New Era

From Karl Polanyi
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[138] If we step out into the open, our horizon expands dramactically. […] …the infinity of historical existence.

The lightning has passed, but the vision remains. Our generation, and perhaps many to come, will live in a world that was revealed by this vision. In a religious history such events are usually termed revelations. […] Of course, we would not be human if we did not search for the Promised Land along different roads. The fierce struggle between worldviews which is raging around us revolves basically interpretations of the revelation.

[139] … And as the three generations that have grown up in Europe since the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars experienced perpetual peaceful prosperity and increasing growth, European humanity came to take peace and the continuous growth and prosperity for a natural law. […]

[140] It privileged one particular leap, perceived as greater, bolder and more exuberant than any other leap, and as such deserved to stand as the paradigm of the great transformations of the future - with our mind-sets today, having witnessed the destruction of entire continents, we cannot but smile when we think of this - this historic upheaval, which set the limit to their horizons, was the French Revolution. It was not the desert sands, the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, Peru's shabby splendour, the fragmentation of Genghis Khan's massive empire, the collapse of the Arab Empire or the dissolution of peoples, empires and races to which they pointed when hailing the iron law of the historical […]

Spengler […]

…every philosophising soul is becoming more or less conscious [of this new way to see time and history] but which is also germinating in the simplest men, will prove to be one of the most important legacies of the generation of the world war.

Text Informations

Reference:
Original Publication: “Új idöszámitás”, Bécsi Magyar Újság, 10 October 1922
KPA: 01/50, 20 (1 p. ; original)
Recent Publication in English: in Polanyi 2016, p. 138-140
Other Languages:

Lge Name
DE
FR « Nouvelle ère »