Modern mankind splits between belief in omnipotence and experienced powerlessness

Evidence

Kant’s answer provides release from one of the two oppressions which threaten modern man, nature and history. Both appear to stifle the free, self-possessed personality: the former, because its mechanicism subjects the soul to the same blind forces as the falling stone and the sprouting stalk; the latter, because it makes of the soul a mere point of intersection of social threads spinning through history and reduces its whole creativity to a matter of administering the inheritance of the race. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The past cannot be affected by what we do, and therefore, if truth is determined by what has happened, it is independent of present or future volitions; it represents, in logical form, the limitations on human power. But if truth, or rather ‘warranted assertability’, depends upon the future, then, in so far as it is in our power to alter the future, it is in our power to alter what should be asserted. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2937 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Totalitarian elites’ moral cynicism rests on belief in omnipotence; Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163; Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction (+2 more)

Related

• Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction (similarity 0.88)
• Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self (similarity 0.84)
• Mechanical determinism makes people believe history moves without them. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self #exemplifies (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163
• Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction #exemplifies (0.75)
• Truth about the past limits human power, future-dependent truth expands it #expands (0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2937