Reflecting on Auschwitz and Humanity

As we've focused this week on Auschwitz and Nazism in general, I've come back to the idea that "people are really really messed up" over and over. Concepts like eugenics, indoctrination, and the need to absolve oneself from accountability show just how depraved humans can be. And in terms of the intentional/functional debate concerning Hitler, I think to a certain degree the Holocaust was an intentional thing.

While eugenics may have had an innocent start in trying to help eliminate disease and reduce discomfort, I doubt anyone would make an argument that it had good moral intentions when it was used as a justification for genocide. At some point it transformed from being a helpful and useful process with (sometimes) questionable practices into something sinister used to justify the death of millions of people. And even if Hitler didn't envision death camps and other similar things in 1933, if he had been presented with it I doubt he would have batted the idea away because of some moral obligation but because of impracticality politically.

And with no doubt indoctrination in schools and through propaganda helped this process proceed. How do you get an agenda passed? Get people to buy in to it. Rome wasn't built in a day, and Hitler couldn't come in a get everything he wanted done within the week. It takes a significant amount of time for people to buy in to things, but indoctrination, especially with kids at a young age, tends to be pretty effective.

Additionally, I think the building up of the bureaucracy around death camps served two primary purposes. 1) it absolves people of their natural feeling of "killing people is wrong" by allowing them to say "Hey I didn't pull the trigger" and then that builds into 2) it allows people to work in/around/with German authorities and to a certain extent buy into what the SS and other German officials preached about Jews. If you aren't killing them and seeing the horrible things you see then I would think you're more likely to start taking sips of the Koolaid.

Obviously this is all my opinion, and I don't have a lot of solid data to back it up with. But I think at some point this stuff has to stop being functionalist in nature and become something intentional. Yes, death camps may be the literal end of the ladder for eugenics programs, but at some point someone has to rationalize everything and sign off on putting in gas chambers and crematoriums. And if killing people in the name of something like scientific progress wasn't a big deal, they never should have had to move beyond death squads. I think the fact the people couldn't handle being responsible for killing people shows that death camps are not the practical end of eugenic theory, but something that was forced.

Fascism, the other "F" word

The rise of fascism is associated with so many things in today's culture. Hitler, Mussolini, horrific violence, WWII, and perfect first-person-shooter video games (I mean where's a better bad guy than the evil, fascist Nazis and their Italian henchmen?). And in today's politics, you can't call someone a fascist without somehow linking them with Hitler (even if that's not what you meant at all, the link is made to discredit your argument).

So I know for me, fascism has kind of fallen out of my lexicon unless I'm talking about Wolfenstein 3D or Call of Duty, and it's generally overlooked in a lot of history survey courses. But I think the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany tells a lot about the nature of people and how it's not inconceivable to have one gifted leader with a core of loyal support to manipulate circumstances to his benefit.

Here are just a few things I think I took away from today's discussion:
1. People look out for themselves: I feel like a lot of their early part of our discussion centered around fascism offering the people something that they couldn't get from other political groups: stability. Reforms and democratic principles don't help if inflation is out the window or you can't put food on your table because of striking farm labor.
2. People look for a good plan, and when they're desperate plans don't have to look exceedingly good, just better than what's going on already: When you are in really tough economic times and there's a lot of indiscriminate and random violence going on outside your door, you aren't looking for the perfect system. You're looking to sustain yourself.
3. Fear is a powerful motivator: "Yeah I killed them, and I'll kill you too" and finding your friend's body on his parent's doorstep in a casket for skipping the draft will help deter opposition and keep people in line.
4. Emotion is an equally powerful motivator: Propaganda, fiery speeches, mass rallies, radio addresses, and appeals to nationalism (Help make our nation glorious!) all bring people in to a world where rational thought is discouraged, and it was hugely successful in a group of people who were upset and angry with the status quo.

It's almost like you need a perfect storm of circumstances in order for a movement that's so radically different from the relatively stable European governments that have typically existed to come to power. People don't wake up one day and say, "You know what, I don't like what we were doing yesterday. Let's change how we play the game." You really do need a collision of forces to create the environment ripe for the picking.

For me it's interesting to see how fascism came about and the ramifications of what happens when people (who I consider) to be quite evil people come to power and whip the masses into a fury behind them for support.

WWI

I've really enjoyed our discussions about World War I in class. I feel like I'm many situations World War II gets all of the glory when it comes to European wars, but World War I could be identified as the permanent shift in how wars were fought. Tanks were introduced, chemical warfare was first used, airplanes were young, but their potential was great. Like we've noted time and time again, tactics had not caught up to weaponry. Calvary charges led to a lot of dead men and horses at the hands of machine guns.

I looked up some casualty statistics and I think the numbers are horrendous. Russia had over 9 million men killed, wounded, captured, or missing between 1914-1918. That's over 75% of the 12 million men they mobilized. Germany had over 7 million casualties out of their 11 million men mobilized. Russia had nearly 1.5 million permanently disabled people after the war, and while Russia and Germany have the highest numbers of casualties, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Austria all have gaudy casualty percentages.

It's really quite remarkable to me the drop off in casualties from then to now. Like Jennifer said in class, Afghanistan and Iraq combined, which are conflicts that have been going on longer than WWI (albeit on a much smaller scale), have only claimed the lives of 1500-6500 American soldiers.

While I would not advocate war as a viable option to solve problems, and I definitely don't like the thought of people getting killed, it does make me happy to know that our gains in tactical understanding, defensive technology, and medical technology and ability have helped to reduce casualty rates from the horrific percentages we saw in the Great War.

With casualty rates as high as 75%, it's no wonder people got upset after the war was over, and imagine what would happen today if the military was still doing things that defied since like running at machine guns on horseback? Can you say, "Cell phone video on Youtube" and then someone's resigning from their post? And today, the public would never tolerate anything remotely close to 75% killed, wounded, or missing.

So for me, while war is interesting to study and not something I would ever want to live through, I'm glad we've made some improvements that give people a better chance of survival.

Conspicuously Consuming

First off, Happy Fourth of July weekend and also a big Happy Canada to anyone who recognizes Canada Day (July 1)!

Second, I'd like to continue our debate on conspicuous consumption that we started in class. Is our society more consumption-based or more leisure-centered?

As Jeff said he felt that we're leisure-based because when people are rich enough they don't have to do anything and can sit around and learn artsy things because they have all the free time in the world they are considered successful (I hope that's a correct paraphrase), and other people in class brought up regional, urban v rural conceptions.

I threw out my feeling about cribs and how that points to a consumption based economy, because we envy what those people have and the point of cribs and a big house is status-y and to show you have more than you will ever need in your life.

I think all of those points are true to certain degrees, but I think the ultimate reality is that our culture, the American culture, has created this sense in people that what we have is never good enough. We're never satisfied with what we've got and we always want more. More cars, more square footage, more time, less weight, more cowbell, whatever. It's part of what makes America so great because we never quit and we keep pushing until we reach our goals. I think it also has a tremendous downside because we're never taught the idea of being satisfied with what we have.

I mean lets be honest. Most of us are not going to be the next P Diddy, and our houses will never be as big as his. I worry that sometimes the subliminal messages our culture sends us is that we can't be happy when we don't have X or Y. I went to Peru in high school and I met a kid there who was literally rolling a bike tire around in circles and chasing it up and down the street. That was all he had, and he was so happy with life. Perhaps it was because he didn't know about all of the other stuff out there, but perhaps it was because he was just happy with what he had. I feel like a lot of Americans aren't happy with what they have. They think "after the next raise I'll be happy" or "once I get this car, then I'm done" or "when I have the time to golf whenever I want, that's how I know I've made it" but that's like suggesting money can buy happiness. And it can't. I am a firm believer that happiness comes from somewhere besides the things we have.

So is our culture consumption or leisure driven? I think it's more accurate to say our culture is driven by telling people they need what they don't have, regardless of what that is.

The Industrial Revolution

As we've talked about the industrial revolution in class, I've remembered how much I enjoy that period in history. It's slightly strange that I find a lot of new machines interesting, but then again I wanted to be a train conductor in the wild west when I was little, so apparently steam and coal power naturally fit into my interests.

I think one of the most interesting things to look at involving the industrial revolution is the complete change of lifestyle that it caused. We've talked about how populations didn't appear in cities overnight, but the long term consequences of the I.R. are very profound and extend beyond pollution and noise. To me, I see the creation of a lot of values and trends that still exist in our society today.

Here are 4 things that I feel like we can trace to the Industrial Revolution that are still relevant in our society today:

1. The idea that you can get ahead by working hard and that people are poor because they're lazy is still around (just ask Neal Boortz). While many people today may say calling poor people lazy may be an extreme view in today's culture, I know plenty of people who still cling to the idea that if you work hard you can get ahead in life.
2. The separation of work time and personal time is still very much in existence today. I remember my sixth grade teacher told my class (on more than one occasion) that there is work time and there is play time, and you have to work during work time and you can play during play time. That's just a watered down version of work v. personal time. And just like Office Space shows us, there are plenty of people out there who hate their jobs but can't just walk away from them.
3. The concept of alienation of labor is second nature to us. The closest we are to the people who make our Nike shoes are when we complain about how little Nike pays them in Malaysia or Indonesia. I work at Chick-fil-a, and while I get to see a product cooked and delivered to customers, I don't raise and kill the chickens that we prepare. I pull them out of a refrigerator, and they're already cut up and go from there. Virtually no one actually works on something start to finish anymore, unless you visit a foreign country and buy something that families make in their homes to sell to tourists.
4. The disparity of wealth is still startling and eye-popping today. I found this article online earlier this week and the numbers are kind of astounding. There have always been haves and have nots, but when we look at the process of wealth concentration that started in the Industrial Revolution we can see in a lot of places that hasn't been significantly reversed. I think the worst offender is China. If my math serves me right (which it may not-feel free to correct me), .05% of China's population holds 50% of the country's wealth. And the US, Hong Kong, India, and Saudi Arabia are close behind on those types of numbers. But wow, that's absolutely astounding.

Those Radical French...

So this week we've spent some time talking about the French Revolution in class. On Monday and Wednesday we discussed how the revolution went from having more moderate goals and ideas to becoming incredibly radical in nature. Dissent was crushed, opposing viewpoints, even from within the revolutionary party, were purged and put down, churches were vandalized, and a lot of people died.

This radicalization left no real middle ground for rational, reasoned discussions in French politics. You were either for or against, in or out, supporter or traitor. Part of the reason that the Thermidorian government never stabilized was because it had no center or moderate middle ground.

In my opinion, part of the power of history is being able to compare what happened in the past with what is happening now, so without bringing in some ugly political comments, my question is are seeing something similar happening in the politics of our own time? Let me be clear, I do not think that we're going to see someone in D.C. set up a guillotine and start axing opposition voices, and I don't think a Reign of Terror is coming in the U.S. But in a serious thought, is the U.S. losing its middle ground of rational political discussions? More Americans identify themselves as moderate than any other ideological grouping, but yet the major political parties seem to be swinging further away from the middle. When was the last time some bill passed Congress with so much as moderate bipartisan support? Let's be honest, the obstinate and stubborn bickering has come from both sides of the isle too. Each party tends to claim that the other's platform is going to lead to the end of the world in some way, shape, or form. It's almost as if politicians would rather us vote on some emotional reaction than really reason things out and say, "hey both of you make some sense, why can't we find a compromise?"

And reflecting back on France, how many years did it take to regain that moderate influence in politics once it was purged out during the Revolution? Sure Napoleon brought a little bit of sense in to the mix, but he was by no means democratic, or even in favor of a republic, and he certainly had his own censorship laws on the books as well. It took some seismic events in French history and a lot of time to restore political stability in Paris.

So that brings me to my three questions:
1) Do you think American politics are headed away from a more moderate center based around rational discussion?
2) Are their any similarities between what's going on in U.S. politics and what happened when the French Revolution turned radical?
3) If politics are becoming more polarized, what types of things do you think would need to happen in order to restore some sort of middle ground in our political system? To play devil's advocate, do we need a Napoleon to hit a sort of "reset button" for us and allow us to rebuild from the ground up?

Comment away, but please keep it clean. I understand I'm inviting conversation on a subject that many hold dear to their hearts, but this is for a college course and I expect mature comments. I'll let you know upfront I have no problem removing comments I view as over the line. With that said, I don't anticipate any problems :)

Shut up and fish!

I feel like a little bit of personal background is needed to understand why I'm writing about the things I do. I'm a social studies education and history double major; so the concept of learning is incredibly fascinating to me, and I tend to see education as a tool to help address the problems we face in society. With that said, here we launch into my thoughts on the enlightenment:

I think Kant's concept of immaturity is very interesting. The idea that people are afraid or do not have the courage to use their own intelligence is an idea that I think is still relevant today. I've taken a few psychology and childhood and family development classes, and one of the interesting things that those instructors pointed out was that children who come from families with higher socioecomic (SES) backgrounds tend to be more willing to ask questions in life and school such as, "Why is this rule this way." But students from families with lower socioecomic backgrounds tend to more or less accept the rules that are presented before them without seeking to truly understand the logic behind them.

So while the motto of "Have the courage to use your own intelligence!" is still relevant today because people do still accept what is fed to them, I disagree with Kant when he says, "Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature" (p. 55). For me, when you look at it in a very practical sense, people from lower SES backgrounds tend to have jobs that require doing without asking questions. Have you ever watched Deadliest Catch? Being a greenhorn on a crabbing boat is not the right place ask, "why is this rule this way?" or "why do we do things x-way when y-way seems more efficient?" because your boss is going to tell you, "Because I said so! Shut up and fish!"

I think being able to ask questions is an essential part of learning. As John Bronowski said, "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." I feel like getting people to the point where they are able to ask questions, to seek understanding, and to move past passive acceptance could be an idea Kant is really driving at here, and I think that if we emphasized that concept today over time it could help to end, or at least change, the cyclical nature of poverty.