And the people? it will be asked. The thinker or the historian who employs the word without irony disqualifies himself. It is all too clear what the people are destined for: to suffer events and rulers whims, lending themselves to the schemes that weaken and overwhelm them. Every political experiment, however advanced, is performed at the peoples expense, is carried out against the people: the people bear the stigmata of slavery by divine or diabolic decree. No use wasting your pity: the peoples cause admits of no recourse. Nations and empires are formed by the peoples indulgence of iniquities of which they are the object. No head of state, no conqueror fails to scorn the people, but the people accept this scorn and live on it. Were they to cease being weak or victimized, were they to disappoint their destiny, society would collapse and with it history itself. Let us not be overoptimistic: nothing in the people permits us to envision such a splendid eventuality. As they are, the people represent an invitation to despotism. The people endure their ordeals, sometimes solicit them, and rebel against them only to rush into new ones, more horrible than the old. Revolution being their one luxury, they fling themselves into it, not so much to derive certain benefits from it or to improve their lot, as to acquire for themselves, too, the right to insolence, an advantage which consoles them for their habitual setbacks, but which they immediately lose once the privileges of chaos are abolished. Since no regime assures their salvation, the people adapt themselves to all and to none. And from the Flood to the Last Judgment, all they can claim is to fulfill their mission honestly: to be vanquished. -Emil Cioran, History and Utopia
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 04:44:13 +0000
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