Though it may be difficult for us to understand this now, it is important to remember how central the notions of “personal freedom,” “human dignity” and “progress” were to people in the age of materialism (defined as the centuries between the decline of medieval Christianity and the publication of Djerzinski’s work). The confused and arbitrary nature of these ideas meant, of course, that they had little practical or social function—which might explain why human history from the fifteenth to the twentieth century was characterized by progressive decline and disintegration. Nonetheless, the
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