Shepard Bancroft Clough (1901–1990)

This is a well-done, old-school academic treatise, short on references and long on the opinions of the author: the kind of extended argumentative essay common fifty years ago but now (sadly) out of vogue. Clough’s premise is that Western civilization (to which he always refers without the use of ironic quotation marks) has five basic values upon which it rests: the worth of the individual, the desire to control the physical world and environment, the degree to which people follow the Golden Rule, the conscious creation and enjoyment of aesthetic objects, and the praise of progress. His approach predicts the one Naill Ferguson, with his six “killer apps,” would take decades later in his Civilization. He examines each of these in detail—but not too much detail and, at times, not enough. Most interesting is the conclusion, “The Future of Western Values,” in which he writes about how modern life will most likely make the Golden Rule harder to follow since more and more individuals will be less and less accountable for their actions:

Perhaps the needless irascibility which is so apparent nowadays among people in our very large cities can be largely attributed to the impersonality of human relationships. Certainly it seems that most bus drivers would not say the things that they do to their passengers if they ever expected to see them again, or at best to encounter them in some situations where the passenger might retaliate.

Also—anyone who has listened to The Teaching Company’s lectures Questions of Value will enjoy this.
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