[Peace] [Peace-discuss] A 'doubtless very different' revolution

[bjornsona at ameritech.net]

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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