26th June 2010
Are we really in a cultural golden age?
“Sallust, the Roman historian who made his name by connecting great events to the moral outlook of the people involved in them, said it more than 2,000 years ago: “The golden age is before us, not behind us.” Twenty centuries later, we still don’t seem to have learned his epigrammatic lesson: We—both the critical we and the popular we—spend an inordinate amount of time looking backward and mourning a golden age of culture that is likely irrecoverable, while looking at the present day as either approaching or having already arrived at an utter nadir.
