The key to reality
Nov. 1st, 2017 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easy"Ideologists who pretend to possess the key to reality are forced to change and twist their opinions about single cases according to the latest events and can never afford to come into conflict with their ever-changing deity, reality. It would be absurd to ask people to be reliable who by their very convictions must justify any given situation." — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (p 174)
Yep, I'm back in the saddle. I can only understand half or two-thirds of what Arendt is saying, because I lack the historical knowledge, but it's still like being hit in the head with successive jolts of electricity. The most important message, for me, so far, overall: racism is an idea, like any other, and someone had to come up with it, and they did so for specific reasons. Also crucial: understanding at last what an ideology is - the "key to reality".
Totalitarianism in the age of Trump: lessons from Hannah Arendt (GA, 2 February 2017) This quotes Arendt expert Professor Griselda Pollock: "She [Arendt] talks of the creation of pan movements, these widespread ideas that overarch national, political and ethnic elements – the two big pan movements she talks about are bolshevism and nazism. There is a single explanation for everything, and before the single explanation, everything else falls away. She gives a portrait of how you produce these isolated people, who then become susceptible to pan ideologies, which give them a place in something. But the place they have is ultimately sacrificial; they don’t count for anything; all that counts is the big idea."
Trump: The Choice We Face (New York Review of Books, 27 November 2016) Whether those who deal with Trump should be guided by "realism" or morality. Read this one.
Yep, I'm back in the saddle. I can only understand half or two-thirds of what Arendt is saying, because I lack the historical knowledge, but it's still like being hit in the head with successive jolts of electricity. The most important message, for me, so far, overall: racism is an idea, like any other, and someone had to come up with it, and they did so for specific reasons. Also crucial: understanding at last what an ideology is - the "key to reality".
Totalitarianism in the age of Trump: lessons from Hannah Arendt (GA, 2 February 2017) This quotes Arendt expert Professor Griselda Pollock: "She [Arendt] talks of the creation of pan movements, these widespread ideas that overarch national, political and ethnic elements – the two big pan movements she talks about are bolshevism and nazism. There is a single explanation for everything, and before the single explanation, everything else falls away. She gives a portrait of how you produce these isolated people, who then become susceptible to pan ideologies, which give them a place in something. But the place they have is ultimately sacrificial; they don’t count for anything; all that counts is the big idea."
Trump: The Choice We Face (New York Review of Books, 27 November 2016) Whether those who deal with Trump should be guided by "realism" or morality. Read this one.
