"Romanticism is man's revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live. The romantic is a daydreamer; he easily manages in imagination to disregard the laws of logic and of nature. The thinking and rationally acting man tries to rid himself of the discomfort of unsatisfied wants by economic action and work; he produces in order to improve his position. The romantic is too weak--too neurasthenic--for work; he imagines the pleasures of success but he does nothing to acheive them. He does not remove the obstacles; he merely removes them in imagination. He has a grudge against reality because it is not like the dream world he has created. He hates work, the economy, and reason."
--Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, 1922

How often does one hear the same indictment of those who care not so much for this world as for the next?

Way to go Ludwig. He describes our leftists to a TEE! They are Nihlists, who exist to use the police pwer of the state as an instrument of plunder against their fellow man.

Morgan

Buzz -- That is true, sometimes. But there are very different ways of thinking about the next world, and of thinking about its relationship to this one. Don't you think that those who care more for the next usually have more reasonable expectations for this one and higher standards for their behavior in this world, and understand that a world and a humanity utterly different in kind from the one we have must be in the next?

Imagine two roads. One leads to a gleaming city on a hill. The other is a dead end.

Which road do you think will be subject to better upkeep? Obviously, the one that leads to the city on the hill.

So too, I think, the life that is lived with a view to the hereafter.