Book: Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Conversation between Rubashov and No.402 :
"OUR IDEAS OF HONOUR DIFFER."
"HONOUR IS TO LIVE AND DIE FOR ONE'S BELIEVE."
"HONOUR IS TO BE USEFUL WITHOUT VANITY".
"HONOUR IS DECENCY--NOT USEFULNESS."
"WHAT IS DECENCY? WE HAVE REPLACED DECENCY BY REASON."

"Do you really believe the people are still behind you? It bears you, dumb and resigned, as it bears others in other countries, but there is no response in its depths. The masses have become deaf and dumb again, the great silent x of history, indifferent as the sea carrying the ships. Every passing light is reflected on its surface, but underneath is darkness and silence. A long time ago we stirred up the depths, but that is over. In other words, in those days we made history; now you make politics.... A mathematician once said that algebra was the science for lazy people--one does not work out x, but operates with it as if one knew it. In our case, x stands for the anonymous masses, the people. Politics mean operating with this x without worrying about its actual nature. Making history is to recognize x for what it stands for in the equation."

"... He was puzzling over certain questions to which he would have like to find an answer before it was too late. They were rather naive questions; they concerned the meaning of suffering, or, more exactly, the difference between suffering which made sense and senseless suffering. Obviously only such suffering made sense as was inevitable; that is, as was rotted in biological fatality. On the other hand, all suffering with a social origin was accidental, hence pointless and senseless. The sole object of revolution was the abolition of senseless suffering. But it had turned out that the removal of this second kind of suffering was only possible at the price of a temporary enormous increase in the sum total of the first. So the question now ran: Was such an operation justified? Obviously it was, if one spoke in the abstract of "mankind"; but applied to "man" in the singular, the real human being of bone and flesh and blood and skin, the principle led to absurdity."

"Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pieta, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called "ecstasy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of modern psychologists had recognized this state as a fact and called it the "oceanic sense". And, indeed, one's personality dissolved as a grain of salt in the sea; but at the same time the infinite sea seemed to be contained in the grain of salt. The grain could no longer be localized in time and space. It was a state in which thought lost its direction and started to circle, like the compass needle at the magnetic pole; until finally it cut loose from its axis and travelled freely in space, like a bunch of light in the night; and until it seemed that all thoughts and all sensations, even pain and joy itself, were only the spectrum lines of the same ray of light, disintegrating in the prisma of consciousness."

-- Darkness at Noon (p.206-7) by Arthur Koestler

Darkness at Noon is another great book after Invisible Man that I have just finished. The internal politics in the Soviet book reminds me of the politics in Invisible Man. Both main characters became disillusioned with their political movement when they themselves were sacrificed. Both had to find a solution, work out a resolution, so they could come to terms with the world, to reach salvation. They both learned the confrontation between individuals and the mass. In one case, one finds individuals are invisible to the mass; in the other case one finds that the mass (and history) does not obey the ethics and morality of individuals. The only way for individuals to attain peace and salvation is through introspection, self discovery, and self realization. Only when the individual has gone to the end of the self can he realize his relation to mankind, history, and the world as a whole.

I also think about my grandfather. I wonder if he had ever come to peace with his Party and his Country before the end.

(In the news today, Milosevic died in prison before trial.)