"It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous"
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Progress depends on a convenient blind spot: the inability of any era to fully see the limits of its own mind. Warner’s line is a scalpel aimed at generational self-congratulation, the kind that treats history as a parade of fools leading up to us. He’s not defending the past so much as indicting the present’s favorite hobby: moral tourism. We visit earlier centuries, gawk at their cruelty, and leave feeling cleansed. The punch is that this ritual requires ignorance of our own contemporaneous barbarisms; if we understood them clearly, we’d lose the comfort of being “advanced.”
The sentence is engineered as a paradox with a grin. “Fortunate” is doing sly work, implying the ignorance isn’t just accidental but socially useful. It lubricates confidence. It lets societies act decisively, build institutions, wage wars, enforce norms, all while imagining themselves enlightened. The second sentence twists the knife: calling ancestors “barbarous” isn’t purely a verdict; it’s a psychological need, a story we tell to stabilize our sense of progress.
Context matters: Warner wrote in a 19th-century America intoxicated with industry, “civilization,” and expansion, while also living amid racial terror, imperial ambition, and brutal labor conditions. His journalism-era skepticism tracks with that Gilded Age contradiction: technological triumph paired with ethical blinders. The subtext is an invitation to humility that’s almost an accusation. If we’re so sure they were barbarians, what, precisely, are we refusing to comprehend about ourselves?
The sentence is engineered as a paradox with a grin. “Fortunate” is doing sly work, implying the ignorance isn’t just accidental but socially useful. It lubricates confidence. It lets societies act decisively, build institutions, wage wars, enforce norms, all while imagining themselves enlightened. The second sentence twists the knife: calling ancestors “barbarous” isn’t purely a verdict; it’s a psychological need, a story we tell to stabilize our sense of progress.
Context matters: Warner wrote in a 19th-century America intoxicated with industry, “civilization,” and expansion, while also living amid racial terror, imperial ambition, and brutal labor conditions. His journalism-era skepticism tracks with that Gilded Age contradiction: technological triumph paired with ethical blinders. The subtext is an invitation to humility that’s almost an accusation. If we’re so sure they were barbarians, what, precisely, are we refusing to comprehend about ourselves?
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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