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| One of the outstanding books of 2020 |
As the century unfolds, fear is likely to become humanity’s overriding emotion. Successful worldviews— those that survive and spread through large populations— will exploit this fear to motivate people’s hero stories, for bad…. or just maybe for good.
"Comprehension [means] examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us— neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight." --Hannah Arendt
With these two points of resemblance – imagination and narrative – in mind Collingwood is saying that history and the novel are both constructs.
[I]n scientific history…everything in the world is potential evidence for any subject whatever.--R.G. Collingwood, quoted by David Pierce in his Polytropy blog
[I]ndividual nation-states no longer possess the resources to solve their most pressing problems or to fulfill many of their basic responsibilities, much less provide expected benefits to citizens. As their power and authority wane, they are beginning to decompose into their ethnic, religious, ideological, and class components.
James Sullivan, writing influential essays under the name of “Cassius,” [at the time of the ratification of the Constitution] proclaimed: “Thus we see that no office, however exalted, can protect the miscreant, who dares invade the liberties of his country, or countenance in his crimes the impious villain who sacrilegiously attempts to trample upon the rights of freemen.”15 In my view, this point is central, even defining, because it connects the power of impeachment with the American Revolution itself. On this account, a violation of liberty or rights is an impeachable offense—even if it is not itself a crime.
But when we release copious amounts of adrenaline into our bodies today and just sit and try to think our way out of a problem, that extra energy boost has nowhere to go. Stress needs a physical counterpart.
Confusion is hypnotic because it creates absorption: that's it! If you are confused you are temporarily trying to understand something – this absorbs your attention.
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