Stop the Rain
Jan. 31st, 2020 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThe following is an excerpt from an article in Atlantic by Jill Lepore; I copied it from Ezra Levin's Twitter feed.
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In 1937, The New Republic, arguing that "at no time since the rise of political democracy have its tenets been so seriously challenged as they are today," ran a series on "The Future of Democracy," featuring pieces by the likes of Bertrand Russell and John Dewey. "Do you think that political democracy is now on the wane?" the editors asked each writer. The series' lead contributor, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, took issue with the question, as philosophers, thankfully, do. "I call this kind of question 'meteorological,'" he grumbled. "It is like asking, 'Do you think that it is going to rain today? Had I better take my umbrella?'" The trouble, Croce explained, is that political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. "We need solely to make up our own minds and to act."
Don't ask whether you need an umbrella. Go outside and stop the rain.
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In 1937, The New Republic, arguing that "at no time since the rise of political democracy have its tenets been so seriously challenged as they are today," ran a series on "The Future of Democracy," featuring pieces by the likes of Bertrand Russell and John Dewey. "Do you think that political democracy is now on the wane?" the editors asked each writer. The series' lead contributor, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, took issue with the question, as philosophers, thankfully, do. "I call this kind of question 'meteorological,'" he grumbled. "It is like asking, 'Do you think that it is going to rain today? Had I better take my umbrella?'" The trouble, Croce explained, is that political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control. "We need solely to make up our own minds and to act."
Don't ask whether you need an umbrella. Go outside and stop the rain.
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