Thursday, July 13, 2017

Lessons from ON TYRANNY - INCO Book Club


Lessons from ON TYRANNY – INCO Book Club
Members of the INCO Book Club read a fascinating new book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” by Timothy Snyder, at their first meeting on July 10. They identified these lessons as most significant or timely:
·      3. Beware the one-party state.  Hitler never had a majority vote, but he co-opted other small parties to establish a one-party State.  We’re vulnerable now with neither of our major parties being highly regarded.
·      10. Believe in truth.  To abandon truth is to abandon freedom.  This is “magical thinking.”  Also “post-truth is pre-fascism.”
·      13. Practice corporeal politics.  Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places and among groups that were not previously your friends.  March!  Demonstrate!
·      18. Be calm when the unthinkable happens.  Tyranny is fear management.  They use these events to consolidate power.  Don’t fall for it even if you’re fearful and it’s difficult.
·      19. Be a patriot.  The president is a nationalist, not a patriot.  He encourages us to be our worse, then calls us the best.  A nationalist has no universal ethics, values or aesthetic.  A patriot wants the nation to live up to its ideals and be our best selves.

The book club’s next book is “The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology” by Erich Fromm.  Although this book was published in 1968 – nearly 50 years ago - it reads as if it were just published! 

For information about the next meeting – Thursday, August 24, at 6:30 pm – and for getting a copy of the book, contact Carolyn Eady at cebeady@outlook.com.