The tragedy of modern culture
12
Aug
Theodore Dalrymple, pseudonym of the English physician and 
psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, who proposed a reflection on the moral decay of modern culture, the effect of the politically correct dangerous on society (as if it were a single political position) and the consequences for the true culture of peoples, your book Anything goes (2016) is a profound “clinical” analysis of what kind of cultural crisis we are experiencing.
The author collaborates with several periodicals The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and The Spectator, it is a conservative point of view that looks at history without a doubt, but it is nevertheless important to make some observations about contemporary life and see how many others wear out the current culture.
She won her first Freedom in Flanders in 2011, a region that speaks Flemish two thirds of Belgium, after praising her as an educated woman, she will criticize her nationalism: “I requested a room… the receptionist answered me in English, but not because of my accent with my wife, who is Parisian, she did the same.
We were thus introduced to Flemish nationalism, which demonstrates that no country is too small for national separatism” (page 30), the other region is French-speaking Wallonia, but only Flemish in Flanders, even if they know French .
He reveals his true identity in the book by saying “as a doctor and psychiatrist, I spent a terrible period of my career trying to take people on a path that seemed appropriate and beneficial to them” (p. 81) and then confesses his failure, he says that their patients were “self-destructive, which, if looked at impartially and with a minimum of common sense, could not lead to anything other than anguish” (idem), but it is not their high point.
In another line, but also in defense of the culture that has arisen among the peoples of the planet, with clear and unmistakable roots, Byung-Chul Han, a Korean philosopher migrated to Germany, also criticizes the culture of the smooth, the absence of imperfections and grooves that are confused in art with the politically correct.
Wrote Byung-Chul wrote that beauty today is smooth, does not show resistance, does not break and requires likes, distance invites only touch, there is no negativity that is opposite, without it, surprise and wonder disappear: “without distance no it is possible to have mystique, demystification makes everything fruiting and consumable. ”, there is no otherness of the Other, there is only room for an aestheticized and homogenized diversity, and thus consumable and explored.
It is not about defending tradition, good critics and good reformers always engage in dialogue with the opposite side, but what is involved is forgetfulness and even contempt for the roots of each culture and a massification that wants to make everything uniform and misshapen .
It is only one side of the culture that reaches the thought that has become vulgar and sophist, of the religion that has become ideological or fundamentalist, and of the culture that we all descend from that is ignored, the social and moral consequences are only the visible part of that occurs in the foundations of modern society.
DALRYMPLE, Thedore. (2016) Qualquer coisa serve. (Our culture: what´s left of it). trad. Hugo Langone. São Paulo: É Realizações.
