💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › albert-camus-neither-victims-nor-executioneers.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:38:44. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Neither Victims Nor Executioners Author: Albert Camus Language: en Topics: alienation, war Source: Retrieved on February 2, 2011 from http://j12.org/spunk/library/writers/camus/sp001174.txt
November 30, 1946 Toward Dialogue
Yes, we must raise our voices. Up to this point, I have refrained from
appealing to emotion. We are being torn apart by a logic of history
which we have elaborated in every detail — a net which threatens to
strangle us. It is not emotion which can cut through the web of a logic
which has gone to irrational lengths, but only reason which can meet
logic on its own ground. But I should not want to leave the
impression... that any program for the future can get along without our
powers of love and indignation. I am well aware that it takes a powerful
prime mover to get men into motion and that it is hard to throw one’s
self into a struggle whose objectives are so modest and where hope has
only a rational basis — and hardly even that. But the problem is not how
to carry men away; it is essential, on the contrary, that they not be
carried away but rather that they be made to understand clearly what
they are doing.
To save what can be saved so as to open up some kind of future — that is
the prime mover, the passion and the sacrifice that is required. It
demands only that we reflect and then decide, clearly, whether
humanity’s lot must be made still more miserable in order to achieve
far-off and shadowy ends, whether we should accept a world bristling
with arms where brother kills brother; or whether, on the contrary, we
should avoid bloodshed and misery as much as possible so that we give a
chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are.
For my part, I am fairly sure that I have made the choice. And, having
chosen, I think that I must speak out, that I must state that I will
never again be one of those, whoever they be, who compromise with
murder, and that I must take the consequences of such a decision. The
thing is done, and that is as far as I can go at present.... However, I
want to make clear the spirit in which this article is written.
We are asked to love or to hate such and such a country and such and
such a people. But some of us feel too strongly our common humanity to
make such a choice. Those who really love the Russian people, in
gratitude for what they have never ceased to be — that world leaven
which Tolstoy and Gorky speak of — do not wish for them success in power
politics, but rather want to spare them, after the ordeals of the past,
a new and even more terrible bloodletting. So, too, with the American
people, and with the peoples of unhappy Europe. This is the kind of
elementary truth we are likely to forget amidst the furious passions of
our time.
Yes, it is fear and silence and the spiritual isolation they cause that
must be fought today. And it is sociability and the universal
intercommunication of men that must be defended. Slavery, injustice, and
lies destroy this intercourse and forbid this sociability; and so we
must reject them. But these evils are today the very stuff of history,
so that many consider them necessary evils. It is true that we cannot
“escape history,” since we are in it up to our necks. But one may
propose to fight within history to preserve from history that part of
man which is not its proper province. That is all I have to say here.
The “point” of this article may be summed up as follows:
Modern nations are driven by powerful forces along the roads of power
and domination. I will not say that these forces should be furthered or
that they should be obstructed. They hardly need our help and, for the
moment, they laugh at attempts to hinder them. They will, then,
continue. But I will ask only this simple question: What if these forces
wind up in a dead end, what if that logic of history on which so many
now rely turns out to be a will o’ the wisp? What if, despite two or
three world wars, despite the sacrifice of several generations and a
whole system of values, our grandchildren — supposing they survive —
find themselves no closer to a world society? It may well be that the
survivors of such an experience will be too weak to understand their own
sufferings. Since these forces are working themselves out and since it
is inevitable that they continue to do so,there is no reason why some of
us should not take on the job of keeping alive, through the apocalyptic
historical vista that stretches before us, a modest thoughtfulness
which, without pretending to solve everything, will constantly be
prepared to give some human meaning to everyday life. The essential
thing is that people should carefully weight the price they must pay....
All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to
reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish
those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the
accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their
force and being. Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist,
it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five
continents throughout the coming years an endless strugle is going to be
pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which,
granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than
that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his
hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of
circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course
will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more
powerful than munitions.