Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“politicians who were trying to reform the system came forward with their program... because they were led to do so by continued and increasing pressure from areas of life that had nothing to do with politics in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, they were trying in political ways to solve the social conflicts (which in fact were confrontations between the aims of the system and the aims of life)...”

“thus as essentially the same as the freedom to engage in philosophical and political reflection, the freedom to write, the freedom to express and defend the various social and political interests of society. People were inspired to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the young musicians and they came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others... meant surrendering ones own freedom.”

“Many groups of differing tendencies which until then had remained isolated from each other, reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to forms of action that made cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with the powerful realization that freedom is indivisible.”

“Moreover, when the trial took place, a new mood had begun to surface after the years of waiting, of apathy and of skepticism toward various forms of resistance. People were “tired of being tired”; they were fed up with the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on in the hope that things might improve after all. In some ways the trial was the final straw.”

“Living within the truth, as humanity's revolt against an enforced position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving: the risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not.”

“ A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.”

“The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well; it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society.”

“Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality”

“living within the truth... takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity... where the stakes are all or nothing... it is undertaken only by those... who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real politics... by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that requires such a sacrifice.”

“the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!”... everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably”

“Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regimes representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations...”

“And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.”

“this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on... the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness...”

“We Christians do not lead others into temptation by the sight of accumulated wealth, for we rarely possess more than enough for our daily bread. A hungry man, driven to despair and ready to commit a crime for a piece of bread, if he comes to us will find all he wants without committing any crime, because that is what we live for- to share all we have with those who are cold and hungry.”

“by leading a Christian life a person preserves himself from all these crimes, which result on the one hand from the struggle for money and possessions, and on the other from the unequal concentration of riches in the hands of the few. Our one way of checking theft and murder is to keep for ourselves only as much as is indispensable for life, and to give to others all the superfluous products of our toil.”

“You would not wish people to be like prisoners who only refrain from crime because they are watched by their jailers. But no laws or restrictions or punishments make people averse to doing evil or desirous of doing good. That can only be attained by destroying evil at its root, which is in the human heart.”

“Crime and evil can be successfully opposed only by the Christian method of love, and not by the heathen methods of revenge, punishment, and violence. I am sure you would like people to abstain from evil voluntarily and not from fear of punishment.”

“Legal justice is considered the highest virtue, and the office of Judge is held in peculiar respect. Yet in spite of this it is known that there is now no city in the world so steeped in crime and corruption as Rome. Remember Roman history: in olden times when the laws were very primitive the Roman people possessed many virtues, but in our days, despite the... law, the morals of the citizens are becoming worse...”

“The violence of a brigand inflicted on a traveler is as atrocious to us as the violence of an army to its prisoners, or of a judge to those who are executed, and we cannot intentionally participate... Nor can we profit by the labor of others enforced by violence. Violence is reflected on us, but our participation in violence consists not in inflicting it but in submissively enduring its infliction on ourselves.”

“We neither know nor understand anything about political matters. We only know one thing, and we know that with certainty, that our welfare lies solely in the good of others, and we seek that welfare. The welfare of all human beings lies in their union with one another, and union is attained not by violence but by love.”

“The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists.”

“Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie.”

“believed in it, and did actually refrain from food and die of hunger, it would still not alter human nature. The same is true of other human passions: indignation, anger, revenge, even the love of women, of luxury, or of the pomp and grandeur characteristic of the gods and therefore unalterable characteristics of humankind too. Abolish what nourishes humankind and humankind will be destroyed.“

“The deception of the Christians, or their delusion - for I do not wish to judge them - consists in not wishing to recognize human nature. Only an old man who has outlived all his passions could fully carry out their teaching.”

“And in the end, is not the grayness and the emptiness of life in the post-totalitarian system only an inflated caricature of modern life in general? And do we not in fact stand (although in the external measures of civilization, we are far behind) as a kind of warning to the West, revealing to its own latent tendencies?”

“With their willingness to surrender higher values when faced with the trivializing temptations of modern civilization? With their vulnerability to the attractions of mass indifference?”

“Is it not true that the far-reaching adaptability to living a lie and the effortless spread of social auto-totality have some connection with the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity?”

“Each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his inherent humanity, and to utilitarianism. In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself.”

“The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie.”

“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of peoples own failure as individuals.”