April 25 Lecture.. Bridging Culture with politics

In war, when shells fly past our bodies at high speeds, we sense clearly that no level of intelligence, virtue, or fortitude is strong enough to deflect them, not even by a hair. To the extent this threat increases, doubt concerning the validity of our values forces itself upon us.

but it has also produced a long series of practical measures typical for the human spirit of the past century, such as–to name just a few–the abolition of torture and the slave trade, the discovery of electricity, vaccination against measles,

Born in full enjoyment of all these blessings now taken for granted, it seems to us as if in truth rather little has changed

Since Liberalism fades out and totalitarianism is the new progress.
War and evil is what affords us the pleasures.
This concept then means from these previous  passages that we must see things accordingly.

I see these group of statements to be hinting that we do not associate pleasure with pain.  Pain is felt at the moment by the indvidual fighting to build our power to choose our pleasures.. But to associate pain with pleasure is not possible. We create values in reflection of pleasure.  We do not associate pleasure with pain.
But we want be sure that we do not misunderstand what pleasure means.  There are sacrifices.  However, the sacrifices can have consequences.  We may be made to think that we can come to expect peace.  However, in order to maintain peace, there is pain.   Pain can be the harmful actions that we overlook to procure values and pleasures.  We have to watch our back at all times. We enjoy pleasure, but with a doubt that nothing is permanent.  We also experience pleasure it as a uniform society. But politics will deal with the pains to organize pleasures of life  through technology  We want freedom and pleasures, but we have to make sacrifices of evil actions to make it possible. If we share things, we may have to deal with a consequence of how we use or develop with our pleasures of life. Nothing is permanent. Progress is made through control, not by enjoying pleasure