A Century of Murder and Illusion

[Doc1]

"To mark the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution The New York Times has been running a series called “Red Century.” In the spirit of its Pulitzer-Prize winning Moscow correspondent and uber fellow-traveler in the thirties, Walter Duranty, the articles in the main are an exercise in rehabilitation rather than historical evaluation. Given communism’s historically unprecedented and copiously documented record of slaughter, torture, mass imprisonment, brutal occupation, and utter failure to achieve its workers’ paradise of justice and equality, the question why the Times would attempt to mitigate the evil of a totalitarian ideology that led to 100 million dead cries out for an answer. Communism, then, was taken not as a political philosophy, but as a scientific discovery that only the irrational, the evil, or those blinded by bourgeois “false consciousness” would reject. Like science, communism was about progress, optimism for the future, and the liberation of humans from social and political bondage by improving the economic and social conditions of human life. It had “an inherent optimism for the future,” as one Times article gushed. This notion that humans can be shaped and improved by rational technique still remains a dominant sensibility in the West, which explains the continuing hold of leftist ideology. From Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan “Forward,” a traditional leftist motto, to the fads of “behavioral science” like “implicit bias,” our world is still enthralled to this superstition that “human sciences” can improve life and transcend the historical disorder and evil our ancestors attributed to a flawed and tragic human nature."

A Century of Murder and Illusion

A fascinating read.

 

[SeaGal]

'The first place to look for an explanation is the rise of scientism in the increasingly secularized 19th century. The success of legitimate science in understanding the material world, and turning that knowledge into practical use by creating life-improving technologies, fostered the illusion that human nature and behavior could be similarly understood and improved by the same methods'

'Scientism - its priests becoming more dogmatic than any robed cleric could hope to be'...anonymous.

Thank you for posting this. Over and over again human nature has revealed its natural behavior, and efforts to 'program' that nature have always disintegrated into brutal forms of governance.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
excerpt from Kipling's, the Gods of the Copybook Headings. (eternal wisdoms)