Photo: L-R: Joseph Haughton, Evi Saari, Hubregt van der Meulenen (conference chairs), Herman Fiolet and Roger Wilson.
‘Our response to present-day living’: Geoffrey Hubbard in the Friend, fifty years ago today
‘It is nothing new for men to see the future as threatening and uncertain.’
Present-day living, for us and for the greater part of the population of the affluent west, has never been better. We are safer, richer, more comfortable than any previous generation. We live longer, are healthier, die of illnesses our fathers seldom lived long enough, or richly enough, to contract. Our homes are cleaner and warmer than ever before; our food more varied and its supply more secure. And lest you think that I am taking a materialist view, we have the capacity to travel in search of man-made beauty or the solace of quiet places, our walls are lined with the great books of the world in paperback, we choose between gramophone records of magnificent music, much of which was once unplayed, in performances which the skill of the recording engineer have made nearly perfect (almost, sometimes, too perfect). Opera and ballet, the entertainments of princes, are widely enjoyed; and the younger staff in my office delight in skiing, once the sport of playboys.
