FQL:

Lestat here. I want to answer this questions from Ksenia Stepanova. “Hello Lestat… What do you find the single best thing about living in the 21st Century compared to the 18th?” Well, Ksenia, let me offer two answers. The selfish sensuous being in me says: electric light is the single best thing. The 21st century, like the 20th, in the West, is awash with artificial light which has endowed the nighttime with the energy and optimism of the daytime, and wholly changed the public life of the human race after dark. I love the splendidly lighted libraries, theaters, opera houses, movie houses, shopping malls, public thoroughfares, common streets, homes and parks. That’s my first selfish answer. But let me also give a longer philosophical answer: the moral being in me has to say that the single best thing in West today is the lack of the poverty and misery that was taken for granted in the 18th century. In the West, people today are well fed, healthy, wearing adequate and generally well constructed clothing and shoes, and free from starvation, death from exposure, and the diseases that ran rampant in the 18th century. Understand, the 18th century still saw cruel public executions, starvation right in the middle of capital cities like Paris or London, and massive death through contagious diseases and through poor sanitation. People today have almost no idea what all that was like. And at the time, of course, we thought the world would always be that way…mud and raw sewage in public streets, many children dying before the age of five, women gone at an early age from the ravages of childbirth, and people dying of common infections. We had no idea that the world could be the way it is now in Western nations. Working democracy was a vague dream when I came of age; the world was sharply divided between the rich and the poor; and criminals were still tortured and cruelly put to death before cheering mobs at places of public execution. Again, people today have no real idea how very different life was before. To say these are astonishing times is an understatement. Thanks for your question, Ksenia. —– And now I’m ready for more questions if any of you all want to enter them into this thread.