Solzhenitsyn on externalising evil

And a lot of books added to my reading list. Thanks all.

I think it's as simple as people getting high on righteousness.
They're so caught up in the adrenaline kick of fighting the good fight that they don't stop to consider that they might be the aggressors and not the defenders.

Another one thanking you for those quotes Freespeecher. I was reading it at the same time as they were reporting Lord Sumption’s speech on policing by consent on the news. I have been wondering about how so many police forces have attempted to counteract past reputations for homophobia or racism. TheIr public face has become more carefully presented but they do less day to day interaction with the public so some officers (or more probably community support officers) have lost that skill at dealing with the public.

A lot of virtue signalling does away for the need for introspection as one just needs to spout the approved view. I think Solzhenitsyn and a book about the Stasi should be added to my Lock Down Reading list, along with Naomi Klein from another thread today.

Those are brilliant and timely quotes, thank you Freespeecher.

How apt that our current freedom (in lockdown here) is because so many could not "rein themselves in" when schools shut down.

Freedom and responsibility are two sides of a coin- if you want one, you got to take the other.
But, that's not cool to say is it.

As for the evil in every human heart.... that's very true. And rejecting the possibility of that evil within ourselves is the root of othering.
I'm a bit worried about the way that I have heard (relatively) sane people refer to the current pandemic as the Chinese virus à la Trump. As if nice white European people aren't capable of starting pandemics.

That's a brilliant quote. I've not read Sozhenitysn but have a copy of The Good Soldier Svyeck somewhere.

Both of those books are incredible, thanks for reminding me of how relevant they still are OP. They had a huge impact on me.

I also read 'Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler' by Margarete Buber-Neumann, which demonstrates how two seemingly contrary ideologies instigated the same repression of freedoms for the 'others' in their societies. And how quickly and arbitrarily those groups were decided and targeted. Chilling.

I've never read Solzhenitsyn but I've observed the phenomena. Many people do not have any sense that they could be mistaken or wrong, or even that their own motives might be mixed or compromised. It took me some time to clue into this because it was always obvious to me that my own motives were often quite mixed, that it was very easy to believe whatever was most pleasant or useful to believe.

People are often very unwilling to consider their own personal foibles as being in any way similar in nature to the more serious problems in other people's personalities. There is also something of a tendency for people to suddenly decide that they were "wrong" about an issue when it becomes challenging to maintain it.

The conclusion I've come to is that true introspection requires practice and instruction, and sometimes even an external bar to measure oneself against. It's also not the same as the sort of naval gazing that tends to be promoted by many self-help books or some types of psychiatry.

I've not read TGA, but The Cancer Ward is one of my favourite books that I re-read every year or so.

'NoDebate' immediately made me think of TCW. Rusanov's insistence that all decisions made by the Party were final, there was no debate. Even apparently self-contradictory positions were correct, if that's what the Party stated. There was never to be any debate.

And the young woman, Asa, educated and privileged, whom simple, uneducated Dyoma falls in love with, also embraces the Party whole-heartedly. She mocks Dyoma when he tentatively suggests that there are other ways to think, ways that are not mandated by the Party.

I mentioned the Stasi in that connection less than five minutes ago!

Informers being encouraged to dob in their neighbours....

It should be compulsory reading. Plus teaching about the Stasi and Mao. Most of the AIBU threads at the moment prove why.

Interesting. I can’t remember enough Solzhenitsyn to comment meaningfully but I’ll dig out TGA and add it to my lockdown (re)reading pile.