<story><title>Live Not by Lies (1974)</title><url>https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ls65536</author><text>Though written nearly half a century ago and in the context of what most might consider an otherwise completely antithetical system of politics and economics compared to what we believe we have in the West today, I can&amp;#x27;t help but see how this essay remains incredibly relevant to us today, perhaps even more so in recent years than prior.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? When so many are in survival mode just to make it from one day to the next, this action tends to be deferred to some point in the future when those large masses of people have progressively less and less left to lose, with unfortunately often predictably violent outcomes, as history has shown.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>4wsn</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it?&lt;p&gt;Feel-good rhetoric aside, your impact as an individual is limited and your defenses are fragile. In real terms, speaking out in even the most diplomatic way leads you to being aggressively silenced for not endorsing whatever the Sacred Infallible Truth may be in the time period that you live in, and there can be very severe consequences that impact your weakest link; your livelihood. The best you can feasibly do as an everyman is try with the people closest to you; the people that trust and respect you. Your partner, your family, your friends, your children. This is your only feasible option.&lt;p&gt;The issue with the passage you quoted (&amp;quot;And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul...&amp;quot;) is that it&amp;#x27;s a call to arms yet it ignores the reality that you have no weapons with which to fight.&lt;p&gt;Reading between the lines of your post; if your society insists on going down a certain self-destructive path there&amp;#x27;s not much you can feasibly do other than watch it and hope your perspective is the misguided one.</text></comment>
<story><title>Live Not by Lies (1974)</title><url>https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ls65536</author><text>Though written nearly half a century ago and in the context of what most might consider an otherwise completely antithetical system of politics and economics compared to what we believe we have in the West today, I can&amp;#x27;t help but see how this essay remains incredibly relevant to us today, perhaps even more so in recent years than prior.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s important to stand up to lies and to speak against recognized propaganda for what it is, but how capable are we as a society even to recognize the propaganda and lies when we see them? And how many of us have the courage to do so in the face of it? When so many are in survival mode just to make it from one day to the next, this action tends to be deferred to some point in the future when those large masses of people have progressively less and less left to lose, with unfortunately often predictably violent outcomes, as history has shown.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noduerme</author><text>I think this is a powerful indictment of a sector of the current young generation who believe that &amp;quot;violence is the voice of the voiceless,&amp;quot; with perhaps even less knowledge of or regard for history than Lenin&amp;#x27;s generation in Russia had:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;All the other fateful means resorted to over the last century of Russia’s bitter history are even less fitting for us today—true, let’s not fall back on them! Today, when all the axes have hewn what they hacked, when all that was sown has borne fruit, we can see how lost, how drugged were those conceited youths who sought, through terror, bloody uprising, and civil war, to make the country just and content. No thank you, fathers of enlightenment! We now know that the vileness of the means begets the vileness of the result. Let our hands be clean!&amp;quot;</text></comment>