Replies

"If someone were to ask me what is the most general symptom of this spiritual anemia, I would surely reply: indifference to both truth and falsehood. Today, propaganda proves whatever it wants to, and people more or less passively accept whatever it suggests. Of course, this indifference hides a weariness, something like a disgust with the faculty of judgment. But the faculty of judgment cannot be exercised without a certain interior pledge. Anyone who judges, pledges himself. Modern man does not pledge himself any more, because he no longer has anything to pledge. Called upon to side with truth or falsehood, good or evil, Christian man pledged his soul at the same time, that is to say he risked his salvation. Metaphysical faith was in him an inexhaustible source of energy. Modern man is still capable of judging, since he is still capable of reasoning. But his judgment doesn't function anymore than a motor functions without fuel, no part of the motor is missing, but there is no gas in the tank."

"To many people, this indifference to truth and falsehood seems more comic than tragic. I find it tragic. It implies a frightful detachment, not only of the mind but of the entire person, even of the physical part of the person. Anyone who is indifferently open to truth or falsehood is ripe for any kind of tyranny. The passion for truth goes along with the passion for liberty. It is not for nothing that freedom of thought has always been regarded as the most precious of all the freedoms, the one upon which all others depend. I am not speaking here only of the freedom to express one's thoughts. For years, millions and millions of people in the world have not only allowed their freedom of thought to be torn away by force; they have voluntarily abandoned it, and will again, as in Russia. They consider this sacrifice laudable. Or rather, it isn't any sacrifice for them, but a habit which simplifies man terribly. The killers for the totalitarian regimes are recruited from among these terribly simplified men." --"The Last Essays of Georges Bernanos" 1955