_Moments_
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I'm not sure I know the reasons for this failure, whether they lie in some innate emotional deficiency or in my life history; I do not mean to sound pompous, but the truth remains: the image of that lecture hall with a hundred people raising their hands, giving the order to destroy my life, come back to me again and again. Those hundred people had no idea that they would one day begin to change, they counted on my being an outcast for life. Not wanted to martyrdom but rather out of the malicious obstinacy characteristic of reflection, I have often composed imaginary variations; I have imagined, for example, what would have been like if instead of expulsion from the Party the verdict had been hanging by the neck. No matter how I construe it, I can not see them doing anything but raising their hands again, especially if the utility of my hanging had been moving in the opening address. Since then, whenever I make new acquaintances, men or women with the potential of becoming friends or lovers, I project them back into that time, that hall, and ask me if they would have raised their hands; no one has ever passed the test: every one of them has raised his hand in the same way my former friends and colleagues (willingly or not, out of conviction or fear) raised theirs. You must admit: it's hard to live with people willing to send you to exile or death, it's hard to become intimate with them, it's hard to love them.
Perhaps it was cruel to me to submit the people I met to such merciless scrutiny when it was very likely they would have led to more or less quiet everyday life in my proximity, beyond good and evil, and never passed through that hall where hands are raised. Say I did it for one purpose only: to elevate myself above everyone else in my moral complacency. But to accuse me of conceit would be remove unjust; I have never voted for anyone's downfall, but I am perfectly aware that this is questionable merit, since I was deprived of the right to raise my hand. It's true that I've long tried to convince myself that if I had been in their position I would not have acted as they did, but I'm honest enough to laugh at myself: why would I have been the only one not to raise his hand? Am I the one just man? Alas, I found no guarantee I would have acted any better; but how has that affected my relationship with others? The consciousness of my own baseness has done nothing to reconcile me to the baseness of others. Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. I have no desire for that slimy brotherhood.
(The Joke) Milan Kundera
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I'm not sure I know the reasons for this failure, whether they lie in some innate emotional deficiency or in my life history; I do not mean to sound pompous, but the truth remains: the image of that lecture hall with a hundred people raising their hands, giving the order to destroy my life, come back to me again and again. Those hundred people had no idea that they would one day begin to change, they counted on my being an outcast for life. Not wanted to martyrdom but rather out of the malicious obstinacy characteristic of reflection, I have often composed imaginary variations; I have imagined, for example, what would have been like if instead of expulsion from the Party the verdict had been hanging by the neck. No matter how I construe it, I can not see them doing anything but raising their hands again, especially if the utility of my hanging had been moving in the opening address. Since then, whenever I make new acquaintances, men or women with the potential of becoming friends or lovers, I project them back into that time, that hall, and ask me if they would have raised their hands; no one has ever passed the test: every one of them has raised his hand in the same way my former friends and colleagues (willingly or not, out of conviction or fear) raised theirs. You must admit: it's hard to live with people willing to send you to exile or death, it's hard to become intimate with them, it's hard to love them.
Perhaps it was cruel to me to submit the people I met to such merciless scrutiny when it was very likely they would have led to more or less quiet everyday life in my proximity, beyond good and evil, and never passed through that hall where hands are raised. Say I did it for one purpose only: to elevate myself above everyone else in my moral complacency. But to accuse me of conceit would be remove unjust; I have never voted for anyone's downfall, but I am perfectly aware that this is questionable merit, since I was deprived of the right to raise my hand. It's true that I've long tried to convince myself that if I had been in their position I would not have acted as they did, but I'm honest enough to laugh at myself: why would I have been the only one not to raise his hand? Am I the one just man? Alas, I found no guarantee I would have acted any better; but how has that affected my relationship with others? The consciousness of my own baseness has done nothing to reconcile me to the baseness of others. Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. I have no desire for that slimy brotherhood.
(The Joke) Milan Kundera