Has anyone else read Mein Kampf? [Archive] - Page 2

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 08:35 AM

Hitler is not at all exceptional in what happened to him. It happened to countless others besides him.

He is exceptional in the way his mind worked, and the deeds that he did.

Can you read? This historian was talking of his ideas and the acts that came out of them. Seriously!

This has no connection with my post that you have replied to, and I can't understand what you are saying. Something must have got missed in the quoting process. Anyway, never mind.

Has everything to do with your post. I pointed out that Putin was also capable of the kind of ruthless things Stalin did on a large scale. Those prisons are still there, you know. You think that Stalin was an exception of the Russian psyche?

So now it's the fault of France, and the rest, and the academic world - everyone except Hitler himself, poor misunderstood lamb, who would have been a good genius if all this hadn't happened.

There are a few things that have contributed to the advance of Nazism and the ensuring war, yes, or did you think that Hitler got out the very same railway carriage and put it in the very same wood as in 1918 to sign the surrender of France just to be funny?

There are a whole lot of circumstances that contributed to this situation. A big contributor was the damages Germany had to pay and the territories it lost. Due to all those damages their economy could not recover and employment rose to 30% in some areas. And Germany had no wellfare system, mind. Damages were stopped in 1931, but they were set to continue for 70 years and until recently Germany had been paying them. It is an acknowledged fact that this was one of the things that enabled Nazism to flourish. And it was Pétain and the French military's idea, not the British. They were against it in fact, knowing what it could pôssibly entail, but the French wanted Alsace, which they had coveted through the whole of history. The League of Nations is another thing that did not work and could be blamed.

The annihilation of Germany at the end was a logical consequence of the unconditional surrender desired by the Allies. And why? Because the Allies thought that an unconditional surrender was desirable above negotiations because they wished to rip out the stab-in-the back myth which had been so prominent amongst the German population and which had been a major contributor, again, to Nazism. Such a state will never surrender unconditionally, so what else but annihilation would follow? At least both parties can be blamed for this and Hitler nor his companions really had any problems with it in the aftermath. It was the German population which would have to pay for it, as populations always do.

People who are blaming Hitler out here, whether we come from Europe or not, are aware of the historical background. I never supposed that Hitler just sprang up, fully formed, or that his ideolgy all came from his own head. I just don't agree that this exonerates him in any way.

I am quite sure that had he been somewhere else, his ideas may have caught on, but would not have grown to the size they grew in Germany.

I agree with this, but it's something that will only happen gradually, over time, and not because of any oh so helpful pleas for compassion and understanding that we might make. But it is important for the healing process to at least acknowledge the evil-ness of the people like Hitler and his cohorts, who were directly responsible for the genocide.

I never said he was not responsible. However, in the face of all of what happened before I cannot call him evil. His acts were, yes, but I personally cannot call him evil, because it is not good enough. Why is that a problem?

Again, this is nothing more than an attempt to deflect responsibility and lay the blame upon the whole of society if not the whole of humanity. "Well... anyone of us might have acted in the same way under the circumstances, so let's not be too harsh on the man. He made some poor choices, but haven't we all. Who here is without sin. Perhaps a fine is in order... nothing too large... and perhaps something by way of a public apology ("Oops, my bad.") and then we can all move on with our lives.":sosp:

Yes, well, dismiss one of the historians which changed German historiography and make your own. Why not. It does not make you more believable at all.
In fact those who have argued that Hitler was just a 'Betriebsunfall' (accident in German history) like Ritter have long been discredited. Some criticism that has been pointed in Fischer's direction says that he does not consider that Social Darwinist ideas (relative to race struggles) were present in most nations at the time, but this man has examined the history of Imperial Germany in the most minute detail and believe it or not, Germany was already going to ethnically cleanse East Poland and Russia in WWI, or after the war. hmmm He has in fact argued that Hitlers views were the views of Germany's elite and not his alone. Hence all the support Hitler got from the start, I guess. He does not excuse Hitler's actions at all, in fact, but acknowledges that Germany's ambitions to Lebensraum its Social Darwinist ideas and the ensuing racism were there even long before Hitler was born. Again, that does not reduce Hitler's responsibility, it emphasises the unfortunate situation Germany's population found themselves in when they could vote for him.

Oh... yeah... you're right. 6 million dead. Just deal with it. Che sarà sarà. As for Dumas, who gives a f*** what a hack novelist who lived well before Hitler has to say. Why not see what the survivors of Auschwitz have to say.

And still it is true. Calling someone evil is not the way forward, comitting revenge is not either. A Jewish novellist knows that too. If you do not acknowledge that every person obtains closure through acceptance then you are deluded.

No, you're not ignoring this slightly inconvenient fact of history; you are simply trying to sweep it under the rug in a more than cavalier manner: "Oh well, s*** happens. Forget about it and let's move on."

No, not trying to sweep it under the carpet, nor trying to ignore the 16 million dead (persecuted + soldiers in the war) I am only trying to say that this was not Hitler alone. My God, how easy can you get if you just blame one person for this! Not even German historians agree with it (anymore).

No, you'll notice I haven't ignored this point at all... indeed I directly addressed it and called you on it for what it is, weak-minded, PC BS. Again, An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.

You know that people with a different opinion think different about its definition. A mere definition in the dictionary does not suffice. You will understand that Hitler and his regime were worse than your average evil person according to your definition.

And let's not forget those damn Jews who controlled the art markets and art schools. If Hitler had only been allowed to realize his dream of becoming a great painter none of this would have happened, but as you can see the Jews certainly deserved everything they got.

I will leave that without comment. I thought your mind was bigger than the ignorance it is blurting out.

What about the Soviet invasion of Poland at the same time as the Nazis? They split the country between them as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Then two months later the Soviet Union attacked Finland in the Winter War.

Yeah, Stalin didn't invaded anyone, all the invaded countries were longing for ruthless soviets and their NKVD. Who wouldn't want to be send to one of the Gulag camps.

Also, the Warsaw Pact was made and signed in 1955, two years after Stalin's death.

I assume that's because Stalin's rule of terror was limited to the Eastern Europe.

He 'liberated' and then stayed. It is virtually the same thing, but for public perception it got burried in the chaos. You can't deny that Hitler had no reason for invading anyone apart from wanting Lebensraum (something that was already the German's plan in WWI). Stalin liberated and then conveniently made satellite states with the help of local communists. Or are you arguing that the Russians just annexed?
As for the partition of Poland: Poland is a special case and had been fought over for centuries.

He was offered an excuse and he took it, that is different from Hitler who just did it. To public perception at least.

And, no, I am not denying that he was tyrant, only that perception is different.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-06-2012, 08:54 AM

Meh. Hitler was evil, end of story.

Alexander III

03-06-2012, 09:22 AM

Meh. Hitler was evil, end of story.

Meh Shakespere is a dead white man who wrote in a language clearly different from our own. Shakespere sucks.

I thought discussion was meant to help us take our Adolecent views and transform them into mature wiser and less intelectualy and culturaly limited views.

But I guese for you, the height of wisdom is reached at 14.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 11:25 AM

Set in stone somewhere? Handed down by a god?

Big statement. I know some socialist friends who genuinely believe capitalism is evil, and I know some capitalist leaning friends who genuinely believe socialism is evil. Neither one of the is 'mentally unwell'. I won't even go into the subjectivity of 'mentally well' either.

Definitions of 'cruelty' are subjective and changed over time. Looks like some more 'moral grayness' right there. I mean, the only way that statement works is if we view the word 'cruelty' as a huge umbrella, encompassing many different interpretations...which, I think, goes against the objectivity of the definition itself, let alone actual 'cruelty' itself.

It might work as some discussion point, or as has been said, some form of 'functioning' definition.
But functioning =/= objective

We're getting awfully close to going around in circles here.

Only an idiot socialist would argue that all forms of capitalism are evil. Only an idiot capitalist would argue that all forms of socialism are evil. Only idiots from both camps would believe that their own ideologies have stainless historical records.

We have evolved to have empathy and guilt. I guess where you live people routinely rape and murder, not just the small criminal class that many could argue is evil, but the everyday person. I'm sure you yourself have committed murder many times. I'm sure if there were no police-men you would own slaves. No? Why not then? Do you think such things are wrong? Do you think such things are evil? Do you think our laws are arbitrary or that they crudely reflect some conception of good and evil that extends beyond our culture and for the most part includes all of humanity? Circumstances can affect man's core morality, his conscience, but that core is still there, the conscience a small island that the pounding surf can beat and can smother but cannot ever erase.

Meh Shakespere is a dead white man who wrote in a language clearly different from our own. Shakespere sucks.

I thought discussion was meant to help us take our Adolecent views and transform them into mature wiser and less intelectualy and culturaly limited views.

But I guese for you, the height of wisdom is reached at 14.

I guess for you maturity means looking upon arguably the greatest tyrant and mass murderer in all of human history as "a victim." And a statement about Shakespeare parallel to Mutatis' statement about Hitler would be "Shakespeare was unbelievably talented." Denying that is as difficult as denying that Hitler was evil.

But you're right. Morality is but a foolish phase of adolescence. May I mature as you have and blossom into a nice moral relativist and let my heart bleed for poor little Hitler.

Aylinn

03-06-2012, 12:06 PM

He 'liberated' and then stayed. It is virtually the same thing, but for public perception it got burried in the chaos. You can't deny that Hitler had no reason for invading anyone apart from wanting Lebensraum (something that was already the German's plan in WWI). Stalin liberated and then conveniently made satellite states with the help of local communists. Or are you arguing that the Russians just annexed?
Yes, Stalin wanted to appear to the people as Daddy the Liberator, but the truth is that he simple annexed these countries. Stalin had no right to force his undesirable presence on others.

The help of local communist was not as important and effective as the 'help' of NKVD.

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 01:16 PM

We have evolved to have empathy and guilt. I guess where you live people routinely rape and murder, not just the small criminal class that many could argue is evil, but the everyday person. I'm sure you yourself have committed murder many times. I'm sure if there were no police-men you would own slaves. No? Why not then? Do you think such things are wrong? Do you think such things are evil? Do you think our laws are arbitrary or that they crudely reflect some conception of good and evil that extends beyond our culture and for the most part includes all of humanity? Circumstances can affect man's core morality, his conscience, but that core is still there, the conscience a small island that the pounding surf can beat and can smother but cannot ever erase.

And your empathy is where exactly? Empathy is not compassion, but being able to put yourself into someone else's shoes and to recognise and partly feel the same emotions. So where is it, your empathy if you are so proud of it? oooh, Hitler is not worth any empathy, of course, because he does not deserve any as he killed 6 million. Hitler had none for those Jews because they were his inferior enemy... hmmmmm

So, if there was no police, would you keep slaves?

(it would depend on the context, but right now: ) No

Why not? Because you think it is wrong?

Yes

Do you think such things are evil?

No, not evil, wrong. Wrong does not equal evil.

Do you think such things are evil? Do you think our laws are arbitrary or that they crudely reflect some conception of good and evil that extends beyond our culture and for the most part includes all of humanity?

No. We are only human and thus not perfect. It was not so long ago that you could be convicted of 'buggery' (i.e. homosexuality) and Wilde was such a victim. We are still waiting for gay people to marry, despite human rights. It was not so long ago women could not vote. And it is still legal in the US to have a gun. Because of the umpteenth Amendment :rolleyes:. What about the rights of everyone else? There are countries with laws that exclude people from voting or ruling the country.
So no, it is not universal, that so-called morality and I would doubt that it is ever put in laws. If it was in the French Revolution with ever such good intentions, it took some time to work.

You said it, conscience can be obscured and I say that all of those Nazis' consciences were obscured and those of all those who supported them into the bargain.
And besides, if you argue that conscience is always there, you are essentially refuting your own argument: Hitler can't be evil in that case because he had a conscience which left him to his own devices for a while. :crash:

I guess for you maturity means looking upon arguably the greatest tyrant and mass murderer in all of human history as "a victim." And a statement about Shakespeare parallel to Mutatis' statement about Hitler would be "Shakespeare was unbelievably talented." Denying that is as difficult as denying that Hitler was evil.

No-one has ever argued Hitler was a victim.

Yes, Stalin wanted to appear to the people as Daddy the Liberator, but the truth is that he simple annexed these countries. Stalin had no right to force his undesirable presence on others.

The help of local communist was not as important and effective as the 'help' of NKVD.

Oh, there is no doubt he would have let any other government in power apart from commis, that is true. But to public perception that got lost in the unintersting aftermath of WWII, though. Sad, but true. And, I would guess, that they passed the murders of 'dangerous' people off to the outside as collaborators or did not say anything at all.

Of course he did not have any right, though, but he took the excuse of liberating Eastern Europe and Churchill could not tell him to get lost because he needed the Eastern Front.

mona amon

03-06-2012, 01:44 PM

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 02:25 PM

"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20ieth century history."

Can't you understand what you read? Seriously! ;) There's a world of difference between ideas on the one hand and the [I]deeds that result when these ideas are put into practice. Your historian knows the difference. He's only talking about the "principles which enabled his acts and behaviour" not about his acts themselves. And I agree with him that Hitler was not original, and that he got his ideas from elsewhere. To call this ideology spouting maniac an original thinker is to give him a compliment he doesn't deserve.

He talks of those principles which enabled his acts. If you don't have the ideas you cannot act accordingly.I never called him an orginal thinker. I said he repeated what had already been said and that because everyone thought the same, he had so much success. It is only a matter of time before someone acts on ideas, or not?

I never said Stalin was an exception of the Russian psyche, whatever that means. You're probably mixing me up with someone else.

You said that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, i.a. proove that such people can spring up i any society and I said that Stalin is is not at all an exception of the Russian psyche, so nor is Hitler an exception to the German psyche of his time. So, no mixing up at this point.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 02:29 PM

And your empathy is where exactly? Empathy is not compassion, but being able to put yourself into someone else's shoes and to recognise and partly feel the same emotions. So where is it, your empathy if you are so proud of it? oooh, Hitler is not worth any empathy, of course, because he does not deserve any as he killed 6 million. Hitler had none for those Jews because they were his inferior enemy... hmmmmm

Yes! What deranged alternate reality do you inhabit in which people feel it in any way worth one's time or one's thought to feel empathy for men who orchestrated the cold-blooded killing of six million innocent men, women and children? I do not see what there is to be gained intellectually or morally from granting Hitler any kind consideration whatsoever. Its down-right head-splittingly absurd to even for a split second bestow upon the ghost of that man a shred of compassion when the cries and the screams and the prayers of his innumerable host of victims can still almost be heard echoing today. Splash some cold water on your face.

No, not evil, wrong. Wrong does not equal evil.

That's right, in your contorted world there is no evil. Just victims, victims of fate and those victimized by those victims of fate. Whatever.

No. We are only human and thus not perfect. It was not so long ago that you could be convicted of 'buggery' (i.e. homosexuality) and Wilde was such a victim. We are still waiting for gay people to marry, despite human rights. It was not so long ago women could not vote. And it is still legal in the US to have a gun. Because of the umpteenth Amendment :rolleyes:. What about the rights of everyone else? There are countries with laws that exclude people from voting or ruling the country.
So no, it is not universal, that so-called morality and I would doubt that it is ever put in laws. If it was in the French Revolution with ever such good intentions, it took some time to work.

In no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation. One people will do it to another but within a culture it has never been routinely done. The iniquitous Nero was condemned in his own time, in ANCIENT ROME, in a pre-christian aristocratic warrior-culture. I told before of Thucydides horror at the internecine bloodbath which transpired in Corcyra during the Pelopponesian War.

I mean what really is your point? Are rapists and molesters and murderers and war criminals really in your scheme of things not evil? What is your issue with this word? An atrocious act is an evil act. What is so complicated about that?

You said it, conscience can be obscured and I say that all of those Nazis' consciences were obscured and those of all those who supported them into the bargain.

And I say that that is the definition of evil. If you do not believe there is an objective humanly-innate sense of right and wrong, developed over millions of years by evolution, then you must have difficulty locating the sky, or distinguishing a chihuahua from a stallion.

And besides, if you argue that conscience is always there, you are essentially refuting your own argument: Hitler can't be evil in that case because he had a conscience which left him to his own devices for a while. :crash:

HIS ACTIONS WERE EVIL, THEREFORE HE WAS EVIL. In teaching you that Hitler was evil I feel as though I ought also to cover the abc's and the numbers up to 10.

No-one has ever argued Hitler was a victim.

Alexander said it would be helpful to look at Hitler as a victim.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 02:34 PM

Set in stone somewhere? Handed down by a god?

Evolutionary psychology.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 02:40 PM

Kiki I take it you also don't think the rape of Nanking was evil. I heard on the radio tearful confessions of the soldiers who took part in the chaos, but I suppose they were just suckers who fell for the fraud of objective morality. They instead should have said "it was not evil, it was wrong, but our commanding officers allowed it, Japanese culture historically encouraged the ruthless treatment of prisoners, so no, it wasn't evil at all."

mona amon

03-06-2012, 02:47 PM

You said that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, i.a. proove that such people can spring up i any society - Kiki

No. I did not say any such thing. EDIT: this is the post I think you are refering to. http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1120752&postcount=219

He talks of those principles which enabled his acts. If you don't have the ideas you cannot act accordingly.I never called him an orginal thinker. I said he repeated what had already been said and that because everyone thought the same, he had so much success. It is only a matter of time before someone acts on ideas, or not?

That's what I'm saying. It was not Hitler alone who had these ideas. I don't know about 'everyone', but there were lots of others who were exposed to the same ideas. It was Hitler who put these ideas into practice, instead of keeping them as ideas, and therefore he is evil. If anyone else put the ideas into practice, then they are evil too.

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 05:52 PM

"However, with his enmity against the Jews and his war for Lebensraum Hitler shows himself not very original and as a child of a broad movement in German and Austrian society before the first world war [...]. He belongs, in terms of the principles which enabled his acts and behaviour, as well as his thoughts, very deep in 19th and 20ieth century history."

Can't you understand what you read? Seriously! ;) There's a world of difference between ideas on the one hand and the [I]deeds that result when these ideas are put into practice. Your historian knows the difference. He's only talking about the "principles which enabled his acts and behaviour" not about his acts themselves. And I agree with him that Hitler was not original, and that he got his ideas from elsewhere. To call this ideology spouting maniac an original thinker is to give him a compliment he doesn't deserve.

He talks of those principles which enabled his acts. If you don't have the ideas you cannot act accordingly.I never called him an orginal thinker. I said he repeated what had already been said and that because everyone thought the same, he had so much success. It is only a matter of time before someone acts on ideas, or not? Fischer's ideas were controversial and renewing as well as defining for Geran historigraphy because they discredited idea that Hitler was an unfortunate accident (Betriebsunfall) which he would be if you just consider him evil. Is he evil, then he is an anomaly. Is he not evil, then he is a man of his time. Which is worse in this case?

I never said Stalin was an exception of the Russian psyche, whatever that means. You're probably mixing me up with someone else.

You said that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, i.a. proove that such people can spring up i any society and I said that Stalin is is not at all an exception of the Russian psyche, so nor is Hitler an exception to the German psyche of his time. So, no mixing up at this point.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-06-2012, 06:28 PM

Meh Shakespere is a dead white man who wrote in a language clearly different from our own. Shakespere sucks.

I thought discussion was meant to help us take our Adolecent views and transform them into mature wiser and less intelectualy and culturaly limited views.

But I guese for you, the height of wisdom is reached at 14.

I'm on thin ice right now, so I'll refrain from pointing why it's so hypocritical for to accuse me of juvenile behavior, Alex, so I'll just leave it at this: lighten up a bit, okay?

KCurtis

03-06-2012, 06:31 PM

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 06:59 PM

Yes! What deranged alternate reality do you inhabit in which people feel it in any way worth one's time or one's thought to feel empathy for men who orchestrated the cold-blooded killing of six million innocent men, women and children? I do not see what there is to be gained intellectually or morally from granting Hitler any kind consideration whatsoever. Its down-right head-splittingly absurd to even for a split second bestow upon the ghost of that man a shred of compassion when the cries and the screams and the prayers of his innumerable host of victims can still almost be heard echoing today. Splash some cold water on your face.

Again, empathy does not equal compassion. Although it has several definitions (maybe we should also here find a functioning one ;)), its primary idea consists of being able to recognise the feelings of someone else, maybe experiencing them too. I may point out that psychopaths have a notorious lack of that, in anything and to anyone.
Why do you get so enraged about something that does not suit you? Because you can find no means to make me do what you like?
Again, I am not at all denying any of his responsibility, nor any of those six million, nor any of the soldiers he killed with his daft invasions, I can only not call this man evil. I can call him bad, but I cannot call him the embodiment of evil. Why do you wish to turn that around in sympathy or even compassion? Because it does not suit your black-and-white view of everything or what? Tough sh*t. Deal with it.
It is not I who need to splash water in my face. I just do what most Third Reich historians have done: try to understand, not condemn and stop. Condemn and stop is cowardish.

That's right, in your contorted world there is no evil. Just victims, victims of fate and those victimized by those victims of fate. Whatever.

Oh, do not make any mistakes about that, my friend. Evil is all around and manifests itself occasionally as excessively in WWII, HOWEVER the adjective 'evil' does not exist, no. That would require a man/woman to be wholly 100% evil, which is impossible.
I know it is difficult to understand, but that is how it is (to me).

In no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation. One people will do it to another but within a culture it has never been routinely done. The iniquitous Nero was condemned in his own time, in ANCIENT ROME, in a pre-christian aristocratic warrior-culture. I told before of Thucydides horror at the internecine bloodbath which transpired in Corcyra during the Pelopponesian War.

hahahah, you really think that is true? Nero was maybe condemned, but I certainly remember the Romans having slaves all through their history. I certainly remember the Vikings raping. I certainly remember it being fine to beat a woman in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and I also certainly remember that the Americans had slaves, beat them and found that quite OK. They even fought a war over it, because they would see their profits go down if they had to pay them. And I remember the Russians still having slaves and punishing them (by death) if necessary until 1917 or some time shortly before that. That was not considered evil, on the contrary. You should see how Pushkin writes about those people and their serfs. Perfectly honurable and good people they were! Not routinely done. Come on! How blind can you get?

I can recall gruesome massacres by our good friends the crusaders and Arabs alike. All for the holy cause. Even the oh so holy and peaceul Pope found that OK (it gave him more power no doubt). Now that was indiscriminate killing if I ever were to call anything that. Oh, and I suppose Milosevic and Mladic had problems at the point they were trying to kill their enemies.

I mean what really is your point? Are rapists and molesters and murderers and war criminals really in your scheme of things not evil? What is your issue with this word? An atrocious act is an evil act. What is so complicated about that?

Of course it is an evil act, did I ever say it was not? I said it was an evil act, only I said someone who has comitted an evil act does not equal an evil person. Seriously, is it difficult to understand?

And I say that that is the definition of evil. If you do not believe there is an objective humanly-innate sense of right and wrong, developed over millions of years by evolution, then you must have difficulty locating the sky, or distinguishing a chihuahua from a stallion.

I say, I say, I say, and who are you to say? God? And I say something different.

HIS ACTIONS WERE EVIL, THEREFORE HE WAS EVIL. In teaching you that Hitler was evil I feel as though I ought also to cover the abc's and the numbers up to 10.

No. His acts were evil, he as a man was not. I refer to my answer above. Please, do your best and try to think, just for once.
It still does not add up with your conscience-island idea, whether you like it or not. If that island of conscience deep in ourselves as inherent good in us, how can a person be evil? It just does not work.

Alexander said it would be helpful to look at Hitler as a victim.

For black-and-white people like you that could be beneficial maybe, because otherwise matters get too complicated. Still Alexander is not me. I never see him as a victim, only as an enigma to be understood with empathy. Please note: this does not equal compassion but understanding for the man's feelings, which he had no doubt as he was human. And, no, they were not good feelings, but feelings nonetheless.

Kiki I take it you also don't think the rape of Nanking was evil. I heard on the radio tearful confessions of the soldiers who took part in the chaos, but I suppose they were just suckers who fell for the fraud of objective morality.

The acts were evil, not the people no. I do not know enough of Japanese culture to judge, but I gather the Japanese were still much worse and much more sadistic than the Germans in their camps. How strange and inconceivable that may actually seem. Where the Germans admittedly set out to kill an entire human race or maybe two and wished to purify their own, the Japanese killed everything on their way. What is worse? Calling the two evil would be kind of insulting the comparative meekness of the Germans.
Who knows what goes through the mind of a soldier at that point? Those kamikaze pilots were selected because they were suicidal or were just indoctrinated so they could cope with just crashing.
What are you suggesting? that soldiers refuse to fllow orders to kill, loot and rape? A soldier does not know refusal, only desertion and the ensuing bullet.

They instead should have said "it was not evil, it was wrong, but our commanding officers allowed it, Japanese culture historically encouraged the ruthless treatment of prisoners, so no, it wasn't evil at all."

Who says the commanding officer 'allowed' it, did he not order it? In all likelihood, they ordered it explicitly as it was common for Japanese troops to behave in such a despicable and medieval manner.

Do you actually understand the concept of military training? You do not question, you do. And those who do that best, get promoted. So essentially, in such a culture, the most ruthless bastards (excuse the language) are at the top. What are mere soldiers to do against that? Get shot?

kiki1982

03-06-2012, 07:01 PM

originally posted by Darcy;
"but that core is still there, the conscience a small island that the pounding surf can beat and can smother but cannot ever erase."

I love this metaphor! See, by contributing to this thread you are also becoming such a good writer!

Apart from the fact that his writing does not make sense, it was a nice metaphor yes. Now still the contents.

oh, you flatterer, you :blush:

Pierre Menard

03-06-2012, 07:16 PM

Only an idiot socialist would argue that all forms of capitalism are evil. Only an idiot capitalist would argue that all forms of socialism are evil. Only idiots from both camps would believe that their own ideologies have stainless historical records.

Idiot = mentally unwell? Hm.
I mean, that was just one small example, I could just as easily mention a vegan who believes the meat industry is evil, or some other such example.

We have evolved to have empathy and guilt. I guess where you live people routinely rape and murder, not just the small criminal class that many could argue is evil, but the everyday person. I'm sure you yourself have committed murder many times. I'm sure if there were no police-men you would own slaves. No? Why not then? Do you think such things are wrong? Do you think such things are evil? Do you think our laws are arbitrary or that they crudely reflect some conception of good and evil that extends beyond our culture and for the most part includes all of humanity? Circumstances can affect man's core morality, his conscience, but that core is still there, the conscience a small island that the pounding surf can beat and can smother but cannot ever erase.

Do I think such things are wrong/evil/blah blah? Yes! I already mentioned that in a previous post. Never once have I said that I don't think it's wrong.
Simply 'I =/= objective.'

"crudely reflect some conception of good and evil" is I think as far as we'll agree Darcy. Conception indeed.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 08:27 PM

I can recall gruesome massacres by our good friends the crusaders and Arabs alike. All for the holy cause. Even the oh so holy and peaceul Pope found that OK (it gave him more power no doubt). Now that was indiscriminate killing if I ever were to call anything that. Oh, and I suppose Milosevic and Mladic had problems at the point they were trying to kill their enemies.

no. His acts were evil, he as a man was not.

Those examples disprove the objective existence of evil just about as well as the Wright Brothers, Nasa and Michael Jordan all proved the non-existence of gravity.

Eichmann was not perfectly evil, he gave his victims sweets and so could have been made more evil, therefore Eichmann was not an evil man. Hamlet is not a perfect play, it could have been made better in some small way, therefore Hamlet is not a good play.

Idiot = mentally unwell? Hm.
I mean, that was just one small example, I could just as easily mention a vegan who believes the meat industry is evil, or some other such example.

Do I think such things are wrong/evil/blah blah? Yes! I already mentioned that in a previous post. Never once have I said that I don't think it's wrong.
Simply 'I =/= objective.'

"crudely reflect some conception of good and evil" is I think as far as we'll agree Darcy. Conception indeed.

There are some things that every human being, from our hairy ancestors to us today, regard as evil. Raping one's own mother is pretty bad. Day to day random impulsive murder never made it the way blue-jeans and compact discs did. Defecating next to a shared camp fire never really caught on. Read up on evolutionary psychology and then come tell me that right and wrong, good and evil, are not one bit objective or universal across the human species.

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 08:31 PM

If Hitler was not evil then Macbeth is hackneyed and the Mona Lisa hideous. If no objective basis underlies morality then why assume one underlies art?

Darcy88

03-06-2012, 08:43 PM

You want a good working foundation for right and wrong, good and evil? What about art and beauty? For art and beauty I go to those who know most about it, the artists and the critics and the most sophisticated consumers. I go to those who possess taste. When it comes to good and evil I do the same thing. I look at the men who I instinctively regard as men most wise and admirable, the two prime examples being Socrates and Jesus. Thus I find out what is good and what is not good. You could say "well, what if your instincts are wrong? How do you really know?" I answer that the man who looks to men of cowardice and spite for ones to emulate is the one who is wrong and I need no mathematical equation nor any empirical test to tell me that. There is an instinct for what is good, the result I believe of our evolution. Philosophers have labeled my point of view "virtue ethics." Whatever it is its exactly the same intellectual process those who deny the objective existence of evil follow throughout their lives. And that makes them hypocrites.

And just because I look to who Nietzsche would call "slave moralists" to determine right from wrong doesn't invalidate it any. I'm reading Plutarch's life of Alexander. Alexander, the quintessential Homeric man, a man of war and power, still deeply regretted razing the city Thebes, still felt immense tearful heart-breaking guilt and shame over killing his friend Clitus in a moment of overwhelming rage. In man's heart there is some faculty for knowing and willing the good.

Alexander III

03-07-2012, 08:37 AM

If Hitler was not evil then Macbeth is hackneyed and the Mona Lisa hideous. If no objective basis underlies morality then why assume one underlies art?

Thats not what we were arguing, I fear what kiki was trying to say was misunderstood by a lot of people.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 08:40 AM

Those examples disprove the objective existence of evil just about as well as the Wright Brothers, Nasa and Michael Jordan all proved the non-existence of gravity.

Don't turn it around now. You said, I quote, "In no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation." And I disproved it by a number of examples. Not least the crusades where there were almost apocalyptic slaughters on both sides who claimed to fight a holy war. Had they kept it to themselves, you could have understood... but no, they were proud of it as well.

Eichmann was not perfectly evil, he gave his victims sweets and so could have been made more evil, therefore Eichmann was not an evil man. Hamlet is not a perfect play, it could have been made better in some small way, therefore Hamlet is not a good play.

I suppose so much for knowing your stuff, right? Mixing people up already.
I would call Hamlet a good play, but not necessarily a perfect play. What does that say? Nothing in this world is perfect.

There are some things that every human being, from our hairy ancestors to us today, regard as evil. Raping one's own mother is pretty bad. Day to day random impulsive murder never made it the way blue-jeans and compact discs did. Defecating next to a shared camp fire never really caught on. Read up on evolutionary psychology and then come tell me that right and wrong, good and evil, are not one bit objective or universal across the human species.

You conveniently ignore that the Vikings raped and killed as well when they emigrated, that the Romans maybe did not kill but enslaved (I would argue that was better value for money), that Caesar largely went on campaign because he had to escape his creditors in Rome, that clearly the Japanese troops must have had some common moral code to kill their adverseries, whatever their ethnicity, that the Incas and Azteks all knew how to do gruesome things. They were maybe not going to kill someone because he was darker or skinnier or anything than them, but seriously, claiming that 'in no culture it has ever been' ok to do these things? I would say the opposite.

Alexander the Great may have regretted one murder. However, a) how do you know this is true? Documents written in those times should not be taken literally as they can be a reflection of the character given to the figure by the author, so Plutarch must have liked Alexander for some reason (indeed he described Alexander too much with self-control). And b) the fact that he could kill him in a rage frankly shows you that not even a clement person, if clement Alexander were, stands above his nature. He may have regretted it, but he still did it right? So that makes him evil in your book. Not in mine, fortunately.

You want a good working foundation for right and wrong, good and evil? What about art and beauty? For art and beauty I go to those who know most about it, the artists and the critics and the most sophisticated consumers. I go to those who possess taste. When it comes to good and evil I do the same thing. I look at the men who I instinctively regard as men most wise and admirable, the two prime examples being Socrates and Jesus. Thus I find out what is good and what is not good. You could say "well, what if your instincts are wrong? How do you really know?" I answer that the man who looks to men of cowardice and spite for ones to emulate is the one who is wrong and I need no mathematical equation nor any empirical test to tell me that. There is an instinct for what is good, the result I believe of our evolution. Philosophers have labeled my point of view "virtue ethics." Whatever it is its exactly the same intellectual process those who deny the objective existence of evil follow throughout their lives. And that makes them hypocrites.

And just because I look to who Nietzsche would call "slave moralists" to determine right from wrong doesn't invalidate it any. I'm reading Plutarch's life of Alexander. Alexander, the quintessential Homeric man, a man of war and power, still deeply regretted razing the city Thebes, still felt immense tearful heart-breaking guilt and shame over killing his friend Clitus in a moment of overwhelming rage. In man's heart there is some faculty for knowing and willing the good.

And did not Jesus say that you should not judge? That is good right?

Did not Socrates say that 'no-one desires evil'? Indeed, he claimed that wrong acts always come back to harm the wrongdoer and as no human would ever do something they knew would eventually hurt themselves it is clear that no human would ever do anything wrong they thought wrong at the very moment they were doing it. It is important to distinguish the means from the ends in this which seem to be obscured if you look at things. Indeed, Hitler, nor the others of his regime considerded murdering Jews, Jehova's Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill and retarded people, blind and deaf people, handicapped people and so forth wrong. They were merely trying to cleanse their superior race from bad influence. Thus, they were not evil, as they were going to the end they desired which they thought was good. Athough they were ignorant of the fact that there is no such superior Germanic race. And that was their downfall. As the end was wrong, the wrongs they did came back to them. That is all. Therefore, they did not desire evil, nor are they evil according to your own definition.
If you quote a philosopher then please consider his principles first.
And it would indeed be beneficial, as Socrates also said, to consider your own ignorance first before considering your knowledge.

Nietzsche, as far as I understand that is, argued that slave morality wishes to make masters slaves as well. In that, the good is what is useful to the whole of society, not to the strong-willed on their own. Slaves try to make their masters believe that what they do is evil in order to become masters themselves. So, as Hitler believed that the Germanic race was superior, he wished to save the Germanic race from bad influences and thus wished to protect his own. He called it God's will at some point in Mein Kampf. From the views of master morality and slave morality, it is both useful in Nazi ideology to kill the Jews and everyone I listed above too. So who are you calling 'evil'? Essentially, if you admit you are looking to slave morality for this condemnation, the only thing you're admitting is that you are weak. I don't know whether that is what you wished me to think, because then we are in the same camp.
And Nietzsche also understood 'morality' as inseparable from a particular culture, I might add.

To me and as far as I can see, Hitler mixed the two and made the Germanic race both superior and enslaved by the Jews and everyone else to get the most of everything. It is known that they misused Nietzsche's ideas of [/I]Über-[/I] and Untermensch. If they considered themselves masters then they must have decided that it was good what they were doing. Though according to Socrates that would amount to ignorance.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 10:13 AM

Don't turn it around now. You said, I quote, "In no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation." And I disproved it by a number of examples. Not least the crusades where there were almost apocalyptic slaughters on both sides who claimed to fight a holy war. Had they kept it to themselves, you could have understood... but no, they were proud of it as well.

My God, this whole response of your is a travesty and I don't know where to begin. Those crusaders slaughtered in war. Back at home they were not all Charles Mansons.

I suppose so much for knowing your stuff, right? Mixing people up already.
I would call Hamlet a good play, but not necessarily a perfect play. What does that say? Nothing in this world is perfect.

You can't call Hamlet a good play Kiki. Not according to your own standards of when an adjective is permitted to be used. Way to dodge my point though. Its easy to keep the same beliefs when you completely ignore what the opposite argument is.

You conveniently ignore that the Vikings raped and killed as well when they emigrated, that the Romans maybe did not kill but enslaved (I would argue that was better value for money), that Caesar largely went on campaign because he had to escape his creditors in Rome, that clearly the Japanese troops must have had some common moral code to kill their adverseries, whatever their ethnicity, that the Incas and Azteks all knew how to do gruesome things. They were maybe not going to kill someone because he was darker or skinnier or anything than them, but seriously, claiming that 'in no culture it has ever been' ok to do these things? I would say the opposite.

Viking culture was a pretty violent culture, but I would not say it fits what I earlier described. And even if it did, the exceptions prove the rule.

Alexander the Great may have regretted one murder. However, a) how do you know this is true? Documents written in those times should not be taken literally as they can be a reflection of the character given to the figure by the author, so Plutarch must have liked Alexander for some reason (indeed he described Alexander too much with self-control). And b) the fact that he could kill him in a rage frankly shows you that not even a clement person, if clement Alexander were, stands above his nature. He may have regretted it, but he still did it right? So that makes him evil in your book. Not in mine, fortunately.

You're right. Discount Plutarch. Discount Plato and Herodotus too, forget we know anything for sure about Greek history.

And did not Jesus say that you should not judge? That is good right?

Did not Socrates say that 'no-one desires evil'? Indeed, he claimed that wrong acts always come back to harm the wrongdoer and as no human would ever do something they knew would eventually hurt themselves it is clear that no human would ever do anything wrong they thought wrong at the very moment they were doing it. It is important to distinguish the means from the ends in this which seem to be obscured if you look at things. Indeed, Hitler, nor the others of his regime considerded murdering Jews, Jehova's Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill and retarded people, blind and deaf people, handicapped people and so forth wrong. They were merely trying to cleanse their superior race from bad influence. Thus, they were not evil, as they were going to the end they desired which they thought was good. Athough they were ignorant of the fact that there is no such superior Germanic race. And that was their downfall. As the end was wrong, the wrongs they did came back to them. That is all. Therefore, they did not desire evil, nor are they evil according to your own definition.
If you quote a philosopher then please consider his principles first.
And it would indeed be beneficial, as Socrates also said, to consider your own ignorance first before considering your knowledge.

Nietzsche, as far as I understand that is, argued that slave morality wishes to make masters slaves as well. In that, the good is what is useful to the whole of society, not to the strong-willed on their own. Slaves try to make their masters believe that what they do is evil in order to become masters themselves. So, as Hitler believed that the Germanic race was superior, he wished to save the Germanic race from bad influences and thus wished to protect his own. He called it God's will at some point in Mein Kampf. From the views of master morality and slave morality, it is both useful in Nazi ideology to kill the Jews and everyone I listed above too. So who are you calling 'evil'? Essentially, if you admit you are looking to slave morality for this condemnation, the only thing you're admitting is that you are weak. I don't know whether that is what you wished me to think, because then we are in the same camp.
And Nietzsche also understood 'morality' as inseparable from a particular culture, I might add.

To me and as far as I can see, Hitler mixed the two and made the Germanic race both superior and enslaved by the Jews and everyone else to get the most of everything. It is known that they misused Nietzsche's ideas of [/I]Über-[/I] and Untermensch. If they considered themselves masters then they must have decided that it was good what they were doing. Though according to Socrates that would amount to ignorance.

I don't give a flying **** whether the Nazis thought they were doing good or not. Intention means **** all. All that matter is what they did and what they did was evil. I don't see the point in even trying to argue this with you further, especially since this last post of yours shows absolutely zero willingness or ability on your part to take my words seriously. Why should I keep wasting my time?

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 10:15 AM

Thats not what we were arguing, I fear what kiki was trying to say was misunderstood by a lot of people.

I'm saying that there is in the end some objective measure by which an act and a person can be called evil, just like there I believe there is with art. Kiki has made arguments in favour of the subjectivity of morality.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 10:26 AM

Kiki go to a school-house, grab a piece of white chalk and write on the board the following phrase as many times as it takes before it finally sinks in:

An evil person is a person who does evil things.
An evil person is a person who does evil things.
An evil person is a person who does evil things.
An evil person is a person who does evil things.
An evil person is a person who does evil things.
......

Alexander III

03-07-2012, 10:43 AM

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 10:46 AM

By your logic I am an evil person because I have done evil thing. So following your logic I am equall to Hitler....

I have a standard by which I distinguish an evil act from a bad act and therefore an evil person from a bad person. While the young Japanese soldier was raping the 13 year old Chinese girl and while he slitted her throat and then turned his malevolent gaze upon her sister or her mother, he was evil. I do believe in redemption. Heck, if Hitler had lived, spent the rest of his life in prison, perhaps he'd have experienced growth personally and morally and become something less of a monster.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 10:58 AM

My God, this whole response of your is a travesty and I don't know where to begin. Those crusaders slaughtered in war. Back at home they were not all Charles Mansons.

You find that response a travesty because it makes more sense than yours will ever do and it even took your arguments and quotes on board and showed you that you did not know what you are in fact talking about and quoting.

You can't call Hamlet a good play Kiki. Not according to your own standards of when an adjective is permitted to be used. Way to dodge my point though. Its easy to keep the same beliefs when you completely ignore what the opposite argument is.

'Good' in this way does not equal 'doing good', but is a parameter of quality. I think I still know when I can use the adjectives I use. Or were you arguing catharsis (if that is at all possible)?

Viking culture was a pretty violent culture, but I would not say it fits what I earlier described. And even if it did, the exceptions prove the rule.

It fits your quote like a tee that 'in no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation.' I showed you clearly that that is not at all the case.

You're right. Discount Plutarch. Discount Plato and Herodotus too, forget we know anything for sure about Greek history.

I merely repeat what critics have pointed out. Don't get angry about it. Fact is, Alexander killed his friend in a fit of rage. Thus he is evil according to your own definition. That is true, period, according to you. As evil as Hitler. Oh, no, wait that is not what you meant, right. Of course that is not what you meant but still it is what you are in effect arguing at this very moment.

Go on, deny it.

I don't give a flying **** whether the Nazis thought they were doing good or not. Intention means **** all. All that matter is what they did and what they did was evil. I don't see the point in even trying to argue this with you further, especially since this last post of yours shows absolutely zero willingness or ability on your part to take my words seriously. Why should I keep wasting my time?

I don't know whether you mean sh*t or f*ck, but I gather it is something along those lines. It is only people who cannot express themselves any longer who use those words. Usually people get enraged at moments like this and vow not to waste their time anymore because they know they are in the wrong. As I showed you, you have not properly considered your own beliefs and their logical consequences.

Think of me as a Socrates and you as a Meno and we might get somewhere.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 11:08 AM

You find that response a travesty because it makes more sense than yours will ever do and it even took your arguments and quotes on board and showed you that you did not know what you are in fact talking about and quoting.

Other way around bud.

'Good' in this way does not equal 'doing good', but is a parameter of quality. I think I still know when I can use the adjectives I use. Or were you arguing catharsis (if that is at all possible)?

I can think of really good people who in moments of weakness did wrong things, not evil things but wrong things. According to your standard of good and evil these people fall short of being good.I made this point earlier but you conveniently ignored it. You can't call anyone good. Its absurd, simply absurd.

It fits your quote like a tee that 'in no culture anywhere at anytime has it been the status quo for the average person to go about raping, killing and enslaving indiscriminately and not receive condemnation.' I showed you clearly that that is not at all the case.

I said right after that sentence that one culture will do it to another culture but not within their own culture in a gross indiscriminate manner. You ignored that inconvenient addendum though, of course. And THE EXCEPTIONS PROVE THE RULE. Or is that too nuanced for you?

I merely repeat what critics have pointed out. Don't get angry about it. Fact is, Alexander killed his friend in a fit of rage. Thus he is evil according to your own definition. That is true, period, according to you. As evil as Hitler. Oh, no, wait that is not what you meant, right. Of course that is not what you meant but still it is what you are in effect arguing at this very moment.

Yes Kiki, committing a crime of passion puts you on the same level as a genocidal tyrant with the blood of six million innocents on his hands. Good sound logic you have there. My, a lot of horses must be going hungry for all the straw you gathered together to construct that straw man. How evil of you to cause such widespread horse famine.

Think of me as a Socrates and you as a Meno and we might get somewhere.

If Socrates adhered to your manner of thinking Western culture never would have made it out of the dark ages. The Platonic dialogues would have been used by the monks as toilet paper. The Muslims would have used them to start fires.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 11:08 AM

I have a standard by which I distinguish an evil act from a bad act and therefore an evil person from a bad person. While the young Japanese soldier was raping the 13 year old Chinese girl and while he slitted her throat and then turned his malevolent gaze upon her sister or her mother, he was evil. I do believe in redemption. Heck, if Hitler had lived, spent the rest of his life in prison, perhaps he'd have experienced growth personally and morally and become something less of a monster.

I think the film Downfall might help you there.

Very, very, very good film. Hammered it home.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 11:14 AM

I think the film Downfall might help you there.

Very, very, very good film. Hammered it home.

Yes it did. It showed that Hitler was a hateful coward to the very end. He wound up resenting the German people and doing all within his power to make defeat as horrible for them as possible.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 11:17 AM

A veritable Socratically spirited person would never liken themselves to Socrates.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 11:57 AM

Other way around bud.

I think not, my friend. Why do you got enraged then? Because you were rejoycing?

I can think of really good people who in moments of weakness did wrong things, not evil things but wrong things. According to your standard of good and evil these people fall short of being good.I made this point earlier but you conveniently denied it. You can't call anyone good. Its absurd, simply absurd.

And you are chaning your beliefs as we speak. Now suddenly there are evil things and wrong things. I have always maintained that no-one is perfect. That goes for good and evil. I thought I told you that.

That is not absurd.

I said there is a difference between a play that is good and a person who is deemed 'good'. Or I asked, are you arguing catharsis? (something which you clearly did not get)

I said right after that sentence that one culture will do it to another culture but not within their own culture in a gross indiscriminate manner. You ignored that inconvenient addendum though, of course. And THE EXCEPTIONS PROVE THE RULE. Or is that too nuanced for you?

No, one culture to another then. And still the Christians killed their own as in the Cathars. The Muslims are killing each other as we speak. The Syrians as well. And the Lybians. Not to mention the maffia and drugs gangs on a smaller scale. Not to mention that riots broke out between monks in Jerusalem last year I think. Henry VIII did his best to kill and frighten away the Catholics because the pope did not want to divorce him. And those nuns and priests were English into the bargain. The English civil war saw Roundheads against Cavaliers. Both English. They did not agree about the king... Oh, the Irish fought a civil war and the ensuing IRA. Not to mention the ETA in Spain. That is indiscriminate killing, isn't it, of your own people and culture?
So I guess now indiscriminate killing is alright between cultures, so Hitler's killing was OK, then. He did not consider the Jews German after all.

Yes Kiki, committing a crime of passion puts you on the same level as a genocidal tyrant with the blood of six million innocents on his hands. Good sound logic you have there. My, a lot of horses must be going hungry for all the straw you gathered together to construct that straw man. How evil of you to cause such widespread horse famine.

And your point being exactly? I merely took your definition and applied it. If there is something wrong with the result, then there is something wrong with the definition. Not my fault.

If Socrates adhered to your manner of thinking Western culture never would have made it out of the dark ages. The Platonic dialogues would have been used by the monks as toilet paper. The Muslims would have used them to start fires.

And he did adhere to it. Go on, if you know better, what does that quote mean, that 'No man desires evil.' In the Dark Ages, he was forgotten as he was stuck in the East with the Muslims. It was only in the Renaissance he cropped up again.

Essentially he argues that man will want something and use the means to get it. Naturally, for that man, those ends can never be evil. Locke thought the same and so did Hobbes. And of course, if the end turns out to be bad in itself, the consequences will return to haunt the perpetrator, however he cannot have thought the end was evil when he did it, because man, nor animal is so stupid to do something to harm himself if he knows that from the start. I know it is hard to imagine, but it is simple and a truth that stands like a house as they say in Dutch.

Wrongdoing = ignorance. And there is your cause.

stlukesguild

03-07-2012, 12:01 PM

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 12:02 PM

Ok Kiki, I concede. You are right. Your examples of immorality prove that it was as normal to kill and rape as it was to knead dough and to defecate, since that is what I obviously, throughout many posts, meant.

You can't call anyone "good" though Kiki. Maybe I'm weird but that seems absurd to me.

Wrongdoing comes from ignorance but it does not in itself equate to ignorance. Wrongdoing is wrongdoing. A good person is a person who does good things, an evil person one who does evil things. This is the point on which we will never agree. I still don't understand why. Your standard of perfection is not one used in most other instances. Why you apply it to evil I do not know.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 12:08 PM

Kiki you've populated this thread with more straw men than were carved soldiers in Qin Shi Huang's terracotta army.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 12:15 PM

Yes it did. It showed that Hitler was a hateful coward to the very end. He wound up resenting the German people and doing all within his power to make defeat as horrible for them as possible.

I knew that was where the problem lay. No, my friend, that was not the meaning of the film according. The meaning of the film was to show viewers Hitler as a man who could be kind to his secretaries and who was afraid by the end, and not as a kind of mythical 'evil' figure like you term him. That way, his acts become even more gruesome because they are acts induced by a human being who could be kind to the one, yet ruthless to the other.

A veritable Socratically spirited person would never liken themselves to Socrates.

No? And why not pray? Because 'no man is wiser than Socrates'?

castleteachings

03-07-2012, 12:38 PM

I have recently bought a copy with the intention of reading, but haven't got round to it yet. I have a long list of other stuff to read. Should I read it through a gap in my fingers?

Alexander III

03-07-2012, 01:45 PM

Again, empathy does not equal compassion. Although it has several definitions (maybe we should also here find a functioning one ), its primary idea consists of being able to recognise the feelings of someone else, maybe experiencing them too. I may point out that psychopaths have a notorious lack of that, in anything and to anyone. Why do you get so enraged about something that does not suit you?

So everyone who has a normal sense of "right" and "wrong"... who takes a moral stance upon something as clear-cut as the Holocaust, as opposed to espousing the morality of a Nazi sympathizer, offering up endless excuses, or a mindless moral relativist who believes that "good" and "evil" are but meaningless terms as its all one and the same can be equated with a psychopath? And who is getting enraged?

Because you can find no means to make me do what you like?

I doubt Darcy has the least thought of changing your mind. That would demand both the ability to think logically and humanely as well as the ability to change, neither of which you seem to have in any great abundance. I suspect, however, that he, like myself, continues posting rebuttals to your inane comments so as to offer some alternative to your repeated apologies and excuses for the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler for others who frequent this site to consider.

Again, I am not at all denying any of his responsibility...

Really? It seems to me that you have repeatedly attempted to deny responsibility by laying equal blame upon his upbringing, his childhood, his experiences in WWI, the French, the English, the whole history of antisemitism, and indeed the whole of society... going on to suggest that anyone of us might have become as he had we been placed in the same circumstances. It is indeed important that we seek out experiences and elements that have contributed to the creation of a figure such as Adolf Hitler or an event such as the Holocaust so as to be aware and alert to the possibility of history repeating itself... but this in no way absolves Hitler (or Himmler or Mengele) from one iota of responsibility for their actions and their actions were of such unmitigated evil that one can only call the individuals responsible for the same "evil".

I can call him bad, but I cannot call him the embodiment of evil. Why do you wish to turn that around in sympathy or even compassion? Because it does not suit your black-and-white view of everything or what? Tough sh*t. Deal with it.

"A Black and White view of the world?" Did you really say that? It seems to me that even accepting that there are endless variations of gray when it comes to the questions of morality and "good" and "evil" Hitler comes about as close to black on the spectrum as possible. You, it would seem, would have us all believe that he falls into some neutral range of gray along with the rest of the majority of humanity. You systematically kill millions of innocent human beings and we place you in the same ring in Dante's Inferno as the guy who once cheated on his taxes.

It is not I who need to splash water in my face. I just do what most Third Reich historians have done: try to understand, not condemn and stop. Condemn and stop is cowardish.

No one has suggested that it is not important to come to some sense of understanding as to the elements that helped trigger historical events, however, a sense of understanding does not exclude taking a moral stance, including the condemnations of genocide and the individuals who carried out such widespread and wholesale acts of murder. The only cowardice apparent here is the cowardice in refusing to take such a moral stance. Edmund Burke fully understood this when he stated, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Once again st.lukes, you like darcy have completley misunderstood what Kiki was saying.

First of we are not saying that Hitler was not responsible, neither are we denying the monstrosity of his acts. But saying Hitler was evil and did evil things is not enough. It is a shallow view of the way thing were, and it is that same shallow view which will lead to other Hitlers in the future, because instead of trying to understand what is arguably one of the most schocking and complex moments of history you are trying to blanket it under a simple "hitler was evil.. the end". I aplogize but that view on things is usless.

Firstly do you think Hitler did everything by himself? I hope not. Because there was an entire system, thousands if not millions of men who were all equally part of it. SO laying the entire blame on hitler is at once narrow minded, and also clouding our view. It is very easy to say it was all Hitler, it is a bit more complex once we realize that Hitler was just a charcater in a very long tradgedy, there were many men worst than Hitler, and the modern historical view is that Hitler was pushed into may things.

Now, let me make a modern anology. All the republicans in america look at the economy and say look, this is all Obamas fault. To all of us this seems a very biased and limited view. Because we know that this econimical collapse is not obamas fault, but the fault of the last 30 odd years of national zeitgesit and political and financial systems which would inevitably lead to the finacial collapse.

Saying the Holocaust was all Hitler is to me as narrow minded as saying the bad economy is all obama. There was a system before it which was leading towards that inevitable moment that was the holocaust. Hitler was just a pawn in the scheme of things, a big pawn, but nonethless just part of a cultural and political ziestgeist which was moving towards its natural conclusion, namley the holocaust. To all the men who knew what The Kaisser and his army and scientists were doing to the Herero and Namaqua people in their affircan colonies at the begining of the 20th century, the holocuats 40 odd years later would have come as no suprise. But everyone was suprised. Because most people behaved like you and Darcy in this situation and instead of choosing to examine the complexity of history and scrutinize, they just chose to lay out uninformed blanket statements to make history more ordered and simpler to understand, which leads to ignorance and the mistakes of the past being repeated.

Here read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_Genocide

And then try telling me about the "uniquness of Hitler" and how no one saw it coming, and how the holocaust was hitlers sole creation.

I appologize if I come of as bitter and personaly attacking you (darcy and st.lukes) but this subject gets me heated up, as in your attitudes I see the ingoring of history and obscuring of truth, just so that the world can be ordered in a more simple and satifying manner. And it is this very attitude which will lead to the horrors of the past being repeated in the future, because the truth of the past remains unknwon and everyone is there waving flags and cheering because this new guy, he is nothing at all like the evil men of before. truth is, that when this "new savior" comes and you shall be cheering him on, he shall appear to you nothign like the mosneters of the past, because your image of the monsters of the past is mainly fictitious and is disjointed from the truth. What you guys preach is the benefit of ignorance, and it is this ignorance which shall damn us some day.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 02:53 PM

So everyone who has a normal sense of "right" and "wrong"... who takes a moral stance upon something as clear-cut as the Holocaust, as opposed to espousing the morality of a Nazi sympathizer, offering up endless excuses, or a mindless moral relativist who believes that "good" and "evil" are but meaningless terms as its all one and the same can be equated with a psychopath? And who is getting enraged?

And you are a teacher? Can you actually teach anything else than what you approve of? I would say, 'no', as you keep twisting what I say and deliberately misunderstand.
Because I merely asked that we do not stop at condemnation which is what condemnation mostly leads to: nothing, and again, that is what we have done for the past 60 years. Has it helped? No.

Instead we keep on ignoring the signs of such regimes and keep on ignoring the solutions to such regimes. A regime does rarely stand with a dictator on its own, it stands with a whole culture behind it and a whole lot of supporters. And yet what do we usually do if we depose dictators? We hope everything will be alright again. That is what has been learned from the calamity in 1945. Sure, call him evil and Hitler takes on mythical proportions and that is what Der Untergang tried to hammer home. Hitler is not an evil daemon, but a man of flesh-and-blood who happened to have bad ideas and unleashed them on the world together with a few followers and with massive support. That makes the Holocaust so much more than the wacky plan of an evil man. But no. We consider him evil and thus, the Holocaust is merely the act of an evil man, as if a devil had come onto the world. But Pol Pot did the very same! Even announced it on the radio. Ok, not in camps, he just left them to die of starvation. He killed his own people, up to a quarter of them (estimates vary).

I doubt Darcy has the least thought of changing your mind. That would demand both the ability to think logically and humanely as well as the ability to change, neither of which you seem to have in any great abundance. I suspect, however, that he, like myself, continues posting rebuttals to your inane comments so as to offer some alternative to your repeated apologies and excuses for the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler for others who frequent this site to consider.

Once again - I do believe people refuse to listen and read - I have never made excuses nor apologies for it. I merely said that this was not only his idea, but the idea of a whole society, culture and century even. That is what made his ideas catch on. Are you denying that they caught on or what?
That is all. If you ask me, that is worse in fact than only citing Hitler as responsible for it. But there you go: not fashionable, so no good.

All of those rebuttals only show the fact that the two of you are after a moral stance which everyone frankly knows and takes (apart from the minority) and holds and that you are not interested in anything else. We know all of it, we know what those people did, that that was despicable and so on, yet the world lets the same happen as we speak because we have failed to understand that the only means to eradicate such excesses is to understand and not condemn.

Really? It seems to me that you have repeatedly attempted to deny responsibility by laying equal blame upon his upbringing, his childhood, his experiences in WWI, the French, the English, the whole history of antisemitism, and indeed the whole of society... going on to suggest that anyone of us might have become as he had we been placed in the same circumstances. It is indeed important that we seek out experiences and elements that have contributed to the creation of a figure such as Adolf Hitler or an event such as the Holocaust so as to be aware and alert to the possibility of history repeating itself... but this in no way absolves Hitler (or Himmler or Mengele) from one iota of responsibility for their actions and their actions were of such unmitigated evil that one can only call the individuals responsible for the same "evil".

No, I have named many causes apart from Hitler's own bad ideas (and causes for those ideas) which make it more logical if you will that he emerged. I never said it absolved them of anything. I merely named those reasons and facts and said that if all those circumstances together had not occurred, this would never have happened. But it did. You see, look back, I said it again, it did. It did. The Holocaust did happen. Sad but true. Still, condemning and stopping is in no way beneficial to examination whatsoever. You deliberately misinterpret my words as if you are out to make me a Nazi. It is just not true and you know it. So stop with it.

"A Black and White view of the world?" Did you really say that? It seems to me that even accepting that there are endless variations of gray when it comes to the questions of morality and "good" and "evil" Hitler comes about as close to black on the spectrum as possible. You, it would seem, would have us all believe that he falls into some neutral range of gray along with the rest of the majority of humanity. You systematically kill millions of innocent human beings and we place you in the same ring in Dante's Inferno as the guy who once cheated on his taxes.

What is this absolute desire of yours to call him 'evil'? Why? Because you think it is easy or because they taught you in school?

No one has suggested that it is not important to come to some sense of understanding as to the elements that helped trigger historical events, however, a sense of understanding does not exclude taking a moral stance, including the condemnations of genocide and the individuals who carried out such widespread and wholesale acts of murder. The only cowardice apparent here is the cowardice in refusing to take such a moral stance. Edmund Burke fully understood this when he stated, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

I said I could call his acts evil not him as a person. So, what are you arguing about exactly? I must call him evil? Because I am your student and you say so? "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." is indeed true. And that is what usually happens after condemnation. It is not the moral stance that should be taken, that is easy, it is action that should be taken and that is mostly missing after the moral stance. People have repeatedly condemed various states for doing so and so and then? Nothing. And in the meantime the people who took that same moral stance watch how the same people they called 'evil' and 'bad' kill others.
Moral stances have no meaning if they do not lead to action.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 02:59 PM

Mr.lucifer

03-07-2012, 03:48 PM

Personally, my visions of evil is a bit complex.

KCurtis

03-07-2012, 05:42 PM

Apart from the fact that his writing does not make sense, it was a nice metaphor yes. Now still the contents.

oh, you flatterer, you :blush:

But see that is your opinion. He makes perfect sense.

KCurtis

03-07-2012, 05:53 PM

I appologize if I come of as bitter and personaly attacking you (darcy and st.lukes) but this subject gets me heated up, as in your attitudes I see the ingoring of history and obscuring of truth, just so that the world can be ordered in a more simple and satifying manner. And it is this very attitude which will lead to the horrors of the past being repeated in the future, because the truth of the past remains unknwon and everyone is there waving flags and cheering because this new guy, he is nothing at all like the evil men of before. truth is, that when this "new savior" comes and you shall be cheering him on, he shall appear to you nothign like the mosneters of the past, because your image of the monsters of the past is mainly fictitious and is disjointed from the truth. What you guys preach is the benefit of ignorance, and it is this ignorance which shall damn us some day.

So now we can blame Darcy for future evil. I don't think he is naive enough to consider any future leader of a country a savior. I also don't see any ignoring of history in his posts, I see much misspellings in yours.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-07-2012, 05:58 PM

My friend, you have a mind.

Wow! The one who agrees with you has a mind! How coincidental!

Seriously, though, you all do realize you've been repeating the same things for about the last ten pages, no? I mean, how many time can you say, "I never said that, I said this," in one thread? The hyperbole is becoming hilarious. On one hand, we now have Kiki who sympathizes with Hitler and thinks he bears absolutely no responsibility for his actions, and on the other we have Darcy and StLukes who hate Hitler so blindly, their short-sightedness will usher in the next genocidal tyrant. Both views are ridiculous, but that's where you are.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 06:02 PM

But see that is your opinion. He makes perfect sense.

Explain that to me.

So now we can blame Darcy for future evil. I don't think he is naive enough to consider any future leader of a country a savior. I also don't see any ignoring of history in his posts, I see much misspellings in yours.

Misspellings have nothing to do with it. And it is 'many' misspellings as they are countable.

In ignoring the vast responsibility of any other person in this, you, Darcy and StLukes and anyone else with the same opinion are ignoring that it was not something that came out of thin air. It is surprising that it actually took so long, really.

kiki1982

03-07-2012, 06:16 PM

Wow! The one who agrees with you has a mind! How coincidental!

Seriously, though, you all do realize you've been repeating the same things for about the last ten pages, no? I mean, how many time can you say, "I never said that, I said this," in one thread? The hyperbole is becoming hilarious. On one hand, we now have Kiki who sympathizes with Hitler and thinks he bears absolutely no responsibility for his actions, and on the other we have Darcy and StLukes who hate Hitler so blindly, their short-sightedness will usher in the next genocidal tyrant. Both views are ridiculous, but that's where you are.

He seems to be the only one who actually thinks, yes.

And I say it again, I do not sympathise. Who ever said that, that I sympathise? I for one did not. It is amazing how people can misconstrue words, if they wish.
I have repeated several times that he is responsible, jeez, how many times again: he is ultimately responsible despite his ideas having come from generations before him.

I cannot help that these two blockheads do not wish to consider historical context in this matter which turns out to be all-defining. If that is sympathising then you do not know the meaning of the word. As you are teacher as well, I would urge that you learn it.

Why, pray, do we ALWAYS accuse someone of sympathising who puts a different spin on the whole matter and offers a look from the exact other side, IF the thing people are discussing is negative? If the thing is positive you are a traitor, if it is negative a sympathiser. Why pray? Because we cannot think differently and 'what I believe is right?' Man would never have come as far as he has done if he had always taken that view. Read that post of Alexander again and tell me, what is wrong with it? What is not true in it? Is it too uncomfortable to consider a wrongdoer like Hitler as a man? No doubt that is it. It is far easier to just say 'he is evil. the end' and all those 6 million will have died in vain because you learnt nothing from their deaths. Good on you.

Even German historians have in the meantime taken a different view, since 1961.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-07-2012, 06:24 PM

And I say it again, I do not sympathise. Who ever said that, that I sympathise? I for one did not. It is amazing how people can misconstrue words, if they wish.
I have repeated several times that he is responsible, jeez, how many times again: he is ultimately responsible despite his ideas having come from generations before him.

For one of the only thinkers in this thread, Kiki, it's quite amazing how you completely missed my point.

KCurtis

03-07-2012, 07:04 PM

Explain that to me.

Misspellings have nothing to do with it. And it is 'many' misspellings as they are countable.

In ignoring the vast responsibility of any other person in this, you, Darcy and StLukes and anyone else with the same opinion are ignoring that it was not something that came out of thin air. It is surprising that it actually took so long, really.

First of all, I don't need to explain anything to you, you can read for yourself. Secondly, you don't need to be so condescending, as I don't need to be corrected on my word usage- and I know what the word many means. I used the word much because I FELT LIKE IT !

KCurtis

03-07-2012, 07:08 PM

[QUOTE=kiki1982;1121501
Is it too uncomfortable to consider a wrongdoer like Hitler as a man? No doubt that is it. It is far easier to just say 'he is evil. the end' and all those 6 million will have died in vain because you learnt nothing from their deaths. Good on you.
Even German historians have in the meantime taken a different view, since 1961.[/QUOTE]

We are not responsible- you are stating an opinion when you say we have not learned anything from their deaths. Who are you? And I knew this thread would result in insulting posts from you- I just thought it would happen sooner. Who cares what you think, really.
I'm done.

stlukesguild

03-07-2012, 07:19 PM

Once again st.lukes, you like darcy have completley misunderstood what Kiki was saying.

First of we are not saying that Hitler was not responsible, neither are we denying the monstrosity of his acts. But saying Hitler was evil and did evil things is not enough. It is a shallow view of the way thing were, and it is that same shallow view which will lead to other Hitlers in the future, because instead of trying to understand what is arguably one of the most schocking and complex moments of history you are trying to blanket it under a simple "hitler was evil.. the end". I aplogize but that view on things is usless.

Alex... no one is suggesting that we not explore the various historical and biographical aspects that went into the creation of Hitler, WWII, and the Holocaust. But if anything is simple-minded it is the idea that we can merely analyze history and biography and come up with a clear cause and effect that might be used to guarantee that history will never repeat itself..

Let turn to the opposite side of the spectrum of "exceptionality", and take William Shakespeare, for example. We cannot simply assign the brilliance of his artistic achievements to the mere accidents of history and society. Certainly there must have been an endless array of individuals whose biography and history were similar. And yet Shakespeare remains an exceptional individual... not merely a product of society and biography. By the same token, neither history nor biography alone explain Hitler... nor do they vindicate nor exonerate from responsibility. It would seem to me that an individual who is unquestionably responsible for the systematic murder of millions of innocent human beings more than fits the bill of "evil".

Firstly do you think Hitler did everything by himself? I hope not. Because there was an entire system, thousands if not millions of men who were all equally part of it. SO laying the entire blame on hitler is at once narrow minded, and also clouding our view. It is very easy to say it was all Hitler, it is a bit more complex once we realize that Hitler was just a charcater in a very long tradgedy, there were many men worst than Hitler, and the modern historical view is that Hitler was pushed into may things.

Alex, knowing you, I suspect that this entire debate is of little or no real interest. You simply take the position of the "devil's advocate" to play at portraying yourself as an original thinker, willing to shock. You seemingly had no problem taking a stern moral position when it came to someone calling your mother a b***h, and yet here you would suggest that we take the time to weight endless nuances of "right" and "wrong" when it comes to genocide. Of course others were involved in the Holocaust and in facilitating Hitler's rise to power. Does that fact absolve Hitler from blame... or rather does it not simply mean that there were others equally deserving of blame and/or being termed as "evil".

Now, let me make a modern anology. All the republicans in america look at the economy and say look, this is all Obamas fault. To all of us this seems a very biased and limited view. Because we know that this econimical collapse is not obamas fault, but the fault of the last 30 odd years of national zeitgesit and political and financial systems which would inevitably lead to the finacial collapse.

Saying the Holocaust was all Hitler is to me as narrow minded as saying the bad economy is all obama.

You analogy really stretches things far beyond any degree of reason.

Hitler was just a pawn in the scheme of things, a big pawn, but nonethless just part of a cultural and political ziestgeist which was moving towards its natural conclusion, namley the holocaust.

If Hitler was but a "pawn" then no one, no where, at any time is more than but a "pawn"... and I highly doubt you believe that. Indeed, such is one of the most inane things you have ever posted. Our individual actions, choices, and achievements are not limited to the political zeitgeist. Social realities do not make a Hitler nor a Shakespeare. How is it, for example, that the same political zeitgeist which could create a Hitler... wholly free from any responsibility for his actions (because he was but a "pawn" of history) could also produce figures such as Schindler or any number of other Germans who never lost a clear notion as to what is "right" and "wrong"... human or inhumane?

To all the men who knew what The Kaisser and his army and scientists were doing to the Herero and Namaqua people in their affircan colonies at the begining of the 20th century, the holocuats 40 odd years later would have come as no suprise.

Certainly, "evil" will never come as a surprise. Humanity forever retains the capacity to do "evil". Most human beings retain a moral compass and restrain tghemselves from acting upon thoughts that they recognize are "immoral" or "evil". I personally fantasize about mounting a Gatling Gun on the front of my car in order to deal with idiot drivers during rush hour... but I don't act upon my thoughts, which I recognize as being somewhat less than morally upright.

But everyone was suprised.

Only the naive were surprised. Only those who could not fathom the depths of evil and inhumanity that the human mind could unleash were surprised. As A Rabbi acquaintance has repeatedly stated, the only real surprise about the Holocaust is that it was not undertaken by the French.

Because most people behaved like you and Darcy in this situation and instead of choosing to examine the complexity of history and scrutinize, they just chose to lay out uninformed blanket statements to make history more ordered and simpler to understand, which leads to ignorance and the mistakes of the past being repeated.

Again... no one has suggested that we should not engage in the examination of the complexity of history... that is simply a strawman employed repeatedly, contrary to what either Darcy of I have said. But certainly you recognize that correlation and causation are not one and the same thing. We can analyze history 'til we're blue in the face... it doesn't explain Hitler nor Shakespeare... nor when and where another Hitler or Shakespeare might arise.

Here read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_...maqua_Genocide

And then try telling me about the "uniquness of Hitler" and how no one saw it coming, and how the holocaust was hitlers sole creation.

When we say Hitler was "exceptional" it need not be reduced to meaning "unique" or "sole example". Considering the great many individuals who were just as much influenced by history and and a difficult childhood and did not evolve into sociopaths who were willing to kill millions, Hitler was exceptional... or stood out from the crowd.

I appologize if I come of as bitter and personaly attacking you (darcy and st.lukes) but this subject gets me heated up, as in your attitudes I see the ingoring of history and obscuring of truth, just so that the world can be ordered in a more simple and satifying manner. And it is this very attitude which will lead to the horrors of the past being repeated in the future, because the truth of the past remains unknwon and everyone is there waving flags and cheering because this new guy, he is nothing at all like the evil men of before. truth is, that when this "new savior" comes and you shall be cheering him on, he shall appear to you nothign like the mosneters of the past, because your image of the monsters of the past is mainly fictitious and is disjointed from the truth. What you guys preach is the benefit of ignorance, and it is this ignorance which shall damn us some day.

Alex... once again this is a good act on your part. I doubt that a single individual here at LitNet (outside Kiki...) buys your outraged act when you have repeatedly made it clear that you are anything but the least little bit concerned about the faceless masses (who will be the victims of any future dictator) as you, yourself, are certainly one of the "deserving" elite. One might point out that seeing oneself above everyone else is one of the most common attributes of the common sociopath. I won't go into your comments concerning my grasp of history... which I fully understand are merely intended to add to the drama... and perhaps to impress Ms. Kiki. But you know as well as anyone here that my grasp of history quite likely far exceeds your own and that I am in no way preaching in defense of "ignorance" (again the same strawman). Although even if I were, I suspect that preaching a defense of ignorance is somehow less repugnant than preaching in defense of Hitler and the Holocaust. (See... I can play the strawman game as well as yourself:cornut:)

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-07-2012, 07:50 PM

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait . . . StLukes, are you suggesting Alex puts on some kind of act here at LitNet? WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NefM2gVo9mw)

billl

03-07-2012, 08:14 PM

Can just anyone become evil? If so, does that make it inappropriate to call them evil, once it has happened? And does calling someone evil mean that one can't comprehend the circumstances and process behind that person's descent into evil?

Even Bible thumpers... well, most of them, as far as I can tell that is--I know that Calvinists and others might be exceptions to this statement... Anyhow, even Bible thumpers typically view evil as something that tempts one (everyone), and can be resisted or succumbed to, it's a matter of circumstance that we all are warned against, and there can be forgiveness, etc. I don't think the "evil" label is simply a way to sweep things under the rug, or hold them at arm's length as something by its nature utterly separate. In most of the western world, in fact, people involved in social/political discourse are being compared to Hitler on a daily basis, there's a strong awareness that such things can happen again, the alarm is going off all the time. And it isn't because it's everywhere gone out of fashion to call him "evil" (I'm sure it hasn't).

So I don't think there's much reason to worry over applying the word "evil" to individuals such as Hitler, Charles Manson, etc., in principle or practice. Any fear of it allowing complacency to set in, or it blinding us to consideration of social/psychological factors (or whatever else) is more than offset by the danger of banishing the word (and its application to people and deeds) from sensible conversation. It's a yardstick ("Evil") for what absolutely must be regarded as inhumane. It's the difference between a nation's leader working against unfair (even evil...) oppression from abroad, and someone explicitly not recognizing a person or a race of people as being human beings, for example. That a leader might get his/her truly held ideas and the examples for his/her intended actions (of either type, responsible or evil) from someone else doesn't change this, or eliminate the distinction.

Sorry if this has all been said already, I have surely missed a lot of what's been said here. And, I have to say, it seems one hell of a burden for German people to see their country's name attached to such terrible history so often. Further, those who are coming at this from modern psychological perspectives, or from some Eastern philosophy/religious perspectives, and from any other angles that might broadly resemble Kiki's stance, I will certainly acknowledge that they are, in a very important sense, making an important point that is loaded with validity. But, while I know evil is a powerful word, and its misapplication would be dangerous, I think it's overly cautious and even more dangerous to utterly dissociate an individual from their calculated and considered actions.

Pierre Menard

03-07-2012, 10:39 PM

There are some things that every human being, from our hairy ancestors to us today, regard as evil..

Every human being? Well, except for Hitler right? And all the other tyrants supposedly who are anomalies. And the mother rapists, and the impulsive murderers.

Raping one's own mother is pretty bad. Day to day random impulsive murder never made it the way blue-jeans and compact discs did. Defecating next to a shared camp fire never really caught on. Read up on evolutionary psychology and then come tell me that right and wrong, good and evil, are not one bit objective or universal across the human species.

I'll tell you right now instead, for the last time as we are going around in circles. If one believe morality is objective, therefore independent of human beings opinions, then you need to prove that. You've given me evolutionary psychology (hardly an agreed upon source of objective morality) Is morality inbuilt then, or is morality also constructed by human beings? If morality is on some level constructed by imperfect-morally grey beings with desires and uncontrollable emotions, then it is at it's very base, not objective. It's not independent of our opinions, unless you believe in a God or some such thing.

There is that which is desirable to us, absolutely. There is that which makes society easier to live in (no murder, no theft), but I still fail to see anywhere set in stone, what is objectively, independent of us and our desires, moral. Subjectively and culturally, I see moral judgements, ones that I believe in, every single day. Objectively I do not.

I don't really have anything else I can add or much else to say, from a personal perspective.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 11:50 PM

I'm not arguing that Hitler was solely responsible for the holocaust. I originally said "Nazis," but even then I wouldn't say they were solely responsible. But denying that Hitler and the Nazis bear MUCH of the responsibility, and were GUILTY, in the same sense that the murderer did not invent the gun nor compel the fates to spin the web of incidents which led to his action but is nevertheless guilty of his crime.... well that is just ludicrous.

Alex your comparison of Obama to the economy and Hitler to the holocaust is spurious. A leader has way way way more power over war and genocide than he has over the economy. A better comparison would have been Bush and the Iraq War = Hitler and the holocaust.

Someone else said that France was also a rabidly anti-semitic country. No holocaust of Jews originated in that land.

Ok, so Nixon was not to blame for the escalation of the war in Vietnam, Alexander was not himself the force which took out Persia, and Caesar, a man born into nobility in a war-like culture and in the wake of several would-be tyrants like Marius and Sulla, no to Caesar cannot be attributed the civil war nor the dictatorship nor anything else that transpired while he held kingly influence over Rome.

Alex you say you mean no offence but then you say that my attitude is what may lead to other Hitlers coming to power in the future. For pete's sake man, open your eyes. I said that I myself could have become as evil as Hitler if I shared his experiences and circumstances. I said there is "nothing essentially different between me and Hitler." I fully realize the significance of the nature of the circumstances, not just the man. You and Kiki simply have some irrational hang up regarding the word evil. That's all it is.

If anything it would be your view Alex, a fatalistic view which lays blame on circumstances rather than on men, which would bring about a comparable repeat of Hitler's tenure as chancellor. In my view I see a guy like Hitler and I say, "wow, what an evil son of a *****, let's go kill the ****." In yours you say, "well, this is an anti-semitic time, the fascists have broad support, fate has thus willed it."

Anyone who denies the existence of evil individuals should imagine your own mother being repeatedly raped and then tortured and then killed, all of this done slowly, over the course of an entire week. If you would not label the person who did that evil then I don't know what to say to you.

What St Lukes just said about Shakespeare and Hitler is spot on and if reason reigned would silence this thread.

Darcy88

03-07-2012, 11:57 PM

Every human being? Well, except for Hitler right? And all the other tyrants supposedly who are anomalies. And the mother rapists, and the impulsive murderers.

I'll tell you right now instead, for the last time as we are going around in circles. If one believe morality is objective, therefore independent of human beings opinions, then you need to prove that. You've given me evolutionary psychology (hardly an agreed upon source of objective morality) Is morality inbuilt then, or is morality also constructed by human beings? If morality is on some level constructed by imperfect-morally grey beings with desires and uncontrollable emotions, then it is at it's very base, not objective. It's not independent of our opinions, unless you believe in a God or some such thing.

There is that which is desirable to us, absolutely. There is that which makes society easier to live in (no murder, no theft), but I still fail to see anywhere set in stone, what is objectively, independent of us and our desires, moral. Subjectively and culturally, I see moral judgements, ones that I believe in, every single day. Objectively I do not.

I don't really have anything else I can add or much else to say, from a personal perspective.

I also don't see how we would progress through further discussion. Objective morality is so self evident to me discussing it is akin to describing the sun to one blind from birth. Call if faith or whatever you will, but all the admirable men from every age and every place all correspond to a fixed pattern of virtue.

Pierre Menard

03-08-2012, 12:17 AM

I also don't see how we would progress through further discussion. Objective morality is so self evident to me discussing it is akin to describing the sun to one blind from birth. Call if faith or whatever you will, but all the admirable men from every age and every place all correspond to a fixed pattern of virtue.

Fair enough. It's been interesting nonetheless and one of the reasons I lurked around this forum for quite a while was because of the obviously intelligent people involved in all manner of discussion.

JuniperWoolf

03-08-2012, 07:12 AM

Seriously, though, you all do realize you've been repeating the same things for about the last ten pages, no? I mean, how many time can you say, "I never said that, I said this," in one thread? The hyperbole is becoming hilarious. On one hand, we now have Kiki who sympathizes with Hitler and thinks he bears absolutely no responsibility for his actions, and on the other we have Darcy and StLukes who hate Hitler so blindly, their short-sightedness will usher in the next genocidal tyrant. Both views are ridiculous, but that's where you are.

My friend, you have a mind.

So now we can blame Darcy for future evil. I don't think he is naive enough to consider any future leader of a country a savior. I also don't see any ignoring of history in his posts, I see much misspellings in yours.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Alex's first language is Italian.

You've given me evolutionary psychology (hardly an agreed upon source of objective morality).

That, and evolutionary psychology also accounts for "evil." If one monkey bashes another's brains in and steals his banana, the one who's willing to kill has a higher likelihood of passing on it's genes. Evolutionary theory could be used to explain and support any aspect of human behavior, that's it's flaw when one is attempting to use it in debate.

kiki1982

03-08-2012, 09:19 AM

Mutatis, it seems that I misunderstood you. I still don't get it, but I suppose it'll come to me one day. I will only be wiser than the day before that. :)

And it seems indeed we are going around in circles.

Morality is not absolute and people can get somehow torn away from what is right. Citing people like Schindler and a few others does not hold up in the face of al those millions who evidently did not even consider the wrongness of what they were doing or chose not to think about it, for whatever reason.

Evil exists and corrupts, does not consume.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 10:21 AM

My friend, you have a mind.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Alex's first language is Italian.

That, and evolutionary psychology also accounts for "evil." If one monkey bashes another's brains in and steals his banana, the one who's willing to kill has a higher likelihood of passing on it's genes. Evolutionary theory could be used to explain and support any aspect of human behavior, that's it's flaw when one is attempting to use it in debate.

If we can't use evolutionary theory in a debate then there is much that we cannot debate. Evolutionary psychology accounts for good and for evil. In a morally relativistic view everything is good or everything is evil or everything is neither of those.

Does no one really see what I mean when I talk about this stuff? There is a reason we are not all sociopaths. If we all had sociopathic genes our species never would have evolved. Compassion and brotherhood and fluffy sounding things like that are actually biological imperatives that have enabled us as a species to survive and evolve. In good or ideal circumstances I believe most people choose kindness and love towards other members of their community and not random violence. Why is this? Because its how we have evolved.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 10:56 AM

Its like my philosophy professor said: "its objectively wrong to randomly kill newborn babies." Little moral relativist that I was I thought he was full of ****. Now it seems beamingly obvious that he was right. He said anyone who disagrees with such a statement is someone you can't discuss moral issues with."

kiki1982

03-08-2012, 11:20 AM

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 11:38 AM

Then your philosophy professor held a particular opinion and he is welcome to it like you are, but it does not make someone else's opinion wrong, does it. There may be a lot of situations where killing babies may be right (and the Greeks and Romans did it apparently, only outlawed in 374AD!) so therefore, Socrates would have proved him wrong if he was there. A philosopher should know better.

As a species we have maybe cared for our old and weak, but there were moments where we did not because it was necessary. Even Jews beat each other in the camps for food and you can see that kind of stuff happening when the Red Cross goes to places where there has been famine for a while. Man just turns into beast at that point and he does not care for his neighbour, if only he has food to feed his and his own.

In good or ideal circumstances we do not do that, no. And why? Because there is no need for anything else. That's why.

Okay, so you think there is nothing inherently objectively wrong with "randomly" killing newborn babies. You don't think there is anything inherently objectively wrong with raping one's own mother. That's your opinion. Its a worthless opinion in my view, the opinion of my professor vastly superior.

If we are to take Plato's earlier dialogues as any indication of what Socrates was all about then we must recognize that Socrates posited the existence of an objective human moral good. Anyone who doesn't has their head stuck where the sun doesn't shine. Courage and cowardice, love and spite, strength and weakness, industriousness and laziness, no, nothing objective to the particular values we ascribe to such things. Its all relative. The weak hateful coward is according to another perspective just as good as the strong loving man of courage. Who am I, who is anyone to make categorical statements. Okay then.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 12:03 PM

There may be a lot of situations where killing babies may be right (and the Greeks and Romans did it apparently, only outlawed in 374AD!) so therefore, Socrates would have proved him wrong if he was there. A philosopher should know better.

Yes, infanticide was common among the Romans. That's why they demonized the Carthaginians for sacrificing newborns to Baal. The exceptions prove the rule Kiki. The part I quoted in bold only shows that you do not grasp morality and have no business discussing it.

JuniperWoolf

03-08-2012, 01:41 PM

Evolution accounts for co-operation, but it equally accounts for violent competition. You're partially right, having a genetic pre-disposition to excel at co-operation would have enabled our early ancestors to depend on each other for survival in times of peace which would have allowed them to survive their environment, in spite of their lack of physiological benefit (claws, fangs fur, ect.). Humans are pack animals, but resources (food, mates, ect.) have always been limited, staying alive has generally always been very difficult. We evolved under circumstances which would put us in direct competition with other tribes for resources that our tribe needs to survive. If our tribe had people in it who were willing to kill and enact cruelties then we stood the better chance of winning. What you call "good" was most beneficial to our ancestors when resources were plentiful, and what you call "evil" was most beneficial when resources were scarce and they had to kill the other in order to have enough to survive. Well, we warred a lot and that's how these genes would have came to be perpetuated. Plus I don't think I need to explain the benefit of rape in passing on one's genetic information, but I guess I will if you want me to. This is all disturbing, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Does no one really see what I mean when I talk about this stuff? There is a reason we are not all sociopaths. If we all had sociopathic genes our species never would have evolved. Compassion and brotherhood and fluffy sounding things like that are actually biological imperatives that have enabled us as a species to survive and evolve. In good or ideal circumstances I believe most people choose kindness and love towards other members of their community and not random violence. Why is this? Because its how we have evolved.

In good or ideal circumstances, yes. We live in good circumstances right now which is why we're able to have this conversation, but most humans that have ever lived have not, and we're their offspring. It sounds like you're either operating under the naturalistic fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy) (what is natural is always "good") or a religious belief that "good" and "bad" come from a larger source than genetic inheritance. It's fine if it's religion, but call a spade a spade.

However, taking all that I've said into account it's still important to note that we are higher cognitive beings, the first on Earth actually - we aren't slaves to our genetics. To assume that because we evolved with violent genes we are destined to act violently would be deterministic fallacy (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Deterministic+Fallacy). We're humans, so we have rational minds that we're free to exercise once theyve benn properly fed and watered. Rationally, we have come to realize over the years that humans tend to not act excessively cruel or violent in times of plentiful resources. When societies have their act together normal people aren't forced into acting violently and naturally violent people are suppressed, so the key to living peacefully and prosperously is to ensure that no humans are forced into impoverished situations. That's what we have to focus on, not impotent rage at dead people and other useless sentiments.

Also I'd just like to quickly mention that I don't want to talk about Hitler. This is intended to be a thread aside regarding evolutionary theory in regards to human morality.

cafolini

03-08-2012, 01:59 PM

Morality can be discussed endlessly. But not as kiki1982 does it. It seems to me that kiki is a nihilist as to what entails the common good. Kiki bases all judgements on what we endured and takes for granted that what we endured is inevitable and right for the times. Right or wrong plays no role in the arguments. But isn't the whole of history a struggle for the hegemony of right over wrong? And isn't all progress a battle which right has eventually won? And how did we win? Didn't every bit of progress come about as a result of law and order? Giving kiki a value apart from the right to free speech would put us back in prehistory or even worse, bad history and inability to transcend it.
I will have to stand upon my head 'till my ears are turned red to buy such assumptions.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 02:59 PM

Evolution accounts for co-operation, but it equally accounts for violent competition. You're partially right, having a genetic pre-disposition to excel at co-operation would have enabled our early ancestors to depend on each other for survival in times of peace which would have allowed them to survive their environment, in spite of their lack of physiological benefit (claws, fangs fur, ect.). Humans are pack animals, but resources (food, mates, ect.) have always been limited, staying alive has generally always been very difficult. We evolved under circumstances which would put us in direct competition with other tribes for resources that our tribe needs to survive. If our tribe had people in it who were willing to kill and enact cruelties then we stood the better chance of winning. What you call "good" was most beneficial to our ancestors when resources were plentiful, and what you call "evil" was most beneficial when resources were scarce and they had to kill the other in order to have enough to survive. Well, we warred a lot and that's how these genes would have came to be perpetuated. Plus I don't think I need to explain the benefit of rape in passing on one's genetic information, but I guess I will if you want me to. This is all disturbing, but that doesn't make it any less true.

In good or ideal circumstances, yes. We live in good circumstances right now which is why we're able to have this conversation, but most humans that have ever lived have not, and we're their offspring. It sounds like you're either operating under the naturalistic fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy) (what is natural is always "good") or a religious belief that "good" and "bad" come from a larger source than genetic inheritance. It's fine if it's religion, but call a spade a spade.

However, taking all that I've said into account it's still important to note that we are higher cognitive beings, the first on Earth actually - we aren't slaves to our genetics. To assume that because we evolved with violent genes we are destined to act violently would be deterministic fallacy (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Deterministic+Fallacy). We're humans, so we have rational minds that we're free to exercise once theyve benn properly fed and watered. Rationally, we have come to realize over the years that humans tend to not act excessively cruel or violent in times of plentiful resources. When societies have their act together normal people aren't forced into acting violently and naturally violent people are suppressed, so the key to living peacefully and prosperously is to ensure that no humans are forced into impoverished situations. That's what we have to focus on, not impotent rage at dead people and other useless sentiments.

Also I'd just like to quickly mention that I don't want to talk about Hitler. This is intended to be a thread aside regarding evolutionary theory in regards to human morality.

There is absolutely nothing impotent or useless about my rage towards Hitler. People seem to be regarding the holocaust as just a word with really awful conotations, they aren't trying to relive the horror of those who endured it. All six million I'm sure would have in their last moments hoped that those responible for their senseless brutal deaths would forever be the recipients of extreme contempt.

I'm not really commiting the naturalistic fallacy. If I was then I would be condoning what I call "evil acts." I just know that words like "good," "virtue," "compassion," "honor," are not mere faith-based metaphysical abstractions but rather deep patterns of thought and behavior ingrained into us by millions of years of evolution. A saintly species would have been as short-lived in evolutionary terms as an evil one, but a species operating according to some moral logic, that doesn't objectively regard raping one's own mother as equivalent to having intercourse with one's mate, is what we are and what evolution has made us.

JuniperWoolf

03-08-2012, 03:05 PM

There is absolutely nothing impotent or useless about my rage towards Hitler.

Well then, what do you hope to accomplish?

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 03:15 PM

Well then, what do you hope to accomplish?

What do I hope to accomplish? If a man shot up a primary school in your town, killing 50 kids, and then in a cafe a few years later you overheard someone making weak excuses for the guy, what would you do?

Someone says Hitler was not evil and I feel obligated to oppose such demented malarky. Heck, my own great-grandfather died in the war that Hitler played a pivotal role in bringing about.

cafolini

03-08-2012, 03:20 PM

Well then, what do you hope to accomplish?

No, no, no. JW. That question is for you. It is very obvious to me what Darcy is trying to accomplish. History will back him with more in his favor than against. He is not under natural fallacy or anything of the kind. But you? What are YOU trying to accomplish? Hope you are joking, or actually playing advocate.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 03:23 PM

I think she's just tired of hearing me pontificate for 20 plus pages.

cafolini

03-08-2012, 03:31 PM

I think she's just tired of hearing me pontificate for 20 plus pages.
\
Could be. I didn't think kiki could ever turn you to Maximus.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 03:31 PM

kiki1982

03-08-2012, 03:55 PM

Okay, so you think there is nothing inherently objectively wrong with "randomly" killing newborn babies. You don't think there is anything inherently objectively wrong with raping one's own mother. That's your opinion. Its a worthless opinion in my view, the opinion of my professor vastly superior.

If we are to take Plato's earlier dialogues as any indication of what Socrates was all about then we must recognize that Socrates posited the existence of an objective human moral good. Anyone who doesn't has their head stuck where the sun doesn't shine. Courage and cowardice, love and spite, strength and weakness, industriousness and laziness, no, nothing objective to the particular values we ascribe to such things. Its all relative. The weak hateful coward is according to another perspective just as good as the strong loving man of courage. Who am I, who is anyone to make categorical statements. Okay then.

I did not say I personally do not consider it wrong, but I live in a society where there is no need to control numbers, nor not enough money/resources/etc to support those children. If we do not want any we know what we can do against it. In view of what has been said below your post, it shows that it is wrong subjectively, but not objectively. In India, they still kill babies (mostly girls). People from the same culture do it the UK for the very same reasons. Why?
Look around you. Do you see objective good? I for one do not. I see subjective good and some of it largely overlaps with my conception, but it does not mean that it is objective.

Socrates acknowledged that one can only desire the good, yes, if one knows oneself and pursues happness (which fulfils one's soul). If one does not know oneself one may do the bad which stems from ignorance. So essentially, he says that every man has the potential to be good and do good, but that he may do the bad if he is ignorant that he is doing it or pursues what he thinks fulfils him. He also professed he only knew that he knew nothing noble and good. Plato defined the quest for wisdom and the mind as a process of learning to refind the Ideas in one's mind that are constant and come from a divine being. As man is living in a non-constant world, these Ideas are obscured and man may never find them back again.

The question is, if your tribe is starving and finding water is difficult, whether it is beneficial to have yet another mouth to feed. The whole tribe may die if you let the baby live. Is it wrong to kill the baby? Of course now it is wrong (subjectively) because we can live if we let the baby live, but is it objectively always wrong to kill the baby? Is it wrong to kill it or let it die if there is not enough food to give it? I suppose that depends on your end.

Yes, infanticide was common among the Romans. That's why they demonized the Carthaginians for sacrificing newborns to Baal. The exceptions prove the rule Kiki. The part I quoted in bold only shows that you do not grasp morality and have no business discussing it.

And that is the pot calling the kettle black because they killed their own. Oh, no, wait they thought it was better to just abandon them to die from hypothermia or something.
I have grasped morality so far that I see that it is relative. I think that is a little further than you have come.

And we are seriously off-topic here. Maybe the moderator finds this amusing?

JuniperWoolf

03-08-2012, 04:09 PM

If a man shot up a primary school in your town, killing 50 kids, and then in a cafe a few years later you overheard someone making weak excuses for the guy, what would you do?

Nothing if he's been dead for sixty years. Like I said, that's useless rage. The opposite of "useless" would be "useful," which implies progress, so you've got to ask yourself: how is raging against WWII Nazis progress? How might it benefit anyone? You'd be better off to just not get too emotional about history which you can't change, because all you'll accomplish is unnecessary grief for yourself. I used to be the same, endlessly imagining the horrible guilt of not being able to take care of my family members as they're sent up the chimney, thinking what it would be like to be shoved into a freezing cattle car for days, or to be a mother who saw her baby's head crushed under a Nazi boot. I got angry for a while as well because that's the natural reaction and also makes it all easier to stomach that way, but there's little point in being angry at dead people. Really the best thing that people living today could do is think about the entire situation from all angles (including those of the opressors no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, because I would argue that this is the most important angle in regards to prevention of similar events in the future) and learn from it.

Someone says Hitler was not evil and I feel obligated to oppose such demented malarky.

You've got to see that this is simply a debate about the nature of "evil." Kiki isn't saying that Hitler wasn't evil ergo he was good, she's saying that Hitler wasn't "evil" in this sort of supernatural sense. Anyway, I'm not too concerned with Hitler, any objective truth there has been very obscured which is I guess what happens in a society largely feuled by propaganda. I'm really more interested in your average every day Nazi, that's what's important. What prompts a nation of people who have accomplished so much greatness to commit such atrocities? All that I've learned so far strongly implies that they were driven to it by great need, they were left very poorly off after WWI. That fits, we can use that.

I think she's just tired of hearing me pontificate for 20 plus pages.

:p Caught me, I'm in "resolution" mode now. Also I've thought about this a lot (really) so it'd be weird to not say anything after reading this thread.

kiki1982

03-08-2012, 04:52 PM

Heck I'd say I actually have direct personal reason to hate Hitler. It was his agressive war policies which led to my great-grandfather getting blown to bits when his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. My grandfather grew up without a father, his mother forced to fend for herself with a 1 year old and a 2 year old, something that no doubt contributed to the psychological mess that he became. He goes on to become an abusive alcoholic and then a suicide when my mother was 14, and this really messed her up, and her being messed up no doubt helped mess me up.

There you go. **** Hitler.

I may tell you that my husband's grandfather was controller of the port of London and repaired the boats when they came back from France so they could go back to it to take more soldiers on D-day. The man worked solid and did not come home for three full days. When he came home, he was black with tar and soot and slept for 24 hours solid. My husband's family was in London during the Blitz.

Another member of my husband's family was back in Poland and was taken prisoner and deported to Auschwitz. He survived 4 years and then was sent to Sangerhausen from where he sent his very last card, saying that he 'ha[d] arrived well.' I have read all the letters he sent and there is a gruesome preoccupation with food the more time passes. He starts with thanking his family for the Easter package they sent him and ends with remarks that must have seemed strange for his family at the time that he 'hope[d] that they [had] enough bread where they [were].' The more time passes the less he actually talked about anything but food and the weather. He was not a Jew, but a Pole.

My family was in Belgium and my grandfather managed not to go to war, possiby out of principle. However, they did live through all the bombing and spent much of their time in the cellar. One of my family members fled to Brussels to live with an aunt because it was a free city (i.e. not bombed). Back home, their house was bombed and the roof was off. The daughter narrowly escaped being sent to Germany to work by finally getting a job in the post office in Belgium. For the remainder she went to work by tram and by train and narrowly escaped death on such a tram when a resistance member asked her to carry her bag. She refused for some reason and a little later the woman was taken away because there was a bomb in it. She said she could not understand why the communist resistance kept sabotaging as the Germans only took hostages to shoot.

Still, my family and family-in-law have felt shock, fear and anger, but no rage.

KCurtis

03-08-2012, 06:16 PM

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Alex's first language is Italian.

Okay, I will be fair then. And I did use the word much in place of many twice!! :eek6:

If we can't use evolutionary theory in a debate then there is much that we cannot debate. Evolutionary psychology accounts for good and for evil. In a morally relativistic view everything is good or everything is evil or everything is neither of those.

Does no one really see what I mean when I talk about this stuff? There is a reason we are not all sociopaths. If we all had sociopathic genes our species never would have evolved. Compassion and brotherhood and fluffy sounding things like that are actually biological imperatives that have enabled us as a species to survive and evolve. In good or ideal circumstances I believe most people choose kindness and love towards other members of their community and not random violence. Why is this? Because its how we have evolved.

Yes, I'm sure some of us do see it. And you are correct about biological imperatives enabling us to survive.

Then your philosophy professor held a particular opinion and he is welcome to it like you are, but it does not make someone else's opinion wrong, does it. There may be a lot of situations where killing babies may be right

The professor just has a vile opinion. Maybe you do too, I'm not sure. I for one have the right not to respect this opinion- but hold it in contempt.

Darcy88

03-08-2012, 09:09 PM

I did not say I personally do not consider it wrong, but I live in a society where there is no need to control numbers, nor not enough money/resources/etc to support those children. If we do not want any we know what we can do against it. In view of what has been said below your post, it shows that it is wrong subjectively, but not objectively. In India, they still kill babies (mostly girls). People from the same culture do it the UK for the very same reasons. Why?
Look around you. Do you see objective good? I for one do not. I see subjective good and some of it largely overlaps with my conception, but it does not mean that it is objective.

The question is, if your tribe is starving and finding water is difficult, whether it is beneficial to have yet another mouth to feed. The whole tribe may die if you let the baby live. Is it wrong to kill the baby? Of course now it is wrong (subjectively) because we can live if we let the baby live, but is it objectively always wrong to kill the baby? Is it wrong to kill it or let it die if there is not enough food to give it? I suppose that depends on your end.

And that is the pot calling the kettle black because they killed their own. Oh, no, wait they thought it was better to just abandon them to die from hypothermia or something.
I have grasped morality so far that I see that it is relative. I think that is a little further than you have come.

And we are seriously off-topic here. Maybe the moderator finds this amusing?

The Romans did not commit widespread infanticide. Period. And if someone comes on here and proves me wrong it makes no difference. The exceptions prove the rule.

I do see objective good. I don't see how under any circumstance it can be deemed objectively good to spray acid on young women's faces like the Taliban do or to rape one's own mother which I'm sure some sick bastard has once done.

Your main error now is that you fail to realize that I admit the validity of extenuating circumstances. If the Jews were as Hitler said really out to eliminate the entire "aryan" race then what he did wouldn't have been evil. Under extreme survival condtions infanticide might be justified. But if you kill six million INNOCENT people, or if for no good reason you take an infant's life, that to me is evil. Its like you Kiki do not make a distinction between cold-blooded murder and self-defense. I do.

Still, my family and family-in-law have felt shock, fear and anger, but no rage.

Your family felt "anger" but not "rage." Rage is but only extreme anger. Kiki go build a time machine and visit Auschwitz and tell the mother of the boy and girl who were just gassed to death that Hitler wasn't evil. You have truth on your side apparently.

Nothing if he's been dead for sixty years. Like I said, that's useless rage. The opposite of "useless" would be "useful," which implies progress, so you've got to ask yourself: how is raging against WWII Nazis progress? How might it benefit anyone? You'd be better off to just not get too emotional about history which you can't change, because all you'll accomplish is unnecessary grief for yourself. I used to be the same, endlessly imagining the horrible guilt of not being able to take care of my family members as they're sent up the chimney, thinking what it would be like to be shoved into a freezing cattle car for days, or to be a mother who saw her baby's head crushed under a Nazi boot. I got angry for a while as well because that's the natural reaction and also makes it all easier to stomach that way, but there's little point in being angry at dead people. Really the best thing that people living today could do is think about the entire situation from all angles (including those of the opressors no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, because I would argue that this is the most important angle in regards to prevention of similar events in the future) and learn from it.

You've got to see that this is simply a debate about the nature of "evil." Kiki isn't saying that Hitler wasn't evil ergo he was good, she's saying that Hitler wasn't "evil" in this sort of supernatural sense. Anyway, I'm not too concerned with Hitler, any objective truth there has been very obscured which is I guess what happens in a society largely feuled by propaganda. I'm really more interested in your average every day Nazi, that's what's important. What prompts a nation of people who have accomplished so much greatness to commit such atrocities? All that I've learned so far strongly implies that they were driven to it by great need, they were left very poorly off after WWI. That fits, we can use that.

:p Caught me, I'm in "resolution" mode now. Also I've thought about this a lot (really) so it'd be weird to not say anything after reading this thread.

Juniper this is a great post. But I still maintain my right to rage at evil horrible men, especially when there is the kind of albeit tenuous link between their actions and my own life that I demonstrated earlier.

kiki1982

03-09-2012, 03:55 AM

The Romans did not commit widespread infanticide. Period. And if someone comes on here and proves me wrong it makes no difference. The exceptions prove the rule.

I do see objective good. I don't see how under any circumstance it can be deemed objectively good to spray acid on young women's faces like the Taliban do or to rape one's own mother which I'm sure some sick bastard has once done.

Your main error now is that you fail to realize that I admit the validity of extenuating circumstances. If the Jews were as Hitler said really out to eliminate the entire "aryan" race then what he did wouldn't have been evil. Under extreme survival condtions infanticide might be justified. But if you kill six million INNOCENT people, or if for no good reason you take an infant's life, that to me is evil. Its like you Kiki do not make a distinction between cold-blooded murder and self-defense. I do.

And here we go again. Infanticide has nothing to do with these 6 million Jews. I took the 'objectively wrong' to heart and showed that it cannot be objectively wrong. Subjectively wrong, yes, in the vast majority of cases, but not objectively. Otherwise it would not have made its way in certain cultures as a way of controlling numbers.

The important thing is not whether we think it is wrong and whether he was responsible or not, the important thing is that what he was doing he believed to be right and why? That is how you resolve things.

Your family felt "anger" but not "rage." Rage is but only extreme anger. Kiki go build a time machine and visit Auschwitz and tell in most the mother of the boy and girl who were just gassed to death that Hitler wasn't evil. You have truth on your side apparently.

I know rage is extreme anger. They never felt it and they have all accepted what happened. They even speak German. The family in Poland very well as it happens. They are Poles and they talk of this time as horrible, terrible and apocalyptic, but I tell you, they are more angry about the Russians after. (although that is maybe because it had a larger influence on their lives)

Again, what exactly happened 60 years ago has little to do with us now. The only thing we can do is not to think about those 6 million people, they will not come back, even if we were thinking about them all the time. Or will they?
The thing we can do is to accept this chapter and learn from it. By ranting and raving, we do not get closure, we only rip the wound open again and again. Thus, it does not heal.

If a driver were to kill my husband tomorrow I would like to either see him pay a substancial amount of money so he feels what he has done or for him to lose his license forever. Putting him in prison is pretty ineffective. I would feel bad, sad and angry at that man/woman, but I would also see that I cannot go on with my life because I keep dwelling on it. You will say it makes a difference, but a person is a person, whether he was killed by gas or killed by a careless driver.

ScribbleScribe

03-09-2012, 09:06 AM

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

Darcy88

03-09-2012, 12:54 PM

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

You mean you never meant for your thread asking about a single book to go on to probe the fundamental nature of morality, of good and evil, history, human nature, the shine and the shadow of man's soul? Really? I apologize.

lol.

Darcy88

03-09-2012, 01:01 PM

And here we go again. Infanticide has nothing to do with these 6 million Jews. I took the 'objectively wrong' to heart and showed that it cannot be objectively wrong. Subjectively wrong, yes, in the vast majority of cases, but not objectively. Otherwise it would not have made its way in certain cultures as a way of controlling numbers.

The important thing is not whether we think it is wrong and whether he was responsible or not, the important thing is that what he was doing he believed to be right and why? That is how you resolve things.

I know rage is extreme anger. They never felt it and they have all accepted what happened. They even speak German. The family in Poland very well as it happens. They are Poles and they talk of this time as horrible, terrible and apocalyptic, but I tell you, they are more angry about the Russians after. (although that is maybe because it had a larger influence on their lives)

Again, what exactly happened 60 years ago has little to do with us now. The only thing we can do is not to think about those 6 million people, they will not come back, even if we were thinking about them all the time. Or will they?
The thing we can do is to accept this chapter and learn from it. By ranting and raving, we do not get closure, we only rip the wound open again and again. Thus, it does not heal.

If a driver were to kill my husband tomorrow I would like to either see him pay a substancial amount of money so he feels what he has done or for him to lose his license forever. Putting him in prison is pretty ineffective. I would feel bad, sad and angry at that man/woman, but I would also see that I cannot go on with my life because I keep dwelling on it. You will say it makes a difference, but a person is a person, whether he was killed by gas or killed by a careless driver.

We are never going to agree. But you admit that what Hitler did was horrible. I think you even say that the acts themselves were in fact evil. I admit that Hitler was a human being like myself and like all of us and that it was fate and circumstance which made him what he was. I say it was evil, you say it was not. I think we have enough common ground to just agree to disagree. The world would be a boring place if everyone agreed on everything. It has actually been fun debating with you. Its brought me to think on things I don't often think about.

kiki1982

03-10-2012, 06:06 AM

I think indeed we agree to disagree, Darcy. :)

And I have learnt a lot about the Nazis because I had to brush up on it as well as about other things (like baby killing in Neotlithic times). Very interesting.

The professor just has a vile opinion. Maybe you do too, I'm not sure. I for one have the right not to respect this opinion- but hold it in contempt.

I never said it was vile, I said it differed from mine. And if he were to say that he did not agree, then that would be fine too. But I tell you, he would not hold it in contempt and that's where a thinker's opinion differs from another's opinion.

And now you will say that is insulting...

kiki1982

03-10-2012, 06:10 AM

Wow I never meant for my thread to get this heated or this long. I was talking about mein kampf, not everything else about the man & the holocaust.

Ok, so where are you now then?

Better get this thread back on track, before the moderator is tired of it... :devil:

stlukesguild

03-10-2012, 01:04 PM

I never said it was vile, I said it differed from mine. And if he were to say that he did not agree, then that would be fine too. But I tell you, he would not hold it in contempt and that's where a thinker's opinion differs from another's opinion.

Or perhaps that is part of the reason that so many highly educated and cultured Germans could participate in such horrific behavior: they were great thinkers and intellectuals but lacked any real sense of morals. Taken from an idealized amoral position we can all entertain the most horrific of propositions (the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, genocide, the whole sale slaughter of children, global thermal-nuclear warfare...) as an intellectual exercise or game... but one thing history has taught us, which you have seeming missed for all you protest that we must learn form history, is that whole sale slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc... are the common result when ideals are placed above human realities... when ideals are valued above human lives. You professor may be a great thinker, but I would suggest that he is morally and ethically retarded.

mal4mac

03-10-2012, 01:33 PM

kiki1982

03-10-2012, 03:24 PM

Or perhaps that is part of the reason that so many highly educated and cultured Germans could participate in such horrific behavior: they were great thinkers and intellectuals but lacked any real sense of morals. Taken from an idealized amoral position we can all entertain the most horrific of propositions (the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, genocide, the whole sale slaughter of children, global thermal-nuclear warfare...) as an intellectual exercise or game... but one thing history has taught us, which you have seeming missed for all you protest that we must learn form history, is that whole sale slaughter, mass murder, genocide, etc... are the common result when ideals are placed above human realities... when ideals are valued above human lives. You professor may be a great thinker, but I would suggest that he is morally and ethically retarded.

They did not participate in such horrific behaviour because they did not diapprove. That is a common misconseption. The situation was in fact worse: they did not realise that what they were saying was racist and what they were thinking was despicable (or the vast majority did not). From Social Darwinism (if you ask me a wrongful interpretation of Darwin's theory), they moved onto 'possibly this also means that certain races are superior to other races of people', this developed towards 'race X is superior to race Y' (with all the measurements etc. Mengele made a PhD about this) and then you only need a mad guy who makes everyone believe what race Y in fact is. Had people in Germany just 'not disapproved' and just been passive, the whole system would not have got so far. Someone at a certain time would have put a stop to it or alerted people that this was frankly going too far. That is what you fail to see. By disapproving or hating, you are blinded for human reality, as you are putting your own morals and ideals above another. The object of hate is evil, period. The object of disapproval is at least to be called 'no good'. The Nazis hated Jews and disapproved of them mixing with the Aryan race. They presented them as a threat to the purity and superiority of the Aryan race.
They disagreed who was exactly Aryan and who Jew and they actually never had a proper definition of it, astonishingly. Hence Goering's sarcastic remark, 'Wer Jude ist, entscheide ich,' (I will decide who is Jew') after conning the system to save his assistant from losing his job. He took it so far that he had his assistant's mother swear an affidavit that her six (!) children were not her husband's, but her uncle's (I think) :eek:. Hitler bought the whole thing as well :lol: and issued a certificate of descent or something. That is frankly laughable.
They did not consider Jews being human or at least not as worthy of it as the Aryan race. A bit of propaganda did the rest. Clever propaganda.
If you want to learn from history, disaproving or hating is frankly useless. The only thing you can do is try to understand the why and how and then look around you. That will benefit you more than disapproving. Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove. Otherwise you ask the wrong questions.

It does not mean that I personally think this fine. Of course not! But it does not benefit me to disapprove of or hate people who have done this or not publically disapproved of it because a) it is not going to bring those people back, b) it inhibits me in my empathy so I can imagine what these people thought and c) it will not make me observant, on the contrary in fact.

KCurtis

03-10-2012, 07:44 PM

That is what you fail to see. By disapproving or hating, you are blinded for human reality, as you are putting your own morals and ideals above another.
Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove.

Again, your opinions. Some people's morals and ideals are above others. My opinion- which I find superior to yours.

stlukesguild

03-11-2012, 12:22 AM

That is what you fail to see. By disapproving or hating, you are blinded for human reality, as you are putting your own morals and ideals above another.

Yep. That is exactly what I am doing. I am placing my moral standards above those of individuals who imagine that systematic murder of innocent human beings is OK. I placing my moral standards above that of those who could even begin to entertain the idea that infanticide is acceptable under any conditions. I am placing my moral standards considering the treatment of women and individuals whose religious views differ from my own above that of certain Islamic... and certain Christian fundamentalists. Ultimately I am placing my moral standards... in which I recognize certain actions as being universally wrong... even "evil" as being above your moral standards of moral relativism which is essentially a position of either moral cowardice (or even a lack of any real moral standards) or as I stated above, "moral retardation".

kiki1982

03-11-2012, 06:01 AM

So if infanticide is always wrong, as you said, then why oh why did the Romans do this on an institutional basis as well as the Greeks, and the Germanic tribes (though the Romans did not agree about this)? Ok, so we should not call it 'infanticide' really, because it was merely exposure. But actually it is because one knows that a baby dies if it is not kept warm and fed.
Surely, they did not consider it wrong? So what will it serve me as a person to disapprove of it? Apart from concluding that the Romans and Greeks were more primitive and less civilised than I thought? Essentially I would then have to deduce that we are now lucky that we do not have to do this anymore and that we anticonception drugs.

Finding your own morals superior to anyone else does not solve a problem, it creates separation and that encourages extremism. What do you think these islamists aim at? They aim at putting their own morals above those of others and indeed think that those same morals are to be followed by anyone. Disapproving of these morals does not help those who are suffering from them. Only by helping those to fight against them and to strengthen them in their own opinions can we change the system of women's discrimination, for example. And that does not start with banning the veil, but by allowing it.

KCurtis

03-11-2012, 09:58 AM

kiki1982

03-11-2012, 12:17 PM

They undergo abortions because they do not want girls. Who can blame them if you see the sheer amount of money a good dowry takes. This includes cars, houses etc. If you have already one daughter you will have to save for your whole life, what are you going to do with a second one? You need a son to compensate.

If you want to ban this practice, you need to understand it first and try to tackle it, tough it is not clear how that should be done.

So it is not actually 'murder', no, only wanted abortion. So it is not illegal, just (faintly) unsettling. Whatever you may think about it, is of no consequence to those people.

Honour killings are of a different nature. They come from the wrongful idea that girls should not even look at a boy. As these cultures can't lock their daughters up, those same girls change too much in a western society, so if they were living in their home country, they would probably not look at boys, but they are in a country where that is normal, so they do. Their parents do not consider this appropriate and so they go mad. Teenager rebels and the whole shabang starts. Of course it is murder, but I don't see the disapproval way working, actually. You may execute and put in prison lots of dads who killed their daughter, but as long as you do not do anything constructive, the whole thing starts again with the next immigrant family. They consider it an honour thing and a woman should be pure. That is utterly ridiculous, but in order for it to stop, disapproval will not work on the contrary, it will drive them further, convinced that they are following the right way and western society is doomed because of its debauchery. Don't laugh, that is what such extremists believe.

And, if you think that because I say 'do not condemn, but understand' that I mean 'I find this ok', then you are constructing things in your mind which have nothing, but really nothing to do with what I am trying to tell you. But any nuance is probably lost on you. Please try, if only for once.

Darcy88

03-11-2012, 12:26 PM

They undergo abortions because they do not want girls. Who can blame them if you see the sheer amount of money a good dowry takes. This includes cars, houses etc. If you have already one daughter you will have to save for your whole life, what are you going to do with a second one? You need a son to compensate.

If you want to ban this practice, you need to understand it first and try to tackle it, tough it is not clear how that should be done.

So it is not actually 'murder', no, only wanted abortion. So it is not illegal, just (faintly) unsettling.
Honour killings are of a different nature. They come from the wrongful idea that girls should not even look at a boy. As these cultures can't lock their daughters up, those same girls change too much in a western society, so if they were living in their home country, they would probably not look at boys, but they are in a country where that is normal, so they do. Their parents do not consider this appropriate and so they go mad. Teenager rebels and the whole shabang starts. Of course it is murder, but I don't see the disapproval way working, actually. You may execute and put in prison lots of dads who killed their daughter, but as long as you do not do anything constructive, the whole thing starts again with the next immigrant family. They consider it an honour thing and a woman should be pure. That is utterly ridiculous, but in order for it to stop, disapproval will not work on the contrary, it will drive them further, convinced that they are following the right way and western society is doomed because of its debauchery. Don't laugh, that is what such extremists believe.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but I have to say that I do not think you have any intellectual grasp at all of morality and what it means to be moral. Saying we shouldn't condemn or disapprove of honour killings or gender abortions, and calling the latter abhorrent practice "faintly unsettling." I'm not going to try to educate you on moral matters, I just had to say this.

kiki1982

03-11-2012, 01:06 PM

Look, I would not kill a daughter because she was one nor abort her. However, you need to see that these people have to save dowries of sometimes 300,000 pounds (it depends on their status) or more, plus stage a feast of several days. And don't think this disappears at all with letting your daughter choose her partner (unless he is of another religion maybe and then there is the question whether she wants that or not - but that aside). So you have 18-odd years to get your daughter a dowry of about that amount and otherwise you can't get rid of her. That is a profound stigma on a family: there must be something wrong with you. Think if people have two or three daughters: they are looking at a mountain of money they can never accumulate.

To add to this, when their daugthers have left and married, they are gone. They will not be there to care for them. It is not about 'who has time and room to care for her parents', it is about 'the son(s) will care for the parents'. If they have not got any, then tough sh*t for them, they do not get cared for. If they do not get a son, they are destitute and poor by the time they have got rid of all their daugthers. Sons compensate for the loss of a daughter, both in terms of presence and money because their bride will bring a dowry both fathers have negotiated.
The daughter who effectually goes to the other family for ever is also the reason why aborting girls in (rural) China is so prevalent: why the government is now allowing two children in certain areas and only if the first one is a girl. Girls are, it is unfortunate, nothing valuable.

The rest may live in a society where a couple's marriage is but a joyous occasion and proof of their love for each other, and that is a relief, but in other societies (and amongst immigrants in the West) it is business like it was for us until the 19th century for everyone but the working classes who had nothing anyway. And the rich still practice this nowadays, though on a smaller scale.

I know it is not personal attack :).

I cannot say that I condemn abortion because of personal reasons, although I find it unsettling that you would get rid of a child you actually wanted, but you are disappointed that it is a girl...

Darcy88

03-11-2012, 01:17 PM

Charles Darnay

03-11-2012, 01:36 PM

J stopped following this thread a few days ago and after taking a quick scan, I am so glad I did. OK, I am gone again - continue.

kiki1982

03-11-2012, 03:34 PM

I think what we should focus on is what many activists in India and other countries focus on, and that is the elimination of the dowry system, a cause made noble and urgent due to the sick practice of gender abortions. By not disapproving of the practice you don't get anywhere. By disapproving of it you put pressure on the culture to do away with dowries.

Of course we should! Whether putting pressure on it from the west is feasible is another matter, but you can hope by lobbying and educating people from those countries, that they realise that this is not what they want and that they do away with it. The smaller the group who endorses such a practice of dowries, the less societal pressure there is to do it and the freer a society will be from it.

As with all social change, it takes a few courageous people from that culture to do something inspiring.

You see, we agree :)

mona amon

03-14-2012, 12:52 PM

Look, I would not kill a daughter because she was one nor abort her. However, you need to see that these people have to save dowries of sometimes 300,000 pounds (it depends on their status) or more, plus stage a feast of several days. And don't think this disappears at all with letting your daughter choose her partner (unless he is of another religion maybe and then there is the question whether she wants that or not - but that aside). So you have 18-odd years to get your daughter a dowry of about that amount and otherwise you can't get rid of her. That is a profound stigma on a family: there must be something wrong with you. Think if people have two or three daughters: they are looking at a mountain of money they can never accumulate. - Kiki

Evil does not cease to be evil just because it's institutionalised. Flimsy excuses will get you nowhere. Gender related abortions in India are not because of the dowry system particularly, but because of the tradition that values women much less than men. Unscrupulous people find that technology can give them what they desire (a male child) and they do not hesitate to use it. They are no worse off than the millions who do not make use of selective abortion, so there are no excuses. Most of the abortions are done by people who are well off and can afford to pay their daughters' dowries (300, 000 pounds, cars etc are rare and extreme cases). It's often just a matter of prestige.

They did not consider Jews being human or at least not as worthy of it as the Aryan race. A bit of propaganda did the rest. Clever propaganda.
If you want to learn from history, disaproving or hating is frankly useless. The only thing you can do is try to understand the why and how and then look around you. That will benefit you more than disapproving. Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove. Otherwise you ask the wrong questions. - Kiki

This works both ways. You are so bent on proving that the Treaty of Versailles was responsible for the whole mess (or something like that), that you're bending over backwards trying to prove that Hitler and his cohorts were not evil (and therefore not responsible). In the process you're sweeping a bit of history under the carpet, and that will hardly help you in understanding the why and how. There are no right questions and wrong questions. We have to ask all the questions.

I totally disagree with you when you say that "Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove." I don't see why you can't disaprove and still understand. In fact the disapproval comes after first understanding.

I know that by calling people or systems evil I am not going to solve the problem of life, the universe and everything. We call something evil because it is evil, just as we call a spade a spade. That's all the justification it needs.

kiki1982

03-14-2012, 07:45 PM

Evil does not cease to be evil just because it's institutionalised. Flimsy excuses will get you nowhere. Gender related abortions in India are not because of the dowry system particularly, but because of the tradition that values women much less than men. Unscrupulous people find that technology can give them what they desire (a male child) and they do not hesitate to use it. They are no worse off than the millions who do not make use of selective abortion, so there are no excuses. Most of the abortions are done by people who are well off and can afford to pay their daughters' dowries (300, 000 pounds, cars etc are rare and extreme cases). It's often just a matter of prestige.

Well, I thought this discussion was finished, but apparently it is not. I did not say evil stopped being evil I said people are not evil. I do dispair at people's reading skills sometimes...
I know houses and cars are in extreme cases, however, can you personally save up enough to buy your daughter furniture as well as all the cooking things plus bed clothes, towels, and all of the things she needs to be able to get married? And it must be the best you can afford, mind. Apart from the prestige, which goes hand in hand with the dowry system (son = gaining money, daugter = losing money), you get such vile practices as well as practices like men marrying and then killing their wives or parents-in-law doing it for them. Purely for the money. Prestige does not come on its own. It has mostly got other things attached.

This works both ways. You are so bent on proving that the Treaty of Versailles was responsible for the whole mess (or something like that), that you're bending over backwards trying to prove that Hitler and his cohorts were not evil (and therefore not responsible). In the process you're sweeping a bit of history under the carpet, and that will hardly help you in understanding the why and how. There are no right questions and wrong questions. We have to ask all the questions.

I totally disagree with you when you say that "Understanding and looking for the why and how you can only properly do if you do not disapprove." I don't see why you can't disaprove and still understand. In fact the disapproval comes after first understanding.

I know that by calling people or systems evil I am not going to solve the problem of life, the universe and everything. We call something evil because it is evil, just as we call a spade a spade. That's all the justification it needs.

It is not because most people consider this person to be evil and almost satan come to earth that things are like that. There are many more reasons than Hitler himself for this whole system. The scary and if you will 'evil' thing is not Hitler himself, it was the whole collection of circumstances that brought Germany and its culture to what it became. The French were maybe more anti-semitic, but that alone does not make sure you kill those people en masse (as they have proven). It was the whole of it: their sad economic situation, the cleverness of the NSDAP's propaganda, the weakness of the Weimar Republik as well as the Diktat of Versailles (as the Germans called it), the profoundly twisted nature of people like Himmler (a failed chicken farmer) the readiness of the German population to fully participate in such a mess by denouncing people who did not agree (heard that on a documentary by a former Gestapo secretary) and one brilliant orator who made the whole thing the sad pinnacle of a brilliant culture. In the face of that, Hitler is a speck. I say it again, had he been in the UK, he had been lynched on the streets in the East End, but he was not in the UK. Sure, brand Hitler evil, but that way he becomes the whole constructor of this machine, which was not only made by him.

It is not because his regime killed 6 million people and that he is ultimately responsible that he is solely responsible. Other people were as much involved in the very design of the machine as he himself. He was their inspiration, indeed, as he was for Goebbels - I don't know what he promised the man, but Goebbels abandoned his reaching out to the socialists in one night after meeting Hitler and stayed loyal to the very end -, but it is impossible to state that he was the sole creator of it. Indeed, you could not even argue that he was the sole designer of it. Had he not been supported through thick and thin by literally the vast vast majority, none of it would have happened. Military admittedly found his plans ridiculous, but like Goering (who tried to disuade him from attacking Russia I think it was) I would argue they all embraced the campaigns when they saw it was no use, as military men do. After a while some in the military got frustrated but assasination attempts went wrong (would we dare to say because of other more loyal and zealous Nazis?).

So, for you I might seem to go out of my way and bend over backwards to brush things under the carpet, but in fact if you have a little look at the context of it all, the responsibility of one man fades away in the face of the glaring responsibility of everyone who let him get on with it. I say it again, he is responsible, by all means, but by branding him evil, he gets the largest blame where in fact the whole of German society was to blame from the late 19th century onwards. They were aggravated by their WWI defeat, brought on because Germany was on the edge of civil war at that point and the war ended prematurely, although they were set to lose and not to win as the stab in the back myth declared. Do you suppose Hitler stands alone amongst all these facts? 'He was just an evil man'. I will say it again, the world trauma of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany was not that a man like Hitler came to power (which is not unbelievable in itself seeing the prevailance of dictators all through history), the trauma was that the German people let him and supported him all through the war. And even that some of them like the SS knew about what they were doing mainly in Poland (another mark of their disdain for Poland and its people) and that they either did not believe them or did not care. That the human race is capable of actually entertaining the thought of exterminating a race of 'other' people is disturbing. Not the dictator by himself. And it was not a dictator who designed the system of extermination it was the vile system that allowed and endorsed it. Sure, he delivered the ideas for it, which he took from others, but by calling Hitler evil, you take away from that glaring responsibility in favour of a simplistic denomination that endorses to forget how it happened. Only by acknowledging how this happened can we resolve this in the future and it is all too evident we have not done that yet.

Darcy88

03-15-2012, 02:33 PM

Well, I thought this discussion was finished, but apparently it is not. I did not say evil stopped being evil I said people are not evil. I do dispair at people's reading skills sometimes...
I know houses and cars are in extreme cases, however, can you personally save up enough to buy your daughter furniture as well as all the cooking things plus bed clothes, towels, and all of the things she needs to be able to get married? And it must be the best you can afford, mind. Apart from the prestige, which goes hand in hand with the dowry system (son = gaining money, daugter = losing money), you get such vile practices as well as practices like men marrying and then killing their wives or parents-in-law doing it for them. Purely for the money. Prestige does not come on its own. It has mostly got other things attached.

It is not because most people consider this person to be evil and almost satan come to earth that things are like that. There are many more reasons than Hitler himself for this whole system. The scary and if you will 'evil' thing is not Hitler himself, it was the whole collection of circumstances that brought Germany and its culture to what it became. The French were maybe more anti-semitic, but that alone does not make sure you kill those people en masse (as they have proven). It was the whole of it: their sad economic situation, the cleverness of the NSDAP's propaganda, the weakness of the Weimar Republik as well as the Diktat of Versailles (as the Germans called it), the profoundly twisted nature of people like Himmler (a failed chicken farmer) the readiness of the German population to fully participate in such a mess by denouncing people who did not agree (heard that on a documentary by a former Gestapo secretary) and one brilliant orator who made the whole thing the sad pinnacle of a brilliant culture. In the face of that, Hitler is a speck. I say it again, had he been in the UK, he had been lynched on the streets in the East End, but he was not in the UK. Sure, brand Hitler evil, but that way he becomes the whole constructor of this machine, which was not only made by him.

It is not because his regime killed 6 million people and that he is ultimately responsible that he is solely responsible. Other people were as much involved in the very design of the machine as he himself. He was their inspiration, indeed, as he was for Goebbels - I don't know what he promised the man, but Goebbels abandoned his reaching out to the socialists in one night after meeting Hitler and stayed loyal to the very end -, but it is impossible to state that he was the sole creator of it. Indeed, you could not even argue that he was the sole designer of it. Had he not been supported through thick and thin by literally the vast vast majority, none of it would have happened. Military admittedly found his plans ridiculous, but like Goering (who tried to disuade him from attacking Russia I think it was) I would argue they all embraced the campaigns when they saw it was no use, as military men do. After a while some in the military got frustrated but assasination attempts went wrong (would we dare to say because of other more loyal and zealous Nazis?).

So, for you I might seem to go out of my way and bend over backwards to brush things under the carpet, but in fact if you have a little look at the context of it all, the responsibility of one man fades away in the face of the glaring responsibility of everyone who let him get on with it. I say it again, he is responsible, by all means, but by branding him evil, he gets the largest blame where in fact the whole of German society was to blame from the late 19th century onwards. They were aggravated by their WWI defeat, brought on because Germany was on the edge of civil war at that point and the war ended prematurely, although they were set to lose and not to win as the stab in the back myth declared. Do you suppose Hitler stands alone amongst all these facts? 'He was just an evil man'. I will say it again, the world trauma of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany was not that a man like Hitler came to power (which is not unbelievable in itself seeing the prevailance of dictators all through history), the trauma was that the German people let him and supported him all through the war. And even that some of them like the SS knew about what they were doing mainly in Poland (another mark of their disdain for Poland and its people) and that they either did not believe them or did not care. That the human race is capable of actually entertaining the thought of exterminating a race of 'other' people is disturbing. Not the dictator by himself. And it was not a dictator who designed the system of extermination it was the vile system that allowed and endorsed it. Sure, he delivered the ideas for it, which he took from others, but by calling Hitler evil, you take away from that glaring responsibility in favour of a simplistic denomination that endorses to forget how it happened. Only by acknowledging how this happened can we resolve this in the future and it is all too evident we have not done that yet.

This whole post is riddled with straw men and logical blunders. I asked a world war 2 expert yesterday whether the holocaust would have happened if Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had never existed and he said that yes it would have nonetheless taken place. But that doesn't make those men not evil. You have a weak and warped grasp of morality and of the concept of evil. It doesn't matter that they were not solely responsible. They were largely responsible for occurrences of a starkly evil nature. This whole post would have come in handy for those Nazis tried at Nuremburg. You'd make a good defense lawyer in the international criminal court. And you simply ignore the hard questions I pose to you, such as whether you'd try to convince a Jew doing a walk of death into the gas-chamber that the men who ordered him or her there weren't evil, or whether someone who slowly tortured and raped and then killed your own mother over the course of a week would not be an evil person.

You say "Hitler was a speck." No he wasn't! He was the fuhrer. All swore an oath to him. He had full dictatorial powers for over ten years. On his order and against the stern misgivings on the part of the military he ordered the invasion of France. A saner fuhrer may not have ordered six million innocents put to death, may not have invaded western europe, may have surrendered before letting his country and his people get blown to smithereens. There is a false historical perspective which accounts for the tide of history in the great pull of great men, the Alexanders and Caesars and Napoleons. Then there is one no less false which attributes causation solely to circumstances, divesting generals and statesmen and thinkers and artists of their rightfully warranted responsibility and glory. You adhere to the latter error.

cafolini

03-15-2012, 03:37 PM

kiki1982

03-15-2012, 04:53 PM

This whole post is riddled with straw men and logical blunders. I asked a world war 2 expert yesterday whether the holocaust would have happened if Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had never existed and he said that yes it would have nonetheless taken place. But that doesn't make those men not evil. You have a weak and warped grasp of morality and of the concept of evil. It doesn't matter that they were not solely responsible. They were largely responsible for occurrences of a starkly evil nature. This whole post would have come in handy for those Nazis tried at Nuremburg. You'd make a good defense lawyer in the international criminal court. And you simply ignore the hard questions I pose to you, such as whether you'd try to convince a Jew doing a walk of death into the gas-chamber that the men who ordered him or her there weren't evil, or whether someone who slowly tortured and raped and then killed your own mother over the course of a week would not be an evil person.

You say "Hitler was a speck." No he wasn't! He was the fuhrer. All swore an oath to him. He had full dictatorial powers for over ten years. On his order and against the stern misgivings on the part of the military he ordered the invasion of France. A saner fuhrer may not have ordered six million innocents put to death, may not have invaded western europe, may have surrendered before letting his country and his people get blown to smithereens. There is a false historical perspective which accounts for the tide of history in the great pull of great men, the Alexanders and Caesars and Napoleons. Then there is one no less false which attributes causation solely to circumstances, divesting generals and statesmen and thinkers and artists of their rightfully warranted responsibility and glory. You adhere to the latter error.

If you want to continue this, then fine by me, but you still don't seem to get what I am trying to say.
I never ever in this thread, nor anywhere else, have dared to claim that they were not respnsible and should not have been punished or did not deserve their lots (in Hitler's and Goebbels's cases). Where you and anyone else gets it from that I have at all defended these people, I have ceased to try and find. The only thing I have tried to do, but which people deliberately misunderstand (apart from a few), is to put it in context AND to add a context to the Holocaust. It does not make it less bad, it only provides you with more than 'Hitler ordered it and he is evil, nah.' The constructing of that process was not a goal from the start, although it was the inevitabe result of the process up till then. That is ackowledged by historians: the idea to exterminate the Jews developed gradually and was not the idea of one man on his own, not even only of the trinity I could call them. Indeed, it was delegated down from Hitler to Goering round about 1940 and then from him to Rheinhardt (?) and then to Eichmann who organised the thing. Eichmann was asked simply because of his good organisational skills. Goering never admitted he actually knew about it and claimed the letter he wrote to Reinhardt (which I have read and which indeed does not mention 'killing' or 'extermination' in any way) was relative to 'emigration' and deportation to further away areas. A bit like the Russians dd with the Tatars. Atlhough it is hard to believe he could not have known. Although what should he have done to stop it if he knew? Be it as it may, ultimately he was responsible so he was punished and committed suice before they could hang him.
You fail to see what is staring you in the face: that these people were maybe made of bad and mad ideas, but that they were in no way the same as your average murderer or serial killer.

The argument that I have to tell this to a Jew is irrelevant in this discussion and it is the classic argument of someone who wishes to guide the discussion somewhere else where there is no longer any rationality. What is it going to benefit us to call this person evil, indeed anyone evil? What, pray? The point is not that they killed so many in such an industrial manner 60 years ago, the point is that they thought of it at all. That fact alone was what was so shocking.

As the Führer, he was ultimately responsible, of course, but do you really think he had time for all these details? Come on! Of course he authorised it and knew about it (Eva Braun did as well, at least to some extent), but you are not going to tell me that he by himself and with his two companions (Goebbels and Himmler) sat down one day and conceived this from the start and organised it all? Do you really believe that? IF you call this man evil, I keep saying it and I will keep repeating it, you take away the responsibility we all had in this. Not only the academic world who propagated such ridiculous ideas about race, not only those who voted for him in Germany because he achieved good things for them (rest mostly to a society almost at civil war), but all of us who were blinded by his show.

I do not put everything down to history, however, I regard branding these people 'evil' simplistic and totally void of any pragmatism. and before you go off on one, no, not pragmatism as to their ideas, pragmatism as to how one could get such mad ideas in one's head in the first place.

You fail to see that it was not the number of deaths is the great shock, that it was the concept of it alone that was the great shock. Again, the US military told the small band of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto who were resisting
its evacuation out of fear for what might happen next, that surely what they were saying about camps where people got killed by hundred or thousands a day, that surely that was cowboys and indians. If they did not believe it until they actually saw it, the piles and wagons of bodies stacked on top of each other outside the crematoria, what was the chance that anyone else did? Did all those people at the conference in 1942 actually believe it themselves, I wonder? The two women who were filmed in the museum in Nuremberg said they heard of a man who drove trucks in Chelmno (I believe), where they essentially crammed people in the back of a truck and then pumped CO2 in it until they were all dead, I believe. That method was abandoned because it ws not efficient enough and I think too expensive. The man was so troubled that he talked of bodies in the back of trucks and people screaming behind him. They said they thought he was surely mad and none of those stories were true. That is how people thought.

If Hitler ordered it, people let it happen. There were people enough who could have done something against it, yet they all contributed to a relentlessly efficient system which denounced anyone who did not agree. And that was the people, not those three blokes at the top.

Learn this: people at the top have no jurisdiction if the peple at the bottom, of which there are many more, do not give it to them. Yes, he did have dictatorial power, but he could not force several million people to not help Jews, to not denounce anyone else, to not think. Even in the most oppresed places you find people who do not agree and do illegal things. In Nazi Germany I would contend that they were very very few indeed.

You may hate him all you like, but it does not make this man evil, to my standards at least. I would urge you to watch Der Untergang again to see what the director meant by it. Very powerful film, only you seem to have missed its message entirely. He is not a mythical evil man, he was a man, full stop. And everyone was swept away by this man. Why, God knows, mayby his oratory talent, but the fact is that that is true.

If your WWII expert said the Holocaust would have happened anyway (which I honestly don't know), then why are you still arguing that he is evil? On the one side you mae him solely responsibe for this, but on the other side you come with an argument which essentially backs mine up.

If he were solely responsible, he was surely a man of his time.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-15-2012, 06:00 PM

How is this still going?

KCurtis

03-15-2012, 06:10 PM

How is this still going?

I don't know, but it's going around in circles now. I still think Darcy's doing a great job though!

cafolini

03-15-2012, 06:38 PM

If you want to continue this, then fine by me, but you still don't seem to get what I am trying to say.
I never ever in this thread, nor anywhere else, have dared to claim that they were not respnsible and should not have been punished or did not deserve their lots (in Hitler's and Goebbels's cases). Where you and anyone else gets it from that I have at all defended these people, I have ceased to try and find. The only thing I have tried to do, but which people deliberately misunderstand (apart from a few), is to put it in context AND to add a context to the Holocaust. It does not make it less bad, it only provides you with more than 'Hitler ordered it and he is evil, nah.' The constructing of that process was not a goal from the start, although it was the inevitabe result of the process up till then. That is ackowledged by historians: the idea to exterminate the Jews developed gradually and was not the idea of one man on his own, not even only of the trinity I could call them. Indeed, it was delegated down from Hitler to Goering round about 1940 and then from him to Rheinhardt (?) and then to Eichmann who organised the thing. Eichmann was asked simply because of his good organisational skills. Goering never admitted he actually knew about it and claimed the letter he wrote to Reinhardt (which I have read and which indeed does not mention 'killing' or 'extermination' in any way) was relative to 'emigration' and deportation to further away areas. A bit like the Russians dd with the Tatars. Atlhough it is hard to believe he could not have known. Although what should he have done to stop it if he knew? Be it as it may, ultimately he was responsible so he was punished and committed suice before they could hang him.
You fail to see what is staring you in the face: that these people were maybe made of bad and mad ideas, but that they were in no way the same as your average murderer or serial killer.

The argument that I have to tell this to a Jew is irrelevant in this discussion and it is the classic argument of someone who wishes to guide the discussion somewhere else where there is no longer any rationality. What is it going to benefit us to call this person evil, indeed anyone evil? What, pray? The point is not that they killed so many in such an industrial manner 60 years ago, the point is that they thought of it at all. That fact alone was what was so shocking.

As the Führer, he was ultimately responsible, of course, but do you really think he had time for all these details? Come on! Of course he authorised it and knew about it (Eva Braun did as well, at least to some extent), but you are not going to tell me that he by himself and with his two companions (Goebbels and Himmler) sat down one day and conceived this from the start and organised it all? Do you really believe that? IF you call this man evil, I keep saying it and I will keep repeating it, you take away the responsibility we all had in this. Not only the academic world who propagated such ridiculous ideas about race, not only those who voted for him in Germany because he achieved good things for them (rest mostly to a society almost at civil war), but all of us who were blinded by his show.

I do not put everything down to history, however, I regard branding these people 'evil' simplistic and totally void of any pragmatism. and before you go off on one, no, not pragmatism as to their ideas, pragmatism as to how one could get such mad ideas in one's head in the first place.

You fail to see that it was not the number of deaths is the great shock, that it was the concept of it alone that was the great shock. Again, the US military told the small band of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto who were resisting
its evacuation out of fear for what might happen next, that surely what they were saying about camps where people got killed by hundred or thousands a day, that surely that was cowboys and indians. If they did not believe it until they actually saw it, the piles and wagons of bodies stacked on top of each other outside the crematoria, what was the chance that anyone else did? Did all those people at the conference in 1942 actually believe it themselves, I wonder? The two women who were filmed in the museum in Nuremberg said they heard of a man who drove trucks in Chelmno (I believe), where they essentially crammed people in the back of a truck and then pumped CO2 in it until they were all dead, I believe. That method was abandoned because it ws not efficient enough and I think too expensive. The man was so troubled that he talked of bodies in the back of trucks and people screaming behind him. They said they thought he was surely mad and none of those stories were true. That is how people thought.

If Hitler ordered it, people let it happen. There were people enough who could have done something against it, yet they all contributed to a relentlessly efficient system which denounced anyone who did not agree. And that was the people, not those three blokes at the top.

Learn this: people at the top have no jurisdiction if the peple at the bottom, of which there are many more, do not give it to them. Yes, he did have dictatorial power, but he could not force several million people to not help Jews, to not denounce anyone else, to not think. Even in the most oppresed places you find people who do not agree and do illegal things. In Nazi Germany I would contend that they were very very few indeed.

You may hate him all you like, but it does not make this man evil, to my standards at least. I would urge you to watch Der Untergang again to see what the director meant by it. Very powerful film, only you seem to have missed its message entirely. He is not a mythical evil man, he was a man, full stop. And everyone was swept away by this man. Why, God knows, mayby his oratory talent, but the fact is that that is true.

If your WWII expert said the Holocaust would have happened anyway (which I honestly don't know), then why are you still arguing that he is evil? On the one side you mae him solely responsibe for this, but on the other side you come with an argument which essentially backs mine up.

If he were solely responsible, he was surely a man of his time.

Ridiculous judgments on you part. I said before I don't care much for the word "evil," but I don't have to make the leader solely responsible to say what Darcy is saying. Neither does Darcy. Not merely solely putrefied. How about far more putrid than the majority? He found the Bob ready. He merely tickled it as it passed through the +-5-degree hypotenuses, and eventually, as the network was built, everywhere.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-15-2012, 07:18 PM

This is from page 21:

Seriously, though, you all do realize you've been repeating the same things for about the last ten pages, no? I mean, how many time can you say, "I never said that, I said this," in one thread? The hyperbole is becoming hilarious. On one hand, we now have Kiki who sympathizes with Hitler and thinks he bears absolutely no responsibility for his actions, and on the other we have Darcy and StLukes who hate Hitler so blindly, their short-sightedness will usher in the next genocidal tyrant. Both views are ridiculous, but that's where you are.

And it's still going!

Every time I see this thread pop up in the newest posts, like an Alzheimer's patient, I click on this thread to see what's happening, and I inevitably am lead to disappointment as I encounter yet another 1000 word pronouncement about what that person really said. Still, it's my fault for coming here.

Drkshadow03

03-15-2012, 07:56 PM

How is this still going?

Kiki isn't wrong to suggest that Hitler's rise to power and the occurrence of the Holocaust has its roots in a much longer history of anti-Semitism in German society. Why that exonerates Hitler from being evil, however, beats me.

Many serial killers have deep traumatic childhoods too. That doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the murders they commit just because that school psychologist looked the other way in 3rd grade and his dad was an abusive drunk, therefore there was a whole institutional edifice that supported his behavior. We might say some blame resides with those people for the hypothetical serial killer turning out the way he did, but that doesn't mean said sociopath isn't evil or that he isn't responsible for his actions.

The point in labeling something evil is a philosophical one rather than an historical one. It is not only a discussion of history, but one of morals and ethics as it intersects with history. It's not just a matter of discussing how people do or did act, but how people should or shouldn't act.

mortalterror

03-15-2012, 09:26 PM

Kiki isn't wrong to suggest that Hitler's rise to power and the occurrence of the Holocaust has its roots in a much longer history of anti-Semitism in German society. Why that exonerates Hitler from being evil, however, beats me.

Many serial killers have deep traumatic childhoods too. That doesn't mean they aren't responsible for the murders they commit just because that school psychologist looked the other way in 3rd grade and his dad was an abusive drunk, therefore there was a whole institutional edifice that supported his behavior. We might say some blame resides with those people for the hypothetical serial killer turning out the way he did, but that doesn't mean said sociopath isn't evil or that he isn't responsible for his actions.

The point in labeling something evil is a philosophical one rather than an historical one. It is not only a discussion of history, but one of morals and ethics as it intersects with history. It's not just a matter of discussing how people do or did act, but how people should and shouldn't act.

Without reading all of the earlier posts, I think that Kiki's point was sort of a modern psychological/philosophical one that denied the existence of evil and good in favor of terms like sick and healthy. Furthermore, I think that Kiki was also taking the behaviorist stance that people's personalities can be largely situational and prone to environmental factors outside of their control. Take that concentration camp prison guard they found in Ohio or wherever last year. During war time, given authority over life and death, and he's a psychopathic monster. But then you put him on the assembly line at an auto plant for sixty years and he never harms a fly. Situational.

Like that book The Reader that came out a couple of years ago. The question isn't so much did the person do wrong, but more did the person do more wrong than a similar person in the same situation would have done. You raise two children in Ruwanda or the war torn Congo and you will probably get a warlord or a soldier of some kind, but sometimes you get a saint like a Ghandi or a Nelson Mandela, and that's where biology and free will comes in.

I don't think that Kiki is a Hitler apologist, although like I said I did not read every post. I think that he/she just doesn't believe in the existence of true evil, or believe that a full blown sociopath could rise through the ranks of German politicians and be as functional as he was. He loved animals, was a vegetarian, and a teetotaler who was fond of his family and could be generous to friends. That doesn't sound sociopathic, but maybe he was a master manipulator and this was all part of his cover, like Richard III walking around with his Bible. Ted Bundy was a lawyer active in politics who did volunteer work and who's friends described him as "kind, solicitous, and empathetic", which begs the question 'How well can you know anybody?'

Finally, there is the question of scale. Is Hitler more evil than Ted Bundy because he killed more people, or were they equally evil and Hitler had more opportunity to act on it? Is it black and white or are there many shades of evil gray that run the gamut down to cutting someone off in traffic?

Personally, I don't know what to think. If there is true evil in the world, then surely the actions of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Ghengis Khan, and Kim Jung Il qualify.

Darcy88

03-15-2012, 10:28 PM

If you want to continue this, then fine by me, but you still don't seem to get what I am trying to say.
I never ever in this thread, nor anywhere else, have dared to claim that they were not respnsible and should not have been punished or did not deserve their lots (in Hitler's and Goebbels's cases). Where you and anyone else gets it from that I have at all defended these people, I have ceased to try and find. The only thing I have tried to do, but which people deliberately misunderstand (apart from a few), is to put it in context AND to add a context to the Holocaust. It does not make it less bad, it only provides you with more than 'Hitler ordered it and he is evil, nah.' The constructing of that process was not a goal from the start, although it was the inevitabe result of the process up till then. That is ackowledged by historians: the idea to exterminate the Jews developed gradually and was not the idea of one man on his own, not even only of the trinity I could call them. Indeed, it was delegated down from Hitler to Goering round about 1940 and then from him to Rheinhardt (?) and then to Eichmann who organised the thing. Eichmann was asked simply because of his good organisational skills. Goering never admitted he actually knew about it and claimed the letter he wrote to Reinhardt (which I have read and which indeed does not mention 'killing' or 'extermination' in any way) was relative to 'emigration' and deportation to further away areas. A bit like the Russians dd with the Tatars. Atlhough it is hard to believe he could not have known. Although what should he have done to stop it if he knew? Be it as it may, ultimately he was responsible so he was punished and committed suice before they could hang him.
You fail to see what is staring you in the face: that these people were maybe made of bad and mad ideas, but that they were in no way the same as your average murderer or serial killer.

No they weren't. You are so right. They were far far far far worse than your average murderer or serial killer. Serial killers kill out of psychotic impulse, they are pretty much insane. Himmler wasn't psychotic, he was sick, suffering from a cancer of dark inhuman ideology. They didn't kill for passion nor out of psychosis - they killed for ideas, in affirming Nazism they negated all else, life, love, beauty, peace. Worse than your average murderer indeed. Its statements like that from you which make me wonder why I bother putting effort into my ideas and words reading and responding to you.

The argument that I have to tell this to a Jew is irrelevant in this discussion and it is the classic argument of someone who wishes to guide the discussion somewhere else where there is no longer any rationality. What is it going to benefit us to call this person evil, indeed anyone evil? What, pray? The point is not that they killed so many in such an industrial manner 60 years ago, the point is that they thought of it at all. That fact alone was what was so shocking.

And no it is not irrelevant. You are doing what the Nazis did - you are negating people's lives, their sufferings and their deaths, by looking upon the situation with eyes blinkered by a passionless abstractive philosophy that ultimately has no heart. The subjective experiences of those slain Jews is what matters most here. Not your cold dead emotionally uninvolved gaze. Proof of what I say here follows in this statement you just made -

You fail to see that it was not the number of deaths is the great shock, that it was the concept of it alone that was the great shock.

And you go on, like after a binge on falsehood and absurdity your mind continues ever to vomit this false and absurd stuff without end.

he was ultimately responsible, of course, but do you really think he had time for all these details? Come on! Of course he authorised it and knew about it (Eva Braun did as well, at least to some extent), but you are not going to tell me that he by himself and with his two companions (Goebbels and Himmler) sat down one day and conceived this from the start and organised it all? Do you really believe that? IF you call this man evil, I keep saying it and I will keep repeating it, you take away the responsibility we all had in this. Not only the academic world who propagated such ridiculous ideas about race, not only those who voted for him in Germany because he achieved good things for them (rest mostly to a society almost at civil war), but all of us who were blinded by his show.

I don't care if you can't trace the whole sick shebang to those few men. They were in charge, the orders came from them, and even if one lends credence to an egregiously false revisionist history which teaches that they didn't you must still admit that THEY COULD HAVE STOPPED IT. The SS took their orders from the Nazis. As did the military. If those men had in themselves anything remotely resembling a conscience they could have ordered that the killing cease. But they didn't. Hence - they were evil Kiki, evil as night is dark and snow is white.

If Hitler ordered it, people let it happen. There were people enough who could have done something against it, yet they all contributed to a relentlessly efficient system which denounced anyone who did not agree. And that was the people, not those three blokes at the top.

Learn this: people at the top have no jurisdiction if the peple at the bottom, of which there are many more, do not give it to them. Yes, he did have dictatorial power, but he could not force several million people to not help Jews, to not denounce anyone else, to not think. Even in the most oppresed places you find people who do not agree and do illegal things. In Nazi Germany I would contend that they were very very few indeed.

Okay, so your argument now is that everyone was evil and so therefore no one was evil. The earliest Greek logicians, buried over two thousand years, all at once rolled over in their stone and ruin and dirt covered graves when you typed up this syllogistic monstrosity.

You may hate him all you like, but it does not make this man evil, to my standards at least. I would urge you to watch Der Untergang again to see what the director meant by it. Very powerful film, only you seem to have missed its message entirely. He is not a mythical evil man, he was a man, full stop. And everyone was swept away by this man. Why, God knows, mayby his oratory talent, but the fact is that that is true.

Yes, the film humanized him. But if you can watch that film and not still see evil there, I'd say you should check your ears for wax and give your spectacles a good cleaning.

If your WWII expert said the Holocaust would have happened anyway (which I honestly don't know), then why are you still arguing that he is evil? On the one side you mae him solely responsibe for this, but on the other side you come with an argument which essentially backs mine up.

This is what I mean. That does not make a lick of sense. If they hadn't ordered the holocaust then some other men may have and those other men would have been evil too. You really just don't like the word evil. You wish it could be stricken from the letters and tongues of man. Well its a useful word that makes a meaningful reference. People will go on calling some people evil until the sun explodes in a few billion years so you may as well get used to it my friend.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-15-2012, 11:32 PM

This thread = :beatdeadhorse5:

mona amon

03-15-2012, 11:44 PM

I think that Kiki's point was sort of a modern psychological/philosophical one that denied the existence of evil and good in favor of terms like sick and healthy. Furthermore, I think that Kiki was also taking the behaviorist stance that people's personalities can be largely situational and prone to environmental factors outside of their control. - Mortalterror

No. :nono: She's perfectly willing to call some people evil, the Norway gunman Breivik for instance. It's only the Nazis like Hitler, Eichmann, and Mengele who have her sympathy, empathy, understanding and compassion.

Darcy88

03-15-2012, 11:45 PM

This thread = :beatdeadhorse5:

I take offense at that graphic Mutatis. Doesn't give me close to enough credit. I'm not beating a dead horse. I'm now beating the spot of earth on which the dead horse I long ago began beating lay but where now no dead horse is to be seen but rather a patch of pansies and dafodils, their bright colorful blooms furtilized by the microscopic remnants of that long decomposed and dissapeared four legged mained beast I beat into fine near-nothingness.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-16-2012, 12:29 AM

:lol: Youre quite the wordsmith, Darcy. :nod:

Darcy88

03-16-2012, 12:37 AM

:lol: Youre quite the wordsmith, Darcy. :nod:

I try. My obstinacy in opposing Kiki's arguments is born not of any hope that I may enlighten her or like a fencer make some final winning stroke. Its just a diversion. A kind of entertainment or sport. Like playing catch. I also find it fascinating that Kiki is an obviously intelligent and articulate individual and yet she puts forward statements that appear in my eyes downright stupidly inane. If I didn't respect her mind I wouldn't bother to persist in debating her.

Darcy88

03-16-2012, 12:42 AM

.....

kiki1982

03-16-2012, 06:12 AM

Thank you Mortalterror for rewrding my view.

No. :nono: She's perfectly willing to call some people evil, the Norway gunman Breivik for instance. It's only the Nazis like Hitler, Eichmann, and Mengele who have her sympathy, empathy, understanding and compassion.

Correction, I said, I quote: "The only man who could be evil is the one who does these things by himself, having had no guidance to do so. Like a Breikvik (or however his name is spelled). He is a good candidate." I called him a good candidate, because I do not know enough of the man to judge. Fact is that he was less influenced by society than Hitler was. You can call that a sic comparison, but that fact stands. I never called him evil because I find an evil person is not capable of any good. I do not know enough of Breivik to judge, but I doubt that he was not kind to his friends.

I try. My obstinacy in opposing Kiki's arguments is born not of any hope that I may enlighten her or like a fencer make some final winning stroke. Its just a diversion. A kind of entertainment or sport. Like playing catch. I also find it fascinating that Kiki is an obviously intelligent and articulate individual and yet she puts forward statements that appear in my eyes downright stupidly inane. If I didn't respect her mind I wouldn't bother to persist in debating her.

And I am as obstinate as you, I'm afraid. And I am also as entertained every morning by replying to these emotional arguments which are frankly a little late for something that happened almost 70 years ago and how many generations? I find it fascinating how someone can a) hate a man he has never ever met, b) can hate a man he obviously knows so little about that his deeds amount to killing 6 million and c) have such little or no understanding of the vile system behind the result. So I am seeking to enlighten as well, but I am afraid that the darkness I am trying to shine my light into is thick as the night when the Vesuvius erupted.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-16-2012, 07:54 AM

A man he obviously knows so little about? I think you've both shown you know plenty about Hitler, so maybe it's time to drop the arrogant attitude, hmm?

And how do you know was influenced by society less than Hitler was, especially when you admit you know little about him in the first place?

kiki1982

03-16-2012, 09:00 AM

No they weren't. You are so right. They were far far far far worse than your average murderer or serial killer. Serial killers kill out of psychotic impulse, they are pretty much insane. Himmler wasn't psychotic, he was sick, suffering from a cancer of dark inhuman ideology. They didn't kill for passion nor out of psychosis - they killed for ideas, in affirming Nazism they negated all else, life, love, beauty, peace. Worse than your average murderer indeed. Its statements like that from you which make me wonder why I bother putting effort into my ideas and words reading and responding to you.

Insane? A serial killer insane? I am sure if these people were really insane, that they would be interned and not executed or locked up. They have a problem with empathy and guilt and are often narcissistic. They live in a fantasy world where reality as they see it is not the reality we see as a society. That is not insane, they have a disturbed perception of things and are sometimes highly intelligent. There is a huge difference with mass murderers or so-called spree killers who do kill in a fit of passion and who may be insane, though sometimes not like Breivik (according to his psychiatrists).

Himmler, I guess, had an inferiroity complex because of his inability to have a military career, both because he was unfit for it and because he was not allowed to do it (demilitarisation of Germany after WWI). He coveted power to account for that inferiority complex. He had a degree in agronomy which accounts for his fascination with eugenics for the Aryan race. He had a daughter he doted on which was his own and when his wife adopted a son, he couldn't be bothered. He had a mistress he had two children with, if I understand it well, for Lebensborn purposes. I don't know about his relationship with those children. At any rate, it cannot have mattered much as they were born in 1942 and 1944.
To me it is clear that this man was far more dangerous, as he saw what happened, allegedly vomited when visiting a camp (although that is unconfirmed) where the killing of Jews was demonstrated to him, and still maintained it.
Hitler never visited a camp. He authorised the plan, but, really, be honest with yourself: who here is the most disgusting and at first glance a budding serial killer/psychopath? Who is the most worrying of those two? Is it the one who knows what is going on and puts his signature under a paper which states 'I hereby authorise to solve the Jewish Question by extermination' or the one who witnesses it and is involved in the details? To whom it was even demonstrated. You will call those two evil, but I would regard it as an insult to those who have 'only' killed 3 or 20 that they are put in the same basket as this creep.

And no it is not irrelevant. You are doing what the Nazis did - you are negating people's lives, their sufferings and their deaths, by looking upon the situation with eyes blinkered by a passionless abstractive philosophy that ultimately has no heart. The subjective experiences of those slain Jews is what matters most here. Not your cold dead emotionally uninvolved gaze. Proof of what I say here follows in this statement you just made.

It is irrelevant to us now. How many generations ago was this? As we as the world are still dwelling on how many, people get killed every day in Syria, in Congo in the nineties, etc.

It is not that I have no heart. Every time I see this happening again, I think of all those who weep for the poor 6 million who died and they have not seen the cause of it, because they can't get past the stage of anger. To resolve an important issue like that, you cannot dwell on how many, you have to dwell on the how. Thankfully, no version as excessive has yet come up apart from the Soviet Union which we branded evil in the Cold War, but, once again, did nothing about.

And you go on, like after a binge on falsehood and absurdity your mind continues ever to vomit this false and absurd stuff without end.

If that is falsehood and absurdity, challenge it, with valid arguments. I am quite confident that won't happen.

I don't care if you can't trace the whole sick shebang to those few men. They were in charge, the orders came from them, and even if one lends credence to an egregiously false revisionist history which teaches that they didn't you must still admit that THEY COULD HAVE STOPPED IT. The SS took their orders from the Nazis. As did the military. If those men had in themselves anything remotely resembling a conscience they could have ordered that the killing cease. But they didn't. Hence - they were evil Kiki, evil as night is dark and snow is white.

Once again, you misconstrue the whole thing. Goebbels for one was not involved in any of this. Involved in clever propaganda and that was it. He was zealous, it has been argued, because he had a malformation on his foot which moved him to over-compensate for his 'perfect' fellows. He used to pass it off as a war wound in earlier days. He was a romatic and had a PhD and his ideas did not completely coincide with Hitler, although he basically 'swore' an oath of loyalty.

Your idea about this is passionate but simplistic:
a) Those three you name (make it two: Hitler and Himmler) did not design this system themselves and they did not sit down together and said, 'well, what shall we do about this, then?' It is true, they could have stopped it if they had a conscience in this matter, no ideology and had they not been in the circumstances they were in. However, they would have had to give up all the forced labour (which accounted for a lot of products coming onto the market, not least the stones for their rally grounds in Nuremberg which I have seen, forced labour was also carried on in the ghettos) etc. And can you tell me what ridiculous impression they would have made if they had packed it in, had they entertained the thought? You just do not reset a system in one go! Are you sure they would not have been murdered? There were power struggles involved in this as much as in other regimes (you cannot conceive what went on behind the scenes). You think they could make their own decisions like that? The process of normalisation and of money (Aryanisation and people who lived on the camp system, companies like AGFA). I am sure the Führerprinzip would have gone straight out of the window at that point. They could have stopped the killing, if they had had enough logistical means to feed them. That was one of the first issues that cropped up and why the first ghetto was cleared. You can call that sick, but what was the other solution? Release them all?
It does not absolve them from their responsibility and sick ideology, but you do need to see that people take themselves somewhere where there is no way back. And in 1942, that was such a dead end.
b) the military could have refused. The military does not refuse. The military does what it's ordered to do. That is why soldiers get shot if they desert in a war situation. No matter what their problem is (even if it is shell skock or PTSD). If people in the military had a conscience at all, they would never ever win a war. b1) the people high up in the military are designed and selected for this especially. A general who refuses to carry out orders is frankly useles. I said that Goering opposed Hitler's invasion of Russia: he opposed it and frantically tried to dissuade Hitler from it, but when he saw it was useless, he backed off and as a true military man, did the best he could although he knew it would go wrong. It does not spring up in the mind of a soldier to have a conscience.
To illustrate this: when Hitler found out certain attack were not carried out he became furious and Himmler who had allegedly (I don't know whether that is true) been conducting negotiations for Germany's capitulation was arrested by the SS after his spokesman in Berlin Hermann Fegelein was executed on the spot for high treason. The latter was not even directly involved in this. The military does not make distinctions of this kind.

Okay, so your argument now is that everyone was evil and so therefore no one was evil. The earliest Greek logicians, buried over two thousand years, all at once rolled over in their stone and ruin and dirt covered graves when you typed up this syllogistic monstrosity.

My argument is not that everyone was evil! For God's sake, that is twenty pages I have tried to make you see that my view is that the man who is evil is the one who is not capable of any good and thinks of horrible and terrible things by himself, of his own accord, unconditioned to do so.

Yes, the film humanized him. But if you can watch that film and not still see evil there, I'd say you should check your ears for wax and give your spectacles a good cleaning.

I cannot see evil no, evil as a force maybe, but not as a man with a trembling hand. The purpose of the director was to make Hitler more human so as to make whatever that was or had been (almost at that time) going on even more terrible. Hitler is not Satan, you know, he was a man and in that was even different from the Führer portrayed in Goebbels's propaganda. 'Married to the people', indeed...

This is what I mean. That does not make a lick of sense. If they hadn't ordered the holocaust then some other men may have and those other men would have been evil too. You really just don't like the word evil. You wish it could be stricken from the letters and tongues of man. Well its a useful word that makes a meaningful reference. People will go on calling some people evil until the sun explodes in a few billion years so you may as well get used to it my friend.

I know people will go on to call other people evil and that does not disturb me, it is when those same people wish me to call someone evil that I get disturbed. That is what you have been trying to do. You say, 'This person is evil, so call him evil.' I say, 'No, I don't.' And you read 'I don't think he did bad deeds or had twisted ideas (to me now)'. Where you ever read that, beats me.

@ Mutatis: I think his view of this man is at least one-dimensional and simplistic. If that sounds arrogant, then so be it.

If this needs to stop, I think it is best for the moderator to close the thread and for the OP to open a group where no direct criticism of the regime is allowed or something. That would prevent it going off topic.

Adolescent09

03-16-2012, 09:18 AM

Hitler was a complete moron. How so many people could have stood by or been influenced by his propaganda is beyond comprehension when his oratory skills were decent at best (and yes, I have seen hours of footage of his selling the idea of mass murder to millions and either the subtitles were abysmally translated to English, or he just simply couldn't speak properly). It was like watching a bunch of toddlers get hyped up over the dogmatic view of a priest when they don't have any preconceptions of the speaker's belief or the slightest clue as to the ramifications of their actions based on it. Hitler was indubitably a terrible man inside and out, but his writing of Mein Kampf was another scarcely discussed atrocity. It caused untold multitudes of readers to die of boredom. Next to every dresser in every hotel/motel should be a copy of Mein Kampf just to put people to sleep who have forgotten to take their sleeping pills.

ScribbleScribe

03-16-2012, 09:27 AM

This thread is only supposed to be about mein kampf and how hitler ties into mein kampf. Not discussion of the man sans the book. Not the discussion of what evil is.

GOOD GRIEF PEOPLE!

ScribbleScribe

03-16-2012, 09:29 AM

his writing of Mein Kampf was another scarcely discussed atrocity. It caused untold multitudes of readers to die of boredom. Next to every dresser in every hotel/motel should be a copy of Mein Kampf just to put people to sleep who have forgotten to take their sleeping pills.

It's not boring to me.

WW2 was a major world war and millions of innocent people were killed. How could anything tied to that be boring due to it's sheer relevance in the larger scheme of what was happening at that time?

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-16-2012, 09:34 AM

This thread is only supposed to be about mein kampf and how hitler ties into mein kampf. Not discussion of the man sans the book. Not the discussion of what evil is.

GOOD GRIEF PEOPLE!

You started a topic about the book written by Adolfo Hitler. What did you expect? Plus, there've been quite a few comments on the book that you could respond to, or try reaparking conversation on the book by bringing up new points.

I think this thread has stayed in topic very well, actually. 26 pages in and the author of the book in question is still the main subject. Usually when a thread gets this long we're discussing the value of art, or having semantic arguments about what "value," or some other such word, means.

kiki1982

03-16-2012, 09:45 AM

:lol:

Although the discussion strayed for a while to the nature of 'evil' in itself, that was quicly amended.

But indeed, that's usually what happens.

:devil:

Darcy88

03-16-2012, 12:06 PM

Kiki,

You spent a large part of that post trying to relieve Hitler and the Nazis of repsonsibility. You say at times that you hold them responsible, but so many of your points and indeed your overall tone suggest that you think that history and circumstances and fate in a way exonerate them. You need to understand that my definition of evil is the standard modern one, and that yours is yours alone, or is only accepted by a small minority of people. An evil person is a person who does evil things. According to you an evil person is a person who does evil things but was not conditioned to do them, rather acting evilly spontaneously, against the grain of their circumstances and condition. That is a WEIRD definition of evil Kiki. I don't care if the person is psychotically deranged as was the immigrant who a few years ago cut off a napping man's head on a Greyhound bus in the middle of the Canadian prairie and then went on to feast on the brains of his victim (sorry everyone for the awful visuals.) He was later diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic suffering psychosis. So what he did was not some well thought out choice he made but rather a sudden mad uncontrollable impulse. But still, you cut off an innocent stranger's head and then eat his brains on a Greyhound bus and you are evil, or were evil while you were committing that gross act of evil. Hitler said in speeches he wanted to see all Jews hanged and their corpses left to rot in the street until the smell was too much for people to bear. Then he ordered the holocaust. He was evil. You are wrong. Most intelligent people seem to agree.

And I know Hitler did more than the holocaust. But show me one great redeeming act he did as fuhrer which would provide anything like a silver-lining to his disastrous inglorious legacy. He was a tyrant, he subverted freedom and democracy. He propogated irrationality and falsehood. He plunged civilization into the chaotic madness of war. I don't care if life under him was better for 5-10 years for the average German than it was before. Anyone who would pay the price of freedom to ensure economic stability is a coward and ought to be spat upon.

You say "you get angry and don't go beyond anger." You simply do not understand. Listen up: anger FOLLOWS from understanding. I understand and then am angry because I understand how evil the man was. And I shared how Hitler's actions have impacted my own life and everyone I've told that to has said "wow, what an insight. You're right." I have suffered, my family has suffered, because of Hitler's evil acts. And you say it was 70 years ago and we should just get over it (yes, that's really what you meant), Well, a lot of Jews survived the holocaust. A lot of the children of the slain remain with us today. If your position is anything more than weak airy philosophical nonsense I behoove you to go visit a person who lived through the horror or was the child of one who did or who died. Tell them all you've told me. Tell them Hitler was not evil. If your conviction lacks conviction then you are the only one it'll ever convince if you even are convinced.

Bottom line is your notion that a person conditioned and fated to be evil cannot therefore be evil is patently false. You are not allowed to simply define words as you want them defined. Make a habit of doing that and your thoughts and speech will become incomprehensible.

mona amon

03-16-2012, 12:27 PM

I cannot see evil no, evil as a force maybe, but not as a man with a trembling hand. - Kiki

Oh well, to each his own. :D And this thread really is becoming hilarious - I'd never have believed it at one time. :lol:

kiki1982

03-16-2012, 05:36 PM

You spent a large part of that post trying to relieve Hitler and the Nazis of repsonsibility...

No, I definitely did not. They are responsible, for the umpteenth time. Either you do not read properly or you refuse to do so.

I said, and I repeat, that you, with your definition of evil would put a pile of sh*t with a minority complex like Himmler on the same level as a serial killer who killed at least three (such is the FBI's definition of one). Call me strange by all means but I find the mere comparison an insult to the menial serial killer. It does not absolve anyone of his deeds, but I refuse to put anyone in the same basket as that creep and his fellow creeps.

I know what he said in that piece. He said it to a journalist and retired Major Joseph Hell. And do you know when the latter asked him why this with the Jews?

He said the following which shows that he was manipulating the crowds and casts a doubt on his actual intentions as to putting up the gallows or not.

Joseph Hell, "When I now broached the question of what the source of his so strongly felt hatred for the Jews was, and why he wanted to destroy this so undeniably intelligent race - a race to which the Germans and all other Aryans, if not the entire world, owed an incalculable debt in virtually all fields of art and knowledge, research and economics - Hitler suddenly calmed down and gave this unexpectedly sober and almost dispassionate explanation:"

Hitler, "It is manifestly clear and has been proven in practice and by the facts of all revolutions that a struggle for ideals, for improvements of any kind whatsoever, absolutely must be supplemented with a struggle against some social class or caste.

My object is to create first-rate revolutionary upheavals, regardless of what methods and means I have to use in the process. Earlier revolutions were directed either against the peasants, or the nobility and the clergy, or against dynasties and their network of vassals, but in no case has revolution succeeded without the presence of a lightning rod that could conduct and channel the odium of the general masses.

With this very thing in mind I scanned the revolutionary events of history and put the question to myself against which racial element in Germany can I unleash my propaganda of hate with the greatest prospects of success? I had to find the right kind of victim, and especially one against whom the struggle would make sense, materially speaking. I can assure you that I examined every possible and thinkable solution to this problem, and, weighing every imaginable factor, I came to the conclusion that a campaign against the Jews would be as popular as it would be successful.

There are few Germans who have not been vexed with the behavior of Jews or else have not suffered losses through them in some way or other. Disproportionately to their small number they account for an immense share of the German national wealth, which can just as easily be put to profitable use for the state and the general public as could the holdings of the monasteries, bishops, and nobility.

Once the hatred and the battle against the Jews have been really stirred up, their resistance will necessarily crumble in the shortest possible time. They are totally defenseless, and no one will stand up to protect them

So in short, Hitler decided he wanted to get the German people on his side and so he had to seek an enemy. The Jews were an easy target because the population was already anti-semitic and, a bonus, they are rich, so if you confiscate their goods, that's interesting for the state too. As is the Catholic Church, which he wanted to abolish in time as well, but that was still too controversial. You have to prepare the people a little bit. This stategy was also backed up by Goering in the converstions he had in his cell with an American psychologist.

Himmler's memorandum from 1940 also illustrates that there was no such explicit plan to exterminate from the start.

I don't know what I have to make of his first statement. Not saying that he was not antisemitic or did not entertain the thought of killing, although if he was decided on the fact already in 1922 then why did he wait so long to do anything about it? He had the freedom from 1933, or from the invasion of Poland. Why not? Too much money in the trade, maybe? Or maybe the fact that the persecution alone was needed for propaganda purposes. If you directly execute your enemy, there is no war, is there.

I grant you, a vile manipulator, but my father in his republican zeal has also expressed some gruesome wishes for the aristocrats to be guillotined.

Mind, I am not denying this at all, but there seems to be some discrepancy between what he said he was going to do with those gallows and when it finally happened. I am not the only one who says that the extermination of Jews was not intended from the start. Their persecution, that was yes, but not their extermination.

And I know Hitler did more than the holocaust. But show me one great redeeming act he did as fuhrer which would provide anything like a silver-lining to his disastrous inglorious legacy. He was a tyrant, he subverted freedom and democracy. He propogated irrationality and falsehood. He plunged civilization into the chaotic madness of war. I don't care if life under him was better for 5-10 years for the average German than it was before. Anyone who would pay the price of freedom to ensure economic stability is a coward and ought to be spat upon.

I think Emil has done that for me already.

If you call freedom the freedom to fight in a civil war then fine. I think for the average person, the choice was quickly made. They couldn't know what he was going to do in 1933 with the Enabling Act. And once they knew, it was too late.

My family-in-law has suffered as well I told you. I do not see them getting upset like you when the name occurs. They are more upset when the name Stalin occurs or the notion 'Russian' although the man's father was killed in Sangerhausen after 3 or 4 years in Auschwitz II as a forced labourer. I have read his letters. Others of that family lived through the London Blitz.
My own family were victims of the war. They do not feel any hatred like you.

Anger does not come after understanding, anger comes beore it. It is a well-known fact that any mourning process has first anger and then peace. The mourning process for any reason and any person is the same, it only varies in length. The mourning process for the Holocaust is not different.

Bottom line is your notion that a person conditioned and fated to be evil cannot therefore be evil is patently false. You are not allowed to simply define words as you want them defined. Make a habit of doing that and your thoughts and speech will become incomprehensible.

You define them as it says in the dictionary.
And 'fated to be evil', what does that mean? You believe that people are born evil or what?
'I am not allowed'? Says who?

I said 'i consider a person [cue what you said I said about being evil], that is valid isn't it? I consider evil a force, not a characteristic. Evil is there and moves us to things, is within us, but we are not wholly evil, so we cannot be called so. If you reject that, that is great, but in a normal discussion you do not require the other who holds that opinion to reject it. And you certainly do not stamp the other's opinion as 'false'. Who is to say it is false? You? And why would you be allowed to say it is false, because you know everything?

KCurtis

03-16-2012, 06:28 PM

Anger does not come after understanding, anger comes beore it. It is a well-known fact that any mourning process has first anger and then peace. The mourning process for any reason and any person is the same, it only varies in length. The mourning process for the Holocaust is not different.

How do you know that anger does not come after understanding? For who?
These are opinions, NOT facts. Many people do not have peace after mourning, for some, mourning does not end. Parents of murdered children mourn, and for many, or most, it does not end, there is no peace. You are presenting opinions as facts here. Bad psychobabblists may say that mourning is a process that is the same for any person, it just varies in length. Prove it! The danger is when others assume that a person in mourning will go through a set process, hmm, really?
[/QUOTE]

Darcy88

03-16-2012, 07:59 PM

No, I definitely did not. They are responsible, for the umpteenth time. Either you do not read properly or you refuse to do so.

I said, and I repeat, that you, with your definition of evil would put a pile of sh*t with a minority complex like Himmler on the same level as a serial killer who killed at least three (such is the FBI's definition of one). Call me strange by all means but I find the mere comparison an insult to the menial serial killer. It does not absolve anyone of his deeds, but I refuse to put anyone in the same basket as that creep and his fellow creeps.

I know what he said in that piece. He said it to a journalist and retired Major Joseph Hell. And do you know when the latter asked him why this with the Jews?

He said the following which shows that he was manipulating the crowds and casts a doubt on his actual intentions as to putting up the gallows or not.

So in short, Hitler decided he wanted to get the German people on his side and so he had to seek an enemy. The Jews were an easy target because the population was already anti-semitic and, a bonus, they are rich, so if you confiscate their goods, that's interesting for the state too. As is the Catholic Church, which he wanted to abolish in time as well, but that was still too controversial. You have to prepare the people a little bit. This stategy was also backed up by Goering in the converstions he had in his cell with an American psychologist.

Himmler's memorandum from 1940 also illustrates that there was no such explicit plan to exterminate from the start.

I don't know what I have to make of his first statement. Not saying that he was not antisemitic or did not entertain the thought of killing, although if he was decided on the fact already in 1922 then why did he wait so long to do anything about it? He had the freedom from 1933, or from the invasion of Poland. Why not? Too much money in the trade, maybe? Or maybe the fact that the persecution alone was needed for propaganda purposes. If you directly execute your enemy, there is no war, is there.

I grant you, a vile manipulator, but my father in his republican zeal has also expressed some gruesome wishes for the aristocrats to be guillotined.

Mind, I am not denying this at all, but there seems to be some discrepancy between what he said he was going to do with those gallows and when it finally happened. I am not the only one who says that the extermination of Jews was not intended from the start. Their persecution, that was yes, but not their extermination.?

If Hitler ordered the persecution and extermination of Jews principally from a motive of political expedience that almost makes it worse than if it was born of hatred and delusion.

I think Emil has done that for me already.

No, he really didn't. He ducked out of this conversation when I pushed him on that topic.

If you call freedom the freedom to fight in a civil war then fine. I think for the average person, the choice was quickly made. They couldn't know what he was going to do in 1933 with the Enabling Act. And once they knew, it was too late.

I call freedom the right to be gay or Jewish without fearing death, the right to cast a ballot and choose who will represent you, not so the party you elect can end democracy but so they can rule and be held accountable the next time you vote. I also call it the freedom to express your political views, the freedom to not be put in uniform and sent off to kill or be killed in a pointless war. Hitler ended real freedom in Germany. A great leader could have pulled them back from economic hell without demanding his people forfeit their souls.

My family-in-law has suffered as well I told you. I do not see them getting upset like you when the name occurs. They are more upset when the name Stalin occurs or the notion 'Russian' although the man's father was killed in Sangerhausen after 3 or 4 years in Auschwitz II as a forced labourer. I have read his letters. Others of that family lived through the London Blitz.
My own family were victims of the war. They do not feel any hatred like you.

Then your family has a lame fatalistic view of things. A madman imposes his sick demented will upon millions of people and as a result myself and countless others suffer, most far more incredibly worse than I have, and I feel that I or anyone has the right to hate him. Really I am shaking my head right now in confounded weariness at the never-ending absurdity that I read from you.

Anger does not come after understanding, anger comes beore it. It is a well-known fact that any mourning process has first anger and then peace. The mourning process for any reason and any person is the same, it only varies in length. The mourning process for the Holocaust is not different.

You're just calling me a liar then, okay. How can anyone feel anger without first understanding? Seriously, how is that even possible? Its not. What are you talking about?

You define them as it says in the dictionary.
And 'fated to be evil', what does that mean? You believe that people are born evil or what?
'I am not allowed'? Says who?

You are setting your own personal definition of evil. You aren't allowed in the sense that I am not allowed to define a carrot as a wooden star-shaped structure, or a mouse as a mythical beast part lion, falcon and deer.

I said 'i consider a person [cue what you said I said about being evil], that is valid isn't it? I consider evil a force, not a characteristic. Evil is there and moves us to things, is within us, but we are not wholly evil, so we cannot be called so. If you reject that, that is great, but in a normal discussion you do not require the other who holds that opinion to reject it. And you certainly do not stamp the other's opinion as 'false'. Who is to say it is false? You? And why would you be allowed to say it is false, because you know everything

We are not wholly good so we cannot be called so. Again, to repeat myself yet again, my aunt with a few grey hairs on her head cannot be called brunette because she has those grey hairs and is therefore not perfectly entirely brunette.

Since when was absolute cell-by-cell, thought-by-thought evilness requisite for one to be called "evil?" Its not and never was. Its your own personal idiosyncratic definition.

You aren't paying any attention to my arguments at all. I've given in to your side on several points. To my side you've compromised on none. Reason is not determining your stance here.

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 05:50 AM

How do you know that anger does not come after understanding? For who?
These are opinions, NOT facts. Many people do not have peace after mourning, for some, mourning does not end. Parents of murdered children mourn, and for many, or most, it does not end, there is no peace. You are presenting opinions as facts here. Bad psychobabblists may say that mourning is a process that is the same for any person, it just varies in length. Prove it! The danger is when others assume that a person in mourning will go through a set process, hmm, really?
[/QUOTE]

Look, I am not going to show you the way to basic facts that anyone should know. Google 'mourning process' and then read.

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 07:37 AM

If Hitler ordered the persecution and extermination of Jews principally from a motive of political expedience that almost makes it worse than if it was born of hatred and delusion.

According to functionalist historians (v intentionalist, which you obviously are) Hitler or whoever else did not order the extermination because it was his first intention, but because in 1942 all those locked up and void of any money (they had confiscated it all, after all) were posing a logistical problem they could not get rid of. One commander of a Polish ghetto (was it Lublin) plainly wrote in a letter that 'there would be a problem [that] winter to feed all the residents in the ghetto' and would it not be 'more humane' to kill them? In 1940 they wanted to banish them to Madagascar, a plan that had been thought about in 1885. The things which it was based on were a bit deluded though, and it did not happen down to the Battle of Britain going totally wrong.

I retain the view that the street they had entered was a dead end. At the point where they were starting to lose the war and saw that their magalomanious illusions were not going to come true, they could not do anything else but kill these people. Sad, but true.

No, he really didn't. He ducked out of this conversation when I pushed him on that topic.

That's not what I read. And I would be surprised that he was not serious, because he knows a lot.

I call freedom the right to be gay or Jewish without fearing death, the right to cast a ballot and choose who will represent you, not so the party you elect can end democracy but so they can rule and be held accountable the next time you vote. I also call it the freedom to express your political views, the freedom to not be put in uniform and sent off to kill or be killed in a pointless war. Hitler ended real freedom in Germany. A great leader could have pulled them back from economic hell without demanding his people forfeit their souls.

Firstly no-one was allowed to be gay openly until about the 1990s. Granted, you were not prosecuted, but you could not walk hand in hand with your lover or live with him openly.

Have you seen how divided the parliament was before 1933? It's a bit like Italy now. Berlusconi has stayed on and f*cked the country up because no-one else could keep them in hand. Romano Prodi won the election a few years ago with a conglommerate of the left and he lasted about one year, was it? Berlusconi reduced the threshold to get seats in parliament so the left would be divided and he would rule the roost. In Germany in the 1920s, there were far too many parties in the parliament who could not agree and therefore, there was no serious policy. Maily on the socialist side. That is what made the NSDAP catch on: they were one front, one line, one man who brought stability. People do not care whether that party 'can be held accountable', they want bread on their tables. If they have to go to a soup kitchen to get food and if they keep voting, but no-one seems to do anything to bring them that bread on their table, then they will vote for the first one who promises it. And if that one has bad intentions, then that is their own problem. The Christian democrats did nothing because they were the bourgeois elite. And I am living now in one of the two places where Hitler got no majority in 1933, as they voted Christian. I can tell you, a mess here for people without money.

A great leader could not have done this, because he would have to have been honest and an honest man honours his promises to the allies.

Then your family has a lame fatalistic view of things. A madman imposes his sick demented will upon millions of people and as a result myself and countless others suffer, most far more incredibly worse than I have, and I feel that I or anyone has the right to hate him. Really I am shaking my head right now in confounded weariness at the never-ending absurdity that I read from you.

I thank you for the insult.

Never ending absurdity? I call it absurd to hate a man whom you have had nothing to do with. That is three generations ago at least for you. I know people as I said who lived through the London Blitz who do not hate him. How irrational are you compared to them, then?

You're just calling me a liar then, okay. How can anyone feel anger without first understanding? Seriously, how is that even possible? Its not. What are you talking about?

It is possible. What am I talking about? If good is what brings you fulfilment, then evil is what does not bring you fulfilment. If good is knowledge, then evil is ignorance. And if evil is ignorance then anger, which does not bring one fulfilment, must be ignorance. And ignorance is the not knowing. So you see, it is possible. That is Socrates. You involved him in this, I did not.

You are setting your own personal definition of evil. You aren't allowed in the sense that I am not allowed to define a carrot as a wooden star-shaped structure, or a mouse as a mythical beast part lion, falcon and deer.

I am not setting my own definition, I am taking an opinion that has been expressed by others like Ellis and Rosenberg. That is not my own personal view. I could reproach you with the same, but I am not, so why are you reproaching me then?

You do by the way, make Hitler this mythical satanic figure. Am I supposed to take that serious?

We are not wholly good so we cannot be called so. Again, to repeat myself yet again, my aunt with a few grey hairs on her head cannot be called brunette because she has those grey hairs and is therefore not perfectly entirely brunette.

And why would I call her a brunette? What interest does it bring me? Does that define her character? I am sure if you had lived in the 19th century, you would have believed that, but we are not that deluded anymore.

Since when was absolute cell-by-cell, thought-by-thought evilness requisite for one to be called "evil?" Its not and never was. Its your own personal idiosyncratic definition.

Apparently it has been for some. I cannot help you are an absolutist or universalist. I for one am not because I can see the flaws of such a view. Actually Rosenberg has claimed that calling someone a absolute term like 'evil' makes us more vulnerable for propaganda like Hitler's. You want to be one of that crowd?

You aren't paying any attention to my arguments at all. I've given in to your side on several points. To my side you've compromised on none. Reason is not determining your stance here.

I am paying attention and contesting them by showing you that they are flawed. A discussion centres not around I giving into you or you giving into me.

Kingbob

03-17-2012, 09:27 AM

After Hitler's rise to power, the book gained enormous popularity. Ｂｕｔ　ａｆｔｅｒ　ｈｉｓ　ｔｕｍｂｌｅ，ｉｔ　ｇｏｔ　ｍｏｒｅ　ｃｒｉｔｉｃｉｓｍ．Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｙｏｕ　ｍａｙｂｅ　ａ　ｌｉｔｔｌｅ　ｂｉｔ　ｍａｄ　ａｆｔｅｒ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｒｅａｄｉｎｇ．．．

Drkshadow03

03-17-2012, 09:27 AM

Without reading all of the earlier posts, I think that Kiki's point was sort of a modern psychological/philosophical one that denied the existence of evil and good in favor of terms like sick and healthy. Furthermore, I think that Kiki was also taking the behaviorist stance that people's personalities can be largely situational and prone to environmental factors outside of their control. Take that concentration camp prison guard they found in Ohio or wherever last year. During war time, given authority over life and death, and he's a psychopathic monster. But then you put him on the assembly line at an auto plant for sixty years and he never harms a fly. Situational. Like that book The Reader that came out a couple of years ago. The question isn't so much did the person do wrong, but more did the person do more wrong than a similar person in the same situation would have done. You raise two children in Ruwanda or the war torn Congo and you will probably get a warlord or a soldier of some kind, but sometimes you get a saint like a Ghandi or a Nelson Mandela, and that's where biology and free will comes in. I don't think that Kiki is a Hitler apologist, although like I said I did not read every post. I think that he/she just doesn't believe in the existence of true evil, or believe that a full blown sociopath could rise through the ranks of German politicians and be as functional as he was. He loved animals, was a vegetarian, and a teetotaler who was fond of his family and could be generous to friends. That doesn't sound sociopathic, but maybe he was a master manipulator and this was all part of his cover, like Richard III walking around with his Bible. Ted Bundy was a lawyer active in politics who did volunteer work and who's friends described him as "kind, solicitous, and empathetic", which begs the question 'How well can you know anybody?' Finally, there is the question of scale. Is Hitler more evil than Ted Bundy because he killed more people, or were they equally evil and Hitler had more opportunity to act on it? Is it black and white or are there many shades of evil gray that run the gamut down to cutting someone off in traffic? Personally, I don't know what to think. If there is true evil in the world, then surely the actions of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Ghengis Khan, and Kim Jung Il qualify.

Oh, I understand Kiki's relativist point about evil, I just don't agree with it and having actually read quite a few of her posts I find her unconvincing. A person can commit horribly evil acts like genocide and no doubt still care about their dog, give money to the poor, and love their family. That doesn’t exonerate them from their crimes or responsibility. Evil is about one’s actions and the extent of those deeds, not whether the person is a total bastard in every single aspect of their life.

There are a number of sophisticated academic definitions of evil we could use. Earlier in the thread Pierre Menard complained since multiple definitions exist we can’t come to an objective understanding of evil, even though he was willing to accept a functioning definition. Of course, I’m willing to bet we could pick 10 or 20 or almost all “functioning” definitions of evil and Hitler would more than likely be considered evil by any single one of them.

By one of the definitions proposed Pierre Menard wasn’t wrong to suggest almost everyone would be considered evil. He and Alex misunderstood my point, though, when I said perhaps evil is more common than we think. My point was that, yes, everyone has committed acts that could be considered evil. But that doesn’t make all human beings essentially evil. This is where scale, remorse comes in, and the ability to change. There is a huge difference in bullying someone verbally in high school, feeling remorse and being genuinely sorry for it as you get older, and never doing that again compared to ordering the extermination of six million people and enacting it.

Another problem that happens in such discussion is the assumption that there are only two positions: absolutism or relativism. It is a perfectly reasonable position to think things like genocide are completely wrong and evil, while still allowing for some moral grey area in life concerning other things.

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 10:24 AM

Oh, I understand Kiki's relativist point about evil, I just don't agree with it and having actually read quite a few of her posts I find her unconvincing. A person can commit horribly evil acts like genocide and no doubt still care about their dog, give money to the poor, and love their family. That doesn’t exonerate them from their crimes or responsibility. Evil is about one’s actions and the extent of those deeds, not whether the person is a total bastard in every single aspect of their life.

Another problem that happens in such discussion is the assumption that there are only two positions: absolutism or relativism. It is a perfectly reasonable position to think things like genocide are completely wrong and evil, while still allowing for some moral grey area in life concerning other things.

I never wished to exonerate anyone, though, that is where Darcy goes wrong. I am maybe a relativist and think more of circumstances than any other, but I still do think it wrong what he did. I only do not see the use of calling a person 'evil' or 'good' for that matter. That is all. I fail to see why Hitler's own and his regime's acts would be less evil, if you will, if I were not to call the man himself evil. The Dalai Lama's acts do not become even better than 'good' if I call him 'good', do they?

In that I go with Rosenberg who calls it dangerous to call anyone or any group of people 'evil', because we tend to turn off our feelings of empathy towards them which makes us vulnerable for manipulation by others (as the Nazis accomplished).

That is all. I would never ever claim that a genocide was fine. I would claim the people who did claimed it was fine, but I myself do not consider it fine. Why would I do that?

Darcy88

03-17-2012, 12:19 PM

I fail to see why Hitler's own and his regime's acts would be less evil, if you will, if I were not to call the man himself evil. The Dalai Lama's acts do not become even better than 'good' if I call him 'good', do they?

This is the kind of mind-bending absurdity I keep talking about. Of course its legitimate to call the Dalai Lama "good." Of course its CORRECT to call the Dalai Lama "good." But the Dalia Lama is not "perfectly" good. Switch Dalai Lama with Hitler and good with evil and there you have your own claims.

I have to keep saying this - your requirement that a person be perfectly evil for them to be evil is your own and maybe a few others' opinion, but we're talking about a pretty basic word in evil that has a meaning across cultures which you, you great and wise Kiki, think is false.

I mean your response to my question with my aunt with grey hairs was truly pitiful Kiki, so pitiful I thought I would just let it go.

And why would I call her a brunette? What interest does it bring me? Does that define her character? I am sure if you had lived in the 19th century, you would have believed that, but we are not that deluded anymore.

Come on! Why would I call her brunette? Why call a leopard spotted? Do those spots define the character of the leopard? I call her brunette because her freaking hair is for all but a few grey strands dark brown. Do away with all the abjectives!

No, night is not dark - it has the dim light of the stars. Because, speaking technically, speaking about perfect absolute darkness - night really isn't dark, the Dalai Lama isn't good and Hitler was not evil.

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 03:50 PM

This is the kind of mind-bending absurdity I keep talking about. Of course its legitimate to call the Dalai Lama "good." Of course its CORRECT to call the Dalai Lama "good." But the Dalia Lama is not "perfectly" good. Switch Dalai Lama with Hitler and good with evil and there you have your own claims.

That is not what I said. That is what I am talking about when I say you do not read.

I said, 'The Dalai Lama's acts do not become more "good" because I call him personally "good", do they?' Answer, no, surely. So, why is it necessary for me to call Hitler 'evil'? Because his acts are no longer evil if I refuse to call him that? Answer, no, they do not become any less evil. Then what are you on about?

I have to keep saying this - your requirement that a person be perfectly evil for them to be evil is your own and maybe a few others' opinion, but we're talking about a pretty basic word in evil that has a meaning across cultures which you, you great and wise Kiki, think is false.

It's a perfectly normal requirement and I believe millions hold it, actually, at least if they are religious. You may rave and rant as much as you like, I think the world would be better by using that characteristic than yours.

No, I do not think the meaning of the word is false, I think you and others employ it to stamp a person and not to stamp an act.

Stamping people does not resolve anything. On the contrary, it creates enmity which is something you do not want (look at the Holocaust for a good example of that).

I mean your response to my question with my aunt with grey hairs was truly pitiful Kiki, so pitiful I thought I would just let it go.

Come on! Why would I call her brunette? Why call a leopard spotted? Do those spots define the character of the leopard? I call her brunette because her freaking hair is for all but a few grey strands dark brown. Do away with all the abjectives!

As you used this as a metaphor for 'evil', I asked you a serious question: 'What does it bring me to call this person a brunette?' I.e. 'What does it bring me to call Hitler evil?' I could call your aunt a brunette to distinguish her from other people she is with (provided they are all blonde, you see even there it is relative ;D), but I could also say she was wearing a red sweater which would probably be more accurate, because the chance that anyone else is wearing a red sweater is smaller than them being a brunette. Does it fulfil me more to call her a brunette? I.e. does it fulfil me more to call Hitler evil?

Again, answer the question, 'What does it bring me to call her a brunette or to call Hitler evil?'

Actually I should have phrased the question better and asked you 'Why should I call her a brunette in favour of anything else?'

[edit] And never mind about the night. What I was actually referring to was Pliny the Elder's description of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, 'not such as we have when the sky is cloudy, or when there is no moon, but that of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights put out.'

Drkshadow03

03-17-2012, 04:19 PM

No, I do not think the meaning of the word is false, I think you and others employ it to stamp a person and not to stamp an act.

Stamping people does not resolve anything. On the contrary, it creates enmity which is something you do not want (look at the Holocaust for a good example of that).

So your argument is that people will feel enmity over someone calling Adolf Hitler evil? Who exactly? Neo-Nazis?

Again, answer the question, 'What does it bring me to call her a brunette or to call Hitler evil?'

Actually I should have phrased the question better and asked you 'Why should I call her a brunette in favour of anything else?'

Is it that you do (not) know the answer to the question?

I think I addressed this point already. At the very least labeling an action or a person evil states to future generations: "What this guy did was immoral and went against every basic ethical code. Don't be like him and don't do what he did."

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-17-2012, 04:35 PM

So, let me get this straight? We shouldn't bother labeling Hitler evil because it doesn't matter what we label him, he was what he was, be it evil or no. So, why should we bother labeling anything from the past, then?

KCurtis

03-17-2012, 05:05 PM

Look, I am not going to show you the way to basic facts that anyone should know. Google 'mourning process' and then read.
[/QUOTE]

I can google anything I want, what comes up is ambiguous regarding this topic. The mourning process as defined by who? Psychobabblists? I guess your definition of basic facts is different.

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 05:25 PM

So your argument is that people will feel enmity over someone calling Adolf Hitler evil? Who exactly? Neo-Nazis?

No, not that. I said, like Rosenberg, that the danger of labelling someone, anyone, evil is that you create enmity towards those people. Look at the Holocaust: Jews are evil, they are treacherous, they are dangerous. And cue what happened.

Labelling anyone person evil is not going to do anything at all, in fact you are copying those you despise.

I think I addressed this point already. At the very least labeling an action or a person evil states to future generations: "What this guy did was immoral and went against every basic ethical code. Don't be like him and don't do what he did."

And let me guess, if we do not label this person evil, people will not find what he did despicable? Be honest with yourself. Is it absolutely necessary to brand him 'evil' to discern that what he did was wrong?

And we see that, really, branding this person evil has done a lot to prevent these things from happening... 'It shall not happen again.' Ok, that is true, no-one has yet authorised the killing of 6 million more, but genocide has definitely happened since. So, has that label 'evil' helped at all, then? Clearly not.

So, let me get this straight? We shouldn't bother labeling Hitler evil because it doesn't matter what we label him, he was what he was, be it evil or no. So, why should we bother labeling anything from the past, then?

The question is what use labelling people is, yes. Now or in history.

I can google anything I want, what comes up is ambiguous regarding this topic. The mourning process as defined by who? Psychobabblists? I guess your definition of basic facts is different.

And you are doing it again, straight copy from the much-thing. Don't be so childish.

Paulclem

03-17-2012, 05:26 PM

Regarding the question of evil, I think it is overly simplistic to label someone evil, and leave it at that. It creates the impression that these people with the potential to commit evil acts and wield terrible power are like Bwahahahahaaaaa cartoon villains.

A real person may have this evil potential about them, but they are not just this. Hitler committed evil acts, and is labelled evil. He was also brilliant in his own way, a shrewd politician, charming, cunning, a dog lover, someone who was polite to his staff, a good administrator and planner, a good recruiter of talent, someone who managed through the competition of his subordinates, a motivational speaker.

I'm not bigging him up because I like him. The real lesson of this history is that a cartoon villain would be easy to spot, and no-one would take them seriously. they would very quickly engineer their own downfall.

But how do you spot someone who has this perrible potential? They'll be talented, charming, clever, and with other impressive attributes. Nut jobs don't easily make friends. That's the real thing about this. Hitler was a real person, who loved and was loved by others at the time. If you remove the human qualities of history's monsters, then you stop looking at the potential monsters that are possibly out there now - the humans who may develop that terrible potential for power and destruction.

KCurtis

03-17-2012, 05:39 PM

And you are doing it again, straight copy from the much-thing. Don't be so childish.

People resort to name calling when they cannot think of a response that matters, oh well. :banghead:

kiki1982

03-17-2012, 05:53 PM

I can't respond to something meaningless in a meaningful way, can I.

That's the very first constructive contribution you have made in this thread. Congratulations.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-17-2012, 06:50 PM

The question is what use labelling people is, yes. Now or in history.

Oh. Well, then the answer is yes. Labeling serves a purpose. We can over-label, yes, but no labeling at all would be a mistake. The reasons seem self-evident.

Drkshadow03

03-17-2012, 07:16 PM

No, not that. I said, like Rosenberg, that the danger of labelling someone, anyone, evil is that you create enmity towards those people. Look at the Holocaust: Jews are evil, they are treacherous, they are dangerous. And cue what happened.

There is a difference between ascribing an adjective to accurately describe an individual based on their actual actions and persecuting an entire ethnic-religious group based on stereotypes.

Calling Hitler evil in no way assigns said characteristics to all Germans, hence my previous comment who exactly is going to take offense to labeling Adolf Hitler evil? Neo-Nazis?

Labelling anyone person evil is not going to do anything at all, in fact you are copying those you despise.

And let me guess, if we do not label this person evil, people will not find what he did despicable? Be honest with yourself. Is it absolutely necessary to brand him 'evil' to discern that what he did was wrong?

Since we all agree that what he did was despicable I see no reason why we can't call it or him evil. It seems to me this is merely a quibbling over the choice of adjective. We don't need to label him evil to discern what he did was wrong, but once we realize what he did was wrong why is it so problematic to label him evil? It is merely an adjective like any other, which serves a purpose. Otherwise, we would have no need for adjectives in our languages. And yes, I do think in certain cases labeling someone brunette, blonde, fat, tall, short, petite, good-hearted, despicable, evil can be useful.

Darcy88

03-17-2012, 09:15 PM

kiki1982

03-18-2012, 06:30 AM

There is a difference between ascribing an adjective to accurately describe an individual based on their actual actions and persecuting an entire ethnic-religious group based on stereotypes.

Calling Hitler evil in no way assigns said characteristics to all Germans, hence my previous comment who exactly is going to take offense to labeling Adolf Hitler evil? Neo-Nazis?

You have not understood his thesis, have you. Labelling him evil creates enmity towards him. And now you may say that is just, but as PaulClem said, you make him this cartoon figure who is not more than 'bad' or 'evil' and he becomes the very personification of it, which takes away the responsibility of all of us or all of those who out of 'free will' at that time kind of chose to do this. I put free will between speech marks because it was not really free, but all those who harrassed Jews in the 1920s and early 1930s and hence made it more acceptable, could have been anti-semitic in their own homes and did not necessarily have to bring it out into the street as well.

I say it again, in that, you become like those who you despise. It makes no difference whether this is one man or a group of people.

Since we all agree that what he did was despicable I see no reason why we can't call it or him evil. It seems to me this is merely a quibbling over the choice of adjective. We don't need to label him evil to discern what he did was wrong, but once we realize what he did was wrong why is it so problematic to label him evil? It is merely an adjective like any other, which serves a purpose. Otherwise, we would have no need for adjectives in our languages. And yes, I do think in certain cases labeling someone brunette, blonde, fat, tall, short, petite, good-hearted, despicable, evil can be useful.

'Evil' as in 'that which is the opposite of good' is too absolute to call a man. Yes, even one like Hitler.

As I consider Himmler, upon reading some of his biography, even more dangerous than Hitler, certainly more deranged, I could not call those two the same adjective. I cannot call Hitler the same adjective as your average murderer who should also be labelled 'evil'.

It is too simplistic. If you cannot see that, then there is something wrong with you.

kiki1982

03-18-2012, 06:37 AM

Drkshadow has stated what I would have stated in a clearer more rational way. Saved me the trouble.

Asking why we would bother to call someone a brunette is just a strange question to me. From evil I went to brunette and I could go from there to a thousand other adjectives which if removed from the language would erase or substantially cripple much of the poetry and novels and in general all the literature we read and love and write.

Look, if you use an analogy, I will build on it.

I asked you a question, but you did not answer it (again):

'Why should I call her a brunette?'

I will explain this question to you:

Why is it important for me to call her a brunette? Why can I not call her something else? Will it fulfil me more to call her brunette?

I.e. Why is it important for me to call Hitler evil? Why can I not call him something else? Will it fulfil me more to call Hitler evil?

Surely, you can answer that. I do not care about the brunette and we are not talking about scrapping adjectives in poetry or novels or altogether here, we are talking about my opinion and yours. Do not involve other things in the debate.

mortalterror

03-18-2012, 08:38 AM

When people build the case for Hitler's evil, a great deal of stress is placed upon his persecution and genocide of the Jews. The systematic destruction of 6 million people is pretty horrific, but not enough is made about the other 6 million Pols, homosexuals, communists, political dissidents, and handicapped that were murdered in the concentration camps with them. It's kind of weird how we divvy up, parse, and categorize his crimes into differing sections. Meanwhile, for sheer enormity of scale, the murder of 26 million Russians in the Eastern Front seems to trump everything, and from what I've read about what happened there it could be just as grim.

Drkshadow03

03-18-2012, 09:44 AM

You have not understood his thesis, have you. Labelling him evil creates enmity towards him. And now you may say that is just, but as PaulClem said, you make him this cartoon figure who is not more than 'bad' or 'evil' and he becomes the very personification of it, which takes away the responsibility of all of us or all of those who out of 'free will' at that time kind of chose to do this. I put free will between speech marks because it was not really free, but all those who harrassed Jews in the 1920s and early 1930s and hence made it more acceptable, could have been anti-semitic in their own homes and did not necessarily have to bring it out into the street as well.

I read what PaulClem wrote, but the problem is no one is using that definition of evil, except for you and apparently him. The irony here is I began to write the same point a little while ago in an earlier post, but as an attack against your position; however, I decided to remove it before my final post. This suggests to me Paul hasn't read all the positions of those involved in this conversation very carefully.

Darcy offered a definition of evil as "conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological well-being and dignity, destructiveness, motives of causing "unnecessary" pain or suffering and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence." None of these paint a cartoon villain, but instead portrays the actions of the person as utterly human.

I would be more than happy to use a simpler dictionary definition:

1. Morally wrong or bad.

2. harmful; injurious.

4. Due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character.

None of these necessarily paint some cartoon villain. All of them I think can define Hitler and his actions.

I say it again, in that, you become like those who you despise. It makes no difference whether this is one man or a group of people.

Repeating it excessively doesn't make it correct. It's just a sign of obstinacy and a desire to be tiresome.

'Evil' as in 'that which is the opposite of good' is too absolute to call a man. Yes, even one like Hitler.

You're the only one using that definition.

Drkshadow03

03-18-2012, 09:47 AM

kiki1982

03-18-2012, 02:04 PM

Darcy offered a definition of evil as "conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological well-being and dignity, destructiveness, motives of causing "unnecessary" pain or suffering and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence." None of these paint a cartoon villain, but instead portrays the actions of the person as utterly human.

That is the definition of the noun. I can agree with that, but I do not call a man the adjective. Again, I find it simplistic.

None of these necessarily paint some cartoon villain. All of them I think can define Hitler and his actions.

As Rosenberg also said, the labelling of people mainly depends on the labellers' thoughts of what people are.

I personally consider people as people, also people who are deranged and people like him. Man is never 100% one or the other, hence he cannot be labelled 'good' or 'evil' because he is not wholly that.

As PaulClem said, he was loved by others (obviously) and he was not an obnoxious man, judging from videos, whatever he did when he put his signature under that extermination plan. You cannot hold him personally accountable for all that the army did as there were other people involved in this, not least Himmler. They were inspired by Hitler, but they were also acting independently. So who is responsible?

Indeed, his actions could be called 'evil', but the man himself gave many people in Germany bread on their table and recreational activity (Kraft durch Freude). Cruises even. You may call that propaganda and disgusting, but the people themselves did not see it that way. Where they had been living in a violent society where socialists and extreme right groups literally lynched each other on the streets (hence The Night of the Long Knives, but that was the very worst and most notorious of it), they now got peace and tranquility. They did not realise what they voted for in 1933, only that this man could keep order and was going to bring change (as they all promise these days).

The Enabling Act was as much his party's doing as his own and the Christian Democrats' as the parliament achieved a 2/3 majority. They were maybe intimidated and socialists were on the run, but all those in the coalition who made up the 2/3 majority willfully signed away democracy. How someone who has been in the parliament for a considerable amount of time can vote for something like that is beyond me.

Calling Hitler evil would make him 'morally wrong or bad'; 'harmful and injurious'; 'of bad character'. I am sure all those in his direct environment did not think so.

I would maybe call him a bad man, but not evil.

You're the only one using that definition.

Not the only one using that definition. Maybe here in this thread. Do not confuse it with the rest of the world.

KCurtis

03-18-2012, 02:59 PM

originally posted by kiki
[/QUOTE]
I would maybe call him a bad man, but not evil.
[/QUOTE]

Well that's encouraging.

G L Wilson

03-18-2012, 03:00 PM

If I want to read a lunatic's work, I'll read Sade.

Darcy88

03-18-2012, 06:41 PM

Look, if you use an analogy, I will build on it.

I asked you a question, but you did not answer it (again):

'Why should I call her a brunette?'

I will explain this question to you:

Why is it important for me to call her a brunette? Why can I not call her something else? Will it fulfil me more to call her brunette?

I.e. Why is it important for me to call Hitler evil? Why can I not call him something else? Will it fulfil me more to call Hitler evil?

Surely, you can answer that. I do not care about the brunette and we are not talking about scrapping adjectives in poetry or novels or altogether here, we are talking about my opinion and yours. Do not involve other things in the debate.

What on God's earth does "fulfillment" have to do with correct description? Nothing, that's what. You apply an adjective to something in order to represent its qualities with words, not in order to "fulfill" yourself. Koo-koo.

Why can you not call him something else? You do, as do I. I call him a man because he was a man, I call him a passionate speaker because he was just that, and I call him an evil person because, and this is so painfully obvious my typewriter might explode now as I press its keys - HE WAS AN EVIL PERSON!

And you would scrap all adjectives. In scrapping evil and in scrapping brunette you open up the scrapping of all them all.

Darcy88

03-18-2012, 06:43 PM

[COLOR="Navy"]originally posted by kiki

Well that's encouraging.

No kidding. "Maybe a bad man?" :banghead:

kiki1982

03-18-2012, 06:50 PM

Darcy88

03-18-2012, 06:55 PM

My question was why it is necessary to call him evil. Obviously you despise me because I do not call people evil and most notably, do not wish to call Hitler evil. I ask you why and what your motivation is for calling a man evil.

I showed you that perceptions of evil can vary, so I showed you a person cannot be 'evil' for everyone and at any time. Yet you refuse to accept it.

Fulfilment comes in when it comes to the merits of knowledge and here of labelling. The question is that it is better to call someone evil and what I (or you) would get out of that as opposed to not calling him evil.

As there is no difference to us personally in all likelihood, your argument amounts to nothing but preference and is then essentially equal to mine.

After seeing you say you'd "maybe call Hitler a bad man" its really really hard to take what you say seriously. But you say someone is "evil" in order to accurately describe them. I get nothing personally from calling the sun bright, nor winter cold. They are simply descriptive facts. You don't like adjectives because they don't personally fulfill you. That's fine. I happen to find them USEFUL.

Darcy88

03-18-2012, 07:04 PM

Calling Hitler evil would make him 'morally wrong or bad'; 'harmful and injurious'; 'of bad character'. I am sure all those in his direct environment did not think so.

If you do not think Hitler was all of those things in spades then I don't know what to say to you. Worse than my head-splitting hangover is reading such lame, absurd, almost depressing opinions. And you are obviously hinting that he wasn't, since you would only "maybe" call him a "bad" man.

And in that larger post you said Hitler cannot be held "personally accountable for all that his army did." You ask the question "who was responsible?" That's what I'm talking about. You confirm my suspicion that you Kiki do not hold Hitler responsible. A reverse Nuremburg defence. I suppose you would argue that those beneath Hitler weren't responsible because they were only following orders.

Here it is in all its shining glory:

As PaulClem said, he was loved by others (obviously) and he was not an obnoxious man, judging from videos, whatever he did when he put his signature under that extermination plan. You cannot hold him personally accountable for all that the army did as there were other people involved in this, not least Himmler. They were inspired by Hitler, but they were also acting independently. So who is responsible?

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-18-2012, 11:14 PM

'Evil' as in 'that which is the opposite of good' is too absolute to call a man . . . It is too simplistic.
No it's not.

I.e. Why is it important for me to call Hitler evil? Why can I not call him something else? Will it fulfil me more to call Hitler evil?

So, why is it so important to you that we don't call Hitler evil? How does that fulfill you?

Not the only one using that definition. Maybe here in this thread. Do not confuse it with the rest of the world.
Possibly the most inane statement in this thread so far. As if anyone suggested, or even thought, otherwise.

Darcy88

03-18-2012, 11:30 PM

Possibly the most inane statement in this thread so far. As if anyone suggested, or even thought, otherwise.

To be fair, I recall saying it earlier somewhere. I believe her definition of evil is a very strange uncommon one. She may not be the only person to hold it, but its rare and its rare because it makes no sense.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-18-2012, 11:38 PM

It's kind of funny when you think about it. This whole time you've been using different definitions for what evil means, so of course you're going to disagree. :lol:

mona amon

03-19-2012, 04:36 AM

No, not that. I said, like Rosenberg, that the danger of labelling someone, anyone, evil is that you create enmity towards those people. Look at the Holocaust: Jews are evil, they are treacherous, they are dangerous. And cue what happened.

Labelling anyone person evil is not going to do anything at all, in fact you are copying those you despise. - KikiFor some reason this reminds me of the story of the man who killed his mother and father with an axe, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. :lol:

Judith57

03-19-2012, 05:37 AM

I have read parts of Das Kapital, and that is as boring.http://www.infoocean.info/avatar2.jpg

kiki1982

03-19-2012, 07:29 AM

After seeing you say you'd "maybe call Hitler a bad man" its really really hard to take what you say seriously. But you say someone is "evil" in order to accurately describe them. I get nothing personally from calling the sun bright, nor winter cold. They are simply descriptive facts. You don't like adjectives because they don't personally fulfill you. That's fine. I happen to find them USEFUL.

Oh, and that accurately describes the Wirtschaftswunder and Kraft durch Freude, does it? That describes the fact that he was the brains behind the Volkswagen (literally 'the people's car') concept, a car which is still doing good business these days. That accurately describes that he stopped hyper inflation in the mid twenties. It also accurately describes that he 'unlocked' Germany by all the motorways he built, does it?

I said we were not talking about adjectives in general here, keep with the discussion you started.

If you do not think Hitler was all of those things in spades then I don't know what to say to you. Worse than my head-splitting hangover is reading such lame, absurd, almost depressing opinions. And you are obviously hinting that he wasn't, since you would only "maybe" call him a "bad" man.

And in that larger post you said Hitler cannot be held "personally accountable for all that his army did." You ask the question "who was responsible?" That's what I'm talking about. You confirm my suspicion that you Kiki do not hold Hitler responsible. A reverse Nuremburg defence. I suppose you would argue that those beneath Hitler weren't responsible because they were only following orders.

I despair at your reading skills sometimes...

It has nothing to do with 'not being responsible' ultimately. It has to do with that he did not, cannot, have personally planned it all. For the simple reason that there is not enough time in the day to plan such futile details (as they must have been for them).

Look at that last disaster in Afghanistan where that soldier shot 16 innocent civilians because he went potty (rightly so, the military should not have sent him there so many times and in such a short space of time). Can you hold Mr Obama personally accountable for that? I hope you are going to say 'no', but I fear the simplistic answer will be 'yes', though.

Granted they can court martial if they find it necessary, however, was he, if he had disapproved of the Einsatzgruppen going to put them all in prison? Really?

I repeat it again, for the umpteenth time, he is responsible like a minister is responsible for what happens in his ministery or like a president is responsible for what his civilians in their official functions do in cases of violence. he is not personally accountable.

So, why is it so important to you that we don't call Hitler evil? How does that fulfill you?

That does not fulfil me, no. That was not my purpose when I came to this discussion. I was attacked (as that often happens when you talk about people like this) and I retalliated.

The only thing I have been trying to do is show that calling people names (whoever they are) is useless. It does not resolve anything as JuniperWoolf said.

To be fair, I recall saying it earlier somewhere. I believe her definition of evil is a very strange uncommon one. She may not be the only person to hold it, but its rare and its rare because it makes no sense.

Uncommon? Approximately 2.2 billion people should hold this definition and I should hope that there are many more (depending on what they believe in).

It's kind of funny when you think about it. This whole time you've been using different definitions for what evil means, so of course you're going to disagree. :lol:

:lol:

For some reason this reminds me of the story of the man who killed his mother and father with an axe, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

Tell me where you read that. I said no such thing.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-19-2012, 09:20 AM

I despair at your reading skills sometimes...

Hey! Look at that! You accused Darcy of having bad reading skills again! :smilielol5: It never gets old.

kiki1982

03-19-2012, 09:26 AM

Look, he continuously misreads what I say. If you choose to do so too, by all means do so, but it does not make it more right.

How the army executes orders can significantly differ from the order in itself. Only look at the differences in what Hitler's own orders were for the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union and what the final direct orders were. Over-zealous anti-semitism that is. The fact that he did not punish them for it or in the wake of the atrocities in Poland made them only answerable to an independant Himmler (so not answerable to himself even!), makes him responsible, but not personally accountable.

Think about it. It doesn't exhonerate, but it emphasises the personal responsibility of the commanders on the ground who actually did it. They were not (all) 'following orders', but basically satisfied their own despicable feelings of hatred and encouraged them in the civilian population.

Making Hitler personally accountable for everything that happened is not only a simplistic intentionalist view (criticised many times over by now) and perfectly impossible to maintain, it is exhonerating everyone else who contributed and thought out the plans in the first place. Essentially, such a defence was also tried at Nuremberg, but had no effect.

Mutatis-Mutandis

03-19-2012, 10:13 AM

I still don't see why someone can't agree with all that and still see the man as an evil person.

kiki1982

03-19-2012, 10:29 AM

Because the Third Reich was not only the killing and he as a man was not only the orderer/authoriser of it, but also the man of Volkswagen and the man of Nazi holiday camps. We may call it creepy, but the people back then did not think so, they thought it was wonderful.

It is not because his acts were evil that the man himself is evil.

To take a very very stark analogy: if the muslims believe everything comes from their God (whom I am not allowed to name, I think), is He 'evil'? He definitely sends evil unto the human race in the shape of disease and natural disasters (or so they believe). Is He, then, evil? No, surely.

And in case Darcy comes back, no I am not, I repeat, not comparing Hitler with God.

Darcy88

03-19-2012, 11:31 AM

Oh, and that accurately describes the Wirtschaftswunder and Kraft durch Freude, does it? That describes the fact that he was the brains behind the Volkswagen (literally 'the people's car') concept, a car which is still doing good business these days. That accurately describes that he stopped hyper inflation in the mid twenties. It also accurately describes that he 'unlocked' Germany by all the motorways he built, does it?

I said we were not talking about adjectives in general here, keep with the discussion you started.

We are talking about adjective in general. Evil is no different than any adjective. Someone who is grumpy 80 percent of the time is a grumpy person despite 20 percent of the time being affable and of good cheer. A brunette is not defined, not in her entirety represented, by the fact that she is a brunette - but she is a brunette. Brunette does not convey that she is a mother or a collector of stamps, but it does represent a certain aspect of her physical being accurately and well. Hitler was not 100 percent evil. But he did enough evil that in the final summation we can say with confidence - Hitler was evil.

I despair at your reading skills sometimes...

It has nothing to do with 'not being responsible' ultimately. It has to do with that he did not, cannot, have personally planned it all. For the simple reason that there is not enough time in the day to plan such futile details (as they must have been for them).

Look at that last disaster in Afghanistan where that soldier shot 16 innocent civilians because he went potty (rightly so, the military should not have sent him there so many times and in such a short space of time). Can you hold Mr Obama personally accountable for that? I hope you are going to say 'no', but I fear the simplistic answer will be 'yes', though.

Granted they can court martial if they find it necessary, however, was he, if he had disapproved of the Einsatzgruppen going to put them all in prison? Really?

I repeat it again, for the umpteenth time, he is responsible like a minister is responsible for what happens in his ministery or like a president is responsible for what his civilians in their official functions do in cases of violence. he is not personally accountable.

So you say its not about being "ultimately responsible," but then you say he is not "personally accountable." That Kiki is double-think. You are holding two contrary things as true simultaneously inside your mind. Its quite fascinating really.

But I am afraid that comparing the 16 year old soldier in Afghanistan to the young German guard at Auschwitz who does the actual dirty business of killing Jews is quite possibly, and I mean this genuinely, not as an insult - is quite possibly the stupidest, most agonizingly and fantastically asinine analogy that I myself have in all my 23 years on this planet ever heard. It just really might be.

The Holocaust was a government POLICY. It was ORDERED. It was ORCHESTRATED FROM THE TOP. It was not a host of scattered acts of independently arisen atrocities. It was a government policy. Hitler and the rest of the Nazis were not personally accountable for the holocaust in the same way Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper is not personally accountable for the billions of dollars that since the recession have gone into building roads and other public works projects. Is he totally responsible? No, not at all. But is he responsible and does his responsibility make him evil - YES, YES, YES, YES A MILLION YESES HE WAS, IS.

The only thing I have been trying to do is show that calling people names (whoever they are) is useless. It does not resolve anything as JuniperWoolf said.

Aww, I call poor little Adolf names. I'm sorry Kiki. I know I'm such a big mean bully. Kiki never again call anyone smart nor stupid, nor fat, nor skinny, nor anything, because you are making the same error calling anyone any adjective in any circumstance that I am apparently making calling Hitler evil here.

Really though, the way you write about Hitler, even though I know you think the holocaust was horrible and wrong, just the way you alleviate his awfulness and evil and attribute everything to other causes makes me think that as a German in 1945 you might have voted for him had his name been miraculously on the ballot in an election.

kiki1982

03-19-2012, 01:36 PM

We are talking about adjective in general. Evil is no different than any adjective. Someone who is grumpy 80 percent of the time is a grumpy person despite 20 percent of the time being affable and of good cheer. A brunette is not defined, not in her entirety represented, by the fact that she is a brunette - but she is a brunette. Brunette does not convey that she is a mother or a collector of stamps, but it does represent a certain aspect of her physical being accurately and well. Hitler was not 100 percent evil. But he did enough evil that in the final summation we can say with confidence - Hitler was evil.

We were not talking of trivial adjectives, the discussion was about the word 'evil'. As such, I regard it as an adjective that is quite distinct from the rest like 'brunette'. If the analogy doesn't work, there is something wrong with it.

Again, is the God Muslims believe in evil because he sends them evil (or so they believe)? The answer is clearly no. Yet you would call Him evil. That does not work, that is all there is to it.

Is the Christian God evil because ultimately Satan is a fallen angel, hence made by Him? No, surely.

Well then. No man is evil, but he has the potential to do evil things. That is a marked difference.

So you say its not about being "ultimately responsible," but then you say he is not "personally accountable." That Kiki is double-think. You are holding two contrary things as true simultaneously inside your mind. Its quite fascinating really.

But I am afraid that comparing the 16 year old soldier in Afghanistan to the young German guard at Auschwitz who does the actual dirty business of killing Jews is quite possibly, and I mean this genuinely, not as an insult - is quite possibly the stupidest, most agonizingly and fantastically asinine analogy that I myself have in all my 23 years on this planet ever heard. It just really might be.

The Holocaust was a government POLICY. It was ORDERED. It was ORCHESTRATED FROM THE TOP. It was not a host of scattered acts of independently arisen atrocities. It was a government policy. Hitler and the rest of the Nazis were not personally accountable for the holocaust in the same way Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper is not personally accountable for the billions of dollars that since the recession have gone into building roads and other public works projects. Is he totally responsible? No, not at all. But is he responsible and does his responsibility make him evil - YES, YES, YES, YES A MILLION YESES HE WAS, IS.

It is not the same. One can be ultimately responsible, but not personally the perpetrator.

The soldier in question is 38. Do you watch the news at all, actually? Again: is Obama personally accountable for those 16 poor Afghan people? No, surely. The soldier is, and his commander should also learn from this as he should be aware of how his soldiers are feeling (he shouldn't be punished, though, because he has not 'done' anything).

The Nazi ideology came from the top, the actual killing orders came from further down the ladder. You can rave and rant all you like, documents show that the orders given by Hitler for the Soviet Union Einsatzgruppen were very distinct from the direct orders that were given to them and which explicitly authorised killing Jewish men, women and children (probably I would say because of the combination of Jewish Bolshevism and the words 'potential enimy'). At that point they were not even answerable to Hitler anymore, so he was frankly not interested. Holding him personally accountable for all of it is clearly simplistic and that intentionalist view has been criticised.

Functionalists (I turn out to be one) have argued that there was in fact no plan directly. The Armenian quote was dismissed from the Nurmberg trials as disputed. Heydrich changed the explicit task of these troops from 'liquidating any party that was deemed hostile to Germany' (ad thus putting up and securing an occupational administration) into 'killing anyone who those commanders deemed hostile.' You can see where the problem lies. Where in Holland and Belgium Einsatzgruppen also operated but did not commit any crimes directly like in Poland for example, in the east they committed gruesome things. If you let a bunch of fired up SS indoctrinated ideologists whom you have blown up with 'Poles are inferior' loose on the population with carte blanche then what do you expect?
Einsatzgruppe D committed far worse crimes than any other in the Baltics. Just because they were free to do as they pleased.
The Wehrmacht was outraged because they saw it, not as wrong, but as bad for discipline (which it is - how to stop it if you wish?).

After the military had tried to court martial these people, Hitler diverted any answerability from the Wehrmacht to Himmler to have done with it. And then of course, you can guess it, the real problems started. They were just wild animals let loose.

The question can be asked who actually gave the order to do those things? Good question.

You can argue that Hitler voluntarily let it happen by not punishing these people (and so indirectly approved it), but you cannot argue that he explicitly ordered it.

Aww, I call poor little Adolf names. I'm sorry Kiki. I know I'm such a big mean bully. Kiki never again call anyone smart nor stupid, nor fat, nor skinny, nor anything, because you are making the same error calling anyone any adjective in any circumstance that I am apparently making calling Hitler evil here.

No, not a bully. A simplistic mind who thinks someone like Hitler had more minutes and seconds in the day than any other person and could plan these details.

Really though, the way you write about Hitler, even though I know you think the holocaust was horrible and wrong, just the way you alleviate his awfulness and evil and attribute everything to other causes makes me think that as a German in 1945 you might have voted for him had his name been miraculously on the ballot in an election.

If you read that in what I have written...