What's Wrong with the World by G.K. Chesterton





Written in 1910, still relevant a century later.

G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World is not a bit of light reading. There are heady thoughts throughout and the reader is invited to do some of the heavy lifting as well. I don't agree with all of Chesterton's conclusions either but he does have a wonderful way with words. Have you ever had an argument with someone in which you thoroughly disagreed with some of their points but admired the way they laid them out and their turns of the phrase? That is my experience with G.K. Chesterton in a nutshell.

I only picked up this volume because I read somewhere that C.S. Lewis was a devoted fan of Chesterton.

G.K. Chesterton
Be prepared, there is no one thing that is wrong with the world - it is a collection of things. Of course, any thinking person knows that there are always a collection of problems that are inter-related and cause all sorts of things to be wrong in the world.

Chesterton is strongly pro-Catholic church so be prepared that one of the things wrong with the world is that the world is not Catholic. Being a Lutheran myself, I smiled and moved on. Women working outside of the home is a problem Chesterton identifies as well. Not because women are inferior (he reveres the housewife and acknowledges it is draining) but because the home is a special place if well-tended by an extraordinary women - a place where the family can actually be free of the demands of society and work. Plus, a homemaker is, by the very nature of the job, a skilled amateur that knows a little about "a hundred trades." Homemakers are not specialized and that is good in Chesterton's eyes.

Why is specialization a problem? People become experts in just one thing and don't learn about the rest of the world. Think of our modern college system. Someone can get an MBA in business but never have taken an art class. Doctorates of art in all likelihood have never taken an econ class. Are those people well educated?

Probably his biggest thing that is wrong with the world is its habit of "altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul." In other words, we conform to the arbitrary demands of society rather than making sure that society conforms to the needs of the human soul.

Tired of the "Think of the Children" mantra? So was Chesterton 100 years ago: "There has arisen...a foolish and wicked try typical of the confusion. I mean the cry, "Save the children." It is, of course, part of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the state (which is the home of man) as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic. This terrified opportunism is also the origin of the Socialist and other schemes."

Chesterton also has several comments on education that to this 20 year veteran teacher sound grumpy, fuddy-duddy and exactly 100% right.

I rate this essay 5 stars out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: What's Wrong with the World.

 Reviewed on October 24, 2009.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

SEPARATION of CHURCH and HATE: A SANE PERSON'S GUIDE to TAKING BACK the BIBLE from FUNDAMENTALISTS, FASCISTS, and FLOCK-FLEECING FRAUDS (audiobook) by John Fugelsang

Image
Published in August of 2025 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, John Fugelsang. Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes. Unabridged. John Fugelsang is seemingly omnipresent on the cable TV news/political talk show circuit. He is a talented debater because he knows how to bring the goods to an argument, especially when Christian Nationalism is involved. Fugelsang had a unique upbringing in a super-Catholic household. Why was it unusual? His mother was a former nun and his father was a former Franciscan friar. They fell in love, had a bunch of kids, and made sure that they all went to church whenever it was having a service.  In a a lot of ways, this felt a lot like my childhood. No - my parents weren't nuns or priests. But, I grew up in rural setting where my Lutheran church was one of the centers of my life. Church every weekend, most of the holiday services, Sunday school, Christmas programs, church youth group, vacation bible school, and I worked at a church summer camp for fi...
Read more

The Best of 2025.

Image
This is a "best of" list based on the 84 books I read and reviewed in 2025. I do not focus on new books, so there are books on this "best of" ranging from being published in 1973 to being published in 2025. The titles are active links to my reviews. *** = Best of the best in that category MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY I acknowledge that it is odd that I found a 39 sports autobiography to be the best book in this category, but I found this to be thoroughly enjoyable read. The cover has a blurb from Playboy saying it was the "best sports book of the year." They may have been right - it is very good. If you are an old fan of NASCAR, this will be a fantastic read for you. *** King Richard I: The Autobiography of America's Greatest Auto Racer by Richard Petty with William Neely. A Paper Orchestra by Michael Jamin. Brian Epstein: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History. Our Subway Baby by Peter Mercurio. John Wesley Hardin: A Life from Beginning to End by Hou...
Read more

DRAGONS of WINTER NIGHT: DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES, BOOK TWO (audiobook) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Image
Originally published in book form in 1985. Audiobook published by Audible Studios in 2013. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 17 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The war against the Dragon Queen continues. The forces of good pulled off a major victory at the end of the last novel, but now the forces of evil are looking for revenge.  Tanis, Flint, Goldmoon, Laurana, and the rest of the intrepid companions head off in search of new ways to fight the Dragon Queen's advancing armies. Or, if that fails - lead a refugee exodus. They use an ancient map from before the Cataclysm to find a legendary seaport only to find that it is no longer anywhere near the sea due to the immense destruction of the Cataclysm. As the companions try to figure out their next steps, an armada of dragons attacks the city, breathing flames from above. Dragon Army ground troops swarm into the city and the companions are split into two groups while Tanis faces the decision of a lifetime. My Review: This is a ...
Read more

GRANT and LEE: VICTORIOUS AMERICAN and VANQUISHED VIRGINIAN by Edward H. Bonekemper III

Image
Originally published in 2007. Edward Bonekemper was a Civil War historian who came to the game kind of late in life - after he retired as an attorney for the federal government.  However, he brings his skills as an attorney to this book. Imagine a regulatory attorney bringing all of his research to bear in order to win a case by simply  overwhelming the other side with binder after binder of evidence. In this case, the evidence is almost 200 pages of appendices, endnotes, and a bibliography.  Bonekemper makes an argument in this book that Grant was undoubtedly the superior general when compared to Lee. In fact, he makes the arguments that Grant was the best general in the Civil War by far and Lee squandered his soldiers and his resources by going on the offense almost all of the time. Being the best general does not mean Grant made no mistakes. It does not mean Grant was perfect. Bonekemper acknowledges mistakes by Grant in every campaign and gives Lee his due from time t...
Read more

DRAGONS of SPRING DAWNING (Dragonlance Chronicles, Book 3) (audiobook) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Image
Originally published in 1985. Audiobook published in 2012 by Audible Studios. Duration: 16 hours, 26 minutes. Read by Paul Boehmer' Unabridged. I distinctly remember loving this series 40 years ago and excitedly visiting my local bookstore to pick up a new one when they were published. I was an avid player of Dungeons and Dragons and a book series released by the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons was a guaranteed win. As the series continued to print new books, I kept on buying them. I probably owned dozen or so of them. Somewhere along the way I sold off my Dragonlance collection. I worked part time at a used bookstore at one point and they probably ended up there. When I found the books in audiobook format, I decided that it was time to revisit these books and see if they held up to my memories of uncritical acclaim. Synopsis: In The Dragons of Spring Dawning , the forces of the Dragon Queen are rolling up victory after victory. But, rather than confidently rolling up the scatt...
Read more

OATH and HONOR: A MEMOIR and a WARNING (audiobook) by Liz Cheney

Image
  Published in 2023 by Little, Brown and Company in December of 2023. Read by the author, Liz Cheney. Duration: 12 hours, 14 minutes. Unabridged. Liz Cheney is most famous for two things. Pre-January 6, 2021 she was famous for being Dick Cheney's daughter and a leader of the House Republicans.  Post-January 6, 2021 Cheney is most famous for being one of the leaders of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.  Cheney was one of the few Republicans willing to incur the wrath of Donald Trump and actually look into the role he played in the January 6 Attack. Cheney calls the book a memoir, but this is not really true. The book offers next to nothing about her childhood or her personal life. You know that she has a husband because she mentions that he helped her proofread various papers she had prepared for the committee.  Cheney starts with former President Donald Trump's election denialism immediately following the 2020 election date rather than...
Read more

DARK SKY (Joe Pickett #21) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Image
  Published by Recorded Books in 2021. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. Winner of the Spur Award for Western Contemporary Novel (2022) Synopsis: Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is good at his job and is known for dealing honestly with everyone. Usually, it's a good thing to have a great reputation. But, it can also mean that people dump the uncomfortable jobs on you because they know you will do them. The new Governor of Wyoming has an idea that will pick up his slumping poll numbers - he will convince a tech mogul to build his latest server farm in Wyoming. He hopes that the prestige and, more importantly, new high-paying jobs will help the voting public overlook his scandals when it comes time for re-election. The tech mogul is sort of a combination of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg. He has new skills he wants to master and the current skill he wants to master is providing himself with all of his own food. He gardens and hunts everything and he is...
Read more

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES: HOW DECENT PEOPLE CAN SAVE AMERICA from the CULTURE of CONTEMPT (audiobook) by Arthur C. Brooks

Image
Published by HarperAudio in March of 2019. Read by Will Damron. Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Arthur C. Brooks was the President of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute from 2008 to shortly after the publication of this book in 2019.  Brooks is deeply worried with the present level of political discourse in America. Debates where the candidates just insult one another. Derogatory comments rather than actual proposals. Look at your typical Facebook political argument. Anonymous posters with names like "Trump_2020_Forever" arguing with "Trumpsters_Suck" and using terms like "libtards" and "conservacunts" while they insist that the other side is nothing but a literal bunch of communists and Nazis. This is getting us nowhere. And that is his point in Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt . What we are showing each other is contempt. He quotes a couples' counselor ...
Read more

DOCTOR WHO: DESTINY of the DOCTOR #3: VENGEANCE of the STONES (audiobook) by Andrew Smith

Image
Published in 2013 by AudioGo (Blackstone/BBC)   Read by Richard Franklin and Trevor Littledale Duration: 1 hour Unabridged. As a part of the 50th Anniversary celebration of Doctor Who, the BBC released a series of audiobooks called Destiny of the Doctor . Each of the Doctors has a 1 hour audiobook story. In Vengeance of the Stones  the Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a RAF fighter jet from the skies above Scotland. While the Doctor is poking around he encounters Lt. Mike Yates for the first time (who becomes Captain Mike Yates and a companion in the television series).  The Doctor soon discovers that the disappearance of the jet is the work of an alien species that has a ancient grudge against humanity and that they are the reason for the prevalence of so many recumbent stone circles in this area.  A recumbent stone circle in Scotland. Photo by Bill McKelvie Also, he discovers that these aliens are more t...
Read more

WELCOME to PAWNEE: STORIES of FRIENDSHIP, WAFFLES, and PARKS and RECREATION (audiobook) by Jim O'Heir

Image
Published by HarperAudio in November of 2024. Read by Jim O'Heir, George Newbern, Eva Kaminsky, Janina Edwards, Roger Wayne, Jim Meskimen, and Adam Verner. Duration: 6 hours, 24 minutes. Unabridged. Jim O'Heir has been knocking around Hollywood for years as a journeyman actor. He has had roles in dozens and dozens of TV shows and movies - good stuff and bad stuff - but always regular stuff. He was well on his way to becoming one of those character actors that you see so often that you say, "Oh! There's that guy! He was on that one show." Then in 2009, he showed up on the new NBC show Parks and Recreation playing the bumbling and often befuddled lovable loser Jerry Gergrich. He kept playing this character for all 123 episodes of the show. This book is a dual biography of sorts. It is the story of Jim O'Heir and how he came to the show, but it's also the story of the show itself. Jim interviews producers, writers, directors, and other actors to give us the s...
Read more