What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection
There are many moments in history when young people have dreamed of glamorous self-destruction rather than embarking, drearily, on adulthood. But in all these epochs, those who actually die are the exceptions. Far greater numbers are touched by the same current of despair, but are nevertheless held…
they wanted to destroy reality and themselves – and to rediscover, in the process, some sense of chivalry and nobility – and therefore they embraced the trenchant power of radical Islam.
Though we are familiar with the statistics of our monopolistic era, we are far less conversant with its spiritual effects. If mid-twentieth-century Western societies achieved a startling level of consensus, it was due to their extraordinary expansion of the share in the social surplus – to which th…
Inside, the nature of local preoccupations is writ large upon the walls
