. . . called into question everything and solved nothing."
The Great War, as [World War I] was then called, fundamentally undermined the cultural continuity of the West. Disconnected from the past, Western societies . . .
. . . found it difficult to develop a compelling narrative with which to socialise young people. As a result, the phenomenon known today as the 'generation gap' acquired a powerful significance -- precisely because it was not simply a generational gap. Rather, it was a cultural gap that opened up between the post- and pre-war eras which, in the decades to follow, was experienced through generational tensions as the problem of identity.
Frank Furedi, "After the War: The first culture war: How the First World War sowed the seeds of identity politics," Books & Essays, spiked-online.com, November 2018.
A fine piece, well worth a read for anyone who concerns himself with the idea of civilization. These snips (Brit spelling and punctuation preserved) give the flavor but not the whole argument:
The traumatic upheavals unleashed during . . . this four-year-long conflict called into question the moral and intellectual premises of Western culture and civilisation. For many, the war served as the ultimate symbol of moral exhaustion and Western decline. In the immediate aftermath of the war, writes a contemporary historian, we can see the 'gradual disintegration of Christian confidence in Western cultural values'.
. . . .
One of the most momentous and durable legacies of the Great War was that it disrupted and disorganized the prevailing web of meaning through which Western societies made sense of the world. . . . In circumstances when the 'meaningfulness of our lives is called into question', [psychiatrist Patrick Bracken writes,] people become painfully aware that they lack the moral and intellectual resources to give direction to their lives [footnote omitted]. 'Europe was exhausted, not just physically, but also morally', writes [Bracken] of the 'crisis of confidence among European elites after the war' [footnote omitted].
. . . . The taken-for-granted assumptions about civilisation, progress and the nature of change lost their capacity to illuminate human experience. . . . [It] was no longer possible to discern in history the 'plot' or the 'rhythm and predetermined pattern' that had, until 1914, appeared so obvious . . . [footnote omitted].
. . . .
Yet the interwar cultural elite was far better at discrediting received roles and identities than developing new ones through which they could endow their personal experience with meaning. . . .
. . . .
Disenchantment with what was seen as a system of bourgeois values was widespread, according to one of its defenders, and 'novelists, humorists and low comedians helped to bring it into contempt'. . . .
Low comedians such as Mr. Fallon, Mr. Kimmel, and Mr. Colbert play the same role today -- bringing bourgeois values into contempt. They have largely succeeded.
. . . .
The clearest expression of the waning of confidence in adult values . . . was a perceptible hesitancy and reluctance to take responsibility for the socialisation of younger generations -- a reluctance especially pronounced among progressive educators of the interwar era.
The reluctance of the interwar generation has given way to the blazing enthusiasm of modern progressive education for socializing the young in the hideous dogmas of progressive thought in culture, politics, economics, and religion.
A case in point is unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. He found a higher calling in -- and I repeat myself from earlier posts -- ceasing to blow up buildings and choosing instead to blow up children's minds. He did this as a professor of education.
"La educacion es revolucion," he crowed at a Caracas conference in 2008, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez at this side. "I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane," he said.
I look forward to his explanation of how "deeply humane" is to be reconciled with the Bolivarian revolution's literal starvation of the people of Venezuela, driving three million out of the country in a desperate search for food.
There's much more in Mr. Furedi's fine essay. Read it. For a related critique of the impact of World War I on the West's understanding of art and meaning, consult Jacques Barzun. Here, for more in the same vein, is one of Unca Darrell's very finest pieces, from 2010.
I'm getting old and not posting much. For the record, however, I was right then and I'm still right. It's comforting to know.
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