What's Wrong with the World

by G. K. Chesterton

Overview

In 1910, when the industrialists and intelligentsia both promised only “progress,” G. K. Chesterton was among the few in the West who could see the brewing ideological storms that would soon make landfall, not just in the form of world wars and totalitarianism but in the pervasive modern dehumanization that consumes us to this day.

More than a century ago, Chesterton perceived the beginnings of “woke capital” and how it aligns with and promotes social progressivism. There is an unspoken alliance between big business and progressives, he explains. The one (big business) impoverishes the worker, eviscerating the material conditions of family life, while the other (the progressive) tells him he doesn't need family anyway. Big business “wants women workers because they are cheaper,” while the progressive “calls the women's work ‘freedom to live her own life.' ”

Chesterton saw, too, how economic individualism ultimately led to more intrusive government because of the inability of the worker to enter into modest ownership of the kind accessible to his forebears, leaving him vulnerable to looking to the State for help.

It is in examining these threats to a decent, stable, ordinary life that What's Wrong with the World proves astonishingly, almost unbelievably, prophetic. Although Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism was still a decade away, one can see in these pages that his arguments were already unmistakably contoured by Catholic teaching, concerned as he is with the false emphasis on “science,” sexual license as “liberating,” socialism's fake humanity, and how “faith in the future” is actually a sign of cowardice and fear of our past.

As readable today as when it was first written, no other book offers such an incisive analysis of what is truly wrong with our world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644136188
Publisher:	Sophia Institute Press
Publication date:	01/25/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was one of the most beloved and prolific authors of the twentieth century, best known for his works Father Brown, , The Everlasting Man, and The Man Who Was Thursday.

Table of Contents

Foreword Sohrab Ahmari ix

Dedication xv

Part 1 The Homelessness of Man

I The Medical Mistake 5

II Wanted, An Unpractical Man 9

III The New Hypocrite 15

IV The Fear of the Past 21

V The Unfinished Temple 29

VI The Enemies of Property 35

VII The Free Family 39

VIII The Wildness of Domesticity 43

IX History of Hudge and Gudge 47

X Oppression by Optimism 53

XI The Homelessness of Jones 57

Part 2 Imperialism, or the Mistake about Man

I The Charm of jingoism 63

II Wisdom and the Weather 67

III The Common Vision 73

IV The Insane Necessity 77

Part 36 Feminism, or the Mistake about Woman

I The Unmilitary Suffragette 87

II The Universal Stick 91

III The Emancipation of Domesticity 97

IV The Romance of Thrift 103

V The Coldness of Chloe 109

VI The Pedant and the Savage 115

VII The Modern Surrender of Woman 119

VIII The Brand of the Fleur-de-Lis 123

IX Sincerity and the Gallows 127

X The Higher Anarchy 131

XI The Queen and the Suffragettes 135

XII The Modern Slave 137

Part 4 Education, or the Mistake about the Child

I The Calvinism of Today 143

II The Tribal Terror 147

III The Tricks of Environment 151

IV The Truth about Education 153

V An Evil Cry 157

VI Authority the Unavoidable 161

VII The Humility of Mrs. Grundy 167

VIII The Broken Rainbow 171

IX The Need for Narrowness 175

X The Case for the Public Schools 179

XI The School for Hypocrites 185

XII The Staleness of the New Schools 191

XIII The Outlawed Parent 195

XIV Folly and Female Education 199

Part 5 The Home of Man

I The Empire of the Insect 205

II The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand 213

III The Dreadful Duty of Gudge 219

IV A Last Instance 223

V Conclusion 225

Three Notes

I On Female Suffrage 233

II On Cleanliness in Education 235

III On Peasant Proprietorship 237