Somewhere in my diary—1980?—I wrote ‘I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature…’ [Now thirty-five years later I realize] how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in man—how little you can count on changing some of these—for instance the appeal of wealth and power—by any change in the [social] machinery… No amount of knowledge or science will be of any avail unless we can curb the bad impulse.
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Beatrice Webb, architect of Britain’s modern welfare state Many modernists, such as Webb and H.G. Wells, had pinned their hopes for the future of mankind on the hope that our social problems could be overcome by education— that violence and injustice would disappear by means of education and social programs. However, in the wake of World War II, their hopes were collectively shattered when they realized how deep the evil goes. Every new riot and war shows us that the task of weeding selfishness and violence out of mankind will be a difficult — and perhaps impossible — task on our own. |
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