Thread by @ooana

Dissidents left frameworks to help us. They left plays, art and lectures. They left letters and bodies.

The choice to listen to their wisdom, or not, is ours.

“We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up

and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble:

“But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.”

“We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul,

all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence. We have lost our strength, our pride, our passion.

“We have been indoctrinated in political courses, and in just the same way was fostered the idea to live

comfortably, and all will be well for the rest of our lives. You cant escape your environment and social conditions. Everyday life defines consciousness. What does it have to do with us? We can’t do anything about it?

But we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to

ourselves that this is not so. It is not “they” who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we!

Some will counter: But really, there is nothing to be done! Our mouths are gagged, no one listens to us, no one asks us. How can we make them listen to us?

To make them reconsider—is impossible.

…So has the circle closed? So is there indeed no way out? So the only thing left to do is wait inertly: What if something just happens by itself?

But it will never come unstuck by itself, if we all, every day, continue to acknowledge,

glorify, and strengthen it, if we do not, at the least, recoil from its most vulnerable point.

From lies.

When Violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: “I am violence. Run away, make way for me -

I will crush you.” But Violence Quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence within itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehoods as its ally- since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only

obedience to lies and daily participation in lies - all loyalty lies in that.

And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal nonparticipation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything -

not with any help from me.”

Excerpt From
Live Not By Lies
Alexander Solzhenitsyn