“But I confess to having mixed feelings about that exhortation, if for no other reason than that I believe change to be not the but a great fact of human life. An equally great fact is continuity, and it may well be that one “adapts” more successfully to certain realities by resisting them than by capitulating to them.”

Well said.

Maybe remodeling society should be approached as if remodeling a large jet while in flight – some walls just should not be knocked down… and if you don’t know which ones are which, such changes should be something resorted to, not striven for…“When it is not necessary to change,” Lord Falkland said some centuries ago, “it is necessary not to change.”

BTW, good to see Matthew Arnold’s name in ‘print’; his Culture and Anarchy ought to be required reading for anyone convinced of the superiority of Modernity in general, and of making Progress in particular.

And just as a help in better understanding what is worth being understood, ‘yourself’ for instance, it’s hard to top these Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.