Columns

MY COMMONPLACE BOOK (a diary of excerpts copied from printed books, with comments added by the reader.)

By Dorothy Bryant
Friday February 03, 2012 - 11:34:00 AM

I give myself credit for having seen clearly in a number of important situations, in itself not so difficult . . . it is less a question of an exalted or shrewd intelligence than of good sense, goodwill, and a certain kind of courage to rise above the pressures of one’s environment . . . A French essayist has said, ”What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.” You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable clichés.Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Victor Serge (1890-1947)  

Serge took serious risks, in dangerous times and places. He paid a high price for speaking out and rejecting fashionable political clichés. He was imprisoned, tortured, ostracized: threatened by both the right wing and the left. 

Courageous people like him, directly or indirectly, make it possible for us to speak freely, honestly, and safely. We owe it to such heroes, wherever and whenever they lived, and we owe it to ourselves, to see through lies and speak the truth regardless of the comparatively feeble pressures of our environment. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Send the Berkeley Daily Planet a page from your own Commonplace Book)