Postwar rootless Europeans lost the imperialist escape route into exotic lands

Evidence

If we compare this generation with the nineteenth-century ideologists, with whose theories they sometimes seem to have so much in common, their chief distinction is their greater authenticity and passion. They had been more deeply touched by misery, they were more concerned with the perplexities and more deadly hurt by hypocrisy than all the apostles of good will and brotherhood had been. And they could no longer escape into exotic lands, could no longer afford to be dragon-slayers among strange and exciting people. There was no escape from the daily routine of misery, meekness, frustration, and resentment embellished by a fake culture of educated talk; no conformity to the customs of fairy-tale lands could possibly save them from the rising nausea that this combination continuously inspired. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 785

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the colonial psychology toolkit — the imperialist character’s escape-into-exotic-lands mechanism from earlier orientation readings, now shown closing off for the rootless generation. — connects to: Mass post-1970 travel defused the political stakes of the lost East — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 1380