I like the pleasure of reading a hardcover book, especially if it is used and cheap! The one in hand was in “very good” condition. It had apparently been given as a gift “with love, from Jane and Floyd” in June of 1955. Since I was born in October of 1956, the nearly 70-year lapse of time gave perspective on the observations and predictions. The book was written in 1953.

It opens with:

In History as it comes to be written, there is usually some “Spirit of the Age” which historians can define but is seldom clear to those who live in them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion”, and to some greater or less extent we always belong to a lost generation. Things are never what they used to be, and while some are resigning themselves to disaster, there are always others quite sure that better times are on the way.

I have certainly fallen into the “Age of Anxiety” camp, and often into the "resigned to disaster" camp.

Krutch seems to have labeled the pre-Renaissance era the “Age of Faith,” our age “The Age of Anxiety,” and some period prior to the two world wars the “Age of Confidence.” Such labels are always tempting to man. Since Adam, man has understood the power of putting a label (name) on something.

H.G., Wells and George Bernard Shaw had recently died within a few weeks of each other at the time this was written. During their lives, both men had been highly confident about the future as they had grown up in the “Age of Confidence.” Things were going to get better! Always! As they passed, it is not widely known that each exclaimed some version of “all is lost” (not really that surprising for mortal atheist beings).

Both Christians and Marxists are believers in eschatology (end times). Christians believe the return of Christ is the point at which evil will be destroyed and good will reign as the final solution. Marxists believe that dialectical materialism will lead to a final “synthesis,” where materialistic evolution leads to utopia.

On page 28, we find:

For the first time, it has become possible for man to destroy his whole species. May we not at the same time philosophize ourselves into a position where we are no longer able to manage successfully our mental and spiritual lives?

Page 35 summarizes one understanding of the human condition: “Hobbes proves that man is an animal; Descartes proves that an animal is a machine. Therefore, man is a machine”.

In the view of materialism, the universe and man within it are random, purposeless clockwork “phenomena” that are determinable. There can be no “free will” in such a universe, so at one level “why bother to think”? Apparently, though, our “thinking” is an illusion. We have no choice, since we are automata, and our “thoughts” are just part of our programming.

The book is full of such observations. “Survival of the fittest” is discussed as, “for what?” Survival for its own sake? Apparently. In a mechanical world, there is no “why.”

A lot of discussion of B.F. Skinner, behaviorism and conditioning are included, along with many references to Walden 2, a book by Skinner describing a behaviorist “utopia.” Except for a “small group of planners” (pretty much undefined, but think of the .0001%.) who know “truth” (or maybe just “some actions that appear to work”) and can condition the masses to follow this conditioning, like Pavlov’s dogs or mice pressing a bar for food.

I enjoyed this observation from page 205:

A few years ago, the New Yorker published an illustration of a small boy standing before his father who is examining an unsatisfactory report card. “Well dad, which do you suppose it is? Heredity or the environment?”

Might there be more variables? In the world of Marxist dialectics, the answer is “no,” because everything can be reduced to a “dialectic”; a Thesis and the Anti-Thesis which can be resolved through dialogue into a synthesis.

The more materialists learn about the universe, the more difficult it becomes for them to deny consciousness and posit man as an automaton with no free will. It doesn't seem that man is merely a robot acting under the incorrect assumption that it has some undefined thing called “free will,” which it perceives as part of the programming instantiated for every particle of the universe at the point of the Big Bang.

Quantum uncertainty has forced pure materialists to posit that this apparent fly in the ointment of certainty is only applicable at the very small, therefore it can be ignored relative to much bigger (or mathematically meaningless) questions like “Free Will.”

I would not recommend this book. It is not written in an interesting manner, nor does it provide any new insights into the problems of mind, matter, philosophy, religion, etc. It does prompt revisiting some very old questions, however.

At this point, I have been pre-destined from the point of the Big Bang to mix myself a martini and pretend to watch a sunset prior to the football game.

That a random happening caused all the events leading up to this point would be amazing — if there were such a thing as consciousness. It seems “unfair” that I will be taxed with the false choices of which gin, how much vermouth, which glass, olive/no olive, etc.

There is no fair/unfair, or even any “why.” It all just is, and the crazy idea there could be a telos, and an intelligence providing that telos is the sort of phantom “idea” that mindless robots seem prone to.

I MUST go … it is predestined!