Reading 4

“Travelling one day—my brother the sieur de la Brousse and I—during our civil wars, we met a gentleman of good appearance. He was of the opposing party, but I knew nothing of it, for he pretended otherwise; and the worst of these wars is that the cards are so shuffled that your enemy is distinguished from yourself by no apparent mark either of language or of bearing, and has been brought up in the same laws and customs and the same atmosphere, so that it is hard to avoid confusion and disorder.”

- Michel de Montaigne, “Of Conscience,” The Complete Essays of Montaigne (translated by Donald M. Frame, 1943)

“It is relatively easy to promote good and to fight evil when evil and good are arranged against one another in two clear lines, and when those on the other side are our unquestioned enemies, those on our side our trusted allies. What, however, if we must ask, each time in every situation, where is the friend and where the enemy?”

- Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (1964)