Ideals are inevitably embodied in institutions made up of people. But since people are flawed institutions consequently betray our trust in them.
The problem every man faces is how to maintain faith in a world full of betrayal. The dilemma can be avoided by denial but only temporarily. Unless it is eventually faced and solved it will lead to terminal cynicism where the only thing left to optimize is what you will sell out for.
Since nothing in the lying institutional world can be accounted fully trustworthy the only semi-solid footing left is culture. It may not be much but it is what’s left. In the end people are loyal, perhaps irrationally to their friends, the memories of childhood and of home.
‘One good memory ‘ wrote Dostoevsky, ‘can save you all your days’. What preserves us through the trauma of betrayal is not the rational but the irrational. In the end neither love nor salvation is a matter of calculation but of choice.