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On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn#47

SpiritualityCrisisPassion

About this quote

What does it mean?
Solzhenitsyn claims humanity lost a spiritual restraint on passions and replaced it with reliance on reforms and material interests.
In plain terms
We traded our spiritual core for political fixes and commercial gain.
What can you take from it?
Spiritual health is more vital than political or commercial success.

Where it applies

  • philosophical reflection
  • societal analysis
  • ethical discussion

Putting it to work

  • prioritize spiritual values
  • critique materialism

Questions to consider

  • Where have you seen spirituality replaced by commerce?
  • Can reforms fix spiritual emptiness?

Another view

It simplifies complex historical changes into a single spiritual loss.

More from Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  1. Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could no…

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  2. If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently mus…

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  3. Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden,…

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