Quote Originally Posted by Boleslav View Post
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.
Good Lord! Now I very much regret putting this quote at the start of my thread. I don't think De Gaulle himself meant for this to be taken quite so litterally, and was just describing a fondamental tension in humanity's make-up here...

At any rate, this was meant as an introduction to a theme. On which I would very much like your opinion Bole...