Posted by fayeroe on July 9, 2009, at 23:18:51
In reply to 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.)and drugs, surely?
>
> In Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky has a character remark that someone is more abstract and therefore more cruel.
poster:fayeroe
thread:905656
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20090221/msgs/905911.html