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" The great fault of modern democracy -- a fault that is common to the capitalist and the socialist -- is that it accepts economic wealth as the end of society and the standard of personal happiness....
The great curse of our modern society is not so much lack of money as the fact that the lack of money condemns a man to a squalid and incomplete existence. But even if he has money, and a great deal of it, he is still in danger of leading an incomplete and cramped life, because our whole social order is directed to economic instead of spiritual ends. The economic view of life regards money as equivalent to satisfaction. Get money, and if you get enough of it you will get everything else that is worth having. The Christian view of life, on the other hand, puts economic things in second place. First seek the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added to you. And this is not so absurd as it sounds, for we have only to think for a moment to realise that the ills of modern society do not spring from poverty in fact, society today is probably richer in material wealth than any society that has ever existed. What we are suffering from is lack of social adjustment and the failure to subordinate material and economic goods to human and spiritual ones. "
― Christopher Henry Dawson , Religion and World History: A Selection from the Works of Christopher Dawson
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" The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street of By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to play with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. "
― G.K. Chesterton , What's Wrong with the World
28
" But what I would like to know," says Albert, " is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No." " I'm sure there would," I interject, " he was against it from the first." " Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No." " That's probable," I agree, " but they damned well said Yes." " It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, " we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who's in the right?" " Perhaps both," say I without believing it." Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me into a corner, " but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;--but the French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side, now what about that?" " That I don't know," I say, " but whichever way it is there's war all the same and every month more countries coming in." Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started." Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority.Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. " A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." " Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp, " I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other--" " Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, " I don't feel myself offended." " Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, " it doesn't apply to tramps like you." " Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh, " Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State--" exclaims Mller." State, State" --Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, " Gendarmes, police, taxes, that's your State;--if that's what you are talking about, no, thank you." " That's right," says Kat, " you've said something for once, Tjaden. State and home-country, there's a big difference." " But they go together," insists Kropp, " without the State there wouldn't be any home-country." " True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were." " Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.Kat shrugs his shoulders. " There must be some people to whom the war is useful." " Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden." Not you, nor anybody else here." " Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. " It isn't any use to the Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already." " I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, " he has not had a war up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous. You look in your school books." " And generals too," adds Detering, " they become famous through war." " Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat." There are other people back behind there who profit by the war, that's certain," growls Detering." I think it is more of a kind of fever," says Albert. " No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn't want the war, the others say the same thing--and yet half the world is in it all the same. "
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" Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ... "
― Joseph A. Schumpeter , Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
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" Thus, for an adequate interpretation of the differences found between the classes or within the same class as regards their relation to the various legitimate arts, painting, music, theatre, literature etc., one would have to analyse fully the social uses, legitimate or illegitimate, to which each of the arts, genres, works or institutions considered lends itself. For example, nothing more clearly affirms one's 'class', nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music. "
― Pierre Bourdieu , Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
