Political Notes
CHAPTER 3
Political Notes
19. South America is predominantly Catholic, North America is predominantly Protestant. We have the same division (south-north) in Europe, and what can be noted everywhere is the greater openness to progress in Protestant rather than in Catholic nations. In general, Protestantism is a more powerful impetus in history than the Catholic form of Christianity.
24. The request for the abolition of the death penalty is an integral part of the tendency in criminal law to take more care of the criminal than the victim of the crime. The arguments are problematic. Thus, for example, they describe to you the details of the execution of the death penalty and ask you if you are in favor of it. They could also describe the details of the execution of the crime and the horrible state it left on the side of the victim and family, and ask the same question. However, this is pushed aside, as if two murders do not exist, but only one-the death penalty that would be carried out against the murderer.
34. No doubt corporal punishment contradicts sense of honor and human dignity, as everyone would easily agree. However, seen from the other side, experience shows that, unfortunately, there is the existence of people without the smallest amount of honor and human dignity. The Qur'an says there are people who are like animals, "even worse than them." One who has spent some time in prison with petty criminals can easily be convinced of this. It is peculiar that people in office write criminal codes, people not usually familiar with this human "material." It is unimaginable to think of doctors who have never stepped into a hospital or interacted among patients. This is exactly what happens with criminologists. Most of them, in the best of cases, have met delinquents during a hearing or during a court trial, and what has to be taken into account is that criminals, unlike ordinary people, have a greater power of transformation. Criminals are never naive; there are, more or less, experienced people. Their accounts of life can be wrong, but not due to naiveté, rather due to a commitment to evil, which in most of them is final and incorrigible. In prison, I have seen a great number of people serving time for pickpocketing and street robberies. Not in a single one have I noticed a readiness to begin any type of honest work after leaving prison. On the contrary, they encouraged and instructed each other and exchanged experiences. I have noticed a bit of remorse only in murderers, but even among them the penitent ones were not in the majority. In one scene of a film I watched in the prison theater, a man was attacking a girl with the intent to rape her. While she struggled like captured prey, the majority of the viewers- prisoners-were noisily encouraging the attacker.
Petty thieves and pickpockets are particularly unscrupulous types of criminals. They amuse themselves by telling each other how they, month after month, stole the entire earnings of miners. They mentioned a case of some miner who, after realizing he has lost his earnings, committed suicide.
One of them, showing me his hands, told me: "Can't you notice that they are not for work, they were created for something else." And indeed, he had beautifully sculptured hands with long fingers. I told him that some claim that it is the type of work that creates the hands. He answered that it, work, surely did not create his. Then I thought he does not deserve such beautiful hands and that it would be completely just he did not have them, only to later remember that the sentence of the Shariah would be just that.
Naturally, one should be very careful in sentencing, but if I were to write the criminal code in prison, and while taking into account all of my prison experiences, I think it would more and more look like the Shariat penal code. As I have before had certain reservations toward corporal punishment, it seems to me at times that God sent me here to compare His wisdom to mine.
48. While reading through the history of a nation or a period, it appears to us at times that some events, victories or defeats, the evil or just destinies of some nation, were a result of fortunate and unfortunate circumstances, that is, of coincidence. However, if we examine things a bit more closely, we usually arrive at a conclusion that the "coincidence" was not as coincidental as we were first inclined to think.
49. I do not know, or do not sufficiently know, the past of my nation. But I know the present, that is, the result. From this present I can conclude a lot about what preceded it.
50. To know a nation or a period, it is in no way enough to read written histories about it. Without Balzac's novels, not even a ten-volume history of France will offer a clear picture of the life of French society. Only with these can we say we know the life of French society of the nineteenth century.
Histories inform us of events, while novels, poems, epics, stories, legends, and fables inform us of life of a man-individual, that is-of that which really existed. The one is external, the other internal history. External history is that much more insufficient, for it most often speaks of emperors and kings and events concerning a limited group of people at the court and around it. And I cannot say I know the history of a nation if I know the emperors it had, wars it waged, all the places where it was victorious or defeated. Furthermore, I cannot even say I know that nation even when I know its legislature and culture. I have to know how an individual lived in his home, how he related to his wife, children, servants, authorities. Only by combining both of these pictures, external and internal, I can say I know, in certain measure, that nation and its past- of course, only when taking into account all the limitations and reservations one should have concerning writers and their texts.
52. In history, as in nature, everything is diversity and continual change. I cannot ask for or expect a single situation or condition to become stabilized in history, for history to stop, just as I cannot ask for one of the four seasons to be forever fixed. In history, as in nature, there will always be forces which will cause change. And I, with my wants and actions, am only a minute participant in one of these continual changes.
53. Something over 100 years ago, the United States purchased a piece of land on the west coast of Africa and founded Liberia, the first free Negro state. It was an attempt by the United States, to an extent, redeem itself for the shameful "black cargo" (ill-famed trade in black slaves). A number of descendents of the Blacks who had been caught in the vicinity and forcibly taken across the ocean as slaves had been returned to Liberia. And what happened? These returned slaves became masters in Liberia and, in an unprecedented manner, subjugated the mainly black population from whom they were descended. This rule of the black caste was known as the "reign of terror of 100 families," lasting almost 100 years; it was ended only by a military putsch in 1980. After all this, we can conclude that life sometimes makes a crude joke of noble thoughts or that intentions, good or bad, have no particular significance in historic life. Thus will happen that positive consequences will result from selfish motives, and negative ones from the most noble of motives. On the other hand, the delineated case indicates how in slaves and those who suffer lurk veiled oppressors, and how much depends on circumstances. As people often say: God knows what he is doing. People, in actuality, can be only externally divided into masters and slaves, oppressors and victims. From the moral standpoint, in every man there exists both a master and a slave, and sometimes it is only a matter of circumstances what someone objectively will be, that is, which of these two possibilities can actualize in historic life.
68. While reading the chronicles about the developed phase of one society or civilization, we shall come across historians informing us of spiritual and moral decadence, stating resignedly that in the midst of plentitude and luxury, there is less and less of a man. Only moral dwarfs remain, waiting for the relentlessly approaching demise. Here and there appear great personages, but those are only the rare individuals powerless in the midst of general weakness. Their greatness appears even larger the more it is in contrast with the general state of spirit.
69. Nations enter history as morally affluent and materially poor. When they exit history, the situation is usually completely reversed. This is confirmed in the histories of almost all significant peoples: ancient Persians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, even the modern Western nations. From this ensues a conclusion that a civilization (which is only objectified, materialized knowledge) can be explained through historical development, while morality cannot. It is precisely morality that is not a result but a prerequisite for a historical, external power, and one could say that people, fulfilling themselves historically, live at the expense of this moral supply, spending it, just as a prospective plant sprouts at the expense of the supply of food in the seed. At first, we always come across a man and with him examples of very pure and exalted religious awareness and morality. As the historical development proceeds, religion is either abandoned or it deteriorates, to finally have, on the eve of demise, godlessness and complete moral deterioration. Morality, therefore, is nowhere a product, we find it in the consciousness and life of people in its original form, most often without the ability to explain it. It can be found as an integral part of the "human material" that announces its entrance onto the historical stage.
What has created this original morality? Nothing, if we take this word in its literal sense. That morality is not the result of life, but life itself, or a source of life that is only to begin. The debauchery and depravity that appear at the end are only the expression of the wasting and loss of ideals. They are the gray hairs of a life that is approaching its end. Debauchery is an expression of weakness, not strength. Why are all young races moral (puritan), while decadent ones are immoral? "Sexual revolution has its turn when any other positive revolution is impossible. It heralds the time when there is no strength nor will for any other ideal. It is a mark of the lack of true will and purpose. For everything that is good is a laborious 'ascent up the mountain'" (Qur'an 90/11).
88. Dictatorship is immoral even when it prohibits sin, democracy is moral even when it allows it. Morality is inseparable from freedom. Only free conduct is moral conduct. By negating freedom, and thus the possibility of choice, a dictatorship contains in its premises the negation of morality. To that extent, regardless of all historical apparitions, dictatorship and religion are mutually exclusive. For, just as in the body-spirit dilemma, religion always favors the spirit, so in the choice between wanting and behaving, intent and action, it will always favor wanting and intent, regardless of the result, that is, the consequence. In religion, an action is not valued without the intention, without "intent," that is, without an opportunity or freedom to act or not act. Just as coercive starvation is not a fast, so the coerced good is not good and is from the religious standpoint valueless. That is why the freedom of choice, that is, of action or lack of it, of abiding or transgressing, is the prerequisite at the basis of all prerequisites of all religions and all morality. And that is why the elimination of this choice either by physical force in dictatorship or obedience training in utopia signifies their negation From this the idea follows that every truly human society must be a community of free individuals It must limit the number of its laws and interventions (degree of external coercion) to that necessary extent in which the freedom of choice between good and evil is maintained, so that people would do good, not because they must, but because they want to. Without this intent for the good, we have a state of dictatorship or utopia.
94. When one world loses the ability of great politics, diplomatic hairsplitting "diplomatic state," as expressed by Hegel) begins.
100. People and a crowd (a crowd of people) are not the same. This difference is well known to demagogues, so they amply use it for their purposes. People are degraded into a crowd when they lose an internal principle of awareness, morals, ideals. People without awareness equals a mob (crowd). A mob is an amorphous crowd of people without ideals, a sum of individuals in which each lives for himself and has only one's own interests or desires without the awareness of something higher and communal, without even a name. People still have ideals, a mob only has wants. We find it at the end of the historical road, on the eve of demise. A typical example is the Roman lumpen-proletariat before the demise of the Roman Empire.
103. When social life loses its true meaning, or cannot find it, individuals, depending on their personal dispositions and character, escape into thought and mysticism, or give themselves to sensual pleasures. The situation in which there exist only two kinds of people-ascetics and practicing epicures-is a reliable sign that a society is diseased.
104. When ideas are concerned, there are two kinds of prohibitions. The first is the resistance of those in power toward advancing ideas, the time for which has come. The second is the prohibition of something that is receding, moribund, for example the edict of Emperor Theodosius against pagans. In actuality, paganism was already dead, and this prohibition was only a death certificate, the announcement of the natural death, which had already occurred. Both prohibitions are without purpose. The former is useless, since it cannot change anything, the latter unnecessary, since the change has already occurred.
110. When laws are concerned, it is very important that principles of some state system or order are based on the spirit of people, for these to live in people even in a form of vague notions that the system then only articulates, names, brings to full awareness, makes a reality. If some fundamental values are not known or felt by people, the noble lawmaker will be in a difficult position, since his laws may remain empty declarations. It is one situation if people believe in the equality of people, another if they have deep-rooted racial prejudices. In the latter case the constitution regarding equality will be "digested" with difficulty and will have little chance of being brought to life.
254. Democracy and stability are mutually conditioned. We need democracy because of stability and stability because of democracy.
271. What do we need: people who believe or people who think? Do these exclude each other?
274. If you read some publications between the wars-it was then fashionable to find so-called sociological explanations for all events-you would, for example, come across the assertion that the increase in the criminal act of rape is a result of sexual repression, conservative morality, etc. Expansion of this offence in the United States and Western countries, especially after the so-called sexual revolution, shows that the sociological explanation was not correct.
285. Henry LeFebvre claims that for twenty years the Communist Party of France has ignored the existence of Khrushchev's secret report of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
293. As in historical events, people are not only motivated by interests but also ideals, history is not predictable. To the contrary, that would be one causality that would differ from the natural one even if only in principle. As historical events are interfered with by the spirit (in the form of morality and ideals, or the motives of justice or injustice), in other words, because its actor-man- is motivated by pain and usefulness (interest) but is not its slave, history cannot be predicted. It continually makes its forecasters "lie." The last example is Marx's failure to predict history. I am thinking, of course, of the absence of world socialist revolution.
297. More than half of humanity today (end of 1984) lives in about twenty federal states. The organization differs from one country to another. Differences are mainly contained in the degree of independence of federal states with respect to the central bodies of government. -
298. History has shown repeatedly that serious difficulties in every great undertaking appear only in the later phases of its implementation. This is indicated equivalently by the histories of Christianity, Islam and socialism.
301. In the preparations for the new post-industrial era, especially after the "oil crisis" in 1974, two million workers were fired in the countries of the European Economic Union, resulting in the number of unemployed rising to over 12 million people in 1984. The question, then, is in which way are we meeting the new era that is inevitably coming? Development, especially of the third (tertiary) activities, offers opportunities exclusively to small, dynamic companies. It is estimated that during the computable period since 1977, in the United States 600,000 companies are established and 40,000 companies go bankrupt annually. Currently there is a battle that relentlessly imposes the market, and in which rule the steel laws of Darwinian selection. Newly founded effective firms are usually small companies with fewer than 20 workers.