I think that line "And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow, For the glitter and the rouge" sums this song up to a large extent. In a general sense it's a song about the coming of a modern culture which lacks substance, is filled with pointlessness and a decent fulfilling life of learning and inquisitiveness is replaced with artificially created wants of glitter and rouge. "And in the moment they were swept before the deluge" - the moment they traded the fulfillment of life for the artificial version thats only a mediocre temptation, you will lose it all, and that has turned out to be true today. This is the first time in history we have in front of us the possibility of destroying most species on the planet. There are in fact two ways - nuclear devastation as well.
"Some of them were angry, At the way the earth was abused" - It's as true today as it was 200 years ago with Native Americans and of course further back. I recently heard a Native American say "If we'd have lived the way Native Americans lived, today we would still be able to drink out of Rivers." So many activists and concerned people who are trying to simply get people to listen to them are still being labeled as extremists, crack-pots, tree-huggers etc. Unfortunately these people harm profits and growth. Pretty selfish of them to want to save our very existence. "By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power" - In another version I have heard the line is slightly changed by the removal of "her" so the line becomes "...forged beauty into power" which to me has connotations of wealthy men in society understanding that as a vulnerable and scared mass of people we are easily subjected to artificial contrivances like vanity and beauty and while we are strutting about comparing ourselves, competing on the most ridiculous basis, they are carrying out the objectives that protect themselves from "the rascal multitude" as we are distracted. Although this version of that line is slightly different it's still a point I'd like to make, because it's blatantly obvious in our developed societies but it miraculously evades discussion in most forms.
The "..the magnitude of.." natures "..fury" is one of the most important points to make in this song. People who tried to protect the earth from the men who wanted to exploit her for their sole personal gain found it difficult to understand how destructive nature could be when we pushed her too much towards the edge. In all, I think it's a song about two groups of people that encapsulate true respectfulness, dignity, decency and thought as there principles and another much smaller but more powerful group that see individual gain, self-interest and plundering as unchangeable aspects of our human nature. If that's true then we were doomed to begin with.
I think that line "And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow, For the glitter and the rouge" sums this song up to a large extent. In a general sense it's a song about the coming of a modern culture which lacks substance, is filled with pointlessness and a decent fulfilling life of learning and inquisitiveness is replaced with artificially created wants of glitter and rouge. "And in the moment they were swept before the deluge" - the moment they traded the fulfillment of life for the artificial version thats only a mediocre temptation, you will lose it all, and that has turned out to be true today. This is the first time in history we have in front of us the possibility of destroying most species on the planet. There are in fact two ways - nuclear devastation as well.
"Some of them were angry, At the way the earth was abused" - It's as true today as it was 200 years ago with Native Americans and of course further back. I recently heard a Native American say "If we'd have lived the way Native Americans lived, today we would still be able to drink out of Rivers." So many activists and concerned people who are trying to simply get people to listen to them are still being labeled as extremists, crack-pots, tree-huggers etc. Unfortunately these people harm profits and growth. Pretty selfish of them to want to save our very existence. "By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power" - In another version I have heard the line is slightly changed by the removal of "her" so the line becomes "...forged beauty into power" which to me has connotations of wealthy men in society understanding that as a vulnerable and scared mass of people we are easily subjected to artificial contrivances like vanity and beauty and while we are strutting about comparing ourselves, competing on the most ridiculous basis, they are carrying out the objectives that protect themselves from "the rascal multitude" as we are distracted. Although this version of that line is slightly different it's still a point I'd like to make, because it's blatantly obvious in our developed societies but it miraculously evades discussion in most forms.
The "..the magnitude of.." natures "..fury" is one of the most important points to make in this song. People who tried to protect the earth from the men who wanted to exploit her for their sole personal gain found it difficult to understand how destructive nature could be when we pushed her too much towards the edge. In all, I think it's a song about two groups of people that encapsulate true respectfulness, dignity, decency and thought as there principles and another much smaller but more powerful group that see individual gain, self-interest and plundering as unchangeable aspects of our human nature. If that's true then we were doomed to begin with.