Something with which to start Monday (and the week) off.
I bristle at the overuse of the phrase, "they are like Nazis." Nazis are Nazis. Nothing less. Nothing more. Language is power. By implication, language of the above sort is not to be flippantly deployed.
I held that belief when folks were labeling Bush the Second as a Nazi. In the present, I double down in my objections when the New Right Tea Party GOP Conservatives and their bullies attempt to Mau Mau President Obama with like assertions.
In sum, I am carefully try to avoid any allusion to the Nazis because it is so much dynamite and teetering nitroglycerin on a two legged broken stool. Yet, I have watched this clip (and the documentary of which it is a part several times over the last few months) and remain chilled at its cautionary themes, themes which remain as warnings to us all. Thus, my wanting to share The Third Reich with all of you.
We are not islands onto ourselves. When strivers support pernicious policies that hurt their brothers and sisters of the lower classes I think of this clip. When Conservatives support torture or the breaking of the Constitution as a mere convenience to serve their ends I think of this clip. When those who are the Other, such as black conservatives, get in bed with Whiteness because "they are the special ones" immune from racism, marginalization, objectification, or the fist of Power, I think of the broad themes of this clip.
Maybe I am too much an adherent to those themes of linked fate and the collective good to be drunk on the false promises of radical Ayn Randian individualism? Hell, it could be my Blues Sensibility as a Black American which has taught me to run away, far away in fact, from such silly dystopian dreaming. Either way, the tale remains cautionary.
All of us could learn greatly from its lessons.
42 comments:
When the economy is sufficiently collapsed such that another 10% or thereabouts of food-powered, hierarchical make-work "positions" go unfunded, then a demographic critical mass will have been reached sufficient to sustain domestic/internal collective killer-ape politics.
You better hope that WW-III has broken out in earnest by then, or, that the Amerireich has a place at its table for the devoutly materialist/militarist negroes who have made their Faustian bargain and worship conspicuous consumption and fully embrace the status-seeking ethos of barbarian culture - aka our non-negotiable "way of life".
The vast majority of Jewish Germans were either initially unopposed to the Nazis, or simply refused to believe what was coming.
As an aside, I struggle with the issue of analogy, and even lessons, as an Ashkenazi Jew whose extended family was murdered during the Shoah, as a cultural and social scholar, and as an historian. On the one hand, genocides are genocides, and the ethical exceptionalism often asserted or implied to the Shoah is unsupportable to me. OTOH, there is no doubt that comparisons to the scale and scope of the Shoah and the Nazi crimes are often unwarranted, and their reflexive and unfeeling use cheapens the history which belongs mot squarely to the victims of the Third Reich [not just Jews, of course].
I often wonder about what lessons can be drawn from the Shoah, or even if lessons ought to be drawn as well. I think about this every day. I've spent most of my life studying modern Jewish history -- although not formally -- as it is the history of my family. It is my history.
What can one take from the Shoah? From Rwanda? From South Africa? From the U.S. and Native Americans? That humans are capable of the most unspeakable horrors, that individual virtue, as important as it is, is typically an inadequate buffer against groupthink and authority (think Milgram), that evil is truly banal (the agenda at Wannsee indicated a morning meeting to discuss the murder of the remaining Jews in Europe and then noted that breakfast was scheduled)? That liberal education is no proof against such evil (9 of the 14 attendees at Wannsee held doctorates)?
I don't know about any of this. But I think about it every single day. In some strange way I cannot really articulate, thinking about this all the time helps me think about oppression and injustice in general, keeps me engaged not just with the plight of the Jews, but with the plight of the oppressed and marginalized in general, with structural violence.
Other than the fact that the History Channel had it on yesterday, why even consider what the Nazi's were on about in 1933 as some kind of special case, when during that same period millions were being killed in an engineered famine in the Ukraine?
It's time to put down the crippling soft narratives and get on about the very serious business of trying to objectively understand where we're at and what that means in terms of demonstrated proclivities.
Potential solutions to what's around that signpost up ahead this way way lie..., because instead of worrying about what other folks may or may not attempt to perpetrate, one busies oneself instead with the requisite activities involved in bending one's own culture and cultural consciousness in the direction of solutions. The more Fremen-like black folks become in America, the more likely it is that we will continue to flourish 7 or 8 generations hence.
I have already encountered many Black journalists and Black publications that refuse to publish my commentaries...Many of them have ostercized me locally and on the social party calendar here in Detroit...A former close associate of mine started working for a MSM outlet and he had the audacity to write me a letter telling me he would have to censor everything I had written on his facebook and website because I was a 'racial writer"..it still stings just to write about it..
No I am never surprised by the evil that men do...
Daniel,
Please educate : Are there any jewish people in the "Stille Hilfe"??
Thanks in advance
Chauncey, this outstanding documentary is *NOT* "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," which was aired by CBS in 1968. That documentary was rather two-dimensional, and reflected the comforting prejudices of its era -- that the Germans bore a unique war guilt that other peoples did not. The corollary was that there was something flawed in the German identify that allowed them to "lapse into barbarism in the middle of the twentieth century" (William Shirer's words).
This NEW documentary, aired by the History Channel in 2011, is called "The Third Reich," and it is far more unsettling. Its point of view is that ANYONE can become a persecutor of a minority. It thus lends credence to your argument about African Americans who should know better, such as Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain, and the assimilated German Jews who sympathized with Hitler. (Just a minor correction about sources, which can get confused on the internet.)
@Cnu--Funny, the pundit classes are finally catching up on the food inflation shortage issue and the question of wealth inequality See today's Wapo. More interestingly, read the comments from the peanut gallery.
@Daniel. Got to keep up the fight. We are not that "evolved." Funny, how people so conveniently forget that Nazi era Germany was one of the, if not THE, most technologically sophisticated countries in the world. I always forget to post it, and perhaps it is apocryphal, but I strongly recall my religious studies professor's lecture on how a group of rabbis put God on trial after the Holocaust. I also never forget the quote, that one could not survive the camps and come out a "good" person.
Hoping I didn't butcher that one. It always struck me as a profound observation full of meaning and the offers needed complexity.
@Thrasher. The problem of theodicy. Is evil the absence of good, and thus God is off the hook? Or is God responsible for evil because he/she/it permits it to exist.
@G Newman. Duh! Thanks for that one. I just overlooked the obvious. I saw the special online for like 10 bucks and am going to buy it. That along with WW2 in color.
Be careful you are treading on Goldhagen's turf. How dare you suggest everyday Germans were complicit with this barbarism!
What other sources or documentaries can you suggest?
@Thrasher: Not sure, but it's a good question.
@CDV: Right on re Germany; it was virtually without question the most 'civilized' and advanced Western nation at the time. And not just technologically -- German culture at the fin-de-siecle? Goodness, the modern West was practically born in and around Vienna.
The Rabbis trial of God is quite famous, and is of course the problem of theodicy (even though I am no religious studies scholar, believe it or not I have actually published a few small items on religion and theodicy).
Theodicy of course is the question of how an omnipotent deity can permit the innocent to suffer (it harkens back in the Judeo-Christian exegetical tradition to the Book of Job). After the Shoah, a number of Jewish scholars raised the ancient problem again. The one I'm most familiar with is Richard Rubenstein's After Auschwitz. He resolves the problem by concluding that God is not omnipotent, because he certainly cannot accept the solution of Job's friends (that Job suffers because has sinned and hence is not truly innocent).
(Also, as to Goldhagen, I am no scholar of Germany, but I did hold a fellowship in Germany for a few years, and spent quite a bit of time there over the last several years. My anecdotal sense is that the general argument in Goldhagen's book is relatively uncontroversial, and that many Germans readily accept the idea that the horrors of the Third Reich would not have been possible without widespread and general consent and participation. Hence the banality of evil).
Theodicy of course is the question of how an omnipotent deity can permit the innocent to suffer (it harkens back in the Judeo-Christian exegetical tradition to the Book of Job)
Yeah, it's basically a theological issue. RS people generally leave theology to the theologians. There are those so-called "ponerologists" who purport to scientifically "study evil", but "evil" itself is really a theological/conceptual issue.
It gets old, but similar ideas can be traced directly to Gnostic thought.
rotflmbao@Goldberg and Oh Crap
Jibberjabbering about "theodicy", "theology" and "ponerology".
Priceless.comedy.gold....,
What you know about actual Christianity wouldn't even do the volume of a thimble any justice.
The literalist and propositional "Christian" is no Christian at all, and never has been. That gaseous propositional garbage passing itself off as official religion has never had any sensible answers for even the most obvious and recurrent human behavioral stuff.
What tickles me most, is the ease with which you silly academics would all dismiss fundamentalist bibtard magical thinking, while not for a moment realizing or even the having the capacity to recognize that your propositional version of Abrahamic religion is equally ignorant and preposterous.
Sheeple - so programmed to believe the a priori unbelievable - are as conditioned as cattle. They're the same type of two-legged livestock who believe the academic and propositional nonsense emanating from so-called economists (none of whom could see or predict the very obvious writing on the wall in 1932 or in 2008) - the same type of sound asleep sheep who could abide in the midst of germans on a collective unconscious killer-ape tear and not have any clue about what was emerging all around them.
It gets old, but similar ideas can be traced directly to Gnostic thought.
Oh STFU....,
How many "Gnostics" do you know?
What single simple act distinguishes the "Gnostic" from any other so-called Christian, Moslem, or Jew?
@CNu
Oh STFU....,
Lol why should I, and who will make me? I've known a couple people claiming to carry on Gnostic traditions, but what's that got to do with the price of eggs in Bulgaria?
Do tell the rest of us silly people, including those of us who are not academics, what is the True Scotsman's definition of "Christian" or "Abrahamic"?
5700 or so years' worth of history is begging to know.
Lol why should I, and who will make me? I've known a couple people claiming to carry on Gnostic traditions, but what's that got to do with the price of eggs in Bulgaria?
my bad..., too early, no caffeine, should've typed GTFOH instead.
As for who'll "make you", careful tempting the hand of fate.
Do tell the rest of us silly people, including those of us who are not academics, what is the True Scotsman's definition of "Christian" or "Abrahamic"?
lol,
Why in the world would I go and do something like that?
I welcome the inevitable.
Far be it from me to even tempt, much less seek to thwart, the fate that you've brought upon yourselves.
In this age of panoptic information access, the fact that something as pervasively obvious as the true nature of Christianity eludes your grasp is a profound testament to the propagandistic brilliance of the predatory class and the submissive suggestibility of their smugly ignorant prey.
@CNu
In this age of panoptic information access, the fact that something as pervasively obvious as the true nature of Christianity eludes your grasp is a profound testament to the propagandistic brilliance of the predatory class and the submissive suggestibility of their smugly ignorant prey.
Uh-huh. That was a swell non-answer. But what did you mean by it?
Please do let me know the True Scotsman definition of Christianity, when you've gotten the chance to put something together. You're the one who brought up the topic, no one else.
Better yet, why not go inform the Christians, who have been chopping each other's heads off over the matter for 1800 years?
Uh-huh. That was a swell non-answer. But what did you mean by it?
Just because it's you OC, and because I was so inadvertently hostile this morning, I'll give you a little hint.
To be a true Christian, you have to know and to have partaken of what is contained in the golden urn in the Ark of the Covenant. (not those exact "mythic" relics, but that exact sacrament to be sure)
Please do let me know the True Scotsman definition of Christianity, when you've gotten the chance to put something together.
Actually, the trap here is a false dichotomy rather than a True Scotsman.
You're the one who brought up the topic, no one else.
Nonsense, you and Goldberg's vacant propositional palaver and handwavy nonsense about "evil", "theology", "theodicy" and "gnosticism" when simple killer-ape ethology under resource constraints will more than suffice to account for mass psychosis and industrial scale murder - is what provoked my impatient scorn.
I find the spectacle of pigs wrangling over the quality of oranges infinitely amusing. It's a form of self-calming lying that you all do, knowing full-well in your heart of hearts that you each don't know or understand a single damn worthwhile thing about the subject at hand, and that you're just parroting and making up gibberish as you mosy along - expendable, leisure class minions of the food-powered, make-work hierarchy.
Better yet, why not go inform the Christians, who have been chopping each other's heads off over the matter for 1800 years?
Nothing would please me more than to see the whole lot of literalist Abrahamic atavisms wipe themselves off the face of the earth. Good riddance I say....,
@CNu
To be a true Christian, you have to know and to have partaken of what is contained in the golden urn in the Ark of the Covenant. (not those exact "mythic" relics, but that exact sacrament to be sure)
Lol you sure have a funny way of saying "I don't know", yourself. Personally, I have no problem with non-theism/agnosticism. Beats the false comforts of absolutist certitude, any ol' day.
Nothing would please me more than to see the whole lot of literalist Abrahamic atavisms wipe themselves off the face of the earth. Good riddance I say....,
Wishful thinking.
Lol you sure have a funny way of saying "I don't know", yourself.
lol, hardly.
It's taken me 37 years of relentless and merciless interrogation of reality to figure it out, but no OC, I know EXACTLY what the Abrahamic thorn in the paw of western civilization is made of.
Personally, I have no problem with non-theism/agnosticism.
Smug ignorance.
Have you so little regard for the heroic exertions and epic secrets of your forbears?
I'm all in favor of a dogged lifelong pursuit of the truth of the matter. Diffident disinterest tending toward atheism OTOH - is just a third variation on the literalist false dichotomy, an allergic reaction as it were to the preposterousness of literalism whether supernatural or otherwise.
Beats the false comforts of absolutist certitude, any ol' day.
lol,
Well, we must all have our self-calming rationalizations.
The notion that there's something tangible and real motivating the peoples of the book, something that is hidden in plain sight - but which you have completely failed to discern for your entire life - notwithstanding the fog of obscurantic theology and religious studies - is more than a little upsetting....,
Spend just a little while sifting through pre-reformation iconography. Look at what's depicted over and over again in the stained glass of gothic cathedrals, in murals and frescos, and in the carefully crafted psalteries.
Browse through a few illustrated alchemical manuals and you'll find much more of the same.
Or not, as you see fit.
The essence of Christian praxis is hidden in plain sight for any who have eyes to see.
I know EXACTLY what the Abrahamic thorn in the paw of western civilization is made of.
Sure, you and about 7,000 other Christian, Jewish and Muslim sects and offshoots. Congratulations.
Anybody can make broad truth claims about "religion", or insist they poses some kind special knowledge of Arcane Truths™. Doesn't mean any of them are any truer than the next.
Alchemical art is among my favorite texts of the west. Who really cares?
Anybody can make broad truth claims about "religion", or insist they poses some kind special knowledge of Arcane Truths™. Doesn't mean any of them are any truer than the next.
lol,
yup, that's what happens when your religion is just so much propositional hot air.
It's precisely why you and Goldberg are left to specious "bone in the nose" pronouncements about theodicy, theology, and gnosticism when confronted with the "inexplicable" fact of routine and pedestrian killer-ape ethology in response to resource constraints.
@CD
In sum, I am carefully try to avoid any allusion to the Nazis because it is so much dynamite and teetering nitroglycerin on a two legged broken stool.
In recent years, say the past decade or so, I've had a serious reaction to labeling everything/everybody "Nazis". Everything's "Nazis", everything's "apartheid", everyone who does anything politically rebellious is the next "MLK" or "Rosa Parks"; but such little time is taken to even try and understand those eras.
Lazy history. It came up during the Shrubya years where I was like, look. For one, neo-Nazis still exist, and persist. For two, it's something of the inverse of your recent post on Germans re-enacting the Civil War.
I say, why go traipsing off to 1930s Germany to recall their history, when the US has our own nasty history of eugenics, segregation, anti-miscegenation and racial purity laws, manifest destiny/Lebensraum, and outright repressive, targeted, state-sponsored murder.
Yes, I know it's not on the same scale as the Third Reich, but that's my point; there's really no need to compare. I feel people go pointing to "Nazis" in order to sidestep or escape our own crap. It gets tiring.
@CNu
yup, that's what happens when your religion is just so much propositional hot air.
Gentle reminder: I don't have a religion. Do not mistake my understanding of what goes on in a Religious Studies department for having "religion". They're not the same thing, not even close.
Oh and take it from someone who's dated a few seminarians in my time: seminary/div school is the quickest/dirtiest way to lose one's religion, if they're unfortunate enough to have one. You probably knew that.
I say, why go traipsing off to 1930s Germany to recall their history,
Because resource constraints drive killer-ape ethology.
Prehistoric and primate warfare is common with members of the two-legged herds routinely attacking their neighbors when they could not obtain sufficient natural resources. Indeed, both Germany and Japan cited a shortage of natural resources for their World War II aggression.
Just remember that German unemployment had reached 6,000,000 by the winter of 1931-32.
You can set your watch by the quantitative measure of economic pain that will be required to precipitate the 4th Reich.
Everything else is merely conversation....,
@OC,
Yes, I know it's not on the same scale as the Third Reich, but that's my point; there's really no need to compare. I feel people go pointing to "Nazis" in order to sidestep or escape our own crap. It gets tiring.
I agree - it does get tiring.
But if I had to guess, I would say that people hyper-focus on Nazis, Nazism and the Second World War because our society and culture seriously can't help itself. The sociopolitical aftershocks of both the First and Second World Wars, the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and the Holocaust are just so massive that Western civilization as a whole still hasn't completely come to grips with it. And thus, scholars and politicians and everyone else are forced to keep swimming around the same subjects. That is, until we finally are able to navigate our way past it.
There are other examples of massive cultural trauma in our past, of course... The Punic Wars, for example - so horrific that they gave us the concept of the "Carthaginian solution" (i.e. the complete annihilation of another culture). However, things like that are so far in our past that its easy to move past it...
Whereas, the specter of Nazism looms large.
@CNu,
Because resource constraints drive killer-ape ethology.
It's true that humans may be conditioned for both war and aggression, as highlighted in the "killer ape hypothesis". We're all animals, after all.
However, I think it's very important to recognize that culture, not aggression, has always been humanity's adaptive strategy for survival. While aggression may be our evolutionary bedrock, it's culture (through the aspects of language, art, religion, kinship, society, etc.) which sets up boundaries for what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable.
Humans may war against each other for resources, as you've said. And those wars may be massively brutal, harkening back to the idea that all apes are predators. But it's societal pressures and norms which dictate what those wars are going to look like, and how those wars are going to be fought. Yes, we are all animals. But we're cultural animals that each understand that there is a basic relationship between the individual and society.
Thus, Nazi Germany didn't start the final solution because of physical pressures, like unemployment or even the excuse of lebensraum. Nor did it start the final solution because humanity is an aggressive species that preys on the weak. Nazi German started the final solution because it was advantageous for the Nazis to use Germany's known historic and cultural distrust of "the Other" to solidify their own control over the German population.
This is why you see the rampant Nazifying of German culture in the 1920s through the 1940s. If it was just about resource constraints and the “killer ape”, then why would Hitler have allegedly said that: "whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner"?
Why Wagner? Why harken back to the 19th century Romantic period of music and art?
Because the Nazi's were attempting to reclaim the Germanic Weltanschauung (world concept), by grossly appropriating the German people's own cultural idea of what it meant to be "German". This is why the Nazis so completely embraced Eugenics and Social Darwinism. They were trying to use technology (computers, science, pseudo-science etc.) to give them an excuse to weed out those that they felt were corrupting the supposed “pureness” of what it meant to be Aryan.
To me, that's even more scary than the "killer ape".
Hello Bill,
However, I think it's very important to recognize that culture, not aggression, has always been humanity's adaptive strategy for survival.
Can you relate that assertion to the Manhattan Project, the military industrial congressional complex, and generations of massive deficit spending on the American warsocialist make-work hierarchy?
How did it come to pass that the U.S. defense establishment, which up until WW-II had a tiny standing army, has since that time mushroomed into the unspeakable, globe-spanning monstrosity that it has become, and, which, also undergirds the global nuclear power industry, inseparably interlocked with the nuclear weapons industry?
Were you aware that Westinghouse and GE "enjoy" a virtual global monopoly on commercial nuclear power generation?
While aggression may be our evolutionary bedrock, it's culture (through the aspects of language, art, religion, kinship, society, etc.) which sets up boundaries for what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable.
How did the military industrial congressional complex, orthogonal to the design of the founding fathers and to two hundred years of American history become the bearer of sacred respect and admiration within American culture that it has become? How did wearing a uniform become the cynosure for industrial scale murder and destruction?
How did the ultimate instrumentality of totalitarian coercion, (nuclear weapons) and the game theoretical "strategy" of mutually assured destruction become credible, sane, practical doctrine in American political and foreign policy?
But it's societal pressures and norms which dictate what those wars are going to look like, and how those wars are going to be fought.
Which brings us full-circle to the current warsocialist strategy of full-spectrum dominance.
This is why you see the rampant Nazifying of German culture in the 1920s through the 1940s.
What do we call the cinematic and video-game conditioning of two generations of American youth such that we now have an elite cadre of remote control killers operating a fleet of 7000 human controlled robotic death systems in operation all over the world and in domestic policing and surveillance operations, as well.
Finally, what American cultural institution is the single largest consumer of American material and energy inputs, such that it's interests are by extension and due to its scale, virtually inseparable from the interests of the American people and our materially and energetically non-negotiable way of life?
The killer ape theory is flawed and is far too simple to explain modern nations or the reasons why they either a.) go to war b.) “Otherize” members of their population or c.) commit genocide.
Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey stated in their defense of “killer ape” that aggression is the thing that set our direct ancestors apart from other primates. To quote Ardrey: “Man is a predator whose natural instinct is to kill with a weapon.”
However, the killer ape theory ignores the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that humans are at all special with regards to hunting and killing. Humans don't kill each other (or other animal species for that matter) any more or less the other animals do. And in fact, if you look at the behavior of modern wild animals, you'll actually find that they're far more likely to kill their own kind than human beings are.
Humans, even when you factor in all of of our modern wars and their massive death tolls, are far more peaceful and less aggressive than other animals.
To quote Boyce Rensberger: “The incredible development in weapons that has undeniably taken place is a comparatively recent phenomenon, occurring only in the last one-tenth of one percent of the time man has existed. The cause may reasonably be sought in the conditions of human society that obtained during this recent period of perhaps 3,000 years. “
http://64.17.135.19/APF001973/Rensberger/Rensberger08/Rensberger08.html
How is this possible?
Well, the reason is that humanity is more than just the sum of our parts. We, as cultural beings, aren't just relegated to the baser instincts of “eat, sleep, breed, chase and kill”. And to try and use that to describe complex economic and/or societal crises is, at best, problematic.
Humans adapt to their environment, and that environment then shapes our culture. And the societal pressures that ones culture creates are often just as powerful (sometimes even more-so) than the more basic forces advocated by yourself.
Humans, even when you factor in all of of our modern wars and their massive death tolls, are far more peaceful and less aggressive than other animals.
rotflmbao...,
data, denial, and vested interests make for an entertaining three-legged stool.
Humans adapt to their environment, and that environment then shapes our culture. And the societal pressures that ones culture creates are often just as powerful (sometimes even more-so) than the more basic forces advocated by yourself.
lol,
however you elect to craft your post hoc rationalization of this armed-to-the-teeth psychopathocracy that has invested the lion's share of its collective cultural treasure in the capacity to annihilate the species many, many, many times over - I'ma go ahead on the record and state that the Nazi's could never even have imagined a Moloch of the magnitude that the supreme allied adversary has become.
This is why the Nazis so completely embraced Eugenics and Social Darwinism. They were trying to use technology (computers, science, pseudo-science etc.) to give them an excuse to weed out those that they felt were corrupting the supposed “pureness” of what it meant to be Aryan.
On this note, I heard this story on the commute, on regular old CBS Radio news. It's an episode of US history I talk about, often. Here, it didn't end formally until the mid-late 70s.
Start here: http://againsttheirwill.journalnow.com/
Today: Sterilization victim 'raped by the state of NC
What happened to Riddick in North Carolina happened to more than 60,000 people in 32 states, from the 1920's to the 1970s under state-sanctioned sterilization programs aimed at cutting welfare costs.
"The people who were the focus of this movement were the dispossessed of society," says Paul Lombardo, of Georgia State University's College of Law. "In some cases, simply people of color."
Euphemism. Should read: "in some cases, simply black people." And whites resented because their mere existence disproves the institutional lie of white superiority...poor whites, whites who do not conform to conservative social norms, whites with disabilities of every stripe.
Same mentality exists right now, this second.
Must say, though, that this story even made the news almost made me drive off the road.
@CNu,
I find it funny that when you don't have a response for something, you devolve into internet slang and snarky comments.
All apes kill, CNu. And humans are magnificent predators. But it is not war and/or aggression which drives human development, nor is it the root cause for why nation-states do what they do. You're looking at a tree, calling it “killer ape”, and then claiming it's the forest.
The reality for why humans kill each other is far more complicated and much more depressing than just saying that we're “hardwired” to be aggressive. In point of fact, humans are not hardwired to be aggressive – we're hardwired to be social and strive for acceptance. And the sad fact is that we're so hardwired to seek out acceptance from our peers, that people will hurt, brutalize and/or kill others just in the hopes of belonging.
Call it a pack mentality, or herd behavior or herd morality if you want, but it's aggression and destruction for no obvious resource gain. And it makes things like the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide, or Rwanda even more disturbing.
Look - what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex thinking communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
And all this is fine and dandy when the overall community acts responsibly. But when it doesn't, and the community starts attacking other groups or even factions within itself, things can get very bad, very quickly.
Since they're an extreme, and apart of the main point of Chauncey's post (the "Power of Willful Denial"), let's go back to the Nazis as our example.
If the Nazis were just acting out “killer ape”, then why didn't the trains and gas chambers stop in 1944 when it was clear that Germany was losing the war? Such mass killing requires a considerable expenditure of manpower and resources. And the Nazi leadership quickly acknowledged in the late 1930s that simply shooting people was logistically and psychologically inefficient.
So, if “killer ape” economics was driving Nazi Germany to do what it did, then wouldn't the leadership have reallocated all those resources fueling the death camps to the front-lines when it was necessary to protect the Reich?
I'll tell you why they never stopped the Holocaust, even in the face of assured destruction –
To paraphrase Winston Church, Hitlerism is a sickness of the mind. And the Nazis would rather see all of Germany fall into a death spiral and final gotterdammerung then stop the Holocaust. What they did had absolutely nothing to do with economics or the Great Depression, and everything to do with their twisted world view.
And it's that methodical evil which makes them so hard to move past.
@CNu,
I find it funny that when you don't have a response for something, you devolve into internet slang and snarky comments.
All apes kill, CNu. And humans are magnificent predators. But it is not war and/or aggression which drives human development, nor is it the root cause for why nation-states do what they do. You're looking at a tree, calling it “killer ape”, and then claiming it's the forest.
The reality for why humans kill each other is far more complicated and much more depressing than just saying that we're “hardwired” to be aggressive. In point of fact, humans are not hardwired to be aggressive – we're hardwired to be social and strive for acceptance. And the sad fact is that we're so hardwired to seek out acceptance, that people will hurt, brutalize and/or kill other people just in the hopes of belonging.
Call it a pack mentality, or herd behavior or herd morality if you want, but it's aggression and destruction for no obvious resource gain. And it makes things like the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide, or Rwanda even more disturbing.
Look - what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
And all this is fine and dandy when the overall community acts responsibly. But when it doesn't, and the community starts attacking other groups or even factions within itself, things can get bad very quickly.
Since they're an extreme, and apart of the main point of Chauncey's post (the “Power of Willful Denial”), let's go back to the Nazis to show an example.
If the Nazis were just acting out “killer ape”, then why didn't the trains and gas chambers stop in 1944 when it was clear that Germany was losing the war? Such mass killing requires a considerable expenditure of manpower and resources. The Nazi leadership quickly acknowledged in the late 1930s that simply shooting people was logistically and psychologically inefficient. So, if “killer ape” economics was driving Nazi Germany to do what it did, then wouldn't the leadership have reallocated all those concentration camp resources to the front-lines when it was necessary to protect the Reich?
I'll tell you why they never stopped the Holocaust –
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Hitlerism is a sickness of the mind. And the Nazis would rather see all of Germany fall into a death spiral and final gotterdammerung then stop the Holocaust. What they did had absolutely nothing to do with the economics, and everything to do with their twisted world view.
And it's that scale of evil which makes them hard for our modern society to move past.
[I've tried to post this three times now, but it keeps disappearing. My apologies if there are double posts.]
@CNu,
I find it funny that when you don't have a response for something, you devolve into internet slang and snarky comments.
All apes kill, CNu. And humans are magnificent predators. But it is not war and/or aggression which drives human development, nor is it the root cause for why nation-states do what they do. You're looking at a tree, calling it “killer ape”, and then claiming it's the forest.
The reality for why humans kill each other is far more complicated and much more depressing than just saying that we're “hardwired” to be aggressive. In point of fact, humans are not hardwired to be aggressive – we're hardwired to be social and strive for acceptance. And the sad fact is that we're so hardwired to seek out acceptance, that people will hurt, brutalize and/or kill other people just in the hopes of belonging.
Call it a pack mentality, or herd behavior or herd morality if you want, but it's aggression and destruction for no obvious resource gain. And it makes things like the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide, or Rwanda even more disturbing.
Look - what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
And all this is fine and dandy when the overall community acts responsibly. But when it doesn't, and the community starts attacking other groups or even factions within itself, things can get bad very quickly.
Since they're an extreme, and apart of the main point of Chauncey's post (the “Power of Willful Denial”), let's go back to the Nazis to show an example.
If the Nazis were just acting out “killer ape”, then why didn't the trains and gas chambers stop in 1944 when it was clear that Germany was losing the war? Such mass killing requires a considerable expenditure of manpower and resources. The Nazi leadership quickly acknowledged in the late 1930s that simply shooting people was logistically and psychologically inefficient. So, if “killer ape” economics was driving Nazi Germany to do what it did, then wouldn't the leadership have reallocated all those concentration camp resources to the front-lines when it was necessary to protect the Reich?
I'll tell you why they never stopped the Holocaust –
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Hitlerism is a sickness of the mind. And the Nazis would rather see all of Germany fall into a death spiral and final gotterdammerung then stop the Holocaust. What they did had absolutely nothing to do with the economics, and everything to do with their twisted world view.
And it's that scale of evil which makes them hard for our modern society to move past.
lol@Bill's two tries at post that got bounced by the blogger commenting system.
Bill, don't worry about my code-switching, CDV and OC understand where I'm coming from and it's all good.
In order to get your post to stick, you're going to have to break it up into two smaller chunks.
I welcome the continued dialogue...,
@CNu,
Thanks for the heads up regarding post size. I appreciate it.
Here's what I wrote before getting bounced.
I find it funny that when you don't have a response for something, you devolve into internet slang and snarky comments.
All apes kill, CNu. And humans are magnificent predators. But it is not war and/or aggression which drives human development, nor is it the root cause for why nation-states do what they do. You're looking at a tree, calling it “killer ape”, and then claiming it's the forest.
The reality for why humans kill each other is far more complicated and much more depressing than just saying that we're “hardwired” to be aggressive. In point of fact, humans are not hardwired to be aggressive – we're hardwired to be social and strive for acceptance. And the sad fact is that we're so hardwired to seek out acceptance, that people will hurt, brutalize and/or kill other people just in the hopes of belonging.
Call it a pack mentality, or herd behavior or herd morality if you want, but it's aggression and destruction for no obvious resource gain. And it makes things like the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide, or Rwanda even more disturbing.
Look - what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
And all this is fine and dandy when the overall community acts responsibly. But when it doesn't, and the community starts attacking other groups or even factions within itself, things can get bad very quickly.
Since they're an extreme, and apart of the main point of Chauncey's post (the “Power of Willful Denial”), let's go back to the Nazis to show an example.
If the Nazis were just acting out “killer ape”, then why didn't the trains and gas chambers stop in 1944 when it was clear that Germany was losing the war? Such mass killing requires a considerable expenditure of manpower and resources. The Nazi leadership quickly acknowledged in the late 1930s that simply shooting people was logistically and psychologically inefficient. So, if “killer ape” economics was driving Nazi Germany to do what it did, then wouldn't the leadership have reallocated all those concentration camp resources to the front-lines when it was necessary to protect the Reich?
I'll tell you why they never stopped the Holocaust –
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Hitlerism is a sickness of the mind. And the Nazis would rather see all of Germany fall into a death spiral and final gotterdammerung then stop the Holocaust. What they did had absolutely nothing to do with the economics, and everything to do with their twisted world view.
And it's that scale of evil which makes them hard for our modern society to move past.
Geez I hate blogger... this is why I don't post more.
It lopped the first part off. Great. :eye roll:
Here's the first part, before "And all this is fine and dandy":
All apes kill, CNu. And humans are magnificent predators. But it is not war and/or aggression which drives human development, nor is it the root cause for why nation-states do what they do. You're looking at a tree, calling it “killer ape”, and then claiming it's the forest.
The reality for why humans kill each other is far more complicated and much more depressing than just saying that we're “hardwired” to be aggressive. In point of fact, humans are not hardwired to be aggressive – we're hardwired to be social and strive for acceptance. And the sad fact is that we're so hardwired to seek out acceptance, that people will hurt, brutalize and/or kill other people just in the hopes of belonging.
Call it a pack mentality, or herd behavior or herd morality if you want, but it's aggression and destruction for no obvious resource gain. And it makes things like the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide, or Rwanda even more disturbing...
Look - what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
And all this is fine and dandy when.... (see first post).
what separates humans from animals is that we acknowledge that we are individuals who belong to complex communities. And, since we have very little physical attributes which make us special, we heavily rely on said communities to give us the adaptive strategies necessary to thrive and grow. In return, the communities we invest in provide us with mutually supportive belief systems which help to determine how we react to things and what our course of behavior on certain subjects is going to be.
True or False Bill?
Do you belong to the most heavily armed and thanaturgic culture in the history of human civilization?
True or False Bill?
Is the warsocialist culture of which you are a member presently engaged in three separate combat theaters in what are very obviously resource wars?
True or False Bill?
Is the Pentagon the primary consumer of material and energy inputs - not only in this culture - but also quantifiably in the whole planet's human cultural ecology - at this time?
True or False Bill?
Since WW-II - The Pentagon (which includes NASA) is the dominant driver of worldwide human technological innovation?
True or False Bill?
The Pentagon employs 80% of working physicists in North America?
Since they're an extreme, and apart of the main point of Chauncey's post (the “Power of Willful Denial”), let's go back to the Nazis to show an example.
Taken in historical context, the Nazi's weren't so extreme after all.
Stalin was killing 7 million Ukrainians when the National Socialists spun up their first political prisoner concentration camp in 1932/33.
Taken in the context of our multigenerational investment in, use of, and reliance upon warsocialist superpower, the Nazi's seem like comparatively small potatos all gussied up in Hugo Boss outfits and with cinematically wicked accents and leather accessories fit for a Castro pageant..,
@CNu,
True or False Bill?
Do you belong to the most heavily armed and thanaturgic culture in the history of human civilization?
It's not as simple as black and white / true or false. And that's my point.
We belong to the most hyper-militiarized culture of the 21st century not because we're a bunch of killer apes who don't know any better, but because it's a culturally-induced sickness.
To quote Eisenhower:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together"
The MIC doesn't exist because humans (or Americans) are naturally violent. The MIC exists because our culture makes it seem like bad things will happen if it doesn't exist. It's a perfect iron triangle, where interest groups push American policy.
Taken in historical context, the Nazi's weren't so extreme after all.
Generally, I recommend that people avoid comparing genocides.
Then how on earth do you propose to stay on top of best practices for doing it most efficiently and surreptitiously - or - if you belong to a potentially targetted minority group - avoid having it done to you when its telltale signature begins becoming apparant on that old wall?
"In 1994 the ruling Hutu government set out to eradicate the Tutsi minority. This was explained as incomprehensible ancient rivalry by the Western press. In reality it was due to the Belgian myth created during the colonial rule. Western agencies got involved, and the Tutsi fought back creating chaos. Many flooded across the border into Zaire, and the Tutsi invaded the refuge camps to get revenge. Mobutu fell from power. Troops arrived from many countries, allegedly to help, but in reality to gain access to the country's natural resources, used to produce consumer goods for the west. 4.5 million people died."
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. http://subrealism.blogspot.com...
Heres some info you may find interesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dVmwoR24rc
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