Get the latest tech news
A World Split Apart (1978)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address was the most controversial and commented-upon public speech he delivered during his exile in the West, for he critiqued the spiritual crisis of both East and West.
How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block successful development. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.
Or read this on Hacker News
