Piyush Kumar

“He kissed the worn cotton on Rose’s shoulder and regretted that he did not believe in prayer.”
― Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind

“...fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of "mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At the bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one's own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These "mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations:

-a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

-the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;

-the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

-dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

-the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

-the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the groups' destiny;

-the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;

-the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;

-the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

...Fascism was an affair of the gut more than the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.”
― Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism

“The heart will hear only one sound. A “no” will pass unnoticed, and a “good-bye” will be heard only as a deferral of hope; the future is unmarred, pushed forward by events but untouched by them because the heart sees only a perfect future with its beloved, and hears only news about that future. The rest, as they say, is noise. There is only one sound it can hear. There is only “yes.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

“How amazing is the spirit of man!...it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of nature's mighty forces, less than a speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to master them. Whatever gods there may be, there is something godlike in man, as there is something of the devil in him.
The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived many perils. Remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and we can always wander,if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of nature.”
― Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India