from accountt:
"Most interestingly perhaps, Marinetti argued that the young cling onto the past because the future is denied to them. I think this is more relevant today than ever before. It's especially true for Western Europeans. Whereas the Indians, the Chinese, even the Eastern Europeans to some degree, can look forward to a glorious future, as Western Europeans we grow up surrounded by a sense of former glory.
The cognitive coping mechanism for long has been to deny the glory ever existed. "No, we did not accomplish something amazing. The British empire left nothing but genocides behind and the fact that homosexuality was officially illegal until the latter half of the 20th century is an unspeakable atrocity." The man in denial will state. When you lose your girlfriend, the girl was a bitch all along. When you lose your empire, the empire was a racist mistake all along."
