J. M. Coetzee Quotes
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.
Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians. Secker & Warburg, 1980, p. 143.
This failing of human nature occurs very frequently in politics. Global Warming was an example, There were many intelligent and skilled politicians who just would not accept the reality that man’s activities on Earth were having an effect on the climate. If they did accept that truth, then the implications would have been profound and much legislation would be required which would limit the freedom of people and companies to do many things. Industries would have to have additional regulations. Government spending would be needed to protect many cities by building up infrastructure. For the Liberal, none of these steps was a major problem. But to a Conservative, all the steps that would have to be taken, were anathema to his/her ideological beliefs. So it would take much more courage for a Conservative to accept the truth of Global Warming, than for a Liberal. Few Conservatives had that courage and there was a political schism over a scientific reality that neither Liberals or Conservatives could understand. The fact that 98 percent of all the scientists who deal with climate, explained that Global Warming was a reality, did not matter to the Conservatives. There are many examples where Liberals would not accept realistic truth for a long time, like the fact that Russia had become a totalitarian dictatorship. And then there have been many issues where virtually all the politicians would not accept truth. An example was the pre WWII rise of Hitler and Fascism. Most American politicians would not accept the fact that eventually we would have to war against Fascism, and there were almost no politicians who would support spending more taxpayer money to build up the military. It took Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War on America to make the politicians face reality.
John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Prize (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.
