> Feel-good rhetoric aside, your impact as an individual is limited and your defenses are fragile. Genuine question - you are from the west, am I correct? It s

> Feel-good rhetoric aside, your impact as an individual is limited and your defenses are fragile. Genuine question - you are from the west, am I correct? It seems to me (just my feelings, no hard evidence) that there is something that people from the west often miss. They construct their arguments about this topic as if only the external result of actions mattered. As if personal integrity did not have any intrinsic value. As if the point of "the courage to defend even his own soul" was to change something about the system and not just what it literally says. When you say "your impact as an individual is limited", it is only true if you are talking about you impact on society. Your impact on yourself is huge. People who do not live "in truth" (whatever that means) know that about themselves. They might rationalize it, but deep down they know. You might frame it in psychological terms and talk about self-esteem, repressing stuff, loosing connection to your own emotions... my point is that the price people pay for not behaving in congruence with their true self might be high. I feel this is why it is important to have the courage to defend your soul - because you need to defend your soul to live well (and by living well I mean "at peace with yourself", not external circumstances - those might actually get really shitty if you intend to live at peace with yourself in a totalitarian regime). Communism was horrible not just because the oppressors did bad things to the oppressed. It was also because many people, who would otherwise lived as decent human beings, compromised one way or the other, and they still have to live with themselves. There are still many people with crushed souls around here. EDIT: I do not want this to sound like unsolicited mentoring from someone who knows better - I am thinking about my own integrity and courage with high level of doubt.