The Hallowing of Man
A Reckoning Meditation on Modernity Through the Lens of Eliot We are not the first to shamble through history like ghosts, nor will we be the last. The world is full of the husks of men—sallow-faced, softly spoken, with eyes that blink but never see. And yet they crowd the pulpits and marketplaces, the boardrooms and confessionals. They wear smiles like crumbling masks and speak of progress in a language that smells faintly of formaldehyde. These are not men. They are mannequins dressed in borrowed virtue, their bones hollowed by fear, their hearts embalmed in compromise. They have forgotten how to tremble. T.S. Eliot saw them before the bomb fell. Before the veil of atomic light revealed how easily men could extinguish themselves. He saw, as prophets always do, that apocalypse does not begin with fire, but with fatigue. Not with revolt, but with rot. Not with the scream, but the whimper. We moderns—educated, enlightened, emancipated—have grown so clever that we no longer need evil. We...