Stop the world, Oakeshott might have said, I want to get off. Conservatism is in fact about the intergenerational bond among the past, present and future. To honor the past, the present must embrace risk as an old friend, as many of our forebears did and from which embrace we in the present enormously benefit. No thank you Oakeshott.
That's a very interesting point. Adding the future changes everything. Chesterton makes the same point somewhere from his commitments as a man of the left and implies it (as I remember) in his blistering critique of Burke in What's Wrong With the World.
"For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on." - Samuel Beckett, in Molloy
For those of us who are in love with what may be difficult, if not especially dangerous, this is a valuable reminder to appreciate the present good and enjoy it fully.
Stop the world, Oakeshott might have said, I want to get off. Conservatism is in fact about the intergenerational bond among the past, present and future. To honor the past, the present must embrace risk as an old friend, as many of our forebears did and from which embrace we in the present enormously benefit. No thank you Oakeshott.
That's a very interesting point. Adding the future changes everything. Chesterton makes the same point somewhere from his commitments as a man of the left and implies it (as I remember) in his blistering critique of Burke in What's Wrong With the World.
It's a great essay, and the second paragraph you quote in particular is superb.
"For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on." - Samuel Beckett, in Molloy
For those of us who are in love with what may be difficult, if not especially dangerous, this is a valuable reminder to appreciate the present good and enjoy it fully.