The most important generation - A wake up call to an amnesiac world
I believe it was C.S Lewis (1898-1963, 16 years old at the start of WW I) who first caught my attention to what I'm going to speak about here. Late in his life he got tired of lecturing at Oxford. "Why would you listen to me? I am a dinosaur. The world I used to live in, isn't here anymore and the new one in its place has nearly nothing to do with the one which has gone to pass" he lamented to the students (as I'm paraphrasing it). He thought about a time from the 19th century and before where everyone revered the classics and the great thinkers of Western civilisation. Where latin and greek still were relevant subjects to study and when the technology.. couldn't kill the whole world instantly with the push of a button. C.S Lewis was part of the last generation who witnessed both these worlds, he was born and grew up in the old one and he died in the new. He and his compatriots is what I would call the most interesting generation that ever will exist, especially to us living today.
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Okay, is this going to be some form of conservative rambling about the better days of yore and how much better everything was when everyone was white, christian and knew how to speak their mother tongue properly? Partly, perhaps (Admittedly I'm scarily conservative at times) but it's not going to be the main point, I sincerely promise.
The second person who drew my attention to the fact that there is something special about this generation was Carl Jung (1875-1961, 29 years old at the start of WW I) when I read his memoirs. In them there is a passage where he speaks about his love for his summer house, he loved it there especially because of the lack of any "modern facilities". Oh, I thought, so no radio or tv then, perhaps no proper wc but only a privy and an old styled bathtub, yeah? No, dummy. No electricity at all. No fridges or refrigerators - only kerosene or paraffin as a source of light inside when the dark fell outside. And I got completely stunned. Apparently I'm so unbelievably modern that I actually forgot that the utilization of electricity hasn't been here forever - in fact, its widespread use is not even 200 years old yet! I myself grew up with computers but can remember when the Internet was brand new, already it has become almost like a certainty for all of us - yes, it can malfunction but kids today gets nervous if there isn't any wifi available in the same way I myself just take electricity as a pure given. Technology moves fast and even if Lewis may have been hyperbolic in his speeches in the 50's he is quite on the money now. He and his generation are dinosaurs in relation to our current days - we are barely the same species and yet there is only a single century between us.
How did this happen?
Besides the nature of technology (the singularity- effect, I will come back to that in another text, I can tell you that much) the most important factor is the World wars. I'm hesitant putting them in plurals because they really should be seen as a single great, horrible war. Especially in the aspect I care about here. In 1914 the western world had enjoyed a very long and prosperous peace. The industrialization had gone into second gear and after a somewhat rough start everyone now could notice that things got substantially better year by year. The optimism was unmatched. The world of old was gone and the new one based on (electric) light and modernity would never see a huge war again. This "beautiful era" is in my view the brightest the West will ever see. All of Europe and the Americas worked together as one, the economy was sound and radical scientific and societal inventions bettered the world step by step. Everything wasn't perfect, bien sûr, but people thought every issue would be solved eventually and they had every reason to think their belief was justified.
Okay, is this going to be some form of conservative rambling about the better days of yore and how much better everything was when everyone was white, christian and knew how to speak their mother tongue properly? Partly, perhaps (Admittedly I'm scarily conservative at times) but it's not going to be the main point, I sincerely promise.
The second person who drew my attention to the fact that there is something special about this generation was Carl Jung (1875-1961, 29 years old at the start of WW I) when I read his memoirs. In them there is a passage where he speaks about his love for his summer house, he loved it there especially because of the lack of any "modern facilities". Oh, I thought, so no radio or tv then, perhaps no proper wc but only a privy and an old styled bathtub, yeah? No, dummy. No electricity at all. No fridges or refrigerators - only kerosene or paraffin as a source of light inside when the dark fell outside. And I got completely stunned. Apparently I'm so unbelievably modern that I actually forgot that the utilization of electricity hasn't been here forever - in fact, its widespread use is not even 200 years old yet! I myself grew up with computers but can remember when the Internet was brand new, already it has become almost like a certainty for all of us - yes, it can malfunction but kids today gets nervous if there isn't any wifi available in the same way I myself just take electricity as a pure given. Technology moves fast and even if Lewis may have been hyperbolic in his speeches in the 50's he is quite on the money now. He and his generation are dinosaurs in relation to our current days - we are barely the same species and yet there is only a single century between us.
How did this happen?
Besides the nature of technology (the singularity- effect, I will come back to that in another text, I can tell you that much) the most important factor is the World wars. I'm hesitant putting them in plurals because they really should be seen as a single great, horrible war. Especially in the aspect I care about here. In 1914 the western world had enjoyed a very long and prosperous peace. The industrialization had gone into second gear and after a somewhat rough start everyone now could notice that things got substantially better year by year. The optimism was unmatched. The world of old was gone and the new one based on (electric) light and modernity would never see a huge war again. This "beautiful era" is in my view the brightest the West will ever see. All of Europe and the Americas worked together as one, the economy was sound and radical scientific and societal inventions bettered the world step by step. Everything wasn't perfect, bien sûr, but people thought every issue would be solved eventually and they had every reason to think their belief was justified.
Then the war started. I'm an historic nerd and I still can't wrap my head around why the war came to be. Yes there were an assassination of a royal but it shouldn't need to send all of Europe into a military conflict, but alliances (guess why I am anti NATO? I have opened a history book..) and deals made it to a necessity in the end. Ah, well, since the war was about technicalities for most parties and countries involved, people were expecting it to be short and actually also rather exciting. Yes, the peace over Europe was starting to feel a bit boring so a short and feisty war would only be refreshing some thought (Obs! This is very much real attitudes from people involved, see Peter Englund "Förflutenhetens landskap" among many others).
What people couldn't foresee was what industrialized warfare would mean in practice. When people thought of war before 1914 - they thought of Napoleon, swashbuckling and riding into battle with the cavalry - but all of that was gone and the war didn't became "short and feisty" in the least. It became the worst nightmare ever manifested on European soil. This nightmare stayed for three decades - with an intermezzo in the 20's and when Europe and the world woke up in the morning of 1945 everything they knew was washed away by floods of blood. It's dramatically expressed, but it is almost literally true.
***
Carl Jung knew this very well and I'm basically just repeating his own sentiment from the later part of his memoir ("Memories, dreams, reflections" - 1962). Carl Jung was almost 30 when the war broke out and compared to the younger C.S Lewis he had truly lived "la belle epoque". He had spent time in Vienna when it was as most vibrant with excited modernity. He was a student of Freud, one of the great fathers of the modern mind. He was right in the middle of it and no one had a better ability to recognize the radical changes the world war(s) brought with them and no one could remember what was lost with more accuracy than what Jung was able to do. Everyone born after 1945 is just doomed to be clueless on how the "classical" world looks like outside of dusty history books and how a life in its realm would be like. Previous generations held together in a different way, their experiences were roughly the same from generation to generation, their wars were fought in roughly the same scale as their forgoers - and of course, they shared the same learned languages, the same lingua franca as the founders of the western civilisation. The literate person before 1914 could hypothetically converse with both Julius Caesar as St Paul - Latin and Greek were so common place it was the natural way to communicate with foreigner even among gifted peasants as late as the 18th century! Where is that today? How many of our academic geniuses know more than a few phrases in these two languages? How many of them care about this black hole in their education? Not to speak about us commoners. If we were transported to Rome 325 a.d or Athens 33 a.d we would be seen as babbling barbarians - not the recognizable heirs to an ongoing and cohesive civilisation.
**
I don't want to lament too much. In the end this is just how history went, a disaster struck us and here we are now. The only question remaining is if there is any way to redeem the situation - can we attempt to solve it, even? This is where the most interesting generation comes in. For most of us it is of little use to start by studying latin or greek and going directly to the immortal classics. We won't understand what we are reading regardless of how hard we put our minds to it. We are in need of guides and interpretators and this is where Lewis, Jung, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, 20 years old at the start of WW I) J.R.R Tolkien (1892-1973, 22 years old at the start of WW I) and others comes in. We, everyone, can start with them. Everyone can read Narnia, A brave new world, Lord of the rings and other works with the intention of getting glimpses how the classical mind thinks and operates. It's notably easier if one has a Christian education in your backbone but it's possible to flip through the Bible and other texts from the origins of Judeo- Christianity with the intention not to get any spiritual insights but to study minds that know nothing of modernity and advanced technology. What is reality when all the things we learnt from modern minds aren't available? If we perform these studies without judgement, maybe we can start to communicate with our forgoers again in a proper way. It's horrible being an orphan, but being an orphan on a societal scale is downright dangerous. We must find a way back - if only in our own individual minds!
*
And this is where I can't recommend Jung enough! He is not only a bridge between ages, he is also a bridge between science and spirituality for the westerner since he was an earnest scientist of the era to the tee but still couldn't do away with God and the spiritual world like his teacher Freud so stubbornly tried to. He speaks both languages and regardless where you stand at the moment in the tragic schism between "logicalism" and "intuitivitism" we suffer in the west I can almost promise you Jung will find a way to speak to you if you are serious with trying to hear him out and let him guide you further back to the past. After you have internalized Jung, so many of the attitudes from the past will make better sense. Jung is one of the best gate to everything we keep forgetting that we have forgot.
I think we have no other choice than at least to try to undo this precarious situation..
What people couldn't foresee was what industrialized warfare would mean in practice. When people thought of war before 1914 - they thought of Napoleon, swashbuckling and riding into battle with the cavalry - but all of that was gone and the war didn't became "short and feisty" in the least. It became the worst nightmare ever manifested on European soil. This nightmare stayed for three decades - with an intermezzo in the 20's and when Europe and the world woke up in the morning of 1945 everything they knew was washed away by floods of blood. It's dramatically expressed, but it is almost literally true.
***
Carl Jung knew this very well and I'm basically just repeating his own sentiment from the later part of his memoir ("Memories, dreams, reflections" - 1962). Carl Jung was almost 30 when the war broke out and compared to the younger C.S Lewis he had truly lived "la belle epoque". He had spent time in Vienna when it was as most vibrant with excited modernity. He was a student of Freud, one of the great fathers of the modern mind. He was right in the middle of it and no one had a better ability to recognize the radical changes the world war(s) brought with them and no one could remember what was lost with more accuracy than what Jung was able to do. Everyone born after 1945 is just doomed to be clueless on how the "classical" world looks like outside of dusty history books and how a life in its realm would be like. Previous generations held together in a different way, their experiences were roughly the same from generation to generation, their wars were fought in roughly the same scale as their forgoers - and of course, they shared the same learned languages, the same lingua franca as the founders of the western civilisation. The literate person before 1914 could hypothetically converse with both Julius Caesar as St Paul - Latin and Greek were so common place it was the natural way to communicate with foreigner even among gifted peasants as late as the 18th century! Where is that today? How many of our academic geniuses know more than a few phrases in these two languages? How many of them care about this black hole in their education? Not to speak about us commoners. If we were transported to Rome 325 a.d or Athens 33 a.d we would be seen as babbling barbarians - not the recognizable heirs to an ongoing and cohesive civilisation.
**
I don't want to lament too much. In the end this is just how history went, a disaster struck us and here we are now. The only question remaining is if there is any way to redeem the situation - can we attempt to solve it, even? This is where the most interesting generation comes in. For most of us it is of little use to start by studying latin or greek and going directly to the immortal classics. We won't understand what we are reading regardless of how hard we put our minds to it. We are in need of guides and interpretators and this is where Lewis, Jung, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, 20 years old at the start of WW I) J.R.R Tolkien (1892-1973, 22 years old at the start of WW I) and others comes in. We, everyone, can start with them. Everyone can read Narnia, A brave new world, Lord of the rings and other works with the intention of getting glimpses how the classical mind thinks and operates. It's notably easier if one has a Christian education in your backbone but it's possible to flip through the Bible and other texts from the origins of Judeo- Christianity with the intention not to get any spiritual insights but to study minds that know nothing of modernity and advanced technology. What is reality when all the things we learnt from modern minds aren't available? If we perform these studies without judgement, maybe we can start to communicate with our forgoers again in a proper way. It's horrible being an orphan, but being an orphan on a societal scale is downright dangerous. We must find a way back - if only in our own individual minds!
*
And this is where I can't recommend Jung enough! He is not only a bridge between ages, he is also a bridge between science and spirituality for the westerner since he was an earnest scientist of the era to the tee but still couldn't do away with God and the spiritual world like his teacher Freud so stubbornly tried to. He speaks both languages and regardless where you stand at the moment in the tragic schism between "logicalism" and "intuitivitism" we suffer in the west I can almost promise you Jung will find a way to speak to you if you are serious with trying to hear him out and let him guide you further back to the past. After you have internalized Jung, so many of the attitudes from the past will make better sense. Jung is one of the best gate to everything we keep forgetting that we have forgot.
I think we have no other choice than at least to try to undo this precarious situation..
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