Abstract

An extraodrinary cultural upheaval is in progress at the moment around much of the world. The last few millenia are going up in smoke as millions, even billions, of people desert, forget, quietly design out or actively repudiate their ethnic, religious and moral traditions. Some people are desperately trying to hold on to or restore their traditions but are finding to their dismay that it cannot be done: the substance of tradition is melting away, slipping through their fingers even as they try to grasp it. The loss is becoming so complete so quickly that very soon now historians will be finding it difficult to reimagine what it was once like genuinely to believe such things and follow such customs