It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates how tyrants manipulate their subjects into obedience and worship.
Etienne De La Boetie highlights the tactics employed by tyrants to consolidate power. They not only enforce obedience but seek to instill a sense of devotion among their people, fostering an environment where the citizens adore their oppressors rather than resist them. This dynamic serves to strengthen the tyrant's control, as blind adoration minimizes dissent and reinforces authority.
In practice
In a speech about government control, one might say, 'As Etienne De La Boetie pointed out, tyrants create a culture of adoration to maintain their regime.'
It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.
If you allow a political catchword to go on and grow, you will awaken some day to find it standing over you, arbiter of your destiny, against which you are powerless.
Goodness is to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but to be gracious and kindly and forgiving.
Young men's minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks both before and after.
Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.
Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.
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