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On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It

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David Livingstone Smith

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“Когда говорить правду стало невозможно (поскольку это каралось смертью), пришлось ее маскировать. В еврейской народной традиции маской отчаяния служит танец. А здесь маской правды сделалась ирония. Потому что на нее слух тирана обычно не настроен.”

“Коль скоро тирания так преуспела в разрушении, что ей стоит разрушить заодно и любовь, умышленно или походя? Тирания требует любви к партии, к государству, к Великому Вождю и Рулевому, к народу. Но от таких великих, благородных, бескорыстных, безусловных «любовей» отвлекает любовь к единственному человеку, буржуазная и волюнтаристская. И в нынешней обстановке людям постоянно угрожает опасность не сохранить себя целиком. Если их последовательно терроризировать, они мутируют, съеживаются, усыхают – все это приемы выживания.”

“One of the most serious consequences of the expansion of the supervisory gaze of the state (and the intelligentsia) into the private sphere is the reduction of the difference between the moral and the legal — a difference that, by protecting vital areas of human behavior from official interference, has always been one of the basic guarantees of civil liberty. [...] The state uses individuals' demands for autonomy — demands that are particularly strong among young people, women, the discriminated, and the resentful of all kinds — as bait to trap them in the worst kind of tyranny. By “freeing” men from their ties to family, parish, and neighborhood, protecting them under the immense network of public services that frees them from the need to resort to the help of relatives and friends, offering them the lure of legal protection against the prejudices, antipathies, feelings, and even glances of their peers—legal protection against life, in short— the state actually divides, isolates, and weakens them, cultivating the neurotic susceptibilities that infantilize them, making it impossible for them, on the one hand, to create true bonds with each other and, on the other hand, to survive without state support.”

“Most people don't enjoy working or what they do, but they do what they have to do earn a living. You agreeing on something because of your expectations. If you expectations are not met . It doesn't mean you didn't consent to it. Just because you don't enjoy it, it doesn't mean you didn't consent to it. Because you are regretting later. It doesn't mean you didn't agree to it. If you can't deal with your own conscience or actions. You don't have to make it their fault.”