Arquivo de Notes | Page 308 of 359

With a Clipboard in the Face of Misfortune

Complications of someone of rare dreams, when they exist, disconnected, vague, abstract, which have always been summed up in mute images, and now frequently come across assaults of infinite variations of misfortune. Wins the study of psychology. It is interesting to note how the rational loses strength as sleep deepens and, in a state of semiconsciousness, presents itself in vigor. Morality, too, is dependent on judgment, or in other words, on rational psychological manifestation. There is also a very clear distinction between the action of unconscious impulses on different levels of sleep. When induced in a state of semiconsciousness, the dream is endowed with a drastically more real character. Oh, dull lines!…

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The Crowd Is Essentially Cowardly

Whenever I am faced with mass aggression against an individual I notice, in the first instance, the inequality of combat. The time of duels is gone; the notion that honor, even if demeaned, demands loyal combat is gone. The crowd is essentially cowardly for taking advantage of numerical oppression. I can see that, even if the individual has done something reprehensible, I will never be able to roar at the sight of his head rolling. I always and compulsorily reject the disgusting roar of the crowd. I will never stand beside the impersonalized mob, the sum of cowards hiding under the mask of a “common cause” to assault.

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The Individual Repels the Group

The man capable of seeing the uniqueness of his existence will never be able to join any kind of organized group, except for interest. The circumstances that have formed his character and shaped his personality, mistakes, failures, regrets… all of this together make any sense of collective belonging impossible. To join a group is to simplify the complexity of one’s own experience, dishonoring it, diminishing the value of the lessons one has learned by force, being unworthy of one’s own resistance.

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Democracy Will End Up Hanged by Democrats

The diagnosis is old:

The biggest disgrace of democracy is that it brings out the numerical strength of the idiots, who are the majority in humanity.

I try to imagine what Nelson Rodrigues would say if he were present in our days of internet and social networks. In the main democracies of the world, freedom of expression is no longer absolute: there are forbidden opinions, there is censorship. The mass of idiots annihilates everything that displeases it to listen. There has never been such ease for hatred to organize itself and find means of action. The digital mobs revolt, commit themselves to the prior judgment and fatally deprive some of the right to speak. They easily destroy careers, reputations, and work immeasurably for the total ruin of the objects of their hatred. The capital yields, because it is averse to polemics and shudders at the thought of the detriment of its image. And democracy does nothing but validate their fury, since it is the regime in which the majority implies the right, denotes reason. Social scientists debate: how to stop the action of organized hatred? How can we prevent the prevailing morality, once again, from methodically suffocating dissident demonstrations? Difficult… Many and many will still be honored by the fires of this time. Hate is the most powerful human impulse; it does not give in until it consumes its own obsession. They will continue to hate, to hate, to hate, until democracy ends up hanged by the democrats.

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