Thoughts on { Violence | Edward W. Said / Primo Levi / Sigmund Freud / Carl Sagan

Alexander Girald

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”

Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1978

“It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model of
thinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist”.”

Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce, 1958

“We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our body, which is doomed to decay…, from the external world which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless force of destruction, and finally from our relations with other men… This last source is perhaps more painful to use than any other.”

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1929

“Vast migrations of people -some voluntary, most not- have shaped the human condition. More of us flee from war, oppression and famine today than at any other time in human history.”

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994