Saturday, June 03, 2006

Global warming and the madness of crowds

Tolstoy:
"At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude, a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second." (War and Peace, Book X Chapter XVII).

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