Wednesday, November 10, 2021

#250: “To Do Evil”

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.”*

“Ideology— that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.”**

“Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions?”***

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*Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.. The Gulag Archipelago (p. 93). Harper Perennial. Kindle Edition.
**Ibid (p. 94).
***Ibid (p. 94).

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn ... (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) ... was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and political prisoner. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union (USSR), in particular the Gulag system. | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn