Word: moderns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years. Of the industrial democracies, only the U.S., Canada and Australia had been spared misery in their homeland. The U.S. economy accounted for nearly a half of total world output in 1945, a proportion that it has never approached since. Crucially, the U.S. defined what it was to be modern. The U.S. was big shouldered and handsome, the U.S. wore nylons and lipstick, the U.S. enjoyed a level of prosperity of which others could only dream. In Manhattan '45, her love letter to New York, Jan Morris writes "The old brag biggest and finest in the nation more and more...
...that does not even come close to describing the world today. The American domination - economic, social, cultural, political - that was such a feature of the post-1945 world is missing now. Plainly, there are material aspects of modern American life that still inspire admiration from overseas, and features of American innovation that nobody else can match. But I spend about half my time outside the U.S., and I have to say that in many ways, like Bernard Kouchner, I think that the magic is gone. You want modern transportation systems? Try France or Japan. New airports? Half the cities...
...recognition, for - to use that phrase again - just deserts. To be sure, Chinese leaders will often tell you that in some ways, great power status has come too soon to them, that they do not yet have the skills or expertise to handle difficult diplomatic challenges. But though modern Chinese will often ask for understanding, they will always ask for respect. They think they've earned it. And they're right...
...This self-confidence of modern China, and other Asian societies, too, has had profound implications. At the most basic level, it has encouraged a wide-eyed admiration. In 2004, the World Bank held a global conference on poverty reduction in Shanghai, and I remember press reports describing the scene each evening. African delegates would gather on the Bund and look over the brown waters of the Whampoa to Pudong, gazing in wonder on an unearthly tableau of neon and skyscrapers built on marshes and paddyfields in not much more than 10 years...
...What those Africans were seeing, of course, was not just a collection of extraordinary buildings - the world's highest hotel or a funky reworking of the Eiffel Tower - they were seeing a way of being modern. And that goes directly to the problem with claims of American leadership today. In the post-1945 world, the U.S. had a monopoly on modernity. Now it does not. There are, we have learned, many ways of being modern, and they do not all follow the path blazed by the U.S. This isn't just because in China - or in Russia, for that matter...