 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
An individual cannot, without becoming sterile, confine his purview to his own life, nor even to his own country or his own age. Each of us is part of a long chain from our remote animal ancestry into an unforeseeable future. The human race has emerged slowly from the condition of a rare and miserable hunted animal, but if we suppose that it has no further journey to make, that there are no greater perfections to be achieved in the future, and that we are approaching a dead-end, something deeply instinctive and immeasurably important will wither and die.... It is for this reason that in judging of a country or a period I should attach importance, not only to the day-by-day happiness of the individuals concerned, but to its contribution to civilization, ...
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, (1954), chapter 11：
More info.: https://russell-j.com/cool/47T-1110.htm
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There are quite a few fundamentalist Christian people living in the southern United States who do not believe in evolution. Even those of us who do believe in evolution rarely think back to the time when apes and monkeys, the ancestors of mankind, were preyed upon by lions and other fierce beasts.
Humanity has progressed by thinking more about the well-being of the world, rather than focusing on our own country. In recent years, however, it seems that ‘home-country first’ is beginning to resurface again, as evidenced by Trump's ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ catchphrases. But do not be fooled by the superficial meaning of the term. Small countries advocating ‘Our Own Country First’ rarely have a negative impact on the world, while the ‘Our Own Country First’ of big countries is nothing more than the imposition of big country ‘egos’ on non-big countries.