Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

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You are here: Home / Potpourri / For The Utility Of The State

For The Utility Of The State

For The Utility Of The State

Heck, I don’t know.

I mean, if we are not here for anything eternal (i.e., we serve no greater purpose).

Why shouldn’t powerful people use us all as a means to an end?

Why should we care?

And why should anyone care if we protested or not?

Understand: Your philosophical word is built on more than you first assume.

That a putatively, but not actually, scientific model of the human being would transform us into animals trained “for the utility of the state” is a constant theme of writers in this period: obviously it generates the governing allegory of Orwell’s Animal Farm. But less than the animal is the numerical: thus Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen,” written in March 1939, just after his arrival in the States, presents an inscription dedicated thus: (To JS/ 07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

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Filed Under: PotpourriTagged With: #Government, #Philosophy

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