1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
“Oh wow, that was an exciting trip. I feel like I've just spent the last few weeks driving at high speed through the desert in an unsuitable vehicle.
I got lost a few times, misplaced my map, ran out of water and my vehicle broke down almost every day; sometimes I feared that I'd never find my way out of the wilderness (or to the end of the chapter). There were some frightening experiences, a bumpy ride (I feel mentally beaten up) and occasional views of the big picture (more beautiful, breathtaking, scary and profound than I had imagined).
Albert Camus was very worried by the course of Russian Communism when he wrote this book in 1951. Many Western thinkers of the day seemed to be instinctively drawn to communism and the contemporary Russian experience.
Many overlooked the “Terror” and mentally excused the Russian elites authoritarian repression and murder of it's own citizenry.
Camus worked from first principles trying to understand what was so obviously immoral and why the Revolution was so murderous.
We are taken on a tour of Rebellion and Revolution... the thoughts, mental constructs, “principles” and history. We meet key players and thinkers from history. We visit historical revolutions and mull over their aftermaths, comparing and contrasting and trying to comprehend why they comprehensively loose their way and end up oppressing the very people that give them their only legitimacy.
This was not an easy read for me, if I was to try to properly follow Camus' reasoning I had to take side trips to other books and the internet to get a handle on characters and concepts. Camus wrote this at a pretty high level and directed it at the high flying intellectuals of the day, intellectual shorthand that Camus threw onto the page in a sentence took me hours (or days in some cases) to understand.
What did I get from this experience?
Well, it boils down to something that is a great philosophy for life.
If you believe anything so strongly that you want to make others understand, then you will end up oppressing, coercing and murdering. If you believe anything founded on unshakeable principles and follow it to its logical conclusion, then you will end up oppressing, coercing and murdering.
Don't force your world view on others, live morally, don't hurt others, be strong in defence of the weak, if you are strong be gentle, if you are gentle be strong. If it feels wrong then it probably is.
I found this a difficult but worthwhile book. Your mileage may differ.”