Status Updates From Wir sind frei, die Welt zu ...

Ok this book’s chronology is weird but I’m trudging through it. Passed the chapter on the origins of totalitarianism and apparently fascism’s biggest agents are loneliness and cynicism. I was shocked to learn we have been here before, despite how different our social realities are these days with social media/technology. Apparently in 1970s New Yorker mag published Arendt, R Carson and James Baldwin in 1 issue!

Love is what makes us human, plural, alive to one another and to the human condition itself.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism she (Arendt) called this the propaganda effect of infallibility: the trick of appearing omnipotent by prophesying a future that you then make happen.

the anonymity and vulnerability of placeless people is also, potentially at least, everybody’s problem because it exposes the weak spot at the heart of a system that relies solely on the reliability of nation states and human goodwill.