snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com wrote:
>
> R and I were talking about the narrative of decline that is present in
> every generation. If you look at the texts that comprise Western civ,
> you'll find that members of each generation complain that the younger gen
> is just not up to the standards of the older gen.
>
> Then I realized: Awwww. Hell, if that's true and each older gen has
> accurately characterized the younger gen, we musta been
> fan-frickin-tabulous-geniuses at one time.
The tradition goes back to texts in hieroglyphics. Probably some of the people writing these hilarious fantasies about decay have read Raymond Williams on this kind of nonsense but choose to forget it.
See Swift, passim. See all the old horseshit about "Merry England." See all the horseshit about "free-born Englishmen" have now (that is, circa 1640) lost the freedom of their forefathers. Read Lycidas. Read Homer & Virgil on those heavy stones which no 10 men of these degenerate days could lift.
Yes, the last Pen for Freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of Law:
Here, Last of _Britons_! let your Names be read;
Are none, none living? let me praise the Dead,
And for that Cause which made your Fathers shine,
Fall, by the Votes of their degen'ratre Line!
(Ep. to the Sat. Dia. II, 248-53)
and the laudatores temporis acti
claiming that the sh-t used to be blacker and richer
(Canto XV)
Carrol