Tolstoy quote which goes quite a long way toward explaining why, despite all the science and technology, we all feel like genuine progress has been halted- As, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man’s capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others. If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts… And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another. Sabotage of education; sabotage of knowledge (libraries) and history (museums); elevation of the savage and hostile (sport, commerce, politics, games, management...all the bastards I am forever complaining about)
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:18:05 +0000
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