It's perhaps a natural consequence of the collapse of religion that people seek escapes from the world rather than try to impose a dogma that would regulate and mitigate the horrors of which humans are capable. These escapes can be drugs, alcohol, self-mutilation, reading escapist books, joining the Society for the Creative Anachronism or becoming a hard core Trekkie. However, ultimately all of these behaviors are self-defeating in that they do not directly address the problems of society. It is as though an entire generation is giving up on trying to fix things. I would like to think I'm reading too much into the book choices of pre-teens and early teens, but the sad fact is that this assessment is reinforced by every interaction that I've had with that generation.

It is clear that traditional religion has failed - the fundamentalist wave that has swept the US will ultimately die out because believing in Jesus is too simplistic and implausible, even in a world that recognizes the possibility of the divine and of miracles. One can follow Jesus as a moral teacher. One could even say he was divinely inspired. However, fewer and fewer people can accept at face value the fantastic and unsubstantiated claims made in books written 2500, 2000 or even 1500 years ago. Islamism is driven by the same despair over the relentless encroachment of secularism that has driven people into the arms of the fundies in the US. Revealed religion is a dead letter.

The question, then, is what we can do as a society to help people feel better about themselves and the human condition. Is there any solace to be had? It is clear that young adult literature is as "dark" as it is because of a profound despair in society. I would hope that at some point a new approach to spirituality takes hold, one that emphasizes being open-minded as opposed to being dogmatic, but which recognizes that certain behaviors are uniformly bad and seeks to act as a balance to the absolute and complete destruction of any sense of right and wrong that is increasing in society.