ABSTRACT
The argument the author makes in this chapter is that the people are living in a ‘cultural skin’ which has hardened and coarsened into something that inhibits the realization of a more reflective, thoughtful, critical, and considered life. There are two responses to this argument which should be noted. The first is that it is not true to say that people live in this thoughtless and unreflective way. The second concern accepts that the people have become thoughtless and disengaged. The author distinguishes his argument from that of cultural pessimists on the Right of the political spectrum. He examines the value of memory for the people well-being, and for ethical life. For the sociologist Max Weber, the twin processes of rationalization and bureaucratisation which displaced God, tradition, ritual, and myth, culminated in a culture of ‘disenchantment’. Moreover, it is futile to suggest that the things which are integral to what it means to be human can be closed down.
