ABSTRACT
Introduction “Consciousness precedes being.”1 Vaclav Havel spoke these words on the floor of the United States Senate in 1990. At the time, Havel was the president of Czechoslovakia, but before the Cold War ended, he had been a dissident, political prisoner, and playwright. Havel was speaking about how the economic philosophy of Communism failed because material realities are not the fundamental factor in the movement of history. Rather, consciousness-human awareness, thought, and spirit-is the fundamental factor that defines history.2 Havel laid the blame for Marxist oppression not just on abusive dictators, but also on the people who, through their own passivity, allowed it to happen.
