Soul and romanticism

The two words of the topic might not be the first to pop into mind when discussing Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear fame. Yet I've been reading Jeremy's I Know You Got Soul and can't help but agree with some of his views. Back before people started to worry about 4Q2006 and whether or not they could leverage the economies of scale to help create a sustainable competitive advantage, the world was a lot more romantic. Or at least that's what intuition would say; of course back then people were just as interested in viewing themselves as important, efficient, etc. But concepts like heroic failure and such fit fairly well as some of the ventures of the older times have been completely useless, yet they have this certain appeal. Clarkson talks about, for instance, the Zeppelin (not Led, but the other flying kind) and how its purpose isn't really to take people from place A to place B as quickly, efficiently and cheaply as possible. In fact the primary purpose of the Zeppelin might not have been to really go anywhere in the first place. It would be fairly nice to just float around in one and observe how the world goes about its business.

I think a certain sense of naivety is precisely which makes the older times so romantic. Especially around the time of the start of the industrial revolution, a maybe a bit before then. Judging by today's yardsticks, the methods of those times were, well, not very good or efficient. And not everything made economic sense. Such as the Zeppelin, for example. But people did it anyway. And there were Barons and whatevers. There was this whole gentleman-esque aura to the thing. Now it's all pinstripes and quarterly reports and the like. And we've lost the cute, innocent, naive view of the world. Granted, this is premature again as in 100 years people will most likely think we were so cute and gullible with our ways.