Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

The Silent Witnesses Of Evil Deeds

The Silent Witnesses Of Evil Deeds

The problem is that evil deeds rarely start out looking exactly like that.

We can all agree on the atrocities and obvious things like genocide and the abuse of children.

But what happens when A seems harmless – and is then used as a tool for B and C?

Take free speech. Most would like to agree on the merits of this one…

But when you start limiting what people who are obviously wrong can say, it is difficult to know where to stop.

What about people that are “mostly” wrong?

Or, people that go against “the science?” (Whatever the heck that means.)

(Good-grief, scientific progress is disagreement. By definition. We learn and prove each other wrong and update information as we go. Does anyone remember Galileo? The “politicians” at large basically banished him for saying the earth was not the center of the universe.)

Once people swallow restricted speech, all that has to happen then is for power to change. A new President. A new King. Whatever. Then you cannot say things that are obviously true.

Truth becomes a lie, and a lie becomes the truth.

And, heck – once people believe lies – you can do nearly anything with them.

Amiright?

Goodness-gracious-alive, this passage jumps out in our current age of wokeism and offense at everything taken:

In it he says, “We have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocation.” But though “the huge masquerade of evil has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion,” some things have been seen clearly: “that evil [appears] in the form of bright, good deeds, historical necessity, social justice”; and, above all, “the failure of ‘the reasonable ones’—those who think with the best of intentions and in their naive misreading of reality, that with a bit of reason they can patch up the structure that has come out of joint.” In such circumstances, “Who stands firm?” His answer: “Only the one whose ultimate standard is not his reason, his principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue; only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when, in faith and in relationship to God alone, he is called to obedient and responsible action.”

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

If Everything Became Absurd

If Everything Became Absurd

Of course, everything became absurd – has become absurd – just look around you.

We sit on this ball of rock, as it hurls through the abyss of space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour…

And what do we do?

We cry and whine about the pointlessness of it all.

We hate and lie and cheat and steal, kill each other, and put ourselves at the center of it all.

We are fools.

I think it’s not a coincidence that we all think we want the same thing (truth).

One day, walking after class through the Jardin des Plantes on the Left Bank, they said to each other—as Raïssa recalled in 1940, writing from their apartment in New York—“ that if our nature was so unhappy as to possess only a pseudo-intelligence capable of everything but the truth, if, sitting in judgment on itself, it had to debase itself to such a point, then we could neither think nor act with any dignity. In that case everything became absurd.” “I wanted no part in such a comedy,” Raïssa recollected. “I would have accepted a sad life, but not one that was absurd.” She and Jacques agreed that for a certain period they would continue the “experiment” of living, to see if “the meaning of life would reveal itself.

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

But then, of course, they turn to the most important and basic philosophical question of humanity.

How can we avoid it?

But if the experiment should not be successful, the solution would be suicide; suicide before the years had accumulated their dust, before our youthful strength was spent. We wanted to die by a free act if it were impossible to live according to the truth.

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

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