One of the stranger anomalies of the modern world, and one that sets it starkly apart from most past times, is our tendency to memorialize victims rather than heroes.
Great points about unselfconsciousness and self-consciousness. I'm currently reading The Abolition of Man for the first time and see lots of connections with what you have said here. Lewis discusses how people in the past would see dying out of a duty for others as a given value and contrasts that with a more self-conscious, modern view.
Yes, the Abolition of Man is a wonderful book. I first read it many decades ago, so I can't really remember this, but I suspect that it was reading it that changed me from being an unselfconscious Catholic to a self-conscious one. I have read it many times since. It is certainly one of the key influences for my thoughts about the anomalous nature of the modern world and how that anomalous view of things affects our understanding of history.
Great points about unselfconsciousness and self-consciousness. I'm currently reading The Abolition of Man for the first time and see lots of connections with what you have said here. Lewis discusses how people in the past would see dying out of a duty for others as a given value and contrasts that with a more self-conscious, modern view.
Yes, the Abolition of Man is a wonderful book. I first read it many decades ago, so I can't really remember this, but I suspect that it was reading it that changed me from being an unselfconscious Catholic to a self-conscious one. I have read it many times since. It is certainly one of the key influences for my thoughts about the anomalous nature of the modern world and how that anomalous view of things affects our understanding of history.