We hear loud laments, all over cyberspace, about the dramatic loss of confidence in "Western Civilsation" by Europeans. There's great wailing and gnashing of teeth because people just don't believe in the bill of goods sold to them by the sort who've been preaching the "can do" spirit ( AKA wishful thinking ) and the pompous crap that gave rise to the "Enlightenment", colonialism, Communism, rampant capitalism, and a host of other great ideas that were to usher in a paradise on earth.
Of course, people have lost confidence. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have lost confidence after the calamitous 20th century. That loss of the "we can do anything because we're us" pipedream is a good thing, so long as it doesn't last too long. Europe needed to be purged of that sort of pseudo-American positive thinking. Let's just hope a fresh idea takes root to sweep away the last vestiges of the wrong sort of confidence and give hope, which is a damn sight more useful, and human, than confidence
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3 comments:
Can't remember the book, but Chesreton wrote about how the asylums are full of people who really believed in themselves.
Dean
I remember that, too. Was it The Ball and the Cross? I think it was the one with the two sensible people trying to fight a duel while everyone tried to stop them.
Haven't read that one yet.
I want to say Orthodoxy or Everlasting Man. It doesn't take alot of proding to get me to read his stuff.
Dean
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