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Loading... From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural… (2000)▾LibraryThing recommendations ▾Will you like it?
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Mankind does nothing save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and imitation by the rest of us Individuals show the way, set the patterns. The rivalry of the patterns is the history of the world. - William James (1908)  | |
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To All Whom It May Concern | |
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The Modern Era begins, characteristically, with a revolution. | |
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How a revolution erupts from a commonplace event - tidal wave from a ripple - is cause for endless astonishment. . . . ardent youths full of hope as they catch the drift of the idea, rowdies looking for fun, and characters with a grudge. Cranks and tolerated lunatics come out of houses, criminals out of hideouts, and all assert themselves. The "findings" [of scientism] have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. This opposition to freedom of thought must, according to that very thought, be tolerated, thus creating a general lack of direction that a dictator will supply. Providence, like predestination, lifts the burden of responsibility from the individual, as does their equivalent today: scientific and psychological determinism eliminates responsibility for bahavior, crime included. What the journalists of every type see as their proper task is to form, with the help of rumor and current prejudice, what is called public opinion. . . . great institutions are undone as much by their presumable guardians as by their enemies. No machinery existed for the purpose [of changing the structure of government]; and given this difficulty, the more despotic the ruler the greater the likelihood of change - provided he made the [sanctioned propaganda source] his bedside book. What is preferable [to the savage state] when society and property have become established and the inequality of talents is revealed, is that ability should be rewarded for the advantage of the community. . . . when in time wealth and rank no longer correspond to merit, the disparity becomes an injustice and leads to instability. It is logical that this century's taste for aberrations, which it sees as a norm previously obscured by prejudice, have made of De Sade's doings and writings "an important moment in the history of ideas and of literature." The 19th- and 20th-century religion of art originates in this period and Mme de Staël is, with her contemporary Chateaubriand, one of the prime apostles. . . . to replace by fiat one set of [legal and social] forms with another, thought up by some improver, no matter how intelligent, ends in disaster. So close is sexuality to politics that nearly all revolutions and social utopias begin by decreeing free love and then turn puritanical when the leaders see that license undermines authority. A movement in thought or art produces its best work during the uphill fight to oust the enemy; that is, the previous thought or art. Victory brings on imitation and ultimately Boredom. . . . compassion easily becomes a selfish pleasure fostering self-righteousness. It requires a constant supply of the poor and the weak, instead of encouraging the healthful and self-reliant. The blow that hurled the modern world on its course of self-destruction was the Great War of 1914-18. When the nation's history is poorly taught in schools, ignored by the young, and proudly rejected by qualified elders, awareness of tradition consists only in wanting to destroy it. The point at which good intentions exceeded the power to fulfill them marked for the culture the onset of decadence. Individuals of ordinary talent or glibness were encouraged to become professionals and thereby doomed to disappointment; and too many others, with just enough ability to get by, contributed to the lowering of standards and the surfeit of art. Fraud was the sport of capable minds and lofty souls who wanted to rise above commerce and make-believe. . . . codes of prefessional ethics had to be written and rewritten to cover new offences. Simpler kinds of cheating were popular among university students . . . | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (3)
▾LibraryThing members' description ▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0060928832, Paperback)
In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world. Each has brought profound change--for instance, the remaking of the commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as decadent. To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo--and, he adds, the scientific foundations for today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the 16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the "Me Decade." Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel, defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides. Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or little-explored in this attractive venture into cultural history. --Gregory McNamee (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:53:25 -0400) (see all 5 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions Taken from "Dawn to Decadence", his landmark study of the past five centuries, Barzun's enthralling analysis of the twentieth century rates the present not as a culmination of western civilization, but as a decline. |
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offblack | May 9, 2013 | 
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