I don’t know how anyone could spend any amount of time around children and not believe in innate depravity
When someone would tell him of some great disorder, instead of being amazed at it, he was on the contrary surprised that it was not worse, in view of the evil of which the sinner is capable.
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| — | Joseph Beaufort on Brother Lawrence |
I can tell you the saddest story I know: It is yours. Oh, sure, you can pretend that I don’t know you that well, but, really, you’re not that special. You’re just like the rest of us. Your life is wracked with recrimination and regret, and even in those rare moments when you can somehow convince yourself that you are mostly a good person, you know that you are only a careless remembrance away from recalling just how terribly you’ve treated someone whose only wish in this life was to love you and be loved by you. You’re a monster. We all are. There are nights when we wake with a start and recollect just how terrible we were, wishing only that we could undo the past and set things right. Unfortunately, we are not given that power. We are here to suffer, to constantly confront our capacity for cruelty, and we do not receive respite until the day we finally do the decent thing and die. But this weekend, at least, we get to turn time back an hour. I guess that will have to be enough.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
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| — | Aristotle (via girlwithoutwings) |
Somewhere in my diary—1980?—I wrote ‘I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature…’ [Now thirty-five years later I realize] how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in man—how little you can count on changing some of these—for instance the appeal of wealth and power—by any change in the [social] machinery… No amount of knowledge or science will be of any avail unless we can curb the bad impulse.
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Beatrice Webb, architect of Britain’s modern welfare state Many modernists, such as Webb and H.G. Wells, had pinned their hopes for the future of mankind on the hope that our social problems could be overcome by education— that violence and injustice would disappear by means of education and social programs. However, in the wake of World War II, their hopes were collectively shattered when they realized how deep the evil goes. Every new riot and war shows us that the task of weeding selfishness and violence out of mankind will be a difficult — and perhaps impossible — task on our own. |
All times are sickening and shameful. Human beings have always been capable of violence, and (if left to ourselves) we always will be.
via neon-noir
Here’s a missed opportunity. In 1999, the U.S. was months away from completing a cell phone network in Afghanistan that would’ve granted wide access to Al Qaeda and Taliban phone calls prior to 9/11. Unfortunately, inter-agency bickering between the FBI, NSA and CIA over who would control it scuttled the project, a former NSA official tells Vanity Fair’s David Rose.
“Had this network been built with the technology that existed in 2000, it would have been a priceless intelligence asset. Why didn’t we put it in? Because we couldn’t f—-ing agree,”
The piece features a number of interviews with frustrated national security officials about how close they came to uncovering the necessary intel to foil the 9/11 hijacking plot.
When humans are involved, pride and opportunity for self-advancement always take priority
