In the years after WWII, it seemed unlikely to many in the west that the kind of virulent anti-semitism associated with Nazism could ever be rekindled again. We were done with that particular evil, we told ourselves; mankind had put away its senseless genocidal urges.
But when one looks around the world today and sees the hatefulness of slogans being shouted in London and Paris and Ft. Lauderdale(!), not only by Muslims, but by their fellow-travelers, for whom the victims du jour may be Palestinians or Iraqis or jihadi prisoners in Guantanamo, but for whom the oppressors are invariably Jews, one is struck by the truth that people do, indeed, “forget” (except for that very large group of people who never had need to force themselves to remember the evils attendant upon anti-semitism, because they cherished them, and handed down their hatreds from generation to generation).
Mark Steyn, as usual, offers some of the best commentary on the subject (H/T: Blue Crab Boulevard). My own opinion is that Hamas and other anti-Jewish outfits would do well to look at things in the long-term, historical perspective:
(Image gratefully swiped from Seraphic Secret)
Never forget indeed. In fact, we'd do well to remember that, on mankind's earth, whatever is old may become new again.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true. In fact, I have often looked with mounting concern on what appears to be a disconnect between our technological advancement, and the decline in manners and morals and simple humanity.
ReplyDeleteTW: gentrus - a male representative of the gentry (take that, Richard McEnroe!)
Paco, I'm not certain that there's a direct relationship between technological advancements and what amounts to a decline in civilization. Possibly indirect, but not direct.
ReplyDeleteInstead, I suggest that our real problem has been the success of civilization. The motivation to build upon the labor of previous generations is gone; instead, people seek to tear them down, and "return to nature" or "eliminate carbon pollution", while maintaining their current level of comfort.
People don't understand just how thin an edge we ride to maintain this civilization. Or maybe they do, and resent it somehow. But it's clear (to me, anyway) that many people simply resent this world, and are bound to beat into a form that suits their perspective. If that results in the decline of anything, I'm not sure these characters really care.
What causes this resentment is hard to pin down; ennui, decadence, or maybe the lingering bitterness over the (spectacular)failure of that great socialism experiment, the (I am glad to say) former Soviet Union. Or all of the above.
But I have come to believe that there is indeed too much of a good thing.
Jeff: True. I wasn't really positing a direct correlation between the two, just noting that the one (technology, the "commercial" and "material" aspects of civilization), seem to be going one way, and our culture (the religious and moral aspects, plus the artistic and intellectual thrust) the other way. If nothing else, it gives the lie to those who always thought that science - or perhaps "materialism" would be a better word - was the answer to all of our problems.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, it gives the lie to those who always thought that science - or perhaps "materialism" would be a better word - was the answer to all of our problems.
ReplyDeleteI concur. And I say this as a secular person. Science/materialism ain't all that there is.