more on this theme     |     more from this thinker

Single Idea 19646

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / a. Nature of value ]

Full Idea

Values do not accumulate: a generation contributes something new only by trampling on what was unique in the preceding generation.

Gist of Idea

Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced

Source

E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 6 'We')

Book Ref

Cioran,E.M.: 'A Short History of Decay', ed/tr. Howard,Richard [Penguin 2010], p.183

A Reaction

That may seem true for a Frenchman or a Romanian, but it doesn't feel true of British culture, which seems to me to have accumulated values over the last five hundred years. Before 1500 it seems to me to be a foreign country. We may be near the end!

The 47 ideas from 'A Short History of Decay'

19627 Opportunists can save a nation, and heroes can ruin it [Cioran]
19622 The pointlessness of our motives and irrelevance of our gestures reveals our vacuity [Cioran]
19602 You are stuck in the past if you don't know boredom [Cioran]
19619 To live authentically, we must see that philosophy is totally useless [Cioran]
19618 I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human weakness [Cioran]
19621 Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran]
19620 Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran]
19624 Intelligence only fully flourishes at the end of a historical period [Cioran]
19625 The ideal is to impose a religion by force, and then live in doubt about its beliefs [Cioran]
19615 I want to suppress in myself the normal reasons people have for action [Cioran]
19614 Lovers are hateful, apart from their hovering awareness of death [Cioran]
19599 Ideas are neutral, but people fill them with passion and weakness [Cioran]
19600 When man abandons religion, he then follows new fake gods and mythologies [Cioran]
19623 Circles of hell are ridiculous; all that matters is to be there [Cioran]
19616 As the perfect wisdom of detachment, philosophy offers no rivals to Taoism [Cioran]
19617 Evidence suggests that humans do not have a purpose [Cioran]
19611 No one has ever found a good argument against suicide [Cioran]
19610 Religions see suicide as insubordination [Cioran]
19626 Our instincts had to be blunted and diminished, to make way for consciousness! [Cioran]
19603 Why is God so boring, and why does God resemble humanity so little? [Cioran]
19605 Despite endless suggestions, no one has found a goal for history [Cioran]
19604 Unlike other creatures, mankind seems lost in nature [Cioran]
19606 We can only live because our imagination and memory are poor [Cioran]
19613 It is pointless to refuse or accept the social order; we must endure it like the weather [Cioran]
19612 The universe is dirty and fragile, as if a scandal in nothingness had produced its matter [Cioran]
19608 Wisdom is just the last gasp of a dying civilization [Cioran]
19601 Life is now more dreaded than death [Cioran]
19609 If you have not contemplated suicide, you are a miserable worm [Cioran]
19633 We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran]
19628 At a civilisation's peak values are all that matters, and people unconsciously live by them [Cioran]
19631 The history of ideas (and deeds) occurs in a meaningless environment [Cioran]
19629 A nation gives expression to its sum of values, and is then exhausted [Cioran]
19632 An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran]
19630 No great idea ever emerged from a dialogue [Cioran]
19634 Man is never himself; he always aims at less than life, or more than life [Cioran]
19636 Truth is just an error insufficiently experienced [Cioran]
19637 History is wonderfully devoid of meaning [Cioran]
19641 If you lack beliefs, boredom is your martyrdom [Cioran]
19640 No one is brave enough to say they don't want to do anything; we despise such a view [Cioran]
19645 Some thinkers would have been just as dynamic, no matter when they had lived [Cioran]
19638 Metaphysics is a universalisation of physical anguish [Cioran]
19642 Eventually every 'truth' is guaranteed by the police [Cioran]
19644 History is the bloody rejection of boredom [Cioran]
19643 A religion needs to motivate killings, and cannot tolerate rivals [Cioran]
19646 Values don't accumulate; they are ruthlessly replaced [Cioran]
19639 We all need sexual secrets! [Cioran]
19607 The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their significance [Cioran]