Threads (1984) –– the most realistic portrayal of war escalation, political lies, government incompetence and the lives of people just after nuclear fallout; what follows: radiation burn, ash, food shortage, vomit, rubble, slow-death and hopelessness. An anti-nuclear film.
The most disturbing consequence of such a tragic scenario is what unfolds at a soul level: the unchecked mortality of individuals without the functioning institution of an overarching government to inflict capital punishment, to enforce "civility" — everyone becomes their own masters, with no definition of depravity or immorality. There are no crimes, but brute power.
If such a scenario were to unfold in our current times, where the living generations are simply floating existentially over hollowed moral foundations, lost with self-centred thinking — debauched acts will reign supreme.
Abstract concepts of: fairness, justice, compassion, equality, safety — will only find meaning in the act of physiological survival. That's all these words will amount to.
If you find yourself adhering to dictates of a particular group -- no matter how large or small -- consider investigating: how did they manage to feed on your conscience by convincing you of their righteousness? — finding the source of your guilt is the first step to self-awareness.
Lesson from Franz Kafka: write as if no one will ever read your work.
Here's him expressing this idea:
"No one will read what I write here, no one will come to help me... My ship is rudderless, it's driven by the wind blowing into the nethermost regions of death."
Create for the sake of creation, nothing else should do.
This exchange with Julian Assange after the publication of Afghan War Logs:
Der Spiegel: You could have started a company in Silicon Valley and lived in a home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool. Why did you decide to do the WikiLeaks project instead?
Julian Assange : We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” — Goethe
Glenn Greenwald on "who gets to decree truth":
"Everyone would love to live in a world in which an omnipotent and benevolent power who rules us allows only truthful statements, while it accurately identifies and then outlaws all false claims. Such a world sounds like paradise: no errors, only truth. Who could possibly be opposed to that?
Unfortunately, human nature makes such a world impossible. If history teaches any lesson, it is clear that treating human leaders or institutions as capable of god-like infallibility and super-human wisdom is quite dangerous.
Humans have tried all this before. For a thousand years prior to the Enlightenment, most societies were ruled by omnipotent institutions – monarchies, empires, churches – that claimed to possess absolute truth and therefore outlawed any views that deviated on the ground that they were "false."
The core innovation of the Enlightenment, one of the greatest intellectual advancements of human liberation, was that all human institutions are fallible, that they endorse false claims either due to error or corruption, and that every individual must always retain the right to question and challenge their orthodoxies.
In sum, there is no such thing as an institution of authority that can be trusted to decree what Truth is. The oldest indigenous societies, far from Europe, had already internalized this lesson, having discarded faith in centralized authorities in favor of decentralized power and dispersed democratic values. And what is now called "the democratic world" is founded in the view that secular truths are ascertained not by decrees of monarchs, clerics and emperors, but by free and open debate driven by human reason and the sacred right to dissent.
...Humans, by our very nature, are incapable of acquiring absolute truth about politics or science even with the best of motives. What one generation believes to be proven Truth (the earth is the center of the universe) is demonstrated by subsequent generations to be gross error, though such truth-tellers often suffer severe persecution when "falsity" is rendered illegal (which is why Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Voltaire and many others like them wasted years attempting to avoid prison or worse, often unsuccessfully, due to laws banning ideas deemed "false" by the reigning authorities of their era). The intellectual history of humanity has one indisputable lesson: humans will always err when claiming they have discovered such absolute truth that nobody should be permitted to doubt or challenge their claims."
“History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes” - Mark Twain
"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know" - Harry S Truman
“History never repeats itself. Man always does." - Voltaire
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” - Winston Churchill.
We learn from history that we do not learn from history. - Friedrich Hegel
“We are choked with news and starved of history” – Durant
"What is history?....it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past" - E.H Carr, What is history?
Collective guilt is something we should be talking about vigorously and its weaponisation through the ages -- ideologically, religiously, institutionally & by leaders of their time -- to condition population into achieving goals of those who weave the most convincing narrative.
The Basic Principles of War Propaganda
1. We don't want war; we are only defending ourselves.
2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war.
3. Our adversary's leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests.
5. The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention.
6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons.
7. We suffer few losses, the enemy's losses are considerable.
8. Recognized intellectuals and artists support our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. Whoever casts doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor.
-- Historian Anne Morelli's summary of Arthur Ponsonby's 1928 classic on war propaganda, 'Falsehood in Wartime,' as contained in Morelli's monograph 'Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre' published in 2001