What a brilliant, educational, enlightened writer. To me, the central message is change is constant, new replaces old, and progress is evident in human history. While nihilists and critics of today’s world bray about the need to go backwards, as with the claptrap about decolonization, there is much triumph in human evolution, destruction as well, even from the printing press, but overall a world of better prosperity and more peace and less war and disease and starvation. The ancients knew less but pointed us in the right direction.
What a brilliant, educational, enlightened writer. To me, the central message is change is constant, new replaces old, and progress is evident in human history. While nihilists and critics of today’s world bray about the need to go backwards, as with the claptrap about decolonization, there is much triumph in human evolution, destruction as well, even from the printing press, but overall a world of better prosperity and more peace and less war and disease and starvation. The ancients knew less but pointed us in the right direction.
amazing article. I highly suggest reading William Wuttunee's 1971 classic Ruffled Feathers.