Tag: history

Du pouvoir, by Bertrand de Jouvenel, dates back to 1945. At that time, the staggering growth of the modern state and the realization that it could only continue to grow inexorably were already causing fear. But what astonishing speed this happened with! The power wielded by the state in those years, just over half a century ago, seems insignificant compared to the power wielded today by any Western democracy. Today, the state has the means to monitor the most intimate details of any citizen’s private life and to annihilate, overnight and without the slightest effort, the life of anyone it targets. In 1945, although the relentless process of growth in power could be predicted, no one could have imagined the monstrosity of the technological arsenal that would quickly fall into the hands of Lobaczewski’s psychopaths. Between the individual and the state, the disparity of means is absolute. Indeed, Lobaczewski seems to have grasped something valuable: to understand the historical, sociological, and political development of the West, it is appropriate to establish a science of evil.

It is always very interesting when historians or biographers, eschewing the usual generalizations, manage to outline the influence of economic factors on individual lives. Because such factors, although sometimes overestimated, and although they do not explain everything by themselves, determine much of what is done. There are decisions that seem irrational if stripped of the economic factors that motivated them, just as there are trials, misfortunes, and states of mind that are economically based. Sometimes, it is in this type of factor that the greatest obstacles to a personality’s affirmation are condensed. It seems somewhat undignified, but that is how it is.

Something that the mind has a hard time getting used to in biographies is comparing the greatness of some personalities with the absolute lack of recognition of such greatness while the biographees were alive. Often, posthumous consecration blurs this contrast, and we can hardly imagine the colossus, if not despised, walking the streets as an ordinary man. But we must always keep this in mind, and by doing so we can get much closer to the reality that surrounded him and better visualize his true dimension.

There are inexplicable experiences, the scale of which can only be grasped by he who has lived them first-hand. One of these is undoubtedly the deceitfulness of modernity. The amount of lies that are taught in schools today, or rather the amount of lies that students assimilate not just as certainties, but with veneration, is something that men from other eras could only understand superficially. Complete falsehoods, such as the history of the French Revolution, or the biographies of figures like Newton, Descartes, Machiavelli, or the emergence of so-called modern science, or the history of the Inquisition, the Catholic Church, slavery, and the list goes on and on, one has to have swallowed and digested them very well to be able, years later, to shake with the proper astonishment at seeing them incontestably debunked by a huge pile of books and documents. All lies! All saturated with ulterior motives! Then one feels the contempt that modernity deserves, and only a good modern is capable of feeling it.