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The sudden assertion of human criteria within a dehumanising framework of political manipulation can be like a flash of lightning illuminating a dark landscape

Vaclav Havel

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A general observation...


Posts: 1547
Joined: 2004-02-22
Recent re-read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. Was struck by this passage, which seems particularly appropriate to this site... "Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like man's two hands, feet, or eyelids, or like the upper and lower rows of teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature's law - and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction?"


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