Michael Totten recalls an interesting quote during his recent trip to Bosnia.
I take seriously the following observation written by Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
shortly before the outbreak of World War II: “English persons…of
humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the
Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being
by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the
horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all
came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as
suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the
massacrer.”
This is a nice example of belief systems coloring perception that is a relevant today as it was 100 years ago. Read the whole thing. The title of this entry links to the article.
I take seriously the following observation written by Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
shortly before the outbreak of World War II: “English persons…of
humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the
Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being
by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the
horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all
came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as
suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the
massacrer.”
This is a nice example of belief systems coloring perception that is a relevant today as it was 100 years ago. Read the whole thing. The title of this entry links to the article.
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