11. Social progress and social fragmentation

In this episode of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich explores the fourth large theme of the history of our times, that is social fragmentation. Life is better in so many dramatic ways. We are richer, older, healthier, better educated. But something is not quite right.... We enjoy better societies, but worry that we have lost a sense of community.  We seem beset by bitter polarization. Could it be that social progress is slowing, and its old rival, social fragmentation is going to overtake it in the marathon of history?

Credits:

* readings from Emmanuel Todd, Lineages of Modernity: a history of humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus (2017 Fr; 2019)

* Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960), a short excerpt from the famous shower scene

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

You can read my essay on Emmanuel Todd at The Burning Archive blog, Emmanuel Todd's Lineages of Modernity (16 February 2020)

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel