08-22-2003, 09:48 AM
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to live and fight nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to die humbly for one."
That seems so backwards.
I would perhaps counter with Borges, writing about the Nazis.
"Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena's hell. It is uninhabitable; men can only die for it, lie for it, wound and kill for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish it to triumph."
Perhaps this problem is not restricted to the Nazis, but is open to anyone who is willing to embrace a suitable unreality. This probably is the problem of the Islamic Jihad terrorist, and of their extreme Zionist counterparts; reality is subject to an abstraction, one which contradicts living, breathing people. The underlying problem is that many such abstractions are unfathomably appealing.
Jester
That seems so backwards.
I would perhaps counter with Borges, writing about the Nazis.
"Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena's hell. It is uninhabitable; men can only die for it, lie for it, wound and kill for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish it to triumph."
Perhaps this problem is not restricted to the Nazis, but is open to anyone who is willing to embrace a suitable unreality. This probably is the problem of the Islamic Jihad terrorist, and of their extreme Zionist counterparts; reality is subject to an abstraction, one which contradicts living, breathing people. The underlying problem is that many such abstractions are unfathomably appealing.
Jester