Western Habits of Thought

Posted by Sigismund on July 8, 2009, at 18:21:04

The following is quoted in "Black Mass" and intrigued me as soon as I saw it....
'To destroy a city, a state, an empire even, is an essentially finite act; but to attempt the annihilation - the liquidation of so ubiquitous but so theoretically or ideologically defined an entity as a social class or racial abstraction is quite another, and one impossible even in conception to a mind not conditioned by western habits of thought'
"The Politics of Hysteria: The Sources of Twentieth Century Conflict" by Stillman and Pfaff.
(This immediately brings to mind the various wars on the abstract nouns of poverty, terror and evil.)
In Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky has a character remark that someone is more abstract and therefore more cruel.

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Western Habits of Thought Sigismund 7/8/09
Re: Western Habits of Thought Angela2 7/9/09
Re: Western Habits of Thought Sigismund 7/9/09
Re: Western Habits of Thought » Sigismund fayeroe 7/9/09
Re: Western Habits of Thought Sigismund 7/9/09
when I think of Western Habits of Thought Bobby 7/19/09

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