Status Updates From Sovereignty

As soon as we envisage not one common cause of error simultaneously infecting minds in general, but a large number of causes variously affecting each individual mind, the picture presented by the sum of individual judgments changes fundamentally. It is now not one of agreement on some quite untrue conclusion, but of a considerable dispersion of judgments.

To the entire extent to which progress develops hedonism and moral relativism, to which individual liberty is conceived as the right of a man to obey his appetites, nothing but the strongest of powers can maintain society in being.

In the complex of which I am thinking, there is more than individuals and their unceasing interaction; there are also emotions felt in common (during natural disasters) and actions taken either simultaneously (as when we go to vote) or in combination (as when we go to war).

And it is the possibility of these collective movements which makes the difference between a collection of individuals and 'a people.'"

It would be a gross psychological blunder not to recognize that there is a demand for authorities, which is the obverse side of the willingness to be authorities of men who like decision and do not fear responsibility.

The centres of authority are, therefore, the natural result of anxieties finding their reassurance.