Some things never change.

Some things never change and that is what incredible authors can capture in their writing. One of my absolute favorite authors is the Colombian-born Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read and reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera and now I am in the midst of 100 Years of Solitude. I wanted to share an excerpt which shows that it doesn't matter where you are or what time you live in, the human constructs of politics and religion are the same regurgitated concepts that surface time and time again. This book was published in 1967; the story of the family is many decades older than that. Yet, this excerpt appears to still be relevant today.

Since Aureliano at that time had very confused notions about the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, his father-in-law gave him some schematic lessons. The Liberals, he said, were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities. Because of his humanitarian feelings Aureliano sympathized with the Liberal attitude with respect to the rights of natural children, but in any case, he could not understand how people arrived at the extreme of waging war over things that could not be touched with the hand.

This is poetry disguised as prose. It is beautiful writing, which is why I will likely read every one of Marquez's books in my lifetime.