Post Tagged 'vaclav havel'

March 10, 2023

Fear and the Feeble Foundations of Ideology

I recently read the monumental essay “The Power of the Powerless” (1978) by Soviet dissident Václav Havel and immediately began to draw parallels between how he describes socialist oppression and what I understand of diabolical oppression. Continue Reading...

December 19, 2011

Vaclav Havel and the ‘Notion of Responsibility’

Václav Havel, playwright, anti-Communist dissident and former president of the Czech Republic, died yesterday at the age of 75. There has been an outpouring of tributes to the great man today. Continue Reading...

November 05, 2008

Hearts and Minds of the Governed

If a handful of friends and I were able to bang our heads against the wall for years by speaking the truth about Communist totalitarianism while surrounded by an ocean of apathy, there is no reason why I shouldn’t go on banging my head against the wall by speaking ad nauseam, despite the condescending smiles, about responsibility and morality in the face of our present social marasmus. Continue Reading...

October 01, 2007

Two Perspectives on Climate Change

These two brief essays provide a good juxtaposition of two perspectives that view immediate and mandated action to reduce carbon emissions as either morally obligatory or imprudent. For the former, see Vaclav Havel’s, “Our Moral Footprint,” which states rhetorically, “It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Continue Reading...