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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kurotowa" data-source="post: 9239981" data-attributes="member: 27957">They were both drawing on the zeitgeist of the time, where civilization is a thin veneer that's easily torn away, leaving man stripped down to his barest essentials. It's just that Lovecraft viewed that raw state as fearful quivering in the face of a grand cosmos that cares naught for you, and REH viewed the raw state as savage barbarian vitality that bites at the throat of their enemies. Lovecraft despaired that all things fall to ruin and the works of men would be supplanted and forgotten in time, and REH imagined an eternal cycle of civilizations rising and falling as the pendulum swung between simple barbarian savagery and the decadent indulgences of high culture.History is more narrative tale than bare facts, as people try to impose meaning on the past and find justification for their choices in the present. In the 1930's they were living in the shadow of the first World War and the epidemic of the Spanish Flu. Scientific innovation and the industrial revolution was changing the face of society at a blinding pace. Evolution was being taught in schools and the old sureties of belief were shaken. It's no wonder their world felt fragile and as if it often teetered on a razor's edge over collapse.</blockquote>