“I think a great many of us are haunted by the feeling that
our society, and by ours I don’t mean just the United States or Europe, but our
whole world-wide technological civilisation, whether officially labelled
capitalist, socialist, or communist, is going to smash and probably deserves
to.
Like the third century, [ours] is an age of stress and anxiety.
In our case, it is not that our techniques are too primitive to cope with new
problems, but the very fantastic success of our technology is creating a
hideous, noisy, over-crowded world in which it is increasingly difficult to
lead a human life. […] as for our public
entertainments, the fare offered by television [and internet] is still a shade less brutal and vulgar than
that provided by the amphitheatre, but only a shade, and maybe not for long.
I have no idea what is actually going to happen before I die
except that I am not going to like it.” (1)
All I did was adding a mention of internet and deleting “the
twentieth” – so as not to spoil the startling illusion of topicality. Because this is actually a piece written in 1966, drawing parallels between the 3rd Century Roman empire and the 20th Century. To complete the comparison, following topics could
of course have been added : migrations, shifting identities, religious fermentation
– to name but a few.
(1) from “The Fall of Rome” by W. H. Auden. (written in 1966, published in Bowersock’s “From Gibbon to Auden - Essays on the Classical Tradition”)
