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THE COLLECTIVE
T H E N AT U R E O F E X I S T E N C E
O U R N E E D T O U N D E R S TA N D I T
“There are people like tigers, who thirst for blood to lick. Who-
ever has once experienced this power, this unlimited mastery
over the body, blood, and spirit of another human being, his
brother according to the law of Christ; whoever has experi-
enced this control and this complete freedom to degrade, in the
most humiliating fashion, another creature made in God’s im-
age, will quite unconsciously lose control of his own feelings.
Tyranny is a habit; it is able to, and does develop finally, into a
disease. I submit that habit may coarsen and stupefy the very
best of men to the level of brutes. Blood and power make a
man drunk: callous coarseness and depravity develop in him;
the most abnormal phenomenon become accessible, and in the
end pleasurable to the mind and the senses. The human being
and the citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and a return to hu-
man dignity, to repentance, to regeneration becomes practically
impossible for him.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) –The House of the Dead