To The Last We Have Learned Nothing. In All Of Us, Deep Down, There Seems To Be Something Granite And Unteachable. No One Truly Believes, Despite The Hysteria In The Streets That The World Of Tranquil Certainties We Were Born Into Is About To Be Extinguished.

-J. M. Coetzee

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To The Last We Have Learned Nothing.

J. M. Coetzee

To The Last We Have Learned Nothing. In All Of Us, Deep Down, There Seems To Be Something Granite And Unteachable. No One Truly Believes, Despite The Hysteria In The Streets That The World Of Tranquil Certainties We Were Born Into Is About To Be Extinguished.

Topic

Believe

Hysteria

World

His Mind Has Become A Refuge For Old Thoughts, Idle, Indigent, With Nowhere Else To Go. He Ought To Chase Them Out, Sweep The Premises Clean. But He Does Not Care To Do So, Or Does Not Care Enough"(72).

Mind

Doe

Care

And Anyway, I Suspect He Secretly Liked It When A Woman Was Cold And Distant

Cold

Suspects

There Seemed Nothing To Do But Live.

Unimaginable Perhaps; But The Unimaginable Is There To Be Imagined.

Unimaginable

Scapegoating Worked In Practice While It Still Had Religious Powers Behind It. You Loaded The Sins Of The City On To The Goat’s Back And Drove It Out, And The City Was Cleansed. It Worked Because Everyone Knew How To Read The Ritual, Including The Gods. Then The Gods Died, And All Of A Sudden You Had To Cleanse The City Without Divine Help. Real Actions Were Demanded Instead Of Symbolism The Censor Was Born, In The Roman Sense. Watchfulness Became The Watchword: The Watchfulness Of All Over All. Purgation Was Replaced By The Purge.

Religious

Real

Practice