I think the message here is to be reasonable and don't assume you can just redefine things. But sometimes definitions need to be expanded or new ones created...we shouldn't forget that.
Murder and slavery are ultimate crimes against universality. There's a lot of smaller crimes where one walks the path toward making another a slave or murdering another without actually doing it. These are also crimes against universality.
It's also interesting how living by scarcity value paradigms sets up the situation where the determined order drives deception and rapaciousness and it takes intent to be moral and ethical. This might be the biggest clue that life could be a test of some sort.
Written from a conservative perspective about the French Revolution. He didn't like that rationality would likely win out over tradition...anybody feel free to detail that...I haven't read the book myself. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Of course, in a system where everything is distributed and there's no other way to live, men expect a universal necessary minimum to be met. That's not even good, it's just not terrible.
I do think truths can be stated, they can be true but unprovable. Not that we should consider all claims equal, but we also should not immediately dismiss unprovable potential truths.
AI: This is the opening line of Hannah Arendt's 1970 essay On Violence, written in the immediate aftermath of the late 1960s. "The last decade" she's referring to is the 1960s specifically — she's writing right at its close, taking stock of what had just happened.
