"... the Mishnah declares that, for the Justice of God, he who kills a single man destroys the world; if there is no plurality, he who annihilated all men would be no more guilty than the primitive and solitary Cain, which is orthodox, no more universal in his destruction, which can be magic. The tumultuous general catastrophes – fires, wars, epidemics – are but a single sorrow, illusorily multiplied in many mirrors. That is Bernard Shaw’s judgment when he states (Guide to Socialism, 86) that what one person can suffer is the maximum that can be suffered on earth. If one person dies of inanition, he has suffered all the inanition that has been or will be. If ten thousand persons die with him, he will not be ten thousand times hungrier nor will he suffer ten thousand times longer. There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human suffering; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.”
Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions. 1937-1952. p178, “the Modesty of History.”
What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men...
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2 comments:
Yes.
Storm Boy is playing at the town hall for the next week. when I asked him about his fears of being in front of six hundred people, he told me, "It's the same as being in front of one person. Each person only thinks their own thoughts or judges their own judgements."
Wow. Kids today.
Nice one Storm Boy!
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