Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The dividing line between Good and Evil

 An amazing quote from Solzhenitsyn in The Mockingbird web site:

As the enlightened among us demythify the chronicler’s stated justification for the mob’s violence, Sister Lange demythifies the greatest and most dominant myth in all of the world and in all of history: the myth of her own entitlement. This is the beginning of wisdom. I am reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag ephiphany, in which he:
…lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

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