It took him little time, once exiled to Europe then America, to see through the illusions of the post-Christian West, and to describe -- knowingly and exactly -- the spiritual emptiness of our purposeless freedom. The Russians had had materialist servility imposed on them by a monstrous regime; we were meanwhile imposing it on ourselves -- in the flaccid consumerism of the “mall culture,” and by our deafness to every noble calling.
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"the spiritual emptiness of our purposeless freedom" "deafness to all noble callings"
ReplyDeleteAgree and disagree. There are things that are horribly wrong. There are many things that are wonderfully right. Not everyone buys into the the materialism. There are amazingly generous people in the world. There are still surprisingly normal healthy folk all about us. Nobility is not gone.
Very little of the uncraziness gets media time. The mistake is to look at t.v. or read the paper--think the world is going to hell in a handbasket--and see only that. Or to believe that what the spiritually diseased elite and those they've brainwashed will prevail.
oops. That should be: Or to believe that the spiritually diseased elite and those they've brainwashed will prevail.
ReplyDeleteDavid, as I do, suffers from what most media writers suffer. We stick our heads down into the well of awfulness every day for a living. I happen to know that David copes by painting landscapes.
ReplyDeleteIn writing for a living, it would be a pretty short career if we just said every day, "Yep, all's well again today. Stay tuned for the tulip report at six."