 At the outset, what immediately strikes a student of Weber’s rationalization thesis is its seeming irreversibility and Eurocentrism. The apocalyptic imagery of the “iron cage” that haunts the concluding pages of the Protestant Ethic is commonly taken to reflect his fatalism about the inexorable unfolding of rationalization and its culmination in the complete loss of freedom and meaning in the modern world. The “Author’s Introduction” (Vorbemerkung to GARS) also contains oft-quoted passages that allegedly disclose Weber’s belief in the unique singularity of Western civilization’s achievement in the direction of rationalization, or lack thereof in other parts of the world. For example: