When I speak of recovering the old and the good, I am not speaking in the sense that these old things are dead. At New Years, one may sing Auld Lang Syne, but I think of the Old and the Good not as past things, of reminiscences, but of things which must be actively recovered. Consider civilization as an expedition through a forest. If one has taken a course that has led the expedition into peril, the best way out is to retrace one’s steps to a point where one is not in peril. This means turning around and heading backward for a time until one’s course is recovered and corrected. One looks at past decisions and makes a verdict — “we took a wrong turn.” Then one persuades others to go back.
But this is not easy. People become accustomed to the wrong path, and to make them turn about requires an act of self-renunciation. “We took the wrong path” must become, for the individual, a recognition that “I took the wrong path.” This is a very hard thing for most people to do.
