Revolution with 12 million American workers unemployed, a circumstance nearly repeated in 2008.Īmerican historian Jacques Barzun (1907 – 2012) takes an equally sober view of the West as that of The Axemaker in From Dawn We saw the American nation move from social unease to culturalĬrisis and economic collapse with The Great Depression of 1929, throwing the United States on the brink of We saw the rapid rise from group consciousness or the common good to obsessive individualism or personhood. With the new obsession with convenience a dehumanization effect on our collective soul.īut 401 in New York City, whereas today that many can occur in a Chicago week. Networks that came to dictate our choices by subliminal We saw the establishment of national radio Guilt was put on hold how two-parent families started to implode then erode in a precipitous decline with divorce becoming the new norm.
Their influence as the epicenter of community social consciousness how Of the discoveries of Albert Einstein and the philosophy of Ludwig We saw how everything was explainable in terms of the “Machine Age,” confirming the validity We saw how the automobile changed morality and courting, while at the same time changing our sense of place and space, fostering the idea nothing was Novelty, pleasure, and rebellion, introduced Wester man to his psychosexual nature with such terms as the “libido,” “id” and “superego.” God and in German psychologist, Sigmund Freud tapping into a desire for When German philosopher Nietzsche presented his concept of the “superman” with no longer the need for Author Willa Cather observes, “The world broke in two in 1922 when theīarrier between traditionalism and modernism disappeared.” Than 50 percent of the population now lived in towns and cities. In the 1920s when the United States was no longer an agrarian society as more In Western man's collective search for identity in psychology where the desire was toĮscape the present, but at the same time to chase the unattainable.
Heroes in literature, film, music, and art as man felt “active, free in spirit.” This ambivalence was core to the existential philosophy of Albert Camus and Jean Paul The celebration of irrationality, chaos, and emotional anarchy in 20 th-century Passage on the world because progress always led us forward toward the horizon Only rarely, if ever, did we look back to examine the effect of our Mattered was a rising standard of living. Has been our practice to use the axemaker’s gifts to take what we wanted from Redefined the way we thought, the values by which we lived, and the truths forĪxemaker’s gift was so attractive, not evil or ugly, we always came back for New way to make us rich or safe or invincible or knowledgeable, we accepted theĪnd when we changed the world, we changed our minds, for each gift They are the axemarkers, whose discoveriesĪnd innovations, over thousands of years, have gifted power in innumerable Tarcher (1932 – 2015)Ībout the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. Such a predilection has created the contentious world we all live in. They demonstrated in The Axemaker’s Gift (1995) how man of Present the compelling metaphor of the double-edged ax of progress and retreat, Poet, a soldier than an artist, a politician than a philosopher. West’s obsession, Spengler suggests it would be better to be an engineer than a Western Civilization” is dead but not yet buried. Subjected to the same cycle of growth and decay by following their predestined Oswald Spengler (1880 – 1936) argues in Decline of the West (1926 – 1929) that all civilizations are Ponder the price of the gain for the loss. Taking risks, creating new profit streams while failing to take the time to Yet, wealthĬreators are likely to be neither, but simply people stumbling in the dark, Visit the people who made it, profited from it, and those who suffered for Of mandate” of the West, take a storybook walk through Western history, and In disbelief as people about the globe with nothing to lose are rising to playĬonstant havoc with its contentment while repeating the same errors of its ways inīIRTH OF THE MODERN & THE MIND OF THE TIMES Three-quarters of the world’s natural resources, accumulating a comparableĪmount of wealth, while believing itself the model of civilization, shuddering CONCEPTUAL LOGIC OF MANDATES HIDING THE SNAFUS THAT THEY CREATEĮuro-American society remains in a surreal state cordoned offįrom nine-tenths of humanity as if in a gated community, drawing on