| America is full of these interesting phenomena, like the National Geographic Society and its magazine. All of this urge to improvement! I grew up going to the Smithsonian (lucky me), the result of an English benefactor who wished America well, and endowed an institution for research and the dissemination of knowledge. Universities sprang up in every matured territory across the land. Edison's labs at Menlo Park provided a model for research sponsored by many other companies. Inventors, scientists, engineers, and explorers all became cultural heroes, as the United States began to reshape the world. It was all so exciting, the march of progress, the acquisition of knowledge, the improvement of the human lot. The rise of spiritual vacancy, of mechanized warfare, and especially the sheer horror at the rationalization of mass murder that Auschwitz represented, along with the threat of the Bomb, shook this faith, and made it all seem more complicated. That is a lot of the reason for what we now call the post-modern era...... |
