-Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, LOGICOMIX (Bloomsbury, London, 2009), 5., p. 234, caption 2.
That reminded me of:
"...the madness and sorrow of the human soul..."
-Poul Anderson, "Un-Man" IN Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, September 1981), pp. 31-129 AT p. 126.
Only the words, "The," "of" and "human," are common to both phrases. However, the thoughts are related. I definitely got the impression when I read it that I had encountered that phrase here attributed to Russell before and what it reminded me of turned out to be the philosophical reflection in an sf story by Poul Anderson, which we have quoted before.
Madness and sorrow... Is that really what drives opposition to world unity in Anderson's story?
2 comments:
No. Opposing viewpoints just look like 'madness' to people who don't agree with them.
It's simple tribalism. My tribe good, your tribe bad, kill-kill-kill.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! Human beings will and do have fiercely held beliefs. And they will often regard opposition to those beliefs as insanity. As you say it springs from our tribalist nature--and is not going to change.
Ad astra! Sean
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