Within the confines of this thought experiment: I wonder sometimes if anybody would have read it at all had he not committed these crimes. Obviously the gravity of his crimes overshadowed any bit of sense in what he wrote, and effectively nullifies all ability in most people to even bring reason to the words as they read them.
That being said, there is undoubted truth in some of what he said regarding the perils of modern technology and the sociological effects on society. In the beginning it was great. These inventions unified everyone and made knowledge available, but then we got so far ahead of ourselves, that knowledge is now buried upon layer and layer of neon colored saccharine trash.
Many people also have trouble separating ideas from individuals. Ideas are imagination. They aren’t real until they are actualized. They can be beautiful or they can be toxic.
Ideas are one thing, but the transmission of them is another. The moment an idea is uttered is the moment that its meaning is jeopardized. Interpretation is the demise of the idea.
People have ruthlessly killed each other for millennia because they believe in the same idea but could not agree on the same word to describe it. A tragedy, not one that the historians would tell you.
> Ideas are imagination. They aren’t real until they are actualized.
> Ideas are one thing, but the transmission of them is another. The moment an idea is uttered is the moment that its meaning is jeopardized. Interpretation is the demise of the idea.
This is Platonic philosophy. The dichotomy between the world of ideas where ideals and perfection is the default and the material world where everything is a corrupted version of an idea.