The Wisdom Letter #171
mail.google.com
The Wisdom Letter #171
was a dead British orator and writer who was on my mind. Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them.
Terry Hayes • I Am Pilgrim
“Worse than war is the very fear of war.”
Einzelgänger • Stoicism for Inner Peace
If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
Ursula K. Le Guin • The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction)
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. . . . To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation”—this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”... See more
― A
Gurwinder • 25 Useful Ideas for 2025
The really, really dark side here is that the stronger an abstraction, often an outright lie, the more motivating it can be for tribal behavior. The soldier metaphor is doubly-appropriate. Taken to its most horrifying extreme, war and genocide is facilitated by abstraction.