"Temptation to behave is terrible"
About this Quote
The line startles because it treats behave not as a virtue but as a seduction. To behave is to comply, to slip into the grooves society has laid down, to keep quiet and carry on. Calling that temptation terrible names the real danger: conformity feels safe, reasonable, even noble, and precisely for that reason it lures people away from hard choices and necessary conflicts. Brecht understood how comfort and respectability can neutralize dissent more efficiently than brute force.
His theater and politics revolve around exposing the costs of obedience in capitalist and authoritarian systems. The German word behind behave might be brav or artig, words that suggest being well-behaved, dutiful, respectable. Brecht consistently distrusted those energies because they produce citizens who will accept exploitation as order and injustice as normal. In The Good Person of Szechwan, Shen Te cannot survive by being good in the conventional sense; she must create a mask that violates propriety to protect herself and others. In The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and his parables of fascism, the bourgeois urge to keep business running and avoid trouble clears a path for tyranny. The temptation to behave becomes the temptation to look away.
Even his staging aims to break the audience of behaving. Epic theater refuses sentimental immersion so that viewers do not sit obediently and feel, but step back and judge, question, and act. Politeness, decorum, and narrative comfort are the mechanisms by which people become spectators of their own history.
The aphorism slices through moral platitudes. Bad behavior is not the point; lucid disobedience is. When rules preserve predation, when etiquette silences the exploited, when tradition shields violence, the pull to be proper is indeed terrible. It keeps the world as it is. Brecht urges a different discipline: to resist the sweet ease of obedience, to think against habit, and to behave otherwise.
His theater and politics revolve around exposing the costs of obedience in capitalist and authoritarian systems. The German word behind behave might be brav or artig, words that suggest being well-behaved, dutiful, respectable. Brecht consistently distrusted those energies because they produce citizens who will accept exploitation as order and injustice as normal. In The Good Person of Szechwan, Shen Te cannot survive by being good in the conventional sense; she must create a mask that violates propriety to protect herself and others. In The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and his parables of fascism, the bourgeois urge to keep business running and avoid trouble clears a path for tyranny. The temptation to behave becomes the temptation to look away.
Even his staging aims to break the audience of behaving. Epic theater refuses sentimental immersion so that viewers do not sit obediently and feel, but step back and judge, question, and act. Politeness, decorum, and narrative comfort are the mechanisms by which people become spectators of their own history.
The aphorism slices through moral platitudes. Bad behavior is not the point; lucid disobedience is. When rules preserve predation, when etiquette silences the exploited, when tradition shields violence, the pull to be proper is indeed terrible. It keeps the world as it is. Brecht urges a different discipline: to resist the sweet ease of obedience, to think against habit, and to behave otherwise.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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