[Peace-discuss] A 'doubtless very different' revolution
bjornsona at ameritech.net
bjornsona at ameritech.net
Mon Jun 4 15:24:47 UTC 2018
And the article about Cambridge Analytica''s parent group conducting surveillance and interference in other countries that Karen Aram submitted to the peace discuss list just after this, is just one example of the barbarism, immorality etc. in this age.
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------ Original message------From: Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discussDate: Mon, Jun 4, 2018 8:22 AMTo: peace-discuss at anti-war.net;Cc: Peace;Subject:[Peace-discuss] A 'doubtless very different' revolution
“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one
historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such
parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe
and North America and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into
the Dark Ages. None the less certain parallels there are. A crucial
turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of
good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium
and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community
with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to
achieve instead—often not recognising fully what they were doing—was the
construction of new forms of community within which the moral life
could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the
coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral
condition is correct [one characterized by moral incoherence and
unsettlable moral disputes in the modern world], we ought to conclude
that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What
matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community
within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be
sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if
the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last
dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time
however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have
already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of
consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are
waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St.
Benedict.” – Alasdair MacIntyre, in 'After Virtue,' thirty-five years ago
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