Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and the present ills of West in the eyes of a visionary (1978 speech in Harvard)

msante

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Yesterday I came across this little jewel and thought I'd share it. It is the speech that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered address at Harvard University on June 8 - 1978.

In the speech he makes a remarkable description of the western world, its narrowness of vision and its social/cultural decadence. IMO it is astonishing how this man, who suffered in his own flesh the horrors of Soviet communism, preserves the sanity, good sense and a certain meekness of spirit that allows him to turn suffering into wisdom and pain into spiritual strength. It is also remarkable that, being a speech delivered almost 40 years ago, some passages are so current that if I had not indicated the date and the author would look like a speech delivered yesterday.

Among the most prominent topics, Solzhenitsyn talks about:
  • The material welfare state that has been reached by Western society and that constitutes the goal of every citizen, has been transformed into a heavy ballast that prevents the development of consciousness and the flowering of higher spiritual values that inspire and enrich humanity as a whole.
  • Western society has placed its faith and trust in a System of Laws disconnected from human consciousness. While listening to him I could not help but connect his words to the passage from Guyénot (From Yahweh to Zion) when he writes about how for the Jewish people, a Law emanating from a "superior" entity that cannot be questioned frees man from the obligation to evaluate and judge his own acts as long as they are done according to the Law.
  • The defence of "human rights" or/and "freedom of speech" has become a kind of "freedom to do what I want" that must be guaranteed to every individual. This absurd conception has become one of the main vehicles for evil to spread in the world. He himself proposes that "it is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations".
  • ... and more
Well, I don't think it's a good idea to go ahead with more spoilers, so for whoever is interested this is the speech


and here is a transcription Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Harvard Commencement Address (A World Split Apart)
 
Yesterday I came across this little jewel and thought I'd share it. It is the speech that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered address at Harvard University on June 8 - 1978.

In the speech he makes a remarkable description of the western world, its narrowness of vision and its social/cultural decadence. IMO it is astonishing how this man, who suffered in his own flesh the horrors of Soviet communism, preserves the sanity, good sense and a certain meekness of spirit that allows him to turn suffering into wisdom and pain into spiritual strength. It is also remarkable that, being a speech delivered almost 40 years ago, some passages are so current that if I had not indicated the date and the author would look like a speech delivered yesterday.

Among the most prominent topics, Solzhenitsyn talks about:
  • The material welfare state that has been reached by Western society and that constitutes the goal of every citizen, has been transformed into a heavy ballast that prevents the development of consciousness and the flowering of higher spiritual values that inspire and enrich humanity as a whole.
  • Western society has placed its faith and trust in a System of Laws disconnected from human consciousness. While listening to him I could not help but connect his words to the passage from Guyénot (From Yahweh to Zion) when he writes about how for the Jewish people, a Law emanating from a "superior" entity that cannot be questioned frees man from the obligation to evaluate and judge his own acts as long as they are done according to the Law.
  • The defence of "human rights" or/and "freedom of speech" has become a kind of "freedom to do what I want" that must be guaranteed to every individual. This absurd conception has become one of the main vehicles for evil to spread in the world. He himself proposes that "it is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations".
"human rights", "freedom of speech" and "freedom to do what I want" are fine concepts, if they can improve individual consciousnesses and becomes a help to the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, they became individualistic, materialistic, blind, inflexible, ego driven and became a tool of some bigger agenda. For any experience, there always needs to be some thing bigger we don't understand. But the one we don't understand doesn't need to be bad, but that is the case in 3D. Whether we can change that in 3D, I don't know. This reminds me short wave cycles and long wave cycles as C's put it.
 
It is the speech that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered address at Harvard University on June 8 - 1978.

Fast forward to October 29th - 2019, when Vesti's interview to Maria Butina's was translated into English, and where she describes her experience with the American Gulag. Not very different from what Solzhenitsyn related in his book about the Gulag Archipelago. Starting on minute 13:18, Butina describes the prison conditions:

First Full Interview With Maria Butina After Release From Horrific American Gulag!

 
Fast forward to October 29th - 2019, when Vesti's interview to Maria Butina's was translated into English, and where she describes her experience with the American Gulag. Not very different from what Solzhenitsyn related in his book about the Gulag Archipelago. Starting on minute 13:18, Butina describes the prison conditions:

First Full Interview With Maria Butina After Release From Horrific American Gulag!

Spineless,disrespectful propagandists like Stephen Colbert continue to push the ''Russian spy'' narrative to millions of viewers who refuse to do even the most basic fact checking.Seems there are 2 types of America currently in existence,one populated by more or less normal people and one populated by drones who simply believe what they hear and wish to push their beliefs onto others.The ''demoralization'' that Yuri Bezmenof talked about is complete,truth is no longer a barrier to opinionated minds.
 
"human rights", "freedom of speech" and "freedom to do what I want" are fine concepts, if they can improve individual consciousnesses and becomes a help to the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, they became individualistic, materialistic, blind, inflexible, ego driven and became a tool of some bigger agenda.

Yes, like several other concepts that in the abstract world of ideas have a strong positive connotation, when subjected to human subjectivity and driven by petty interests or severely deranged minds, they become tools of chaos. It is as if those ideas that in the hands of a conscious individual could inspire and stimulate the development of humankind, when are stripped of context and used by pathological individuals, cannibalize or devour themselves (such is the case of concepts like "equality", "freedom" and others).

An example could be skepticism. Skepticism could be a weapon to develop knowledge; one could say that it is healthy to maintain a skeptical attitude and not to accept any information that is given to us without at least questioning its origin and validity, that is, corroborating it in some way. But when skepticism becomes an end in itself, when the "skeptical attitude" becomes more important than the "use of skepticism" as a methodical tool for knowing and learning, it is when a positive principle or idea devours itself, or in other words self-destructs.

Another example could be that of these flat earthy guys. Distrusting the statements of mainstream science can be considered a healthy attitude; taking this attitude to irrational extremes by disbelieving EVERYTHING that science says to embrace absurd theories, is another way in which a positive principle is completely reversed and becomes an instrument of evil.
 
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