Prophetic Words from John Buchan

John Buchan (1875-1940) was a politician and author who is most widely remembered for his Richard Hannay series of novels. In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, he takes a dim view of the future.

Writing in 1940, in the midst of WWII, he seems to be looking toward future generations and how they will be affected by modernism. He writes, My fear is not barbarism, which is civilization submerged or not yet born, but de-civilization, which is civilization gone rotten. (p. 146)

The world has become a huge, dapper, smooth-running mechanism. Is that the perfecting of civilization? Does it not rather mean de-civilization, a loss of the supreme value of life? In such a world everyone would have leisure. But everyone would be restless, for there would be no spiritual discipline in life.... Everybody would be comfortable, but since there could be no great demand for intellectual exertion, everybody would be slightly idiotic. Their shallow minds would be easily bored, and therefore unstable. Their life would be largely a quest for amusement. The vulgar existence led today by certain groups would become the normal existence of large sections of society. (p. 147)

Men would go everywhere and live nowhere; know everything and understand nothing. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. In the tumult of a jazz existence, what hope would there be for the still small voices of the prophets and philosophers and poets? (p. 148)

He certainly seems to be describing the 21st century!

Blessings,