11-14-2018, 01:38 PM
Crimean War. Franco-Prussian War. Liberation struggles in Balkan Europe. Unification of Italy.
Even in America I am tempted to believe that the Gilded Generation took on many of the roles of a Civic generation while missing some. Like a Civic generation, the Gilded did things on a large scale (Big Business took off in energy, meat processing, and rails under the Gilded), believed in secularism (their preachers resembled more Billy Graham than Billy Sunday, Herbert W. Armstrong, or Jerry Falwell), became conformist, adopted a bland style in culture, got an early start and a late exit from the political sphere, and tended to an indulgent style of child-rearing. Unlike a purer Civic generation, they remained pecuniary; their morals were always suspect (think of the stereotypical villain of the silent movie era, the villain wearing a cape); they distrusted arcane intellectualism; and they had short fuses, as one would expect of a Reactive generation. The Civil War may have empowered Northern survivors of the Civil War while crushing the hopes of Confederates.
Even in America I am tempted to believe that the Gilded Generation took on many of the roles of a Civic generation while missing some. Like a Civic generation, the Gilded did things on a large scale (Big Business took off in energy, meat processing, and rails under the Gilded), believed in secularism (their preachers resembled more Billy Graham than Billy Sunday, Herbert W. Armstrong, or Jerry Falwell), became conformist, adopted a bland style in culture, got an early start and a late exit from the political sphere, and tended to an indulgent style of child-rearing. Unlike a purer Civic generation, they remained pecuniary; their morals were always suspect (think of the stereotypical villain of the silent movie era, the villain wearing a cape); they distrusted arcane intellectualism; and they had short fuses, as one would expect of a Reactive generation. The Civil War may have empowered Northern survivors of the Civil War while crushing the hopes of Confederates.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.