In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

PRESENT VS. PAST 313
more convincing than the overly bright prophecies of the Communists.
Robert Musil--comparing his own novel in progress, Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities), to Oswald Spengler's Untergang
des Abendlandes (Decline of the West)-ironically admits: "I
laugh ... at all these declines of the West and their prophets!" (Musil,
382-383).
From Europe, the traditional center of the Western world, the United
States and the Soviet Union may look like two different versions of the
future [see Center vs. Periphery]. But chronologically speaking, these
versions of the future are realities of the Present. Since it appears so
surprising and complex, this Present attracts unusual amounts of intellectual
and emotional energy. Especially in Germany, the Present is an
object of intense philosophical reflection. Many intellectuals believe that
conditions of life in the Present are such that devoting attention to any
other time period is meaningless. "Our era does not count on a remote
posterity. Its spiritual products are meant to be consumed, just like the
products of any other kind of work. Even the people with the largest
incomes do not accumulate capital-and nobody can pass it on to the
next generation. With a certain amount of composure, we can focus on
meeting the requirements of our own era and on living in it, as long as
we manage to understand it" (Heinrich Mann, 272). There are even
allegorical descriptions of this feeling: "It is impossible to ignore the
penetrating voice of this present; it pushes the most romantic dream into
the merciless light of day, where all objects adopt new forms and new
colors. Their essence and meaning become accessible to those who dare
touch their contours, visualize them, listen to them-transform them
into lived experience" (Lania, 322). [see Reporters]
In an interview with Thomas Mann that treats the Present as a tension
between the generations (Mann's and his children'S), a young journalist
suggests that what is considered human and must therefore simply be
accepted overlaps with what is demonstrably legitimate according to
explicit ethical criteria: "For every now and then-indeed, quite of tenwe
are simply unable to look at certain things that were clearly evil for
the older generation and find them 'bad' or 'illicit.' In other words, we
are more relaxed and open-minded when it comes to distinguishing what
is human from what is morally responsible" (W.E.S., 192). Compared to
the Present, even the not-sa-remote Past seems a world in which people
were often carried away by their emotions and opinions, whereas now