the_lady_lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_lady_lily) wrote2013-05-13 11:31 am
the_lady_lily) wrote2013-05-13 11:31 am
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Back to Methuselah - George Bernard Shaw
This is an extremely odd play by Shaw, which seeks to offer a sort of Darwinian sacred text as an alternative narrative for those who no longer adhere to Christianity but still seek some way of articulating purpose and development. It is also much better, I suspect, to read it than to see it staged. There are five acts in chronological order, moving further and further into the future and offering an insight into what the human lifecycle will look like by the time that evolution takes hold. It's all very interesting and quite well thought out, but I cannot imagine actually sitting down and watching it performed, not least because some of the dialogue is - well, a wee bit on the philosophical side.
The general idea that Shaw is playing with is about exploring what would happen if humans suddenly decided they could live longer than they currently do, and indeed continued to expand their lives up to three centuries and beyond. How would that change how we live? How would our priorities shift? How would long-lived humans live alongside short-lived humans? As I say, it's all quite good fun albeit a wee bit dated in terms of what future technology would look like, but it's an idea worth playing with. Sadly, I suspect Shaw's interpretation of evolutionary theory has probably thoroughly bombed out by now, but it's an interesting artefact and worth reading for curiosity's sake.
This is an extremely odd play by Shaw, which seeks to offer a sort of Darwinian sacred text as an alternative narrative for those who no longer adhere to Christianity but still seek some way of articulating purpose and development. It is also much better, I suspect, to read it than to see it staged. There are five acts in chronological order, moving further and further into the future and offering an insight into what the human lifecycle will look like by the time that evolution takes hold. It's all very interesting and quite well thought out, but I cannot imagine actually sitting down and watching it performed, not least because some of the dialogue is - well, a wee bit on the philosophical side.
The general idea that Shaw is playing with is about exploring what would happen if humans suddenly decided they could live longer than they currently do, and indeed continued to expand their lives up to three centuries and beyond. How would that change how we live? How would our priorities shift? How would long-lived humans live alongside short-lived humans? As I say, it's all quite good fun albeit a wee bit dated in terms of what future technology would look like, but it's an idea worth playing with. Sadly, I suspect Shaw's interpretation of evolutionary theory has probably thoroughly bombed out by now, but it's an interesting artefact and worth reading for curiosity's sake.