09-22-2020, 12:05 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-22-2020, 05:54 AM by Eric the Green.)
I remember what Kenneth Clark said in Civilization in 1968, even at the start of the stalemate, and already he said, after describing the climax of The Age of Reason in the episode entitled "The Smile of Reason," with scenes and comments on the founding of the USA and Washington DC: "A peaceful looking scene; a great ideal made visible. But beyond it! What problems. Almost insolvable. Or, at least not solvable by the Smile of Reason!"
I'm afraid those whig values and achievements are not enough to move the human spirit and keep a nation alive. And after 52 years, the problems are not more solvable now, and in fact much less so. It will take a Revolution, just like what happened in a later episode of Clark's series, and perhaps that is unlikely to succeed, with new bosses being no better than the old, or else never able to win. And so yet another civilization enters a period of decay, just as Europe did. Indeed, the episode about the French/European Revolution in Clark's series was called "The Fallacies of Hope." "We're used to all this now. We're almost numbed by repeated disappointments," he wrote in 1968!
I'm afraid those whig values and achievements are not enough to move the human spirit and keep a nation alive. And after 52 years, the problems are not more solvable now, and in fact much less so. It will take a Revolution, just like what happened in a later episode of Clark's series, and perhaps that is unlikely to succeed, with new bosses being no better than the old, or else never able to win. And so yet another civilization enters a period of decay, just as Europe did. Indeed, the episode about the French/European Revolution in Clark's series was called "The Fallacies of Hope." "We're used to all this now. We're almost numbed by repeated disappointments," he wrote in 1968!