Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"i think that these theories have more to tell us about what happened in the 20th century than any other theories that ive ever come across.
the terrible mass movements of the 20th century occurred because of the nature pf peoples personality.
its a mistake not to concentrate on factors that play that massive a role in determining the destiny of the entire world.
It isnt clear to me that we have learned what we really had to learn from nazi germany or maoist china.
mass genocidal movements were a defining characteristic of the 20th century; it struck me that the right level of analysis for understanding mass movements like the nazi movement or the ideological possession that characterized the stalinist soviets or mao's communists or pol pots cambodian communists
or any of the dictators who you can talk about who were on the far left or far right during the 20th century - to me those were failings of individual personality, and the most astute writers that ive ever read who described what they assumed to be the causes of these terrible conflicts made what i feel to be the same point:
the connection between the existential failure of the individual, and the mass catastrophes of society"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3aTURVEC8
"What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.
...one should make no mistake about the meaning of the title that this gospel of the future wants to bear. "The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values"--in this formulation a countermovement finds expression, regarding both principle and task; a movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect nihilism--but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly can come only after and out of it.
For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals--because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these "values" really had.--We require, sometime, new values.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901, Preface"
People are complicated.
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