The Promise and Predicament of Modernity

Where does this leave us? Adding another sentence to the book of daily longing.

Despite the eloquence of Marx, and that of the great Santayana, human beings desire neither freedom nor disillusionment. Such matters hold little fascination or appeal. We want magic lanterns and shadows on the wall. We want spectacle. We want lies. What's more, we want slavery (what Etienne de la Boetie called "voluntary servitude" and Tolstoy attributed to the Law of Violence and "stupification").

Even so, in every epoch there emerge a few kindred souls who aspire to sobriety and to finding, as Wallace Stevens put it, "what will suffice." Souls who resist, refuse, and renounce the ways of the crowd and embrace Tolstoy's Law of Love. It would be too much to imagine that such individuals could ever constitute a critical mass or prove to be the "hinge of history." They are more like brief sparks in an otherwise impenetrable darkness. But, by such lights, we stumble through. One might even say (optimistically, perhaps hyperbolically), "We find our way."