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| Published 2019 |
The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system.
--George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
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We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.
--Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. (1965).
Not content with being taught how to think without being taught a doctrine, they changed the non-results of the Socratic thinking examination into negative results: If we cannot define what piety is, let us be impious—which is pretty much the opposite of what Socrates had hoped to achieve by talking about piety.
Where does this leave us in regard to one of our chief problems—the possible interconnectedness of non-thought and evil? We are left with the conclusion that only people inspired by the Socratic eros, the love of wisdom, beauty, and justice, are capable of thought and can be trusted. In other words, we are left with Plato’s “noble natures,” with the few of whom it may be true that none “does evil voluntarily.” Yet the implied and dangerous conclusion, “Everybody wants to do good,” is not true even in their case.
Hitler also had an above-average and keen intelligence and a genuine, if very limited, faculty of judgment, which functioned well within its limits. Hitler’s assessments of international relationships in Europe were almost always correct. His comments on European history were often truly excellent—especially his comments on the mistakes of Napoleon I, who ought never to have exchanged the title first consul for that of emperor, nor mixed family matters with politics. His judgments of people were often perceptive and amusing, but his judgment failed completely where the Anglo-Saxon countries were concerned. There he misunderstood every event and every situation. His views of America were so unrealistic that they caused him to slap his hand on his knee with pleasure when he heard that America had entered the war. He did not even understand the most primitive power relationships. How could he have understood that for Anglo-Saxon peoples treaties are by no means mere scraps of paper?
Lukacs, John, The Last European War: September 1939--December 1941 (1976)
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