The eleventh chapter of The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace contains Albert Camus‘ 1946 essay Neither Victims nor Executioners. Camus wrote this 16-page essay as World War II had just ended, and it seemed as if the Soviet Union and the United States were dragging the planet into the horrors of a third world war. Eleven years later, he would win the Nobel prize for literature. There is so much to discuss in this essay I will being reviewing it in parts.
Camus begins the essay by naming the 20th century in relation to recent centuries. He labels the 20th century: the century of fear. Though he does not blame science directly for the atmosphere of fear, he sees the technology it invented as a tool of fear. The more recent film Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore echoes this same diagnosis in that the United States in particular has adopted a a culture of fear. Continue reading Albert Camus’ Neither Victims nor Executioners: Century of Fear