What’s wrong with towering ambition?

Pour ceux qui croient encore en l'humanité, pour ceux qui admirent les réalisations humaines, je vous offre ce texte très intéressant publié dans la revue Spiked:

What’s wrong with towering ambition?

There’s more to the Burj, however, than all those records and figures. It is an astonishing work of architecture that is inspired in its simplicity and elegance.

You have to be seriously lacking in imagination not to be impressed by Burj Khalifa.
There was a palpable sense of excitement, with expats congratulating each other and an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

Turn to the Western media, however, and the story was completely different. TheTelegraph called it ‘The New Pinnacle of Vanity’, The Times(London) predicted that ‘Towering ambition always comes before a fall’, and Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian called it ‘a gaseous burp in the desert’.

On the surface, most of the attacks on Dubai seem to stem from environmental concerns and a desire for social justice.

Dig deeper, however, and it is clear that a fair bit of this is driven by the contemporary Western anxiety about progress.
It is precisely because of this can-do attitude that Dubai seems anachronistic to observers in the West, where a culture of low expectations prevails and fear of change is dominant.

L'avenir serait donc dans ces pays ?

Quoi qu'il en soit, une culture qui se déteste, qui dénonce tout accomplissement, tout dépassement de soi même. Une culture qui crache sur toute fierté et toute ambition est une culture qui se meurt....

'It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine' chantait R.E.M.

Cette banqueroute philosophique, cette haine généralisé du progrès, de l'accomplissement nous place au pied du mur...

Mais «chantez maintenant»....

Francois.