Sunday 2 June 2013

Why have there been no great men since 1950?

SHARE
Great Britain has been going through a new dark age since 1950 in the arts, ideas and writing. A fall-off much more striking than the simultaneous diminution in our political power. I recently reread this wonderful article by Andrew Thornton-Norris on this subject which I highly recommend.

I think the same is true of Western Europe (and Eastern Europe too under Communism and then the post-Communist explosion of a kind of capitalism). And in all the rich countries,  and in the world in general the story sounds pretty similar.  

Please correct me if I am wrong. 

What is also interesting is that I have never seen this phenomenon remarked on except in this article.

And what are the reasons for this sudden steep decline?

In the West, we seem no longer to do great men. And please do not mention Mrs Thatcher, Martin Luther King or Ronald Reagan. Who after 1950 compares with Keynes, Jung, Joyce, Laurence, Churchill, Evelyn Waugh, Proust? Or the painters like Picasso, Matisse, etc, etc?

Add to that loss of religious faith and loss of faith in Western civilisation as superior to other civilisations and you have have decadence, yet we had technological innovation and the amazing post-war economic miracle.  For everyone, rich and poor, life in Western Europe was better than it had ever been. The Communist Eric Hobsbawm referred to the period 1950-1973 as Western Europe's Golden Age, but things continued to improve since. Even in Communist Eastern Europe between the death of Stalin and 1989, living standards rose slowly and war was avoided.

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times.

From the article I linked to, I particularly liked and completely agree with this aphorism of Maurice Cowling's,


...secularisation so far from involving liberation from religion, has involved merely liberation from Christianity and the establishment in its place of a modern religion whose advocates so much assume its truth that they do not understand that it is a religion to which they are committed.

One of my greatest regrets is that university I did not get to know and sit at the feet of Maurice Cowling (and Edward Norman and the Peterhouse people). Their kind of conservatism appealed to me, even though I did not like their Thatcherite conclusions they drew from it. I found Margaret Thatcher's ideas repugnant and simply completely  uninteresting. I was a romantic. She has been proven right about a lot of things but she was, at best, to quote Sellars & Yeatman's description of the Roundheads, Right but Repulsive. 

15 comments:

  1. no Dark Age yet, just the 3rd and the 4th centuries, when erudition replaced creativity and bureaucracy replaced government

    ReplyDelete
  2. I told Tom Gallagher that we were living through the French 3rd Republic in its later years and he said - No. It's Vichy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think that date could be pushed back by some way....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No. Think of Keynes, Jung, Joyce, Laurence, Churchill, Evelyn Waugh, Proust, Picasso, Matisse..

      Delete
  4. Anonymous 2 JUNE 19:44, The date is "thee" dates
    and go back a long way, but the death knell rang loudly in the aftermath of
    WW11 and effectively brought forth the death throes of Christian Society. WW11 became the ideal question for the ideal
    answer to the "Christian Question". Christianity was subtly
    but effectively blamed for the "Jewish Question". The premise
    was false but it was garnered and used effectively and efficiently as The coup de gras to degrade the power and influence of Christian Society and the result is the degradation of thought and society.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Picasso. Very Post-Christian.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have thought that Picasso was a better artist before he
      came into his own. but I am not post-Christian or post-
      anything.

      Delete
  6. No need to take a 'Christian' perspective on this: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113299/leon-wieseltier-commencement-speech-brandeis-university-2013

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous 3 June 10:00, I haven't looked at your suggested
      article yet but I will. I can only imagine what I will find. But of course there is every need for a Christian
      perspective as it is central to the discussion as western
      societies central to the discussion have lived in a pre-dominantly Christian world for centuries.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous, I read the newrepublic article. He is the
      literary editor and he is literary. These are just my
      initial thoughts (without reflection). He is a
      Humanists. I am not. Anyway what I hear he pretty much says with flourish that calculators and data are not
      enough. The humanities are as important, maybe more so
      today. So that's good. And of course he includes religion in the humanities. So far so good. But it seems
      lacking. Reading the humanities at University will not
      save civilization. I don't know how many great thinkers
      writers and contributions it will produce when in this
      age the very foundations of this kind of higher thinking
      ..thought is crumbling away through man's own efforts.
      Man now building his new foundations upon Humanism.
      Humanism is a poor foundation and will not last. Just my
      initial thoughts.

      Delete
  7. Ah well - I hate getting Biblical, but Isaiah 3:1-5 is irresistible in this context: "For behold the sovereign the Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water. The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the cunning man, and the ancient.The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skillful in eloquent speech. And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them. And the people shall rush one upon another, and every man against his neighbour: the child shall make it tumult against the ancient, and the base against the honourable."

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ah well - I hate getting Biblical, but Isaiah 3:1-5 is irresistible in this context: "For behold the sovereign the Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water. The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the cunning man, and the ancient.The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skillful in eloquent speech. And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them. And the people shall rush one upon another, and every man against his neighbour: the child shall make it tumult against the ancient, and the base against the honourable."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is irresistible. Thanks for offering it. So here we are.

      Delete
  9. Pentru ca civilizatia vestica a apus...Si lumea s-a prostit, deci nu mai e cerere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, I don't speak Romanian. Who's fooling who ?

      Delete