Thoughts for the Day: Thursday 24 September 2020

 

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

The great political philosopher Hannah Arendt captured the moment’s sentiment brilliantly, with language that resonates eerily today. “Never has our future been more unpredictable,” she declared. “Never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest— forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”

Prometheus Rising

Robert Anton Wilson

Throughout most of human history and up to 100 years ago — up to 20 years ago, in some parts of the world — a man or woman could lead their entire life snugly within the cocoon of the local tunnel-reality. Today, we all constantly collide with persons living in wildly different tunnel-realities. This creates a great deal of hostility in the more ignorant, vast amounts of metaphysical and ethical confusion in the more sophisticated, and growing disorientation for all — a situation known as our “crisis of values.”

Age of Anger

Pankaj Mishra

Even the most devout radicals remain circumscribed by their context of the worldwide Crystal Palace, mirroring or parodying, like [Oklahoma City bomber Timothy] McVeigh, their supposed enemies, but at an accelerated rate: they obey the logic of reciprocity and escalating mimetic violence rather than any scriptural imperative.

Let's keep it short today from Hannah Arendt:

"We know today that the greatest danger of tyranny is from the executive." — Hannah Arendt

And one from her friend, W.H. Auden:

"America can break your heart." — W.H. Auden

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 2 September 2020

 Erich Fromm: Love is an art form.

Theodor Adorno: Fidelity to love is the only means we have to resistance. Walter Benjamin: We must love without hope. Hannah Arendt: Why is it so hard to love the world? W.H. Auden: We must love one another or die.

"...how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes..." Hannah Arendt

"Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever..." — Hannah Arendt

(All of the above from scholar Samantha Rose Hill via her Twitter feed: @Samantharhill)

Founding Brothers

Joseph J. Ellis

Honor mattered because character mattered. And character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with  republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure. Both Burr and Hamilton came to the interview because they wished to be regarded as part of such company.

The Best and the Brightest

David Halberstam

“For there was no doubt in Bundy’s mind about his ability to handle... the world. The job was not just a happenstance thing; he had, literally and figuratively, been bred for it, or failing this, Secretary of State. He was the brightest light in that glittering constellation around the President, for if those years had any central theme, if there was anything that bound the men, their followers and their subordinates together, it was the belief that sheer intelligence and rationality could answer and solve anything.”