A line from Milan Kundera I'd forgotten...

[punpirate]

... from this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=114538&mesg_id=114538

The salient quote is: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

How often have we derided the short attention span of the American public, how little the average American knows of his own history, or his own legislative process....

Makes me wonder about the rapid-fire news today which covers every story in thirty seconds or less, just long enough for it to evoke an emotion, but not long enough for it to sink in.

It sometimes seems as if the pace of life in the country has been speeded up intentionally--compressing the time available to digest the news--to actually think about it. Not just take it in, but allow for the time to consider if it makes sense, if it seems true, does the color commentary fit the facts as described, or does it actually color them in ways that aren't about the story.

Just musing on the struggle of memory against forgetting. What Milan Kundera meant, of course, was the struggle to remember what life was like before in Prague before 1968. I wonder if we'll be considering that struggle in the future....

Cheers.

[applegrove]

1. What a great quote. Perfect for the times. Thanks.

[applegrove]

3. There is so much truth to the notion that evil relies on ignorance or

great evil relies on humans forgetting memories of the past and the truth. The patsie forget who they are and grow down to adolescence. The victims are forgetten by the people who knew them as something else (a normal person).

Touches a chord I guess you could say. I would use the word evil - Kundara may not because his characters don't quite know what it it like to be average - or to struggle with it. There is something inhuman in him. From the one book I tried to read.

[punpirate]

4. Well, perhaps you need to read more...

... of Kundera--he's quite human. :)

Try The Engineer of Human Souls (the title comes from Stalin's definition of the writer). Or The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

What may put off Americans is that Kundera has a distinctly Eastern European view of life under Soviet occupation which depends very heavily on irony and black humor, and that can make his writing seem as you describe.

But, the point is not so much that it's a matter of pure black and white, of pure good and evil. I have no doubt that the people who inhabit the top levels of our government think they are doing great things--but, so did Stalin.

That's what makes Kundera's line interesting--it doesn't have anything to say about good and evil--only the revision of history and the tendency to forget how things once were.

In that sense, it's important for today--because there's an effort underway now, and for a while now, to rewrite history, and to see lies as reportorial balance to the truth, and it wasn't, at least in some times in the past, nearly so obvious as it is now.

Cheers.

[applegrove]

6. Eastern European male - say no more. I know why I couldn't finish

the book. When they called a press conference about Arnold and said it had to do about touching and feeling the ladies as a 'fun' way of communicating with them.. I was shocked. Surely there is no reason to call a press conference on an Eastern European male and tell us this?

And it was not so long ago that it was the norm for business men to pat a female business woman on the but to say "good job".

The greater message of the book was obviously lost on me.

[punpirate]

7. This deserves a response...

... but there's no point letting this devolve into a flame fest.

[applegrove]

8. Okay - I made a generalization about Eastern European males of

an older generation and it was bad to make a generalization.

Or perhaps you are angry that i made light of the allegations against Arnold?

Sorry either way.

My original post that the word evil would be more appropriate still stands.

[saltpoint]

2. What a great post, punpirate.

Kundera's voice needs to be heard, and especially now.

Really appreciated this tonight.

[Binka]

5. Going to Prague this July. One of my top 5 places in the world.

Kundera has long been a hero of mine. Thanks for sharing his wisdom.

No doubt the pace of life has been intentionally ratcheted up. It's why I left the states I can't deal with it and I don't want my 3 year old daughter exposed to it.