Friday, September 18, 2020

Thoughts of the Day: Friday 18 September 2020

 


But another important reason for the feeling of loneliness arises from the fact that our society lays such a great emphasis on being socially accepted. It is our chief way of allaying anxiety, and our chief mark of prestige. Thus we always have to prove we are a “social success” by being forever sought after and by never being alone.


A succession of thinkers in subsequent decades and centuries were to build upon these three basic revolutions of thought, redefining liberty as the liberation of humans from established authority, emancipation from arbitrary culture and tradition, and the expansion of human power and dominion over nature through advancing scientific discovery and economic prosperity.

“Knowing that I could be painfully wrong and curiosity about why other smart people saw things differently prompted me to look at things through the eyes of others as well as my own. This allowed me to see many more dimensions than if I saw things just through my own eyes.”
And from the deeper look from "Understanding & Politics" from Hannah Arendt:
The understanding of political and historical matters, since they are so profoundly and fundamentally human, has something in common with the understanding of people: who somebody essentially is, we know only after he is dead. This is the truth of the ancient nemo ante mortem beatus esse dici potest. For mortals, the final and eternal begins only after death.
(Location 6192)