Quote:
Some people, [Benjamin Constant] said … “conclude that we are destined to be slaves. They would like to reconstitute the new social state with a small number of elements which, they say, are alone appropriate to the situation of the world today”.
And what are these elements?
Constant might have been writing in the opening decades of the 21st century rather than the opening decades of the 19th.
“These elements are prejudices to frighten men, egoism to corrupt them, frivolity to stupefy them, gross pleasures to degrade them, despotism to lead them; and, indispensably, constructive knowledge and exact sciences to serve despotism the more adroitly,” he wrote.
1 Like
Wow. Amazing how the schemes despots use to attain power have not changed for centuries - they’re still using the same old tactics, just repackaged.
1 Like