Monday 25 November 2019

Unwary Sharing


Has the problem that A.C. Benson recognised in 1908 when he published his book of essays At Large, been amplified by social media? Every unwary gush, every dubious spout, just got in from a party and feeling a touch elevated sharing, shall be counted unto you and dragged into the light of day. You may walk on your knees to Jerusalem dressed in chastely cut sackcloth but it will not avail you. You’ve said it and it remains in the akashic of the internet. There is an acute balance between the benefit of flouting the line of official Ireland with rebarbative utterance and the formal apology – ‘Sure I didn’t know what I was saying and even so, though I might phrase it differently, there are questions to be answered’. (American note: Single quotes are conjectural attribution or an inverted perverted comma comment)


The question is whether the modern conditions of life are unfavourable to greatness; and I think that it must be confessed that they are. In the first place, we all know so much too about each other, and there is so eager a personal curiosity abroad, a curiosity about the smallest details of the life of any one who seems to have any power of performance, that it encourages men to over-confidence, egotism, and mannerism. Again, the world is so much in love with novelty and sensation of all kinds, that facile successes are easily made and as easily obliterated. What so many people admire is not greatness, but the realisation of greatness and its tangible rewards. The result of this is that men who show any faculty for impressing the world are exploited and caressed, are played with as a toy, and as a toy neglected.
(from Our Lack of Great Men )

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