Show Sunset or Dawn Da Puzzled Humans Rise to Inquire By BRUCE DRUCE CATTON One of the most perplexing things about bout living in 1933 is that the worlds world's leading thinkers seem quite unable to o make up their minds whether we weare weare were are re approaching a sunset OP ci a dawn If you nose through the books bootes magazine articles and md interviews in which thoughtful men try to appraise the ie present situation you will find tind two wo schools of thought represented According to one school the end of ofil aU all il things is at hand and a great darkness is about to settle down over overie the ie waters Capitalism is done for western civilization is about to col col- lapse apse and the world is about to enter entera a new dark age According to the other school our woes arc are just the birth pangs of a anew anew new ew order ordel of or life liCe We are going through a great change and paying for or it in misery and confusion but when the change is finished things will be almost infinitely better than they icy were before There will be more and less poverty more peace and nd less war more happiness desperate uncertainty Each crew of prognosticators prognosticates can assemble a multitude of facts acts and a whole string of clever arguments to prove its case You can get damnation darrina tion ion with your morning coffee and salvation with your our dinner after-dinner cJ cig ret aret if you like ikc and arid each forecast will vill seem to be abs absolutely fool Now all of this however conflicting conflicting conflict- conflict ing ng it may be seems to indicate one i thing indisputably that we have reached one of history's great turnIng turn- turn lag Ing ng points and that no matter what the he future brings us us it is going to be something different from what we have had before For better or for worse worse vorse we have come upon a time change f and those of us who dont don't like ike change seem to be very much out of luck Yet it is also quite possible that the he seers are mostly wrong The disasters disasters dis dis- dis asters they foresee may not be quite as bad as they expect the improvements improve- improve m ments may leave us only a little bit 1 better jetter off than we we were The important im- im thing is that we accept the 1 fact act that some sort of f change is coming com com- ing ng and prepare our minds for it |