Staying Human Is What's Important

"It's not enough to stay alive. It's staying human that is important."
--Winston, in Orwell's 1984

"It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life  and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it."
--Nicolas Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
--Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence

"Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?"
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

So many roads, so much at stake
Too many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity
--Bob Dylan, Dignity

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.
--Ecclesiastes 1:18

A Handful of Insights from Nikolai Berdyaev

Seeds for contemplation and consideration.

Nikolai Berdyaev

I discovered Nikolai Berdyaev around four decades ago in a book titled Four Existential Theologians. He was born in 1874 and lived through the Russian Revolution and both World Wars. His writings do not conveniently fit a neat categorization. He's been referred to as a Christian mystic and a Christian existential anarchist philosopher, among other things.

I have selected a half dozen quotes to share here. Though written 80 to 100 years ago, these observations seem totally relevant today, do. they not?

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"Slavery is passivity. The victory over slavery is creative activity."

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"Only the free man is a personality, and he is that even if the whole world should wish to enslave him."

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"Man, human personality, is the supreme value, not the community, not the collective realities which belong to the object world, such as society, nation state, civilization, church."

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"Freedom gives rise to suffering. One can lessen it if one refuses freedom."

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"We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."

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"It is beyond dispute that the State exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it." 

EdNote: This last quote reflects why Libertarians are constantly on guard to call out government overreach.

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We're living in some profound times. It's so easy to allow ourselves to get tangled up in pettiness. We were created for something higher. 

Earlier today I was thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King's dream about living in a world where we're judged by our character and not the color of our skin. His quote crossed my mind while I was reading a journal note from the mid-70s. I'd written something about how character is something you have to work at, to develop. It is not something that just gets zapped into us. It saddens me to see how character has been diminished as a value in our contemporary culture.

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What are you currently reading to challenge your thinking? What are you thinking about to challenge your lifestyle? Too often we just live and let live.  

Here's a poem along that line: The Easy Way Out