Alexander Solzhenitsyn

After about a million attempts and the general malaise that dominates my life I have finally entered the bloggosphere or whatever you computer types call this world of posting random stuff.

I figure if half the people out there have something worthwhile to say and half do not then I probably fit somewhere in the middle and therefore should have one of these things. I hope most of my stuff on here will be philosophically, politically or intellectually stimulating but if I do something dumb or one of my friends do then I will not shy away from sharing it.

My first post will be on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and how he not only gave me the name for my blog but also for the topic of my first blog post.


If you have a few minutes check this link out.......It is his 1978 Address to Harvard's incoming first year class.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn author of such works as the Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich addressed a Harvard commencement ceremony in the late 1970's with this speech. Many expected him to praise the freedom and openness of Western society as he had spent much of his life in Soviet prison camps, forced while suffering from cancer to perform menial tasks. Instead Solzhenitsyn produced a biting criticism of the absence of courage and individual responsibility within that same society. That following only a legal structure and not a personal set of goals, morals and restraints cannot in itself form a society where freedom and greatness can exist. A statesman is not able to be truly great as if he/she wishes to attempt such a feat their every action is greatly questioned and scrutinized. Decadence, overzealous pursuit of happiness and contentment, instant gratification have become part of Western development. The demand for instantanious and continuous news and information has created within the media a need for guesswork, acceptance of rumors and information with hardly credible sources. These and many other ideas have created a something in which he believes should not be placed on a pedestal and questions the preponderance of the Western countries to attempt to spread this way of life internationally.


Pretty heavy stuff.........and while some of his beliefs are hard to swallow, such an extreme view can often be pretty effective in making one look long and hard at oneself and question what they believe. If at the end of the day that can be done well the human spirit is alive and well and those evils Solzhenitsyn spoke of perhaps could be kept at bay for a while.