What’s Wrong with the World

By: G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

In this important book, G.K. Chesterton offers a remarkably perceptive analysis of social and moral issues, even more relevant today than in his own time. With a light, humorous tone but a deadly serious philosophy, he comments on errors in education, on feminism vs. true womanhood, on the importance of the child, and other issues, using incisive arguments against the trendsetters’ assaults on the common man and the family.

Chesterton possessed the genius to foresee the dangers of implementing modernist proposals. He knew that lax moral standards would lead to the dehumanization of man. In this book, he staunchly defends the family against those ideas and institutions that would subvert it and thereby deliver man into the hands of the servile state. In addressing what is wrong, he also shows clearly what is right, and how to change things in that direction.

Public Domain (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

As a relevant today is ever…

This is a truly masterful work, considering it was written 100 years ago. Chesterton shows himself to be quite prescient regarding the ills of society, and some common sense approaches to how to fix it.

We moderns need this counsel.

We need to understand a more traditional view of the nature of mankind. Is it possible that our wisdom has not kept pace with technology? Has our arrogance about our place in history of science blinded us to the failure of some of our social ideas? Is it possible that what we deem as archaic or obsolete could instruct us and provide some sanity?

Good book, but this recording won't dowload

Any additional comments?

This book, like anything by G.K. Chesterton, is pretty good. Unfortunately, this particular version won't download correctly so I can't listen to it as an audiobook or give it a better review

Distributism

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been severely detrimental to the human race.

10/10

The mind that finds...

"The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's."
- G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

Written 107 years ago, Chesterton's 'What's Wrong with the World' is dated on several topics, primarily regarding women. But even if it wasn't dated, that wouldn't change the essentials of why I am always simultaneously thrilled and frustrated by G.K. Chesterton. I may not agree with what he says, but I always adore how he says it. In that way he is like another English writer Christopher Hitchens. I would read Hitchens and practically yell and the book in parts, but God how I loved the gift of Hitch's words. Chesterton, if born 75 years later, may have had a sparing partner in Hitch. They seem very similar in rhetorical boldness.

Chesterton genius was (and probably still is) found in his playful use of paradox. He, I believe, is the master of rhetorical paradox. He doesn't just want to argue the point. He wants to twist the argument, reframe the debate, make a tangle of both sides, and show the world a third-way. He approaches issues of politics, class, sex, education and tries to show how often both sides of the argument are blind. He looks at a chessboard where both black and white pieces are stuck in a perpetual check and instead of suggesting a draw, he adds a couple pieces, or suggests billiards.

What is surprising is not how often I disagree with Chesterton, but how often I agree with a text that was written 107 years ago. It is also surprising (the math is easy here because he was born almost 100 years before me) to discover he was 35 when he wrote this book. It seems a bit curmudgeonly written for a 35 year-old. But that is also one of the charms of Chesterton. Even as a youth, his witty writings and his conservative attitudes seemed like those of a sarcastic, slightly drunk old sage than a haughty young intellectual. I may admire Charles Darwin more, but I'd probably want to drink with G.K. Chesterton.