Authur Koestler wrote:
"There is now an answer to every question, doubts and conflicts are a matter of the tortured past --- a past already remote, when one had lived in dismal ignorance in the tasteless, colorless world of those who don't know. Nothing henceforth can disturb the convert's inner peace and serenity --- except the occasional fear of losing faith again, losing thereby what alone makes life worth living, and falling back into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. This may explain how Communists, with eyes to see and brains to think with, can still act in subjective bona fides, anno Domini 1949. At all times and in all creeds, only a minority has been capable of courting excommunication and committing emotional hara-kiri in the name of an abstract truth."
1. What does Koestler mean with "where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth?"
2. What does the blue sentence mean?
-- act in subjective bona fides = act sincerely and honestly (??)
-- "anno Domini 1949" = 1949 (?)
Please help!
Thank you
Cadzao