STATE-BLINDNESSby@hgwells
135 reads

STATE-BLINDNESS

by H.G. Wells14mNovember 24th, 2022
Read on Terminal Reader
Read this story w/o Javascript
tldt arrow

Too Long; Didn't Read

In what I have written so far, I have tried to get the effect of the American outlook, the American task, the American problem as a whole, as it has presented itself to me. Clearly, as I see it, it is a mental and moral issue. There seems to me an economic process going on that tends to concentrate first wealth and then power in the hands of a small number of adventurous individuals of no very high intellectual type, a huge importation of alien and unassimilable workers, and a sustained disorder of local and political administration. Correlated with this is a great increase in personal luxury and need. In all these respects there is a strong parallelism between the present condition of the United States and the Roman Republic in the time of the early Cæsars; and arguing from these alone one might venture to forecast the steady development of an exploiting and devastating plutocracy, leading perhaps to Cæsarism, and a progressive decline in civilization and social solidarity. But there are forces of recuperation and construction in America such as the earlier instance did not display. There is infinitely more original and originating thought in the state, there are the organized forces of science, a habit of progress, clearer and wider knowledge among the general mass of the people. These promise, and must, indeed, inevitably make, some synthetic effort of greater or less homogeneity and force. It is upon that synthetic effort that the distinctive destiny of America depends.
featured image - STATE-BLINDNESS
H.G. Wells HackerNoon profile picture
H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells

@hgwells

English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine

Share Your Thoughts

About Author

H.G. Wells HackerNoon profile picture
H.G. Wells@hgwells
English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN...

Permanent on Arweave
Read on Terminal Reader
Read this story in a terminal
 Terminal
Read this story w/o Javascript
Read this story w/o Javascript
 Lite
L O A D I N G
. . . comments & more!