Two Views of a Civilization

There are philosophers who claim that any civilization depends on the stories that people tell. Here are two commentaries on that.

Matthew Arnold:

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born¹

Charles Eisenstein:

For anything to turn or change, it has to fulfill its extreme. The current ideology, the cultural story, that we live in has to finish its telling before a new story can be born.²

1From the poem Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, 1855.

2From “Living With The Contradictions”, alternet.org, November 13, 2012.