>This social system no longer rests on the
>'Founding Fathers' Calvinist work ethic and taste
>for saving - but, on the contrary, on a new ideal
>(I don't dare speak of ethics or morals): the
>quest for the biggest payoff for the least
>effort.
Damn! That's (almost) what I was just about to say.
>The real mystery to me is situated there: how can a
>society renounce common sense and pragmatism to
>such an extent and enter into such a process of
>ideological self-destruction?
Here's where I think I can help.The society has renounced common sense by internalizing and aggrandizing it. Of course, when common sense becomes a virtuoso performance it is no longer common. Eventually it ceases to even make sense. The Calvinist, "time is money" work ethic that Todd refers to was itself a middle class mutation and internalization of the earlier, communal peasant and craft guild worker ethic of "share and share alike". The time is money phrase could only work as a variation on the share and share alike theme, which would re-emerge in extended families, communities and in working class solidarity. A lot of what people on the left view as horribly reactionary stuff -- family values, faith-based social programs -- represents a very understandable longing for an imagined more compassionate past while at the same time pursuing that nostalgia on the charlatan terms of the biggest payoff for the least effort.
The Sandwichman