We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how governments dehumanize their enemies to justify their actions against them.
Bertolt Brecht critiques the moral implications of warfare, suggesting that governments label their adversaries as 'barbarians' to rationalize their ruthless behaviors. The essence of the quote lies in the observation that this desire to portray the enemy as inferior aligns with the governments' own barbaric actions, which reveals the contradictions in how power operates and justifies violence.
In practice
A speech discussing the ethical implications of warfare.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.
To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.
The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.
Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex.
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
Will is wish, and liberty is power.
Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?" I asked my medicine man the next day...So what can we do about the craziness of the world?" Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace.
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