And more importantly, in years to come. Thumbs down on optimism. Optimism is out. Pessimism is in. What the article really said is that the more profound scholarly books to come out of the throbbing heartbeat of academia in the Western world are pessimistic.
Optimism is out.
We're in postmodernism. And postmodernism, the article says, is modernism with the optimism taken out. Because Western civilization is rooted in the Judiac-Christian faith. At the heart of many of the intellectuals of our world today there is an absolute lack of respect for religion and for our system of government, the free enterprise system. Well, for much of this century, the source of optimism was found in the collectivist philosophy of life rather than in the individualistic philosophy of life.