“Is our age passing from civilization to barbarism? Civilization is too fragile. Always the result of human consciousness and its confidence, it is never the product of its achievements, however glorious, or its institutions, however solid. The West today, with its self-confidence sagging, vitality ebbing, and order eroded, knows only introspection, lethargy, traditions. Prone from exhaustion, a prey to its own fears, it is in danger of being overwhelmed by the anxiety, apathy, and anger of a humanity strangled within it. Thus it is vulnerable to the frustration and fury of those enraged by the betrayal of it meaning.”
Os Guinness, The Dust of Death (Buy on Amazon – US|UK)
Written in 1994, The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever, speaks to the heart of the problem in the UK today in the face of the recent rioting.