Modernism and Human Well Being

To one who surveys the story of human welfare from an historical point of view, certain anomalies present themselves for consideration. Much of the vaunted progress is disclosed in the form of highly artificial changes, which have profoundly altered the ways of living and affected the reaction of the organism to a somewhat novel environment. Gains in one direction have almost inevitably entailed the giving up of something traditional, for that is the usual consequence of progress. In our enthusiasms for the new advantages we are all too often prone to overlook the possible virtues of that which is replaced or abandoned. A pessimist might occasionally debate whether, in the long run, the alleged benefits overbalance the loss of that which was good. Machinery has altered the problem of human and even of animal toil; urban life has acquired aspects of extreme artificiality; older dietary regimens have given way to new foods; the call for haste has speeded up man’s nervous responses; even the atmosphere has been changed through formerly unknown contaminations. It is not strange, therefore, that thoughtful persons sometimes face the innovations of our present-day life with a querying mind. Something of this skepticism appears in a recent comment by a keen observer, Sir Philip Gibbs, regarding the [conditions] encountered in the Near East: