My European ancestors had worked hard for several centuries; they had undertaken to dominate and then to transform the world, and to a certain extent they had succeeded. They had done so out of economic interest, a taste for work, but also because they believed in the superiority of their civilization: they had invented the dream , progress, Utopia, the future. This consciousness of a civilizing mission had evaporated during the course of the twentieth century. Europeans, at least some of them, went on working, and sometimes working hard, but they did so for gain or out of a neurotic attachment to their task; the innocent consciousness of their natural right to dominate the world, and to direct its future, had disappeared. -Michel Houellebecq, Plateforme
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 04:23:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015