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This is civilisation with Matthew Collings

From:     telly 
Category: TV
Date:     15 December 2007
Time:     05:08 PM

Review:

Nostalgia is getting old. The fear of death combined with the sadness of getting old, means that you 
hope things are all getting worse, otherwise you'd be even more depressed about the passage of 
time and being past your peak. If civilisation is not declining, then your subjective losses are all for 
nought, as the neutral hand of history doesn't tap you on the shoulder. 

Hence Collings spends most of the show selling on us on the idea of our decrepit lost postmodern 
civilisation, and at the end, clever enough to be wary of Spenglerism, he offers a faint message of 
hope if we can only get real with our higher feelings.

Sadly, the ultimate sadness, is that the world doesn't care about us, we care about the world, and thus 
civilisation is neither declining nor rising, just going on regardless, it is us, individiuals that pluck value 
judgements out of our own thin hair.


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