In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the tendency of individuals to conform to group thought in response to perceived threats, emphasizing blind loyalty to the state.
Randolph Bourne's quote reflects on the human instinct to seek safety and belonging in times of perceived danger, often leading to a loss of individuality and critical thinking. It warns against the dangers of nationalism and conformity, as people may become overly devoted to the state and its ideologies, viewing it as a paternal figure that demands unquestioning loyalty and collective action.
In practice
During a political rally, this quote could be used to challenge blind allegiance to the state.
We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated.
War is the Health of the State.
Age steals away all things, even the mind.
We know our lands have now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value; but we know that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone.
We live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be 'filled' with initiatives, activity, sound; often there is not even time to listen and dialogue... Let us not be afraid to be silent outside and inside ourselves, so that we are able not only to perceive God's voice, but also the voice of the person next to us, the voices of others.
You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful.
God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.
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