We all need a bit of self-delusion. It gets us over the difficult spots.

United States:. A nation given either to unjustified over-enthusiasms or infantile furies.

Educating the masses was intended only to improve the relationship between the top and the bottom of society. Not for changing the nature of the relationship.

Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.

The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

The Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit.

Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.