 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
The man who has a different theology feels strange, and whatever is strange must be dangerous. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, part II: The Conflict of Passions, chapter ２: Politically important desires, n.12
More info.：https://russell-j.com/cool/47T-2_0214.htm
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Groups that believe in different ideologies (beliefs), be they political beliefs, religions or anything else, tend to quarrel with each other. We tend to believe that the ideology we believe in is the truth, but the reality is that if you are born and raised in a different country or region, you may think that a different ideology is the truth.
By the way, the sentence ‘the man who has a different theology feels strange, and whatever is strange must be dangerous.’ could be misread, so I interacted with ChatGPT.
[Me: ‘What is the subject of feels in “the man who has a different theology feels strange”? Since it translates as ‘felt’ and not ‘feels’, does that mean ‘the man’ is the object and the subject is ‘we’?
ChatGPT: The word ‘feels’ does not have the active meaning of ‘feels odd’, but rather the nuance of ‘felt odd’ or ‘is seen as odd by those around him’.
Russell's phrasing implies that the person in question is so ‘made to feel’, that he is influenced by the perspectives of those around him.
Me: Please rewrite the sentence, supplementing the wording.
ChatGPT: If the sentence is supplemented, the meaning is as follows:
‘the man who has a different theology is felt to be strange by many people’
‘whatever is strange is also perceived as dangerous by them’.
I: When I look in the English-Japanese dictionary, I find ‘feel’ as the meaning of ‘feel’, but I don't find any examples or meanings of ‘felt’. Why is this?
ChatGPT: The English-Japanese dictionary generally translates ‘feel’ as ‘sense’, but the English word ‘feel’ can have a passive nuance of ‘sensed’, depending on the context. This is a translation adjustment arising from the difference in passive expressions between Japanese and English.
The English word ‘feel’ not only expresses how the subject ‘feels’, but may also indicate how others feel or think of them. For example, in English, translating the sentence ‘ He feels strange’ as it is, ‘He feels strange’, does not convey the meaning well, while ‘ He feels strange [from others] ’ can reflect how he is seen by those around him].
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