SARAH HOYT: Shock Therapy. “In our current day and age, common sense can be almost startlingly subversive. . . . World War I was terrible, and for many reasons, including the prevalence of pictures and news, the fratricide/civil-war quality of it, the massive number of casualties. It shocked an entire generation into … writing an awful lot about it, and into trying to tear down the pillars of civilization, believing that Western Civilization (and not human nature, itself) was what had brought about the carnage and the waste. Do I need to tell you they were wrong?”