Thursday, August 13, 2009

So does social media augment or inhibit catholicity?

In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares. The menace of this kind of provincialism is that we can all, all the peoples on the globe, be provincials together; and those who are not content to be provincials, can only become hermits.
Eliot, "What is a classic?" - helpfully culled here.

Labels: , , ,

5 Comments:

Blogger Zo said...

That "provincialism" wouldn't be plain old stupidity, would it. By any chance.

8/15/2009 3:24 PM  
Blogger Tom Matrullo said...

I think provincialism is Mr. Eliot's way of providing some sort of anemic historical understanding of stupidity.

8/16/2009 5:01 PM  
Blogger Zo said...

Doesn't go near far enough, does it. But then, he wouldn't.

8/16/2009 6:00 PM  
Blogger Juke said...

"... can only become hermits..."
Ahem.

8/18/2009 6:02 PM  
Blogger Tom Matrullo said...

Juke, you've always been unmarketably Zeitgeisty.

8/18/2009 7:27 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home