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with each passing day, I understand less and less, for who could ever claim to know it all, yet, the simplicity of our base-ic basest instincts makes evil so easily attractive, that now, I forgive almost nothing, anyone for the cruelty inherent in on the surfacial skin of our normalcy, so easily, revealed, and reveled in, wrecks me, and the poetry sparks are not doused, but wick and ember shriveled oh the irony, that foolish me should write of the commandment to love just as the world displays old levels of hate historically deep… .I am hated, to many who would know me only as Jew, and this refresher course in my brain, reminds me, that love thy neighbor as thyself, can morph into a generational opposite, that my former degree of comfort, beliefs, was only skin deep…and Tolstoy was a naïf, a romantic, a royal, who hoped for the best in each man, and that cannot ne achieved for hate is so easy digestible, so sweet a treat for humans, who desire no compass other than simple baseness to know which direction to take…. ————————————————————————————- ”There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself." Tolstoy ”To perform evil deeds a person must discover “a justification for his actions,” so that he can regard stealing, humiliating and killing as good. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble,” and so conscience restrained him. He had no ideology, Solzhenitsyn observes, nothing like “anti-imperialism” or “decolonization” to allay pangs of guilt. Solzhenitsyn concludes: “Ideology—that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but receive praise and honors.Solzhenitsyn
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Oct 20, 2023
Oct 20, 2023 at 3:08 PM UTC
Tolstoy uses a French expression, “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner”: To understand all is to forgive all.
with each passing day, I understand less and less, for who could ever claim to know it all, yet, the simplicity of our base-ic basest instincts makes evil so easily attractive, that now, I forgive almost nothing, anyone for the cruelty inherent in on the surfacial skin of our normalcy, so easily, revealed, and reveled in, wrecks me, and the poetry sparks are not doused, but wick and ember shriveled oh the irony, that foolish me should write of the commandment to love just as the world displays old levels of hate historically deep… .I am hated, to many who would know me only as Jew, and this refresher course in my brain, reminds me, that love thy neighbor as thyself, can morph into a generational opposite, that my former degree of comfort, beliefs, was only skin deep…and Tolstoy was a naïf, a romantic, a royal, who hoped for the best in each man, and that cannot ne achieved for hate is so easy digestible, so sweet a treat for humans, who desire no compass other than simple baseness to know which direction to take…. ————————————————————————————- ”There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself." Tolstoy ”To perform evil deeds a person must discover “a justification for his actions,” so that he can regard stealing, humiliating and killing as good. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble,” and so conscience restrained him. He had no ideology, Solzhenitsyn observes, nothing like “anti-imperialism” or “decolonization” to allay pangs of guilt. Solzhenitsyn concludes: “Ideology—that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but receive praise and honors.Solzhenitsyn
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2237741/secret-jew-of-my-heart/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/opinion/moral-luck.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20230921&instance_id=103278&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=17556971&segment_id=145313&te=1&user_id=0e2bfe72b2cf96f30ceaa6e616d59ce6
nat-lipstadt
Written by
99/M/NYC/Lippstadt/Kraków
Oct 20, 2023
Oct 20, 2023 at 3:08 PM UTC
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