"Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace"
About this Quote
Schaeffer slips a time bomb into a deceptively mild sentence: progress has not made us morally taller, just more dangerously capable. Coming from a composer who helped invent musique concrete - the art of turning recorded reality into new forms - his point lands with extra bite. Modernity doesn’t merely add instruments; it amplifies consequences. The “atomic menace” is the ultimate new sound in the human orchestra: a technology so loud it can drown out every older moral argument.
The quote works because it refuses the lazy optimism of linear history. By naming the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, Schaeffer pokes at two convenient myths: that premodern life was barbaric, and that reason inevitably civilizes. He grants that the world can be “better” and “worse” at once, then narrows the indictment to a single invention that changes the moral math. The threat of nuclear annihilation doesn’t just increase the stakes; it reshapes everyday ethics into something more anxious, managerial, and abstract. You can live decently inside a flawed society; you can’t live decently on a planet where the wrong decision can erase the possibility of decency altogether.
The subtext is generational. Schaeffer lived through two world wars and the Cold War, when “civilization” looked less like an achievement than a thin varnish over mass death. His quiet cynicism is strategic: it makes the atomic age feel not like a dramatic break, but like the logical endpoint of modern confidence - moral maturity lagging behind technical power.
The quote works because it refuses the lazy optimism of linear history. By naming the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, Schaeffer pokes at two convenient myths: that premodern life was barbaric, and that reason inevitably civilizes. He grants that the world can be “better” and “worse” at once, then narrows the indictment to a single invention that changes the moral math. The threat of nuclear annihilation doesn’t just increase the stakes; it reshapes everyday ethics into something more anxious, managerial, and abstract. You can live decently inside a flawed society; you can’t live decently on a planet where the wrong decision can erase the possibility of decency altogether.
The subtext is generational. Schaeffer lived through two world wars and the Cold War, when “civilization” looked less like an achievement than a thin varnish over mass death. His quiet cynicism is strategic: it makes the atomic age feel not like a dramatic break, but like the logical endpoint of modern confidence - moral maturity lagging behind technical power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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