The modern thinker is a man who combines ‘an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense.’ Thus, Chesterton suggested that our so-called Modern-Age will someday be referred to as ‘The Muddle Ages.’
-Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker, p. 99
To think, Chesterton didn’t live to see Postmodernism…
The phrase ‘Postmodern’ has really become passé anyhow; therefore, until I find something better, I believe I will start referring to our time as the Muddle Ages. It is certainly more true of our time than it was of Chesterton’s. He didn’t have to deal with people who got their knowledge from Wikipedia and expect a commercial every 8 minutes (even in dialogue). To me the phrase can represent the muddle of a time in which thinking tends to be quite broad and shallow, a mile wide and an inch deep; or a bunch of people wandering around all over the place without any sense of direction. The phrase is a keeper.
I think that the qualitative deficiencies of our time, which you are referring to here, have been well captured by an essay titled “the Paradox of Our Age” which famously quips that this is a time where we have “much in the show window, and nothing in the stock room” among other strong insights.
What I find amazing about that essay, beyond the essay itself, is how the public has received it. The ideas seem to resonate strongly with many people. It has been plastered on postcards and posters, etc.
Most interesting of all, however, is that the essay has often been chopped up prior to quotation, in order to avoid strong Christian messaging, and attributed to somebody entirely different than the pastor who wrote it- Dr.Bob Moorehead.
I first came across it on a t-shirt somebody gave me, which credited the Dalai Lama, of all people. It has also been attributed to George Carlin, an “unnamed student” who witnessed the Columbine shooting, and Jeff Dickson.
I think the story of this essay is demonstrative of the irony of living in the “Muddle Ages.” Even when we realize that we are living in a time where there is “much in the show window, and nothing in the stockroom,” where common sense is contracted, and we move about with vigorous vanity, we demonstrate that we are patients unwilling to take the cure. We want the essay without the pastor who wrote it, and the implications thereof. Men of the Muddle Ages want Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace”- if they want grace at all.
You can find the essay here, along with some of the controversy of details. http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
I’ll read it – thanks.