Orwell explored the concept, now it’s recognizable in our current march to a one world view.
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Regardless of my take on the taqiyya part, I think there’s something important we might (unfortunately) need to learn from this ketman idea. I saw firsthand a little bit of how people lived in the Soviet Union not long before its collapse. If Mr. Globaloney does get his way, one way to survive might be to emulate those who survived under Soviet tyranny. It’s a big mental shift for anyone born in the West, especially in the USSA. Reading Solzhenitsyn, for example, is a good start.
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Milosz’s Ketman provides a psychological vocabulary for the condition I have been trying to describe using Spengler Morphology of History.
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Does it not shrivel and steal from the soul. Like living a lie it takes massive amounts more energy than living authentically. Maybe my age speaking though, I doubt I’d have the energy or the inclination.
Milosz acknowledges the killing of the soul living under tyrannical conditions in himself, his fellow artistic friends and those he met. He lived in Poland as long as he could tolerate what he saw, even becoming a diplomat, but finally left in 1951 when it became apparent the government considered him a threat to their regime, since he refused to join the Communist party. With the help of a Catholic nun he was able to get to Paris. Whether she was a real nun or not he does not disclose. His book, The Captive Mind, was published in 1953. The USA denied him asylum in 1951 due to political pressure from Polish citizens who considered him a communist, though his wife and children were in DC. It was during the McCarthy communist craze.
France granted him asylum. Finally in 1960 the University of California-Berkeley offered him a position. He was considered one of world’s best poets during his lifetime.
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It sure can crush your soul if you let it, and it’s hard not to let it. When the alternative is torture, death, or similar horrors, it might be better to do as the average Soviet citizen did – as long as you refuse to be one of the killers, torturers, snitches, etc.