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WHAT MAKES A GOLDEN AGE?
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Message 1.
Posted by TheodericAur (U14260004) on Monday, 19th September 2011
On the Ancient and Archeology Board there have been discussions regarding Gildas and the "Golden Age" of Arthur / Ambrosius.
This has got me wondering as to what actually comprises a Golden Age?
The Elizabethan era is often referred to in this way, as is the Aztec Empire, or the Chin Dynasty and even the 1960s.
It was the latter that got me thinking because there is the hype of the '60s and as well as the glamour, psychedelia, freedoms, there were also the down sides of poverty, child abuse, back street abortions, inflation, strikes, 3 day week etc.
So what is it that makes us think of certain eras being "golden"?
Kind Regards - TA -
Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 19th September 2011
Theodoric
Matthew Arnold wrote about this- perhaps in "Culture and Anarchy", and in fact part of it was quoted in Jackson and Marsden's Sixties study of "Education and the Working Class".
The gist of it was that there are ages when a really vibrant cultural life is generated through the participation and involvement of all layers of society. He saw Elizabethan England as such a time when Shakespeare plays could be appreciated by all the people. He might have said the same for Greek drama.
Yesterday I watched on Iplayer the Andrew Marr interview with *** Gould now in the "death place" who expressed the conviction that everyone needs to have a higher purpose in life. the whole society from top to bottom.
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 19th September 2011
It was the latter that got me thinking because there is the hype of the '60s and as well as the glamour, psychedelia, freedoms, there were also the down sides of poverty, child abuse, back street abortions, inflation, strikes, 3 day week etc.
So what is it that makes us think of certain eras being "golden"?
Well a perfect world doesn't and can't exist but, I think, a golden age is one that is memorable compared to those decades immediately before or after.
An age that is considered golden could be so named for a variety of reasons, an extended period of peace and prosperity, or advances in science, achievements in the arts or even for a period of idealism and hedonism such as the 60s. -
Message 4
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Monday, 19th September 2011
Nostalgia, a selective memory and the time when one was in one's prime.
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Message 5
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 19th September 2011
Distance and not having had to live through the reality.
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Message 6
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 19th September 2011
I was going to say something similar to cloudyj here. I would put the last golden age as the 1950s, which seem to me a time when there wasn't a lot of political or economic upheaval (at least where I live) and you could get into a hospital when you needed to, and doctors visited and milk came in nice bottles to the doorsteps (as it did for a long time after that admittedly, and since we had a cow in the 1950s milk didn't come near our place in a bottle - selective memory already shown up), and we didn't hear of drugs or criminal gangs or kids drinking themselves silly (though apparently more alcohol was drunk in NZ in those days than now).
Ah well, my life at least is still pretty golden, so shouldn't complain.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 7
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Monday, 19th September 2011
Nostalgia - and attractively, and selectively, written accounts of the time fill the bill pretty well from my perspective.
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Message 8
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Monday, 19th September 2011
But you know Ur-L even nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
TP -
Message 9
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 19th September 2011
In so far as those women born in the West (!!!!) between the mid 40s and late 60s are concerned, this has probably been the golden age. For the first time in history we had the opportunity to control our fertility, we could be pretty confident we would survive childbirth and that our children would live to adulthood; no major wars or famines, the prospect of education and employment if we wanted it and increasing personal, political and financial independence.
Was there a previous Golden Age for women? I'm pushed to think of one, even for the elite. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 19th September 2011
It is interesting and I think signficant that the posts have taken a very different line to that tradition in which Matthew Arnold - and the OP wrote..
Thus historians wrote of the idea of Classical antiquity as an idea that lived on through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages with the view that Civilized virtues - of the kind associated with the Arthurian legends- might yet prevail against barbarism selfishness and all those things that diminish other people in our eyes.
In this sense a Golden Age leaves a huge legacy of achievement that inspires the world for centuries to come and helps people to feel that their life and death will perhaps have had some point and value.
I always think of Christian Aid taking up the clever admen type slogan "We believe in life before death".. And after.. what is the legacy.?.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Cass wrote "historians wrote of the idea of Classical antiquity as an idea that lived on through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages with the view that Civilized virtues - of the kind associated with the Arthurian legends- might yet prevail against barbarism selfishness and all those things that diminish other people in our eyes.
In this sense a Golden Age leaves a huge legacy of achievement that inspires the world for centuries to come and helps people to feel that their life and death will perhaps have had some point and value. "
I think that this idea of calling a happy period a "golden age" first came from the Roman writer Cassio Dio who, describing the death of Marcus Aurelius and the accession of Commodus in 180, says "our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day." This sentiment was taken up (to the apparent general approval of the educated of the time) by Edward Gibbon who wrote in the 18th century "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would, without hesitiation, name that which elapsed between the death of Domitian and the accession of Commodus. [ie 96-180ad]" Of course, his view can readily be criticised; for a start he appears to think that the whole human race lived in the Roman Empire, when most people at that time didn't. Moreover this was a time when the evil of slavery was not only in force, it was seen as a natural, virtually unquestioned, institution. The use of torture in the judicial system was routine, and condemned criminals suffered horrible deaths for public entertainment. Nevertheless, one can see what Cassius Dio, and Gibbon, meant; most of Europe was kept at peace by a strong, but not yet overly large, army and a stable government which enabled widespread trade and an economic prosperity which was probably unprecendented at that time. Clearly, most of the benefits accrued to the ruling classes, and the data we have from Egypt, for example, suggest that the poor were, if anything, in a worse state than before - but the fact remains that Cassius Dio, part of the ruling classes himself, look upon the world before 180, with pleasure. -
Message 12
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Cass wrote "The gist of it was that there are ages when a really vibrant cultural life is generated through the participation and involvement of all layers of society. He saw Elizabethan England as such a time when Shakespeare plays could be appreciated by all the people. He might have said the same for Greek drama."
All layers? How many people actually saw Shakespeare plays in England? Probably less than 1% of the population, at a guess. You have more of a case with Greek drama, I suppose, as cities were generally smallish and had theatres that could accommodate a large part of the population, though I think that the slaves would have been excluded.
I happen to think Shakespeare plays and Greek dramas are over-rated anyway. I view the works of the 19th century novelists and poets as far superior.
Caro said that the last golden age was the 1950s. I see some justification in that because the crime rate was remarkably low then, and if people can go out feeling safe, without having to lock their doors, that surely makes a huge difference to the whole outlook on life. But I think Caro will not disagree that part of her feeling about that time arises because she was young then. A child would then look at a steam train, view it as magnificent, giving a ride that was fun and memorable, whereas an adult of the time would be annoyed by the grubbiness, delays, price of the tickets etc.
On the basis that the aim is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the real golden age is NOW. In this generation, we have reached unprecedented levels of prosperity, and that means longer lives in better health, writing and reading more than ever before. -
Message 13
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Nostalgia, a selective memory and the time when one was in one's prime.
I agree with that, cloudyj.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!"
Wordsworth was supposed to be writing about the French Revolution, but he was probably remembering the heady nights he'd spent with the beautiful French girl, Annette Vallon (she became pregnant with Wordsworth's child in 1792).
The late Victorian/Edwardian era is usually seen as a glorious golden time - that world of "Downton Abbey" which as a nation we're wallowing in yet again every Sunday night (a world being presented as still reasonably golden, even though it's now 1916). And a blissful age indeed it had been up till then - for some.
"You have the only things worth having - youth and beauty." So says Lord Henry Wotton to Dorian Gray, and I'm sure Oscar Wilde had a point, although he should have added, "And you're rich, posh, English, you're a boy and it's 1890."
But Dorian Gray of course was utterly corrupt, and so - I suppose - was his golden calf of a late Victorian world - a golden era built on others' misery and poverty (kept out of sight, like Gray's portrait). And Henry Wotton's words at the end of the famous youth and beauty speech are curiously prophetic for our own times - which have seen the end of all our nostalgic hopes of building a fairer society:
"Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...A new Hedonism - that is what our century wants. You might be a visible symbol. "
And so it proved. Oh heck - it's so depressing. -
Message 14
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
And if we have got somewhat away from classical ideas of Golden Ages in our responses, well, it's not as bad as what I heard today - someone going to live in a sheltered village (or whatever you call a place where people go and live independently with some care) called the Golden Age Rest 鶹Լ.
I was using the 1950s partly as an example of seeing a golden age in the time I was a child. But it does seem to have been a very easy time for people generally in my country anyway, a fairly even society at the time, crime reported mostly just in the more salacious weeklies and not much of it on the surface anyway. (I don't recall ever seeing a train till I was about 18. We didn't seem to live near such things.)
Ferval is right about about the best time to have been a woman though - and it's been a pretty good time for most western middle-class men too. If you're not silly enough to join the army anyway. (Though in the 50s no one expected women to work and they could do what they liked all day, basically. As long as they had a driver's licence. No easy to get out of a bad marriage though.)
Cheers, Caro.
PS I can still go out without locking my door. (Though when the insurance people were bothering about our security while we were away and I was about to shout at them that 'We don't even need to lock our doors here" I thought better of it.) -
Message 15
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
"But Dorian Gray of course was utterly corrupt, and so - I suppose - was his golden calf of a late Victorian world - a golden era built on others' misery and poverty (kept out of sight, like Gray's portrait)"
The prosperity of the Victorian world was mostly built upon technology, the inventions that the Victorians produced so many of. Of course the machines had to be built and fuelled by workers (typically in mines) working extremely hard in terrible conditions, but then, workers had worked extremely hard in terrible conditions for centuries, this was not unique to the Victorians. -
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
I agree that we have to try to believe that the Golden Age is now- because ultimately Now is all we possess- It is our only vital asset. The Past is dead and gone, and the Future does not yet exist-- so any Golden Age from history worth looking at is one that provides us with models of how to cope with NOW and to harness the full potential of everyone in the Present with an eye on a Future worth creating.
It is of course not easy in our present economic system which counts retirement from the fray as one of its greatest achievements.
As I have said before I count myself lucky in having spent 37 years teaching in the crucible in which an important part of the Future has been forged.. for as David Cameron observed recently children in Inner Cities now seem to be outperforming children raised in plush suburbs..
Quite simple really.. They understand that the need to make a better world is not an option it is an imperative.. and I taught so many who "adopted a 'yes we can' attitude and have achieved in the face of all disadvantage that I have to be optimistic.
It was symptomatic of the lack of faith in the post-war world, however, that schools as institutions- and most of our popular media- have spent so much time and energy trying to find ways to limit and neutralise the efforts of those whose who see no point in trying to work for the greater good.. . teaching at the same time that lesson that very few people and institutions care about or really pays any individual attention to those who are determined to do their best.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
fascinating
All layers- does not mean everyone.. Only a small % of the English population lived in London but Tudor theatre was a genuinely popular form of entertainment with travelling players taking mini-performance around the country- rather as Felicity Kendal's parents did in India before and after Independence.
And the universal appeal of Shakespeare reflects the fact that he always seems to have scenes between those who were "common people" as well as courts and Kings.. It was expected that everyone would understand in the context of the Commonweal -that obsession of the Tudor period during a period of what we might now consider to have been revolutionary change.
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
The perception of what was a Golden Age seems to me to be largely defined by our own views and prejudices, it must incorporate what we would wish to see our own society valuing and exclude what we see as current failings. Whereas today we might admire times of scientific, artistic or literary achievement, I doubt that we could consider them as golden if they were founded on slavery, child labour or the subjugation of a class or gender.
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Message 19
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
"But Dorian Gray of course was utterly corrupt, and so - I suppose - was his golden calf of a late Victorian world - a golden era built on others' misery and poverty (kept out of sight, like Gray's portrait)"
The prosperity of the Victorian world was mostly built upon technology, the inventions that the Victorians produced so many of. Of course the machines had to be built and fuelled by workers (typically in mines) working extremely hard in terrible conditions, but then, workers had worked extremely hard in terrible conditions for centuries, this was not unique to the Victorians.
But surely the conditions in many of the Victorian mines, mills and factories *were* particularly gruesome - or is the whole dark Satanic thing just a figment of various writers' fevered imaginations?
I read a biography of Stephen Tennant a couple of years ago - it left a heck of an impression on me. Tennant was a bit of a Dorian Gray character - very much the product of a "golden era" (of the bright young things), a wealthy, curled darling, incredibly good-looking and enormously rich. He was Siegfried Sassoon's lover. Tennant's family had made their fortune manufacturing bleach in hideous, polluted, industrial Glasgow. He was a single man and in 1930 his disposable income (no rent of course - he owned several properties - Sting now lives in one of them) was £8,000 a year. I checked on the Economic History calculator thingy and that is apparently around £1.5 million a year today. What struck me was that I was also re-reading Orwell's "Wigan Pier" at the time and the 1930s unemployed miner, his wife and their two children whom Orwell describes so vividly in Chapter 6 of that book (it's *not* a novel, but an account of conditions in the coal areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire at a time of mass unemployment) were existing on a dole of £83 a year - and £23 of that went on rent.
So there's golden and golden, I suppose.
But then the poor are always with us, as somebody once remarked. The rich are too. Tamara Ecclestone has just spent £1 million on a new bathtub made out of crystal: it's very heavy and it cost a fortune just dragging the great lump of rock out of the Amazon jungle. It's got to be shaped and polished and then have the taps fitted. All adds up, I suppose.
PS Cass, you do manage to stay optimistic - you're very lucky. I read recently on a history blog: "I survive by immersing myself in an imagined past." Oh heck, I thought - that sounds just like me. History can become as addictive as any drug, and *imagined* pasts - your own or someone else's - are not a good idea. Oh well. Talking of imagined pasts - back to Elizabeth Woodville now and those horrid York brothers creeping into the Tower of London to smother mad, useless old Henry VI with a pillow. Poor Henry. The 15th century was certainly not a golden age for him - or for England. Although it was, I believe, for the merchant classes. -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Temperance
Re optimism
I was looking up yesterday something in Michael Palin's "New Europe"-- which in fact shares something of the Crucible nature of my inner city.. You may have watched the TV series which is about the countries of post-communist Eastern Europe caught up in all the challenges and dynamism of a NOW that they are rooting in their history and traditions-- and in the Future.. He too ended with a note of optimism - having just visited some monuments to the Nazi attempt to unite Europe by force..
He had seen during his trip lots of people who wanted to be part of a Europe that was based upon people wishing to be one..
Of course the politicians today are talking about having no choice but to support the European Union and the Euros.. a dream of unity based upon States and politics- and not people.
The reason why I was looking in the book was because I wanted to track down his encounter with Eugenia Demoshyenko, the daughter of a woman Prime Minister of the Ukraine just after the Orange Revolution. I found in the book many details, including the fact that Eugenia is married to an Ukrainian pop star who was born in Leeds.. But- for reasons best known to MP- though he mentioned that Eugenia had been sent by her parents to be educated at Rugby School, he missed out from the text her opinion that we in Britain just do not appreciate what an asset our educational system shaped in an age when Britian "ruled the world" is to a world that wishes to rule itself.
Tas might point out to us that Mahatma Gandhi did law in London, and the whole of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty that was helped to make India the world's largest democracy were educated in Oxbridge- not to mention the Bhuttos it seems in Pakistan, and Hansansuji (spelling?) in Burma etc.
As people in the older EU and the UK scream about the costs of changing from the status quo, it is to such places that we can look for people who can see the benefits of change- and progress.
Regards
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Aung San Suu Kyi, cass.
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Message 22
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Thanks Ur-lugal
I rarely read it..neither in regard to the lady herself or relatives-- last time a checked up a couple of years ago in a History of Asia I bought c1967 the family already featured there...
It brings me to a point that rather follows on from my previous thread.. We do seem to be rather "down on" the way that family connections seem to give people what we call an "unfair advantage" these days... But the "unfair advantage" may just be the weight of family expectations and expectations from others of the family.
I was struggling to remember the name of a teaching colleague whose husband was the 鶹Լ man in New York, and whose daughter (now married) has been on the 鶹Լ for some time and featured prominently in the coverage of 9/11 from NY. The names finally came to me.
But recent studies of British education show that more than ever pupils succeed when they have parents who know how to be successful. In other words schools no longer teach with a view to really fulfilling potential. Since the added value of parental input is so crucial.
I was talking to a friend this morning who was just back from taking his daughter up to university as a fresher.. He is a justifiably proud father having come here from Jamaica in the fifties and having done various apprenticeships that make him what one might call a master builder. But no academic. His daughter, however, he has always said, has taken her standards from her grandparents of German stock who went to Cambridge. She could have done but has gone to her mother's old university.
We have both had the good fortune to have had daughters who rose to the challenge of their family expectations: and sons who buckled under it.
Cass -
Message 23
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
Temperance,
To a large degree, I agree with you. The condition of the common people has been (from our point of view) grim for centuries, or even millenia, but the industrialisation and population rise in Victorian times brought a new twist to the horrors of poverty. Whereas the ploughman of the 18th century would have worked hard and probably did not get enough to eat, at least he would have had fairly fresh air, and probably a settled community to live in (v. important), his grandson, who had perhaps moved to London, might have suffered living in a hovel with poor drains, perhaps near smokestack factories etc,, or maybe gone down a mine to hew coal all day in the dark. The population of the country went up quite quickly in the 19th century, but it is noteworthy that in the early to mid Victorian period the death rate actually went up which shows how grim things were. But in the late Victorian period, the indicators all point to the fact that they were coming to grips with the problems, sewer systems were put in place, and the factory acts resulted in real benefits to workers because the working day was successively cut to 8 hours, in the most important industries. It was in the late 19th century that we begin to hear of workers being given Saturday afternoon off - for centuries the working week was 6 long days. The development of the American West lead to the increased availability of wheat. Effectively the country was at peace. Life expectancy in 1880 was much higher than it was in 1780. Yes the rich had it much easier, but is that not always the case, no matter what the age? I don't care if the rich get richer, as long as the poor get, at the least, what they need. -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
fascinating
To some extent all of that version of history during the Industrial Revolution was very strongly influenced by propaganda and three key facts
(a) the most telling examples are usually drawn from Lancashire and industrial Scotland where industries were set up precisely because the regulations and controls that existed in parts of England where industry had been growing for centuries did not exist.. The lack of regulation and control made it possible for the port of Liverpool to man slave ships with pauper apprentices and undercut Bristol, while Lancashire was a very convenient place for people from Scotland and from Ireland to escape to from countries where conditions were much worse than in Southern England.. And they brought with them a very strong tradition of having to appeal to the public- for both Scotland and Ireland had no system of poor relief or ideal of Commonweal, they just issued licences for people to beg.. And many of the documents produced by the factory age show that they could do it very cleverly.
(b) All historians seem to agree that William Wilberforce's Anti-Slave Trade Campaign was historical, not only for what it did directly, but in the example that it gave in the ability of lurid propaganda to strike to the heart and stir up the moral indignation of people reading about things in the comfort of their own homes- of which they know and understand really nothing. "Mrs and mrs outraged of wherever" was discovered and with them the fact that they would be prepared to join in crusades and put up their modest amounts of money to create pressure groups aimed just at achieving one goal in life.. Such crusades produced much of the documentary information that filled the history books- especially as the late nineteenth century historians looking at economic and social history were most commonly either Marxists or Sociallists looking for evidence that would fit in withe Marx's view of the science of history.. Most important of all was the London School of Economics created by Sidney and Beatrice Webb specifically with this aim in view.
(c) The industrial age was also the age of Sense and Sensibility that followed the Age of Reason.. It produced that particular literary genre the Gothic Horror story.. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive" has already been quoted. It was a period generally when writing was meant to be visceral, to stir up powerful emotions, and make people feel that mighty and awesome things were happening in the world. It was a Byronic Age full of hyperbole- and it was contagious.. not the least because when everything is said with such bombast and exaggeration the small quiet voice of sense and reason gets drowned out.
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 20th September 2011
On the basis that the aim is the greatest happiness of the greatest number the real golden age is NOW.
Sounds like David Cameron talking about the huge Happy-O-Meter the Office of National Statistics have come up with just in time for the Conservative Party Conference.
I suppose if we're going to talk about "Golden Ages" we should define what we mean by happiness. I've never read Jeremy Bentham - what did he say he meant by "greatest happiness"? Wasn't it something to do with absence of pain and the presence of pleasure? But what did he mean by pleasure?
I quite like what Epicurus recommended for happiness: not lots of food, drink, sex and a crystal bathtub, but a simple vegetarian diet and the company of a few friends in a modest garden. Very nice and jolly sensible. But hold on, there's more - we should aim also for "sobriety, honour, justice and wisdom". Sobriety - well, if you insist - but those last three are definitely tricky. Can they be measured?
I'm not so sure philosophers to be trusted to advise us on happiness anyway. They may be a lofty lot, but many of them do seem to end up pretty depressed (and drunk). -
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
In terms of the greatest happiness of the greatest number I think that J.K. Galbraith's 1992 book "The Culture of Contenment" really put its finger on that emerging culture of "winners and losers" that was truly a culture a way of life and not a Civilization... For the USA had abandonned the pursuit of happiness for what was already on the market- or could soon be.. The post-war world has seen scientists and engineers being given the role of playing god- either running the global economy or destroying all life on Earth at the push of a button.
The role allocated to "the common man" was just to go along for the ride as these great geniuses used mere intelligence to create their version of a Garden of Eden.
But Beatrice Webb's grandfather Potter- [one of the founders on University College, the start of London University- a place where Nonconformists like the Unitarian Potters could study]- said that the best thing that had happened for humankind was getting thrown out of the Garden of Eden. If we had stayed there we would have ended up like pigs wallowing in an orchard.. As obesity and ill-health become the illnesses that Western culture offers to the world it is clearly not happiness but hedonism and the quiet of satiation.
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Totally off topic but reading Temp's post I was struck by how the terms 'utilitarian' and 'epicurean' have commonly become the diametrically opposite of their original meanings with utilitarian being employed to mean functional and practically useful and epicurean to suggest luxurious and sensual. It makes you wonder if there's any point in being a philosopher if your ideas are going to be so profoundly traduced.
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Message 28
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Sounds like David Cameron talking about the huge Happy-O-Meter the Office of National Statistics have come up with just in time for the Conservative Party Conference.
What on Earth are you talking about?
I am not talking about narrow definitions of happiness here. I contend that humanity has been hugely successful in reducing the miseries of past ages. One significant measure of human well-being is the child mortality rate. Now, you may argue that it might be good that children should die in large numbers before age 5, but I humbly suggest that the parents, and the children themselves (and I'm sorry, but I think their opinions matter the most) would far rather they survived. Child mortality has been reduced in Europe from about 15% to less than 1%. That is a real tangible benefit of Western civilisation. But I am sure nobody is going to express any satisfaction or pleasure, still less pride, at this incredible achievement. -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
fascinating
But "every child a wanted child" also means that hundreds of thousands are killed before they are even born.. Since when people have abortions whatever it is that is aborted- the intent and the aim to to stop the birth of a human being.. In many cultures the tragedy of infant mortality was directly related to the joy of birth and new life. South American mothers in the Andes counted the ages of their children from 9 months before they were born, and when asked how many children do you have replied so many above ground and so many below ground.
Now there is the great boon of being able to control procreation and to learn to be content with what the world can support according to scientific and mathematical projections.. For human life is a curse for the Earth more than a blessing.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Hi fascinating,
I read quite frequently people complaining of modern food and life - the latest was when some blog was talking about various oils you could use when cooking and got blasted by people objecting to this that and the next oil on the grounds they were poisoning us all and we should stop taking chemicals (as if we could!) and get back to the natural healthy food people had in the past. I look at this sort of thing in bemusement and wonder at their scientific and historical ignorance. Do they really want to go back to the 'natural' style of living which resulted in the average lifespan in Sheffield in the 1850s being 24. Or Maori being old at 40 with no teeth?
At the risk of annoying people with personal details, my father and his three brothers, eating mostly from their farms, died aged 43, 50, 52, and 71, all of various cancers. It's not a great advertisement for a life before cancer was curable and food was fatty and sugary.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
What on Earth are you talking about?
I was referring to David Cameron's recent request to the folk at the Office of National Statistics. He wanted them to attempt some kind of assessment of the nation's happiness. It seemed a very odd idea to me: can happiness be measured and reported on like the Gross National Product? I had a vision of the Prime Minister reporting back to Conference next month - standing in front of a huge Swingometer type graphic display (older posters surely remember the Swingometer, that highlight of Election Nights). A huge blue arrow would presumably indicate the inexorable rise of the nation's delight quotient since May of last year.
A serious and interesting article about this here:
Having read fascinating and Caro's posts above I can confirm that I am very glad I still have my teeth; I am most certainly happy - and grateful - that many types of cancer can be detected early and cured; and yes, I too want babies to live and to thrive. That said, I do think that in any debate about "golden ages" we need to differentiate between happiness and wellbeing. The latter has undoubtedly increased in the West during the last hundred years or so, but the evidence suggests we are not getting happier:
And since that 2006 report more people than ever are being prescribed anti-depressants; more people are attempting to self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs; more people are stuffing themselves with junk food which increases the risk of early death from heart disease, cancer and diabetes, while others - usually women - seem determined to starve themselves "in the midst of plenty".
Something is not quite as it should be in this *our* golden age of wellbeing.
Robert F. Kennedy was surely right when he noted that "Gross National Product measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile". But then again there's that saying attributed at various times to Sophie Tucker, Mae West and Dolly Parton: "I've ben rich and I've been poor and believe me, honey, rich is better."
I expect Bentham would agree.
SST.
. -
Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Caro
Sorry to read about your father and brothers. Were they the sons of the gran who I think you have previously said brought you up?
But as for "life-expectancy" in the industrial age-
The Registration of Births and Deaths Act c1835 gave people a new tool.. The often quoted figures for "life-expectancy" that really showed up Manchester seem to have their origins in the propaganda of the businessmen of the Manchester School who wanted the people of that "populous district" to vote for it to be given the status of a "Municipal Corporation" in accordance with the new act...
As I have said before the Lancashire region was badly lacking in infrastructure.. So the businessmen wanted to make the case for having town authorities with the authority to force everyone to pay rates in order to bring about improvement- hence they wished to make the situation look terrible.
But Manchester was a very young city having swelled enormously in recent years and- probably like NZ in its early years- it had a young population that was breeding.. It does not take many babies dying during childbirth (0) or in their infancy (1-2) to pull down the average age of death in a population in which few people are beyond middle age.. Normally- as your comment about your relatives suggests- we expect people to die mostly young or old.. Industrial cities had hardly any old people. Like the early colonial settements.
Cass -
Message 33
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
As Cass says, average life expectancy figures can be very deceiving since they are so influenced by infant mortality. Going from memory, in the medieval period, if you survived childhood, you could reasonably expect to live well into your 60s. That figure was across the population but I can't recall the figures for men versus women or by social class but I think that, unsurprisingly, the upper classes had an expectancy of surviving into their 70s.
Weren't they lucky not to be living in parts of Glasgow today. On that point, are there any medics out there who could tell me if something I remember hearing years ago is true, that soft water more of a risk to cardiac health than hard?
Sorry, I'm off topic yet again. -
Message 34
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
Cass said For human life is a curse for the Earth more than a blessing.
Thus you make plain your misanthropy. Instead of celebrating the fact that children are no longer dying by the million, you are determined to mutter on miserably and decide that human life is actually a curse. But of course you have no qualms about having a long and fulfilled life for yourself do you?
Temperance, I see no reason why happiness cannot be measured - why do you have such knee-jerk cynicism? And of course you yourself are quoting measures of happiness to make your point, ie the 鶹Լ article which measured peoples happiness in 1957 and then 50 years later, and found that people were happier in the 1950s. This is no surpise to me. I was talking about the huge advances in human wellbeing (which leads to more happiness) made in general over the last 200 years. The advances in the last 50 years, though significant, may be less likely to lead to happiness, basically because of the choices people make. For example if they make more money and spend that on cigarrettes and alcohol, they are not likely to be any happier in reality. This does not alter the fact that THIS is the most golden age of them all, becuase, first and foremost, we have the food and medicine that can give us longer and healthier lives. -
Message 35
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
fascinating
The sentence that you quoted was clearly (I would have hoped) intended to convey a point of view that I reject.... That I thought would have been obvious from my post that made Temperance accuse me of optimism.
As for weighing happiness Jeremy Bentham developed the idea of a "felicific calculus".. A "lot" of bundle of mixed pleasure and pain consequent upon some action was to be measured in accordance with factors like intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity. Then each individual could add up both pleasure and pain and see whether on balance there was more pleasure than pain. Do the same exercise for everyone and you can get an answer for the whole community.. But as a virtual hermit- perhaps even a genuine mysanthrope- Bentham's moods were perhaps more constant and predictable than people who live by the light or darkness that others bring into their lives.
Cass -
Message 36
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 21st September 2011
It's true that figures for life expectancy are influenced by all sorts of things, but nevertheless in our present day we have in the west both little infant mortality and length of life at the end. For this we have advances in medical interventions to thank - my lifestyle is undoubtedly worse than my father's and uncles' (yes, Cass, they were the sons of my grandmother who brought me up) - I eat too much and resent any exercise at all. But there are pills that you take now for high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels and all sorts of things that presumably extend my life. It's an odd thought that I might not be alive without them.
It also wasn't just a young population and babies dying that meant people died early - when reading about these industrial cities, the sewerage was dreadful, many families shared one toilet and washing facilities, disease prevention wasn't understood well, etc.
But fascinating, it's not quite fair to accuse people of misanthropy and cynicism when they are just putting forward a reasoned argument. The Earth itself probably doesn't care about the population - it will go on in its merry way whatever we do, but an excessive population (and yes, I want a good long life while thinking other people shouldn't be born - and that's another matter that interests me quite a lot, but not for discussion here) puts pressure on the resources of Earth to make it less comfortable for following generations. Many children are still dying by the millions, sadly, just not where you and I live.
I think people never really see their own time as a Golden Age and I guess that's because we can't see into the future well to know if the changes we are seeing will improve life or not. People so often worry about the behaviour of their young people when perhaps it is some of the technological changes that are really going to affect what life will be like. Or uncertain things like new wars. You look forward with uncertainty and backwards with knowledge.
Caro. -
Message 37
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Temperance, I see no reason why happiness cannot be measured - why do you have such knee-jerk cynicism? And of course you yourself are quoting measures of happiness to make your point, ie the 鶹Լ article which measured people's happiness in 1957 and then 50 years later and found that people were happier in the 1950s.
Point taken. I just wish you would reciprocate and acknowledge that wellbeing and happiness are two completely different things.
But I'm not a cynic - how I wish I were - whatever you or other people may think, and I find it very frustrating that you do not seem able to appreciate that, although of course it is good to be well-fed, warm and free from pain, people can find themselves in that happy position and yet still be unhappy, alienated, anxious, even deeply afraid. Many people around me seem to be just that - friends I worry about who are living lives of quiet desperation, despite money, middle-class English comfort *and* children. If we are indeed living in a "golden age" why should that be?
I actually don't believe in golden ages, and I wish we paid more attention to the end of the Thoreau quotation about quiet desperation - " and go to the grave with the song still in them". We can't avoid the absurd inevitability of the grave, but what I find distressing about life today is that mention "the song" and most folk assume you're talking about the "X-factor". Spiritual desolation (and I'm not trying to push "God" here by the way) is everywhere, and not all your Gradgrindian statistics in the world can persuade me it is otherwise. In fact I can just imagine Gradgrind taking Girl Number 20 through some kind of happiness catechism:
Q. Girl Number 20, what is the chief end of man?
A. To be happy, sir.
Q. Where do you live, Girl Number 20?
A. In England, sir.
Q. What is the date?
A. It is 2011, sir.
Q. And so what condition do you find yourself in, Girl Number 20?
A. I am happy, sir.
I'm reading a lot of Hilary Mantel at the moment, a woman I admire tremendously. She describes perfectly what I am struggling to express. In this paragraph it is twilight and her character is driving along the M25, that golden highway that loops around one of the richest and most successful cities on earth:
"The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin's scrub-grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon...This is marginal land: fields of strung wire, of treadless tyres in ditches, fridges dead on their backs, and starving ponies cropping the mud. It is a landscape running with outcasts and escapees, with Afghans, Turks and Kurds: with scapegoats, scarred with bottle and burn marks, limping from the cities with broken ribs. The life forms here are rejects, or anomalies; the cats tipped from speeding cars, and the Heathrow sheep, their fleece clotted with the stench of aviation fuel..."
Just one woman's perspective, I suppose - others I'm sure see it all quite differently.
SST. -
Message 38
Posted by TheodericAur (U14260004) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Hi All
What an interesting group of answers..... Thankyou....
The definition of a Golden Age appears from these answers to have so many different interpretations and be applied to so many different levels.
I was fascinated that some people have identified a Golden Age with their own experiences, whether of youth and energy or their level of safety or control of their lives. Yet others cannot believe that a Golden age has been, is or can be within their lifetimes.
What is obvious from the answers is that the Golden Age is very subjective to various strands of our world or indeed our immediate society.
A Golden Age across the whole spectrum of our society does not seem to be possible.
An era of great honesty might be countered by limited lifestyles, yet longer lifespans do not necessarily mean happier lives when the latter part of our lives may be blighted by lack of mobility or disease or the earlier part being blighted by war.
Another view is that even the people who “have everything” are also (as Temperance points out) “unhappy, alienated, anxious, even deeply afraid. Many people around me seem to be just that - friends I worry about who are living lives of quiet desperation........
So what many people strive for all their lives, travel continents for, give up their lives to help their children achieve a “comfortable lot” is in fact found to be dross when you obtain this goal.
A Golden Age is a measurement and as many people have said here, in one way or another, it is a comparison between what we have now and what has gone before or what may happen in the future.
Many Golden Ages are qualified, like the “Golden Age of Steam” or the “Golden Age of Chivalry” and perhaps this is recognition of the fact that there is no such thing as perfection or a complete “Golden Age” at all levels.
Will our age be known in the future as the “Golden Age of Information and Communication” and what will be meant by that?
Will it mean greater and more immediate links to your friends and families, the ability to access information like a global library from all over the world, to better understand each other or to be able to fight campaigns easier, arrange civil unrest whether in the Arab States or Croydon, to book your holidays, manage your finances from the comfort of your own home or send pictures from Britain to New Zealand in the twinkling of an eye?
If you had told someone in 1970 that in 40 years you could stand in the middle of a field up a mountain and take a picture on your phone and send it to your friend on the other side of the world in a few seconds and that they would have been able to see it and their was no film involved, they would have regarded that as living in a “Golden Age” (or more likely that you were not telling them the truth).
If you had also told someone in 1970 that in forty years time there would still be wars, poverty, famines, child mortality, pirates, slavery, pollution at all levels, abortion on a grand scale, financial collapse, spying on individuals by the Press, cameras following your every move operated by the State, fewer personal freedoms, a greater divide between the very rich and the poor, financial turmoil not seen since the 1930s etc. they would have been disappointed but probably not surprised but they would not have seen this as a Golden Age.
Perhaps the phrase “Golden Age” is designed to show us what we don’t have now and from the comments on this thread so far that is exactly what it would appear to have done.
As I suppose is what Gildas meant to show in his criticisms of his age.
An ideal that because it is assumed was there in the past can be acheivable in the future by changing the present but in fact in actuality may never have been there in the first place.
Kind Regards - TA -
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Eric Hobsbawm uses the title "The Golden Age" for the the second part of "The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991"..
For him it was 1945-1973.. And it was followed by "The Landslide".
But Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in 1917 and was educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge during his "Age of Catastrophe"..
As a Socialist and eventually a key advisor to the Labour Party one can understand why he could see those years as full of promise, and they were.. But only enough to make the global Sixties generation see the full potential of one world- for good or evil.
The potential is still there but the infections of the Age of Catastrophe inevitably found their way into globalisation because that earlier age had been so damaging to idealism.
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Temperance said
Point taken. I just wish you would reciprocate and acknowledge that wellbeing and happiness are two completely different things.
I don‘t argue against that. I have never been hung up on the idea of ‘happiness’ being the prime goal of humans, but there again I am not inclined to argue against anyone that says that happiness is the most important thing, because wellbeing could be synonymous with happiness; my dictionary gives the definition of ‘the state of being healthy, happy etc’. I only mentioned “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” in an attempt to be uncontentious; surely happiness can mean fulfilment, well-being, self-actualisation.
But, as I say, I am not really hung up about the actual meaning of happiness, nor even particularly whether each individual is actually happy. What we are discussing here is the meaning of the golden age; now, of course, we all knew from the start that it is a kind of unanswerable question, that different people will have differing opinions but, on the other hand, these types of questions (such as “who was the greatest Briton?”) do have the effect of really getting people to think about history, so therefore I am happy to go with the flow and give my own opinion on the matter.
Obviously it goes without saying that many people can be miserable in a golden age. Nobody said that a golden age meant that absolutely every person would be happy/fulfilled/self-actualised. Cassius Dio would not have considered that everyone in the time of Marcus Aurelius was constantly going around with a smile on their face. The subject of this discussion is not “paradise” or “utopia”. The concept of a golden age can only mean a period when many things were particularly good - and of course different people will have different ways of defining ‘good’ in this context.
You call me Gradgrindian, but I say again, emphatically, those inclined to say “oh you can prove anything with statistics” or “I know what the numbers show but I still believe” will be among the first to say (for example) “How can you say that the country is better off when it’s been proven that the poorest 20% have seen their incomes drop by 8.4% in the last 2 years” or “in real terms health spending has actually dropped by 1.6% year on year, so that proves the country is in a mess”. In fact I believe that statistics should indeed be treated with caution. Having said that, the most important indicators of well-being, such as life expectancy and child mortality, nutrition and education, social security and pension provision, to name but a few, have changed so STUPENDOUSLY for the better in the last 200 years (eg child mortality is less than one tenth of what it was) that I make no apology for pointing up these facts. And if pointing out such stark facts induces you to name-calling, so be it.
If you don’t stick to facts you get the skewed perception you quote about the M25. The M25 is a road upon which lots motor-vehicles travel on -fact. I have been on it many times and have never seen a fridge on it (dead or alive), not one pony cropping mud, and no scapegoats. The leaves of the bushes go naturally yellow-green in the autumn, I don’t see any reason to think that they are actually poisoned. The orange colour from the street lights is quite nice, better anyway than the pitch blackness that you would otherwise get at night.
I think I know what you mean by spiritual desolation, but I would call it moral desolation, and I think that it is down to, in large part, having too much. For what are the problems that people most commonly suffer from? Obesity and high blood pressure? The crowded commute to work? The constant pressure to pay the mortgage? The inability to get a job [suffered by about 10% of the population]? The loneliness of the old? The various problems caused by smoking? I would suggest that most of these problems are caused by having too much of too many things. Most people have cars, drive almost everywhere in them, causing huge traffic jams, they eat too much (and maybe drink and smoke too much too), so get overweight and feel below par almost all the time.
Another problem is the alienation that people feel in the working environment. There is a pressure to perform that can cause chronic stress. Also the division of labour has reached a point where the worker is so specialised that his task can seem very far removed from anything that can be said to be a worthwhile activity. But such a worker would not dream of exchanging his lot for that of a coal miner circa 1900, who, whether or not alienated or stressed, had to go down a hole in the ground and fill a set amount of tubs with hewn coal. That’s the difference - if there ever was a golden age in the past, it surely cannot surpass this one in terms of material wealth and opportunities.
But back to spiritual/moral desolation, I believe that many of us have become spoilt brats, that is the nub of the problem, we actually have too much - not everybody of course. But even the people that some commentators call the “disenfranchised” eg the rioters in London. They were not downtrodden poverty-stricken folk who rioted in the hope of getting a much needed crust of bread, the hardest hit shop was apparently J D Sports, the rioters going for what is seen as the most stylish designer gear.
I bang on about how life has improved over the past couple of centuries, partly because it is historical fact, but partly to try and get people to appreciate it, and not for any lecturing or hectoring reason, but in the hope that it may make people feel good, because it actually gives me a certain joy (there’s a word you don’t here much of nowadays) to consider how much people over the generations have worked to intelligently improve the world, and I am grateful that others have made possible that I can travel on a jet plane and meet friends across the world, who I can communicate with instantly even when I am back in Britain. Maybe the moral regeneration that seems necessary could start with people being grateful for what they do have (joy = happy + thankfull). -
Message 41
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Temperance,
thank you for your thoughts.
"I'm reading a lot of Hilary Mantel at the moment, a woman I admire tremendously"
I hope that it is not "A place of greater safety". Book that I read on vacation, but struggling with the never ending amount of information and detail I had to do my utmost best to finish the book...
"a woman I admire tremendously"
I agree...if you read about her life...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 42
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Fascinating,
fully agree with all what you said.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 43
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Thanks for that, Fascinating, well put.
You've made this cynical old bore feel a lot happier tonight. -
Message 44
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Yes, I had in mind to make a one-sentence response to Temperance to say that a Golden Age does not mean every individual or even most individuals would call themselves happy. Surveys usually have quite a high number of people saying they are happy, but (as someone who used to carry out surveys on the ground) I think one reason for that is that people who are really unhappy don't do surveys. They tell the researcher to go away or they don't fill out the forms. (Having said that I once did a victimization survey asking people if they had had any crimes or personal tragedies in their lives - I came home after the first day feeling quite shattered - someone had watched her brother dive into a swimming pool and break his neck, someone's best friend had been murdered, one said she could do this survey but I was to stop if her husband arrived. This was in a small town with little obvious crime.)
Caro. -
Message 45
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Part of Matthew Arnold on the poet Goethe
"
He said; "The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!"
And he was happy, if to know
Causes if things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness."
Cass -
Message 46
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
I have to say I am still somewhat bemused by the reference to the Aztec Empire in the OP.
I had a half Mexican pupil to whom I got used to saying "Don't go Aztec on me!" over the years. . as I gradually got to know more about her rather "colourful" life.
After the first half-term break in her first year aged 11 she put up her hand and said "Sir. I went and visited Auschwitz over the half-term break. Can we have a lesson on that?"
She was a "dark girl" quite at home with blood and guts and deaths heads..etc
I did go to the Aztec exhibition a few years ago to see whether I could warm to them.. Really not my cup of chocolate.
Cass -
Message 47
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
Thanks Cass, your remark about the Aztecs sent me back to thinking about what we mean by a Golden Age and away from a mire of my confused musings about the meaning of happiness. Happiness is surely a transient state; if we felt that way all the time it would be no more than contentment without the heightened feelings that happiness implies.
That leads me to think that, when using the expression, usually we are not even considering general happiness unless as in some distant, imagined Eden but more about achievement in some form. As ever, the OU provided solace and clarity, its definition is
"The first and best age of the world, in which, according to the Greek and Roman poets, mankind lived in a state of ideal prosperity and happiness, free from all trouble or crime. (Cf. Hesiod Wks. & Days 108, Ovid Met. 1. 89.) Hence, the period in which a nation, etc., is at its highest state of prosperity, or in which some department of human activity is at its acme of excellence."
Thus we might say that the Aztec empire was the Golden Age of Meso American architecture, arguable maybe but a position that can be held without reference to the happiness or otherwise of the population.
It therefore seems to me that we can only refer to any age as being Golden in terms of a specific and describable characteristic and only for a section of the population or even one individual. -
Message 48
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 22nd September 2011
ferval
I think that it is very difficult for us to conceive of a Golden Age as I have described it- and in the terms expressed in the 1916 History of Medieval Europe that I have been working with recently- in the Present Age.
There are things that you either see because they are there or else you can not really imagine.. So for example I have mentioned before that in April 1999 at an incredibly significant moment in my life I saw "the glories"-- a rainbow that I was driving along that led me up into the Heavens for about half a mile. For those moments I felt that all units of time had come to the same point and that somehow it made me feel that my life had been "on the right road" ..
But I think that some of the posts have indicated why we can not easily conceive of a Golden Age-- it is because we no longer have transcendental thought, but have been sold a material progress that is based upon piecemeal analysis and construction towards no concept of wholeness..
John Dalton invented atomic theory in the first decade of the nineteenth century and we have come to believe that the whole is defined by and can be no greater than the sum of its parts..
Therefore we cannot achieve "wholesomeness" or such senses of being at one with the whole of Creation and humankind within it.
Cass -
Message 49
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Friday, 23rd September 2011
Caro, I think you are almost wholly mistaken. There are numerous places and organisations that deal with the transcendental and the holistic, and they are made accessible by the help of the technology of the internet. You can start by looking at .
I can agree that the main thrust of modern life is to have everything divided up into disconnected specialities, for the sake of effficiency, and that leads many to fail to see the larger picture. On the other hand, many people are working to bring things together. Since you mentioned the drugs that you are taking for high blood pressure and cholesterol, I will mention that holistic ideas would favour treating the whole body; one treatment, for example, might be exercise, which has been shown, in many cases, to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. -
Message 50
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 23rd September 2011
fascinating
I think that you were replying to me..
And I totally agree.. That is why I referred to the hangover from a couple of centuries of disintegration..
Science was based for so long on "post mortem analysis" - even Gibert White in the mid-to-late eighteenth century- the first ecologist- got people to bring him dead specimins to dissect, and Science itself worked on the "all othet things being equal" conditions that could be contrived in laboratory conditions.
But none of this created "joined up" understanding.
And I believe that my Sixties generation- being the very first truly global generation, one born into the first truly global catastrophe than Humankind has achieved and growing up in a divided world, most crucially an East-West divide that had the power and potential to destroy all life on Earth- reacted against our inheritance and set out on a journey to see things whole..
Certainly it was why I took as many world history options as I could at Uni- while having consciously chosen a University with a course providing a solid core of English history- for wholeness means interconnectedness not chaos.
I see our present economic crisis as a symptom of a failure in the West to see ourselves genuinely as part of "One World" and to produce more to export to the rest of the world than our failed economic system..and our Capital investments.
Because the whole Adam Smith idea of focussing all energies on to creating wealth and then using the wealth to deal with every other aspect of life has had disastrous consequences- like herding people together in huge cities where the consequences were horrendous and remain so.. Even with States that normally take c40% of all the wealth that we generate the problems created by the cities remain chronic- and, in crises like our recent ones, States have to spend even more weighing down future generations with debt.
The cities are temples to mammon, and though we can mitigate some of the consequences by spending money, what most people are crying out for is love. And "money can't buy me love".. only sex.
But I believe that things will change.. And I was interested to see the head of the World Bank on TV yesterday.. Some ten years ago I gave a parent who worked for the World Bank a copy of my pamphlet "The Rediscovery of Social Man", which she later said that she was using parts of for "brainstorming" item in conferences on development economics- her field seemed to be especially Russia and the old SU.
Perhaps as the old system comes near to collapse people may finally be more prepared to accept some new-- or rather in some ways very old.I am convinced that Humankind got this far by being Social.
Cass
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