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Say it isn't so
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21/04/2015 16:00:27
John Ryan
Captain-Cooker Appreciation Society
Taumata Whakatangi ..., Nouvelle Zélande
 
 
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21/04/2015 15:20:11
Information générale
Forum:
Politics
Catégorie:
Autre
Titre:
Divers
Thread ID:
01618658
Message ID:
01618907
Vues:
46
>> So proper ideas are there to protect individuals, not to make the world more dangerous.
>>The problem with that notion is that someone has to decide what ideas are proper.

Which brings us back to your comments about ideologues. Self-certainty and hostility towards fools who don't accept one's version of the truth, is the cause of much of the trouble in the world. You only have to use the retrospectoscope on wars to figure out that millions of people have lost their lives and empires have risen and fallen because ideologues took a fixed position and often used some pretext to justify their intended course of action. Sometimes it helps to reflect on eternal truths such as "all is vanity" or the story of the mighty Ozymandias before embarking on a holy war over some fact du jour.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us.
"
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
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