Engineering in the Age of Exhaustion

From an excellent article in The American Interest:

"In our daily lives, we dwell on gadgets. Distractions have always been with us. In the time of The Great Exhaustion, it is their scope and place in the ecology of daily life that is new. For the Liberal, the future is secured through property and the generative family. If any time or money remains after property and family have been secured, distractions can be fleetingly entertained. In the time of The Great Exhaustion, however, this relationship is reversed: property being a burden, we rent; the generative family being an archaism, we have fewer children or none at all. Neither is thinkable unless the present takes precedent over the future—a thought that can only seriously enter the mind when we are convinced that the beneficent state will provide for our security and care for us in illness and in our dotage. The gadget, once a distraction, now becomes the center of gravity around which those other, once-central, concerns distantly orbit. Here is the urban life of 400 square foot apartments built for “the folks” who do not own a car or a bicycle, but may rent one from time-to-time. They look up to the state, whose power grows as property and family recede.10 And they look down to “browse” on their mobile phones and tablets, whose unit sales proliferate in proportion as they do not."

The new Stars Wars trailer is another great example of the Age of Exhaustion. Where the wonderment of innovation, the opportunities embedded in the future, thoughtful debates over good versus evil, the power of the human experience, etc. is being reduced to a Star Wars as anti-white message and debate.  Very sad - the force is no longer with us.