Quote Originally Posted by Wildor View Post
"Man, 'limited by his nature' is 'infinite in his desires'. The world is thus full of opposing forces. Of course, human wisdom has often succeeded in preventing these rivalries from degenerating into murderous conflicts. But the competition of efforts is the condition of life... In the last analysis and as always, it is only in equilibrium that the world will find peace."


Charles De Gaulle
I'm not sure I believe that man is "limited by his nature" or "infinite in his desires". The former quote is obviously the realist philosophy, and as I've argued with Conrad before, for this to make sense one has to accept that the masses are some kind of apocalyptic disaster zone, guilty of crimes large and small, from being selfish and cruel all the way up to not knowing what fork is used for the fish course. The latter quote is obviously De Gaulle's characterization of a Liberal Internationalist position. That's very much the diplomatic approach I prefer (I'm a utopian) but again, I'm just not sure I buy into the assertion here. I don't think that people are "infinite in their desires", I think that an ability to imagine is impacted and reduced by many factors, such as education, literacy, internet access, health, diet, etc. I think people like to imagine a perfect world, but what people actually want is much more grounded in the practicality of their everyday experience. "World peace sounds nice, but when are you going to finish building that new elementary school?"

In other words, I am more optimistic about the masses than De Gaulle was, and I am less confident in people's ability to imagine than De Gaulle was. He identifies a tension that I don't accept necessarily exists.