Open Minds

I was reading one of my daily financial blogs and I read this quote. It’s been over a year since I read War and Peace, but the style of writing and logic was unmistakably Tolstoy. I recognized the author even before looking for the source at the bottom.

“With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’ view of their situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger approaching.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant.”

Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace

This was written on a financial blog, so the implication was that there is a great financial danger approaching, and people are acting frivolously. I think he is right. I think that it’s the job of our leaders to listen to the first voice, while it’s perfectly reasonable for the average citizen to listen to the second. Instead, too many of our leaders are falling prey to the latter, and the ones hearing the former are too few in number and influence, and are shouted down by the latter.