The destructive forces of the century produced the world’s unity and modern human strength

Evidence

The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists’ “expansion for expansion’s sake,” the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie’s political device of “power for power’s sake,” the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 12

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The genuinely troubling claim that catastrophe and progress are inseparable in this period — evil as the price of historical awareness — is a dense, paradigm-grade thought.
• XREF: connects to: The twentieth century’s catastrophes shook faith in historical progress. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 58; Roman-world rupture produced a modern individuality no human form can express — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 841