"If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age"
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Barzun’s jab lands because it flatters modernity and scolds it in the same breath. Calling our era the “Wastepaper Age” is more than a cranky complaint about clutter; it’s a diagnosis of cultural inflation. Paper stands in for the endless production of memos, reports, dissertations, bureaucratic forms, reviews of reviews - the machinery of a society that mistakes output for insight. The phrase reduces a whole modern posture to a tactile, slightly humiliating substance: heaps of words destined to be discarded.
The Stone Age comparison is the sly pivot. Barzun invokes the most flattering myth of progress - humanity dragged itself up from primitive tools to complex life - and then implies our sophistication may be, in practice, a downgrade. Civilization’s enemies aren’t just barbarians at the gate; they’re inside the library, drowning judgment in paperwork. The subtext is not anti-literacy, but anti-noise: too much documentation can function like ignorance, because it overwhelms the capacity to choose, remember, and value.
Context matters: Barzun spent his life inside institutions that manufacture text (universities, cultural gatekeepers) and watched the 20th century professionalize knowledge into credentials and departments. His line argues that recovery is possible, but only if we stop treating accumulation as achievement. “Rise again” isn’t automatic progress; it’s a moral demand. Civilization, he implies, is a habit of mind - not a stack of paper.
The Stone Age comparison is the sly pivot. Barzun invokes the most flattering myth of progress - humanity dragged itself up from primitive tools to complex life - and then implies our sophistication may be, in practice, a downgrade. Civilization’s enemies aren’t just barbarians at the gate; they’re inside the library, drowning judgment in paperwork. The subtext is not anti-literacy, but anti-noise: too much documentation can function like ignorance, because it overwhelms the capacity to choose, remember, and value.
Context matters: Barzun spent his life inside institutions that manufacture text (universities, cultural gatekeepers) and watched the 20th century professionalize knowledge into credentials and departments. His line argues that recovery is possible, but only if we stop treating accumulation as achievement. “Rise again” isn’t automatic progress; it’s a moral demand. Civilization, he implies, is a habit of mind - not a stack of paper.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reinvention |
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