The New Patricians

Abstract

It is always tempting for us to claim that what we are living through is a cultural crisis. To make such a grandiose claim at the present time would be to misstate the nature of our present condition. There is no crisis - or, rather, the crises are long over and we are now living in their aftermath. What we are beholding is no more than a gradual process of steady decline, with regular and increasingly predictable milestones, which may loom up like ghastly omens to those not yet habituated to their passage, but each of which is merely another stock reminder of the descending course we are following. Thus every new crudity in our written or spoken language, every ingenious vulgarity in behaviour instantly made the object of popular enthusiasm by the media of mass communication, every fresh episode of barbaric or upstart indifference to the quiet sensibilities of quiet people should be seen, not as some epoch-making collapse of standards, but simply as the latest symptom of decay in a way of life, a mental and moral perspective, which has long been atrophying before our eyes. While no doubt the slow enervation of our culture will at some time reach its nadir, to be succeeded eventually by a re-awakening, we must assume that disenchantment and disorientation will continue to permeate the atmosphere we breathe throughout the lifetimes of everyone now living. There will always be decent and simple people who are alarmed by novel forms of mindlessness or shocked by stale obscenities. However, we do not need to be overcome by passive dismay: on the contrary, it is necessary that we should learn to live through times of spiritual recession. For although there are periods of renaissance, in which it is easy for most people to feel intensely alive, it is during the protracted sequels of general retreat, unease, and disappointment that most individual human lives have to be lived.