"The belief in the perfectibiliy of man, the omnipotence of reason, and the certainty of progress...had more or less ended... It was very clear that reason could be enchained, that human nature was showing no desire to be perfected...The inerrancy of science, too...was proving a broken reed,  for science was...cultivating doubts and substituting probabilities for certainties. The world of sense and time had become distressingly insecure, and they had no other world...They were a haunted race, who seemed to labour under perpetual fear."

That is John Buchan on the "lost generation" of young intellectuals exactly a century ago. It applies to me and to our time as well. As then there is no certainty to anything, to man's improvement, to progress, to reality itself. "The world of sense and time had become distressingly insecure, and they had no other world."  In the margin I wrote at one time: "What other world is there? Spiritual?" I have felt many times that the certainty of terra firma was shifting beneath my feet. China's prosperity is not real. Our own is built on sand, as the Great Recession showed. Imperfect man has not perfected capitalism. The complete trust which we placed in reason and in science and technology was misplaced. We can not defeat a virus today any better than we could then.  We cannot find a passenger airplane. Modernity betrayed its promises to us as it did the lost generation. "Reason could be enchained," aye what we have learned is that reason can enchain. "Built in redundancy" did not prevent Challenger from exploding; the internet is not fee, either of cost or constraint. Technology did not provide security or privacy or peace but insecurity, invasion of privacy and fear of war. We are a haunted race labouring under perpetual fear, just as they were.