Simon Blackburn

One of the series of satires etched by the Spanish painter Goya is entitled "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters". Goya believed that many of the follies of mankind resulted from the "sleep of reason".

Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. We are typically ready to believe that our ways, our beliefs, our religion, our politics are better than theirs, or that our God-given rights trump theirs or that our interests require defensive or pre-emptive strikes against them. In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other.

the idea being that only when we can see ourselves properly can we obtain control over the direction in which we would wish to move. It is only when we can see our situation steadily and see it whole that we can start to think what to do about it.