Infinite darkness, infinite light
ADVISORY: INCLUDES CONTENT THAT MAY DISTRESS SOME READERS.
The December ’22 podcast, “Meet Hooda Thunkit (Replay)“, quotes the final two sentences of Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities:
“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known.”
These words are spoken by Sydney Carton as he stands before the guillotine, at the beginning of the French Revolution. In this prophetic speech, he sees a vision of future events, including events involving his loved ones; and the fact that, in years to come, the bloodthirsty revolutionaries who created the guillotine and used it on so many, will turn, and use it on thousands of each other.
That actually happened, mainly in a period from 1792 to 1794, in what is called the Reign of Terror.
Any revolution carries the risk that one set of tyrants will merely replace another set of tyrants. There is also the dynamic that once the revolution is over, many of those who supported it, who expected it to bring about a paradise, will be disappointed in the fact that it didn’t. These people may turn against the new regime.
Decades of turmoil followed the American Revolution also. But not like France.
The Wikipedia article, “Reign of Terror,” explains some of the dynamics that led to this event in France. There was a class conflict between the more moderate middle class and the extremist, anarchist and violence-prone lower class. Among the intellectuals, Rousseau had an overly optimistic view of human nature, such that any policies based on his philosophy were sure to fail; and this may also explain the continued failure of classical liberalism ever since. Robespierre, on the other hand, believed that the French people were incapable of democracy, and somehow reasoned that, because of that, anyone who opposed the state had to be eliminated. That came to include many of the former revolutionaries themselves.
The references list at the end of that article includes links to two others that I had not heard of, “Red Terror” and “White Terror,” so I checked those out also. Both of these refer to movements in the Russian Civil War.
Unlike the French Revolution, the Russian Civil War is not taught about in American high schools. Most Americans believe there was the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, and that was it. In fact, that revolution was the beginning of a bloody civil war that lasted from 1917 to 1922, that saw many serious war crimes committed by both sides. In retrospect, it is amazing that any nation could endure such trauma and survive.
The Red Terror refers to the systemic terrorism perpetrated by the Bolsheviks themselves. The White Terror refers to that committed by their opponents, the Whites.
Guards at the grave of Moisei Uritsky. Petrograd. Translation of the banner: “Death to the bourgeois and their helpers. Long live the Red Terror.”
The Red Terror modeled itself explicitly on the Reign of Terror in France. The Wikipedia article indicates that Lenin had explicitly endorsed terror as a Bolshevik strategy as early as 1906. A telegram he sent his minions indicates what sort of man he was:
Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity … You must make example of these people.
(1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday’s telegram.Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so …
Yours, Lenin.
P.S. Find tougher people.
On the one hand, the article indicates that the Bolsheviks had to use terror, because they never really had popular support. On the other hand, there was little difference between what the Reds and the Whites actually did to people.
One of the instruments they used was like this. They would take a barrel, and drive nails into it all over, with the nails all pointing inward. Then the abuser would take a prisoner and put the prisoner inside there, and roll the barrel around, with the prisoner inside, for as long as it took for the abuser to get bored.
These torture practices ultimately, basically, drove some of the abusers themselves crazy. By means of something like PTSD, their brains poisoned by chronic intoxictation by adrenaline, chronic intoxication by malice, chronic intoxication by cruelty, whatever; they essentially sustained brain damage, and were unable to adapt to normal society after the war.
Infinite darkness, infinite light
The physical world, as far as we know, has four dimensions, and is finite. It only extends so far. The spiritual world, in contrast is infinite — given that it exists outside of time and space — and very likely has an infinite number of dimensions, an infinite number of planes, in infinitely many different places and with infinitely many orientations. inite darkness, and in the other direction, toward infinite light.
Human beings can be, at any moment, at any point along that axis. By virtue of free will, we can move anywhere we choose along that axis. And there is no cosmic resistance to, the cosmos does not resist, any movement toward darkness or evil. We observe in history that people are capable of heinous crimes; nations are capable of heinous crimes; and nothing in the material world will necessarily resist them.
So are reigns of terror able to occur.
And we are seriously mistaken to suppose otherwise.
On the other hand, there is another side to this coin, another direction available on this axis. We are just as free to seek light, seek goodness, practice love and mercy and forgiveness and cooperation, to create blessings for ourselves and one another.
It’s our choice.
Music: The Who, “We won’t get fooled again” https://thehomelessblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/wont-get-fooled-again.mp3
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