The joy of service, a friendly word from Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Douglas, and Hitler

Let us, you and I, read these quotes and just think about them.

Turn them over in our minds, taste them, not taking them for granted, but really, really, considering what the authors were trying to communicate to you, and I, what their backgrounds were, and what their concerns were.

We see how clear things become to us when we look at a word’s definition and not the feelings we are used to feeling when we hear them. Our feelings, what a word means to us because of our history, our upbringing, our parents, crisis, fears, tragedies, hopes, personal victories, and schooling, are subjective and unique.

But the word existed long before we were born, will exist long after we are dust, and has specific meanings that can tell us a lot, a lot.

But only if we are open to them, and only if we listen, instead of pushing ourselves on it.

Just listen to words, what they whisper to you, what they shout to you. Don’t be pushy and rude, let the words speak for themselves and you may be delighted what they say.

“Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges” — George Orwell

“It is almost a joke now in the Western world, in the 20th century, to use words like ‘good and ‘evil’. They have become almost old fashioned concepts, but they are very real and genuine concepts. These are concepts from a sphere which is higher than us. And instead of getting involved in base, petty, short-sighted political calculations and games. We have to recognize that the concentration of world Evil and the tremendous force of hatred is there and it’s flowing from there throughout the world. And we have to stand up against it and not hasten to give to it, give to it, give to it, every-thing that it wants to swallow.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglas

“The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated over and over.” –Adolph Hitler

Oh, and another word from Huxley:

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers. The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.— Aldus Huxley

What is Servitude? The word was first coined 1471. Meaning the condition of being enslaved. Slavery or bondage of any kind. Also compulsory service of any kind. From Middle French servitude, from Late Latin servitudo “slavery,” from Latin servus “a slave.” Synonyms include serfdom, and thralldom (yes, a serf is a slave. Those who argue otherwise have not understood the matter.)

What is Service? A word first coined 1100. From Old French servise, from Latin servitium “slavery, servitude,” from Latin servus “a slave” ‘Meaning “act of serving” is attested from 1230.”

When we think hard about phrases like “a world of service”, a “service sector”, “national service”, a “service economy” we notice certain things.

What is national service?. It is service to the nation, service to the nation-state, service to the state. What is the State? A word first coined in 1538. “the political organization of a country, supreme civil power, government..”

Ah my friend, see what the words whisper and shout, when we simply sit down, and let them speak, and are present, and open to them?

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