The Twilight Years, Part I

Cassandras and Sirens

During the twenties and the thirties, Britain was afflicted with a profound pessimism. There was a widely shared angst that civilisation (a very significant and loaded term) was coming to an end and a long night of barbarism was about to descend upon European civilisation generally and upon Britain specifically. And Britain, at the time, regarded itself as the leader of the civilized world.

This period of two and a half decades has been highlighted recently through the publication of Richard Overy's The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009) which has received acclaim. In effect, the study of any period of history has implicit significance if can help us understand man—his devils and demons, his pride and passions, his nobility and fragility. All good historical studies provoke questions and reflections upon our own days under the sun. They also inevitably lead us to think about the future.

Overy's work achieves all of this, which is not unexpected since it is a work of social and intellectual history by a master of his craft. It traces how Britons were thinking about themselves and their culture and their dark fears for the future. In Overy's treatment we learn much about the transition of Enlightenment optimism to post-Enlightenment pessimism. This pessimism still dominates in the West. (“The world is bad; it is going to hell in a hand basket, and only the government can save us.” Variations on this theme abound, and have done for the past eighty years in the West.

What we do not often credit, however, is that the relentless wail of the sirens calling for more and more government, rules, regulations and controls is predicated upon a deep, pervasive, and persistent pessimism. The dominant cultural consensus is that the civilised world is fundamentally stuffed up; it is broken. It needs fixing.

The Inter-War years were the time when the shift from pervasive optimism to persisting pessimism occurred in the West. It goes without saying that dominant cultural moods (whether optimistic or pessimistic) are expressions of the dominant religion of the time. What is particularly interesting is that the switch from relentless optimism to prevailing pessimism about the future in the twenties and thirties did not reflect a change in the dominant religion. Enlightenment rationalism continued as the established and dominant religious faith, even as it has to this day. This is not unexpected. When man asserts himself to be the measure and master of all things, reality eventually annoyingly intrudes; the more extreme the previous optimism had been, the deeper the disappointment upon the dashing of hopes is likely to be.

Although Overy does not say so, we believe his research illustrates clearly enough that pessimism and despair and desperation is the natural and abiding world-view of Enlightenment rationalism.

A second theme developed and traced by Overy is the impact made by the educated elites of the time. Almost all from the perspective of their respective fields were in the vanguard crying doom and woe. In every case the experts and intellectuals—who had assumed the mantle of prophets and priests within the established religion of secular humanism—misread and misdiagnosed reality. But to add insult to injury their prescriptions for preventing the collapse of civilisation ranged from the barking mad to the positively dangerous. Their “solutions” were far worse than the actual problems they intended to resolve.

In many ways, the solutions of the experts (whether sociologists, eugenicists, economists, psychiatrists and psychologists, historians, political scientists, philosophers, and dominant literary figures) became self-fulfilling prophecies. Their advice, to the extent that it has been followed, has made the world into a far more difficult and dangerous place.

In the West we have been gripped in recent years by climate change mania that has announced then end of civilisation as we know it. This mania has been an almost purely Western phenomenon—notwithstanding the attempt to dress it up as a global concern. Recent events have stripped away the framing and positioning, and climate change mania is now clearly displayed as a Western syndrome.

The hysteria has been fed by “experts”, by the prophets of our culture—the academics and the scientists. The people are troubled with nightmarish visions of the future. They have been provoked by the siren song of, “Something must be done.” Guilt, blame, darkly pessimistic prognosis, harbingers of catastrophe, a reverence for science and its ability to save us, and “solutions” which would bring untold suffering upon the entire human race.

All of this is eerily reminiscent of what occurred in Britain in the Inter-War years. It turns out the apple has not fallen far from the tree these seventy years later. We are reminded of the wise words of Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is why a careful study of, and reflection upon, the critical Inter-War years is so important.

In the forthcoming series of posts we will endeavour to summarise the main aspects and critical features of this period as Overy recounts them for us. We will thereby endeavour to learn much about our own days.