Streams of Silver (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #5)

by R.A. Salvatore

Because for change to be lasting among reasoning creatures, that change must be for the better. And so civilizations, peoples, evolve to a better understanding and a better place. For the Matron Mothers of Menzoberranzan, as with many generations of tyrant families, as with many rich landowners, change can be seen as a definite threat to their power base, and so their resistance to it seems logical, even expected. How, then, can we find explanation in the fact that so many, many people, even people who live in squalor, as did their parents and their parents’ parents, and back for generation after generation, view any change with an equal fear and revulsion? Why would not the lowliest peasant desire evolution of civilization if that evolution might lead to a better life for his children? That would seem logical, but I have seen that it is not the case, for many if not most of the short-lived humans who have passed their strongest and healthiest years, who have put their own better days behind them, accepting any change seems no easy thing. No, so many of them clutch at the past, when the world was “simpler and better.” They rue change on a personal level, as if any improvements those coming behind them might make will shine a bright and revealing light on their own failings.