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The Communists who imagined a utopian Russia destroyed the terribly flawed Czarist society but produced a far worse place and gave us the gulag. The Germans who compared the flawed democracy of Weimar Germany to images of a Great Reich destroyed that imperfect democracy and gave the world Auschwitz. In the Middle East today, some religious people who compare their flawed societies to images of a religious utopia governed by God and their religion's laws support the creation of religious totalitarian states. Americans who compare their society, one of the most just in human history, to a society free of all competition, racism, sexism, and any other real or imagined flaw—or to an imagined idyllic past—often weaken that society by condemning and reforming it excessively and unjustly
On the other hand, without any images of a better society, we would have little reason to hope for a better world, and we would have little guidance in what to strive for. But images are like fire and need to be handled accordingly.Share
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