#acquisto

“if anything defines ‘the West’ it is the pursuit of salvation in history. It is historical teleology—the belief that history has a built-in purpose or goal—rather than traditions of democracy or tolerance, that sets western civilization apart from all others”.

Both capitalism and communism “were messianic movements, using the language of reason and science, but actually driven by faith”.

When the object of that faith is progress, and when the stakes involve war and bloodshed, lucidity when we are tempted to take our guiding myths as fact is particularly important, and for Gray,

“belief in progress has become a mechanism of self-deception that serves only to block perception of the evils that come with the growth of knowledge”.

This critique of self-deception leads Gray back to a more accurate foundational myth, that of original sin, fully acknowledged in its mythical status but nonetheless operative and useful as a corrective to more potentially dangerous modern myths of progress.

Aria fritta in Lombardia: persino la Corte dei Conti certifica il fallimento della Giunta di Fontana

Avviso a tutti quelli che si ritengono vittime di un non meglio precisato “spirito anti-lombardo” ogni volta che si scrive del disastroso stato di Regione Lombardia in campo sanitario e delle enormi falle in questo anno di pandemia (Fontana e Moratti in testa): c’è un documento di 331 pagine della Corte dei conti (Sezione regionale di controllo per la Lombardia) che mette nero su bianco il…

The difference between a thinker and brooder is that the former '...not only meditates a thing but also meditates the meditation of the thing. The case of the brooder is that of the man who has arrived at the solution of a great problem but has then forgotten it. And now he broods, not so much over the matter itself as over his past reflections on it. The brooder's thinking, therefore, bears the imprint of a memory. Brooder and allegorist are cut from the same cloth.'

The Fall Out of Redemption