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“This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.”
― Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
― Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
“One day the killing will be over, either because the oppressed will have their liberation or because there will be so few left to kill. We will be expected to forget any of it ever happened, to acknowledge it if need be but only in harmless, perfunctory ways. Many of us will, if only as a kind of psychological self-defense. So much lives and dies by the grace of endless forgetting.
But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging one's own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.”
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging one's own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.”
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist.”
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others. Human”
― Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
― Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
“There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say "these horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day." To repeat the famous phrase about "who they came for first" and "who they'll come for next." But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted upon them, they would tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.
No, there is no terrible thing happening coming for you in some distant future. But know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity. Forget even the dead, if you must. But at least fight against the theft of your soul.”
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
No, there is no terrible thing happening coming for you in some distant future. But know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity. Forget even the dead, if you must. But at least fight against the theft of your soul.”
― One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Kai Yun’s 2025 Year in Books
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