Word: decayed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...book will probably be read by some as a callous, you-can't-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-eggs dia tribe against social planners, academics in public life and environmentalists. Among his dicta: "Adjustments that take the reward structure too far out of line with contributions produce economic decay . . . An entirely disproportionate share of medical attention goes to the chronic, hopeless ills of the aged at the expense of children and young adults, whose needs would be a much wiser investment of the resources . . . In the real world, limited resources impose choices; in the world of government, everyone...
Will has not completely given up to despair but he sees little chance of reversing the decay of the liberal, bourgeois civilization he cherishes. "The question," he says, "is how is it possible to have a quickened sense of anxiety, in the public at large, about the growing power of the state, the growing ugliness of life, and the general undisciplined nature of public and private appetites." He shakes his head. "And I'm not very hopeful about that...
...city, she faces problems that rival those of New York's Abraham Beame. Floods during the rainy season annually cause millions of dollars in property losses; equally damaging fires break out regularly during dry months. Poverty is rampant, with its attendant ills of malnutrition, disease, crime, urban decay and omnipresent filth. Imelda's first order as manager last week was to order a cleanup of the city, in preparation for President Gerald Ford's state visit in December. How well she can cope with the city's problems may help determine her political future...
Complacency is a problem, he said, adding "we're alert to any incipient signs of decay...
Oswald Spengler had been developing somewhat similar theories as early as the first volume of Decline of the West in 1918. But while Spengler argued that the decay of civilizations was inexorable and essentially purposeless, Toynbee insisted that man retains his freedom of choice: "I do not believe that civilizations have to die...Civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills." Moreover, it has a purpose, a dimly perceived but divinely ordained purpose. "History," he wrote, "[is] a vision of God's creation on the move...