If you stroll through an art museum with a decent stock of art that runs between 1870 and, say 1950, you can mark off the WW1 artists generation without botheri

If you stroll through an art museum with a decent stock of art that runs between 1870 and, say 1950, you can mark off the WW1 artists generation without bothering to look at the date. The works scream in horror, constantly. Another commentator remarked that Western civilization died then; I would hesitate to say that, as I live in a very well appointed state, in the West. But the entire apparatus of moral philosophy imploded in that time, and a theodicy appropriate to the explanation of the Great War has never caught the public mind. Most of modern neo-fascisms, paleoconservatives, and so forth are caught up in this rift - we lost the power to explain evil in a materially useful way, and resolve it in a socially cohesive way. Or, to put in another way, the Great War sliced the social fabric and it's all been unravelling ever since. I don't think that will last forever, we are adapting. But we have to look forward: what can we build new, not haul out JS Mill, Ayn Rand, or Dewey to situate them in a time and place that they don't really belong.