| May you live in interesting times | ||
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The Victorian era was the time of the industrial revolution and empire building. During the 19th century the exodus from the countryside to the towns accelerated and Britain effectively ceased to be an agricultural society. It was a time marked by optimism, when Britain was great. It was the dawn of a new age. But it was also a time when the old certainties were being challenged - Darwinism was starting to challenge the religious idea of man as being in a different category to other animals, geology was telling people that the earth had been in existence for rather more than the biblical 6,000 years and astronomers were coming to the conclusion that the solar system would eventually come to an end as the sun went out rather than carry on for all eternity. And so, in contrast to the general mood of optimism, there was also a mood of concern amongst those aware of these things - the better educated people. The comfort given to them and their predecessors by the established order of things was looking fragile. Matthew Arnold in his poem ‘Dover Beach' * said:
Those who came to the conclusion that the human race had no external support after all, had the discomfort of having to envisage a very different future. Of course their 21st century successors take all this for granted. They have been brought up at a time when our world view had already changed. They cannot really imagine what it would have meant to live through such a paradigm shift in the way the physical world and the social and intellectual aspects of that world was regarded. It is obvious that the social world changed as a result of these profound changes, however it didn't collapse. But those involved in a period of change always find it difficult - they cannot see how things will ultimately re-adjust themselves in order to accommodate the new truths without making life somehow worse. And we are all little conservatives at heart. Very often, of course, it pays to be resistant to change. Things which we have held to be right or true for a long time should not be toppled without serious examination of the proposed alternative. But like it or not, we too are in a time of great change. Technology continually changes the way we live our lives. There is the small matter of global warning. At the moment for us in the UK it is a matter of some importance that we have a change of leader. Gordon is promising to look at things afresh and even to reconsider such things as identity cards. In France, they have apparently decided that their social model needs to be reappraised and of course in Italy, well in Italy... There is another change which has occurred over the last 30 years - the progressive abandonment of communism, even if in China, North Korea and Cuba it is still nominally the state religion and if in South America it reappears fitfully from time to time. But might it be that the ‘melancholy long withdrawing roar' of, this time, communism, will finally come to an end in this century? In its place, the ideological clashes now seem to be between liberal economics and protectionists and, of course, between the evil West and the Muslim world. But at the same time China and India are becoming major liberal economies with the consequence that our present obsession with the tribal problems in the Middle East may be seen as very short-sighted. There is a huge world out there. So then, the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" may well be apt for today, except that I have always seen those words more as a benediction - for I cannot say that I would like to live in times that were dull.
* Extract from Dover Beach - the whole stanza: The Sea of Faith |