"Truly, many wicked things have been written on today's sky, worse than things written on New York's subway cars. Certainly many millions of Americans pine in their perverse pleasures, glutted with narcotics, pornography, and insane sensuality. A good many people fret themselves over the rather improbable speculation that the earth might be blown asunder by nuclear weapons. The grimmer and more immediate prospect is that men and women may be reduced to a sub-human state through limitless indulgence in their own vices--with ruinous consequences to society generally."
--Russell Kirk, The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written on the Sky, 1988
Good quote. Not a great name for a book. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Words to consider in today's society of instant gratification.
I don’t think that it’s necessarily been the fear of inevitable annihilation or any other reason like that that has prompted decidedly worse behavior by human beings. I think our current level of disintegration can be attributed more to social evolution (de-evolution?).
With the end of WWII and the advent of a technology boom that offered comforts and excesses that the average person never enjoyed prior to that time, people took advantage and eventually found it less important to control themselves or maintain disciplines as before. With this, values started to change. The Boomers took it to the next level and allowed for even less control while developing the selfish competitiveness necessary to achieve upward mobility. Their offspring are naturally less disciplined and to make matters worse, most are the products of feel good dumbed-down educational systems and a environment that’s resulted from social de-evolution.
Idiocracy, indeed.
Funny, as I write this, I’m listening to the Kinks ‘Apeman’. Appropriate.
"Truly, many wicked things have been written on today's sky." What does this metaphor mean?
I agree with Kirk's explicit conclusion that the consequences of the "limitless indulgence" of one's vices is more ruinous than death at the hands of one's enemies. While the latter destroys the body, the former destroys the soul.
I disagree, however, with the implicit conclusion that the "improbable speculation" of being blown asunder isn't worth fretting over. Concern over vice and nuclear weapons is not an either or. Both are very dangerous. Neither seems to me particularly improbable. Indeed, the day a nuclear weapon is detonated on American soil the probability is one. Whatever the probability, given the destructive power of such weapons, fretting is entirely justified.
Wow, that guy sounds like a real square.
Ralph, I suspect that Kirk's point is that normal people make a mistake by thinking about improbable things they have no control over rather than thinking about the very real issues in their immediate control-- say, their own, their family's, their community's virtue and vice.
Skeptic,
If that is the whole point, then there is nothing to disagree with.
