The Economist - "A severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress"

This newspaper always makes me feel happy in such a way in which philosophers define happiness. The obituary in the latest copy on Ta Mok, "the surviving leader of the Khmers Rouges", who died on 21st July, is very interesting. Ta Mok commented on his comrade Pol Pot that he had fallen like "a ripe papaya" and was now no more than "cow shit". In fact, Ta Mok added, Pol Pot was less than that. Cow shit was useful.

Perhaps now with the same peasant's brutality, one may say to Ta Mok, "ditto".

I take the liberty to say, very humbly, that Ta Mok's usefulness does not lie in the instrumentality as cow shit, which provides the necessary nutrients to plants. It reminds us that we have to be intelligent and brave in order to not let the evil take charge of our lives, regardless of whether the evil is as necessary in essence to make humans more enlightened as cow shit to make plants more robust.