Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future-with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals-have a worse record to show in these sciences than in almost any scientific endeavor.
Interpretation
Predicting the future is inherently uncertain, and reliance on various methods often yields poor results.
Hannah Arendt's quote highlights humanity's constant quest to foresee the future through various means such as technology, astrology, or ancient practices. She critiques this pursuit by suggesting that despite our advanced tools and methodologies, our accuracy in predicting future events remains significantly lower than in traditional scientific fields, emphasizing the complexities and uncertainties of human existence.
In practice
During a seminar on decision making, illustrating the uncertainty of predictions with this quote can provoke deep discussions.
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
It is the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.
Where it gets weird is that nowadays there are millions of people on this earth who call themselves followers of Jesus, but their lives look nothing like His, and they're not obeying the things that He called them to do.
To advance the Gospel by political lobbying, by any form of pragmatism, shallow Gospel entertainment, emotional manipulation, acceptance of sin and sinners, is to cross over into the devil's work.
In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head
Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger.
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