Shameful Stupidity

Global Analysis, Weekly Column Published 2/6/09 by J.R. Nyquist
"We no longer have a universal ideal!” exclaimed Fyodor Dostoevsky in the nineteenth century. Everything is flabby, vapid, all people are vapid! We all … are empty!” According to Dostoevsky, civilization had become an “ant heap” and Western religion was “fast approaching atheism.” A few years later a German philologist named Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw the advent of what he called “European nihilism,” which signified the future collapse of Christianity and the rise of totalitarian states, destructive wars, and a new barbarism. “Everything will be mob rule,” Nietzsche predicted. England only had another fifty years as a great power. The United States would “seemingly” become a great power, but would be “quickly consumed.” The country that would emerge on top, said Nietzsche, was Russia.

If a man of great insight and intuition, like Dostoevsky, thought our great grandparents were “flabby” and “vapid,” what would he say about us?" Read more at Global Analysis...