In The Long Run
How many
really individual actions
are left undone merely because
before performing them we perceive or suspect
that they will be
misunderstood!
—those actions, for example,
which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil.
The more highly an age
or a nation values its individuals, therefore,
and the more right and ascendancy we accord them,
the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known,
—and thus in the long run a luster of honesty, of genuineness in good and evil,
will spread over entire ages and nations,
so that they
—the Greeks, for example
—like certain stars,
will continue
to shed light for thousands of years
after their sinking.
The Dawn Of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 529
This passage resonates, no doubt because I read again the memorial oration given by Pericles to honor the Athenian’s that fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian war in 432 BC. The memorial day speech was recorded by Thucydides, the historian who recorded the story of the 27 year war. Warfare is a crucible. There’s plague and starvation by siege. The suffering, the tragic dimension does not efface the value of individual lives given in dedication to the well being of society, to wives, brothers, sisters, children, the living who remain. According to Pericles an honorable death is a testimony that burns with durable light.
These considerations moved me because American society is positioned such a far distance from this state of excellence.
We Americans are, – a “short run” focused people.
Moreover, here in America, the individual is disposable…
