On the subject who did what and who did not and when and why and melanin and AL-something...from and by Erasmus of Rotterdam:
I realized that the human drive to compete and to get the upper hand, the drive to be more successful than your neighbor, and the resulting drive for power by itself are not dangerous to the world. The violence by itself has short breath. Blindly and madly it interferes with events. It does not involve will in any rational way. Its memory is short. So soon after its explosion it will self-implode. Even in cases, where the violence becomes contagious and psychotic, where it inflames whole groups, these gatherings in turn soon change into self minded gangs, that will scatter right on the first drop of the initial temperature. In history rebel eruptions without the spiritual guidance never got dangerous. Real unrests and bloody revolutions arise only when this Ur-drive for violence starts to serve some idea or when that idea takes advantage of it.. Because to turn a crowd of normal people into a party you need ideological paroles. You need organization to turn a crowd into an army. You need a dogma to create a party movement. The cause for all the violent conflicts of the humanity lies not as much in the blood-bound violent intent as in some ideology, that unchained this violent intent, taking advantage of it and setting it in motion against that part of human race that thinks differently. It is eventually the fanatics - this crossbreed of intellect and violence, who want to impose the dictatorship of one and only ideology, namely their own, on the universe – who split the community of man into their adherents and opponents, into friends and foes, into heroes and villains. Because the fanatics accept only their own system, because they allow only their own truth, they must use violence to oppress their adversaries. By encouraging fanatism one declares there is just one valid system to be, to think and to believe – and thus accepts the responsibility, that he or she may cause the schism of the world and start the spiritual and physical war against a different logic of thinking and living. Every single violence against thought is a war declaration against the spiritual freedom of the human race. Any humanistically inclined person thus may not and can not swear by any ideology, because any reigning ideology will gravitate towards hegemony. A humanist can not get bound to any party, because the duty of any party member, whatever the party, is to see, feel and think the party way. This way his or her own freedom of thought and action are compromised. And without this freedom there is no justice – no equality, which should be the highest ideal for us all.
PS: I mentioned this text some time ago (Mq?). It's 500 years since Erasmus wrote it - I dont know the source, it definitely is not the Praise of Folly.
Is he writing about failures of human race? Or about its character traits?
Regards
dj |
