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.
It felt to me like America was always wanting to resolve things too quickly, without thinking through what the costs and consequences would be and how that affects an individual living in that world. Then as I grew up and went about my life, I think I just got more and more interested in that gray area where things are not so easily quantified.
The Kingdom of God is Within You.
Like almost everyone else in America, I grew up believing the myth of the objective scientist. Fortunately I was raised on the edges of two very distinct cultures, western European and American Indian.
This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . .
When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.
The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.