Modernity: not everything in life can be understood?

I am big fan of radio 4 and in particular their history of ideas program - In Our Times. Earlier this year there was a program dedicated to Thomas Stearns Eliot and his modern classic "The Waste Land":

THE WASTE LAND AND MODERNITY

In October 1922, the latest edition of London’s literary magazine, The Criterion, hit the shelves. In it was a new poem by a little known American poet. The poet was called Thomas Stearns Eliot and the poem was called The Waste Land. It turned out to be among the most influential poems ever written in English.

The Waste Land found a new way to express the modern world in all its bruising, gleaming cacophony. But Eliot himself has been accused of elitism, of misanthropy and high-minded despair at the paucity of 20^th century living. 

But could someone who captured modern life so well really dislike it so much and when he stared out at a world of radio and cinema, of radical art and universal suffrage, did TS Eliot really see only a barren, featureless plain?

Contributors

Steve Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London

Fran Brearton, Reader in English at Queen’s University, Belfast

Lawrence Rainey, Professor of English and American Literature at the University of York

I can't claim to have understood the many themes and ideas which are layered into the Wasteland. However I love the approach and style of writing. 

At heart I am an empiricist, but in this poetry you have a wonderful description of the disjointed nature of conscious thought, the often random, confusing and dark nature of modernity. 

There are interesting parallels between the 1920s and now:

• The financial crises of the 1920s and our current credit - the financial problems in Great Britain in the 1920s were apparently deep
  
• Shock of the horror of the World War and mans ability to kill and destory on a new scale, compares to modern fears of our unsustainable consumption and growing fears of global warming
  

Apparently Eliot (who was working as a translator in the City) was also deeply troubled by the treated of Versia, and foresaw that the economic castration of Germany would be disastrous. The point reminded me of a recent letter my mother wrote in the FT regarding the credit crunch:

-----Original Message-----

Sent: 06 October 2008 22:51

To: editor@ft.com

Subject: Stock Market Crash 1929

Dear Sir,

Let us not get into a greater panic than we must : the stock market

crisis of 1929 preceded but did NOT lead to the second world war

(Dominique Moisi, FT 6/10/2008).  Arguably the greatest victim of that

particular financial crisis was the USA who entered World War II

reluctantly and only after the Japanese attack on the American fleet in

Pearl Harbour  in 1942.  The most credible single cause of the second

world war was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 after the first world

war.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc - no, indeed.

Yours,

Marianne Pitts

Dr.  Marianne Pitts,

Warwick Business School,

University of Warwick,

Coventry CV4 7AL

My mother has told me not to worry about the state of the world?

paucity |ˈpôsitē|

noun [in sing. ]

the presence of something only in small or insufficient quantities or amounts; scarcity : a paucity of information.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French paucite or Latin paucitas, from paucus ‘few.’

unsustainable |ˌənsəˈstānəbəl|

adjective

not able to be maintained at the current rate or level : macroeconomic instability led to an unsustainable boom.

• Ecology upsetting the ecological balance by depleting natural resources : unsustainable fishing practices.

• not able to be upheld or defended : the old idea was unsustainable.

DERIVATIVES

unsustainably |-blē| |ˈənsəˈsteɪnəbli| adverb

crisis |ˈkrīsis|

noun ( pl. -ses |-ˌsēz|)

a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger : the current economic crisis | a family in crisis | a crisis of semiliteracy among high school graduates.

• a time when a difficult or important decision must be made : [as adj. ] a crisis point of history.

• the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death.

• the point in a play or story when a crucial conflict takes place, determining the outcome of the plot.

ORIGIN late Middle English (denoting the turning point of a disease): medical Latin, from Greek krisis ‘decision,’ from krinein ‘decide.’ The general sense [decisive point] dates from the early 17th cent.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one." It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant.