Skip to content
- Arthur Koestler describes the heady moment when ‘the new light seems to pour from all directions across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke. There is now an answer to every question, doubts and conflicts are a matter of the tortured past’ when one still lived among ‘those who don’t know.’ One has at last achieved complete serenity and assurance, except for the ‘occasional fear of losing faith again, losing thereby what alone makes life worth living.’
- Tags: #favorite
- Note: Let this not describe any sort of awakening I experience!
- Once you have assimilated dialectics, Koestler explains, ‘you were no longer disturbed by facts,’ which fell automatically into place. The only remaining difficulty was adjusting to a rapid shift in the party line. Then you had to search your memory to convince yourself that you had always accepted the new truth. It’s just what Orwell describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four: ‘Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.’
- And he realized that, although his generation was not as bloodthirsty as the radicals to follow, they, and he himself, could be drawn into committing horrible crimes in the sincere conviction that they were pursuing justice. The relative moderates, who above all want to dissociate themselves from the conservatives, can always be shamed into going along with anything. It is a mistake to think that the decent people we know would never endorse, let alone commit, vile deeds. ‘And therein lies the real horror,’ Dostoevsky explains. In Russia, and eventually everywhere, ‘the purest of hearts and the most innocent of people can be drawn into committing … the foulest and most villainous act without being in the least a villain! … The possibility of considering oneself—and sometimes being, in fact—an honorable person while committing obvious and undeniable villainy—that is our whole affliction today!’