Symbols control sentiment and thought, and the new age has no symbols consonant with its activities.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
Conditions have changed, but every aspect of life, from religion and education to property and trade, shows that nothing approaching a transformation has taken place in ideas and ideals.
For the older symbols of ideal life still engage thought and command loyalty.
Because the two are rivals and because the older ones retain their glamor and sentimental prestige in literature and religion, the newer ones are perforce harsh and narrow.
Since the aims, desires and purposes created by a machine age do not connect with tradition, there are two sets of rival ideals, and those which have actual instrumentalities at their disposal have the advantage.
Ideals and standards formed without regard to the means by which they are to be achieved and incarnated in flesh are bound to be thin and wavering.
If the ideals associated with the higher life of our cultural past have been impaired, the fault is primarily with them.
Mental and moral beliefs and ideals change more slowly than outward conditions.
In reality, the trouble springs rather from the ideas and absence of ideas in connection with which technological factors operate.
It is always convenient to have a devil as well as a savior to bear the responsibilities of humanity.
Steam and electricity have done more to alter the conditions under which men associate together than all the agencies which affected human relationships before our time.
The actual new world has been generated in the last hundred years.