thoughts of the day 1908

Again, from Barbusse, the French writer, and "Hell" (1908)

--(Medical doctors discussing how similar all men are, as seen from their insides, to which one conludes:) "Men are mostly similar by their vile pretension to be dissimilar and enemies"

--What can we do to get out of slaughter and misery if not hope for it?
-- we can actually WANT it!

--The root cause of all human evil is our subservience to the past, which prevents us from redoing everything or anything the right way, based upon reason and moral sense. The spirit of tradition infects mankind, and its two atrocious manifestations are property and the notion of a motherland."

Note: I assumed he wrote this after World War I (especially because of hisfamous "Fire" masterpiece, journal of a WWI squadron, which shocked the public for its realism); this would seem to be a typical tirade for late WWI, or 1920, and with good old-fashioned idealistic communist overtones. But he wrote this, with striking clairvoyance, the decade before WWI.....

That was the thought of the day...