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KICKING_SELF_IMPROVEMENT

                                              December 11, 2005

In a Homer Evans book ("The Black and the Red",
I suspect) a character asks Evans to borrow a
book, and randomly names the first thing he        TAKEN_LIGHTLY
thinks of: "The Story of Philosophy" by Will
Durrant. Evans responds "You must be joking",
and the other character stammers in embarassment
and tries to explain why he wanted to see
something so superficial.


There was a long series of these "The Story
of ..." books, summaries of different
branches of human knowledge.


Superficial they almost certainly were... but
isn't it interesting that they existed at
all?  There was a time once when an average
middle class guy might feel the need for such
works.  Acutely feeling a lack in their             HIPSTERISM
education, they went off on periodic
intellectual self-improvement kicks; they
tried to fill the gap with these sorts of
summaries, "superficial" or no.

Can you imagine anyone bothering
with books like these today?

In comparison to the present state of the States,
this sounds like a Golden Age of respect for the
intellect.

We've gotten over "self-improvement".



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