History shows that just because we want a problem solved doesn’t mean the problem will be solved.
But persuasion is analogous to compromise in that negotiators must ultimately reach accommodations—settle on something—in order to make a new law or establish new knowledge.
ARENDT: I do not believe that there is any thought process possible without personal experience. Every thought is an afterthought, that is, a reflection on some matter or event. Isn’t that so? I live in the modern world, and obviously my experience is in and of the modern world. This, after all, is not controversial. But the matter of merely laboring and consuming is of crucial importance for the reason that a kind of worldlessness defines itself there too.
An election cannot establish a unitary National Will. The belief that it does so leads to the belief that the Nation is deciding whatever Richard Nixon decides should be done, with American bombs and American lives, in Vietnam.
“The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.”
— Journalist/activist Chris Hedges
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” — Epictetus
