The heart of the great enterprise

Like (http://incharacter.org/review/good-writers-bad-men-does-it-matter/) I also had to stop reading Patrick French's biography of Naipaul midway through. Somehow the disheartening ruthlessness and solipsism of Naipaul, (what I think of as the absolute moral failure at the heart of the great enterprise) - was a deterrent.

And yet, we are used after all, to hubris, crisis, moral failing, regret and then death (the Hamletian historical dialectic). One can argue that it is the honesty of these writers, the courage to confront (but not to overcome) the worst in themselves, that lends itself to the shock of recognition on their pages that readers experience.

And yet, is it possible to believe that man is essentially a heroic figure; that his redeeming qualities and actions will in the end, produce a life (i.e. a human condition) in which not only the best in him triumphs, but that the best results for all those around him are also produced?

This is why those who peddle hope and change are so compelling; they offer for a moment, a vision of the future that is different from the past, and even though it never materializes, not in one generation or one thousand generations, yet, we fall for it, over and over again.