Modern mind: arrogant, ignorant and sloth

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Portrait of Hilaire Belloc.Image via Wikipedia
Does this not confirm Hilaire Belloc's extraordinarily prescient description in 1929 of what he termed the "Modern Mind" - that cultural conceit that has been formed through the intermingling of arrogance, ignorance and sloth - and the "instrument" which feeds and deepens its malaise? "
The popular Press," writes Belloc, tends to present
"as objects for admiration a bundle of things incongruous: a few of some moment, the great part trivial. Above all it grossly distorts ... Thus the 'Modern Mind' dislikes thinking: the popular Press increases that sloth by providing sensational substitutes. 
Disliking thought, the 'Modern Mind' dislikes close attention, and indeed any sustained effort; the popular Press increases the debility by an orgy of pictures and headlines. The 'Modern Mind' ascribes a false authority to reiteration; the popular Press serves it with ceaseless iteration ... In all these ways and twenty others the popular Press as we have it today thrusts the 'Modern Mind' lower than it would otherwise have fallen, swells its imbecility and confirms it in its incapacity for civilization and therefore for Faith."
It is precisely this form of sneering, stultifying pseudo-morality so often adopted by the modern media - whose self-promotion to the status of judge and arbiter of what warrants public attention, coupled with its fickle affections and compulsive dalliance with social media - that represents the realisation not just of Belloc's predictions, but of Kafka's nightmares.

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