This is NOT true. Evil is quite capable of doing good for it's own reward.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
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This is NOT true. Evil is quite capable of doing good for it's own reward.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
No, just no. Are we really going argue whether Mengele, the Angel of Death, was evil? From whence this incorrigible resistance on your part to indict any man, no matter how depraved and lacking of humanity, as one who is evil? I don't understand it. Eichmann and Mengele were evil, regardless of whether they gave their victims sweets, dropped change into the poor box, or gave their dogs a nice pet. You admit their responsiblity and yet refuse to state the plain and simple truth that they were evil men. How is the Norweigan gunman, Anders Breivick, any worse, any more evil than they? He had them to look up to, their immoral example to emulate. Absolve men of their evil and you are one step closer to embracing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Yes, he left Germany shattered and then ignobly jumped ship, not even man enough to face well deserved justice. A true coward indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
That is not profound philosophy, that is straight balderdash. By your impossible standard no man can be deemed good either, since there is always some minor moral slip up that even the best of us fall prey to. You've set your own definition of evil, a definition that neither I nor most people adhere to, and then come here spouting it as a general truth. Its not. An evil man is a man who commits evil acts, not one whose every fibre is bloated with some metaphysical evil presence.Quote:
They are only the exceptions if man is not condoned to be violent.
Of course evil exists, but it is not embodied in people. That is profoundly philosophical but man is too imperfect to be perfectly evil, therefore there are no evil people, but only people who are somehow disposed to follow evil. Yet they are always capables of being kind.
I think it was a bad thing to execute them all. We could have learned so much of them, yet we killed them and have only their statements from Nuremberg to tell us what they thought. It would have been much better to put them in a room together and eavesdrop. That could have shed a light on what was really going on. But no, they had to die.
To be honest I don't know what I might have done. I suppose it would have depended on my husband. I think at least I would not have accepted that he do any of this nonsense, but I don't think I would have accepted that he openly protest. Then it would have been emigration. Far enough away.
I would probably not have been the one to hide Jews. However, if I had been in England, I would probably have done something, if I met the right people, as I would have been safe. For me there should always be enough reward to warrant the effort. [B]The threat of being put in prison (as far as I would have known back then) or shot would not have warranted protesting or hiding Jews. Martyrdom in such a way, I find silly. Not because it is not honourable, but because you have done nothing much to improve things either way.
And the sentiment of yours I quoted here in bold is the same sentiment that allowed the atrocities to occur. Not enough people were willing to risk it all, to spurn consequence and reward, and just do the moral thing. Its a passive, neutral way of thinking. You have the evil wolves and the good shepherds vying for influence over the great human flock. Both are relatively few in number, the bulk of humanity being passive, neutral sheep.
Thanks. The topic at hand lends itself to strong sentimental expression.Quote:
Originally Posted by KCurtis
Yeah, seperating ourselves from destructive behaviour and denying that it's a part of us, assterting that it is some other called "evil" and insisting that the potential isn't there within us as well to commit gross acts would be a mistake. They mentioned that in Maus. Some German reporter told Art that German youths were really starting to get sick of being punished for the sins of their great-grandparents, and are they supposed to feel guilty forever? Art replied that maybe this burden isn't just on German kids - maybe it's on all people, maybe all of us have to feel guilty, forever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
Eichmann and Mengele's actions were very different. Eichmann organised, Mengele did himself. You cannot deny that organising is different and easier than doing it yourself. Secondly, Mengele clearly had a history in experimentation. If the great chief of the university of Berlin of all people, also did sterilisation experiments on black women, was obsessed with race and focussed on mulatto chlldren, taught Mengele plus a whole lot of others, I contend that a twisted mind, which Mengele must have been seeing the cruel stuff he did, finds approval of its twisted ideas in such an environment. And he will certainly have found it in the rest of German society.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
An Anders Breivik has not found approval or confirmation in his society, that is why it caused such a big shock. He has only found it in a minority of people who assemble on the internet. There is a great difference between the two.
Again, I have never said they were not responsible, I have only highlighted the fact that these ideas did not come from themselves, but were deeply embedded in what they learned and what they saw. That is profoundly different from an Anders Breivick. Turn it how you will, Anders Breivik was not living in a society that generally condoned shunning, beating and thwarting Jews or any other minorities. He may project anti-Semitic type of views onto Muslims as Blumenthal says, but he is not a neo-Nazi. And he despises Hitler as will be apparent from his own manifesto:
And he goes on for a while like this.Quote:
Whenever someone asks if I am a national socialist I am deeply offended. If there is one historical figure and past Germanic leader I hate it is Adolf Hitler. If I could travel in a time-machine to Berlin in 1933, I would be the first person to go – with the purpose of killing him. Why? No person has ever committed a more horrible crime against his tribe than Hitler. Because of him, the Germanic tribes are dying and MAY be completely wiped out unless we manage to win within 20–70 years. Thanks to his insane campaign and the subsequent genocide of the 6 million Jews, multiculturalism, the anti-European hate ideology was created. Multiculturalism would have never been implemented in Europe if it hadn’t been for NSDAPs reckless and unforgivable actions. Eastern Europe would have remained free, the US and Russia would never have risen up as super-powers. The balance of power would have remained in Europe. And it would be a beautiful Europe with beautiful cultural conservative policies – very similar to the ones you now find in Japan and South Korea. Hitler almost destroyed everything with his reckless and unforgivable actions and he will forever be known as a traitor to the Nordic-Germanic tribes.
Not balderdash, my opinion. Not better or worse than yours. Man is not perfect.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Of course very few people adhere to that definition and that is the problem. We committed revenge on those Nazis, but we learned nothing. It is happening under our noses again and again and we fail to act. As Juniperwoolf said below you post, the fact that we (or you) call them evil, means that they are essentially different from you yourself and so that it can never happen again. Yet it is part of man and it happens again and again. Yet we do not learn.
Again, it seems to be difficult to explain to you that this was a gradual process. Maybe it is best understood by Darcy's words on a much more trivial subject: 'I was in the middle of it before I realised.' The Germans were in 1933 supporting Hitler and beating Jews on the street, cutting off their curls and such before they knew it. It was too late to do anything. Martyrdom is all well and good, but it would not have done anythig against this vast perpetuum mobile which rolled on until it rolled straight into the abbyss. At the point where they decided that they wanted pleasure, they turned away from any interest in the long term effects of that day's pleasure and they voted for him. The Weimar Republik failed to act when it was supposed to and somehow Hitler was tried for his coup in the wrong court. He should have been tried in Dresden where there was very little support, yet he was tried in Munich which only increased his popularity. Somehow, everyone seemed decided to subject Germany and Europe to this and everything failed which could have stemmed his advance. People got used to the kind of militaristic behaviour we now see as a threat in Hungary and they got used to yellow JUDENLADEN signs on the windows of shops. We now see this as a straight sign that something is wrong. They got used to people wearing yellow stars on their coats. They did not even flinch. The great power of this was that is was so gradual that it went unnoticed. If you see it now you wonder how people never objected to it, never got genuinely concerned about it, but this was over at least 10 years if not more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
The sad thing is that people did not want to act because there was no seeming danger. Not even Jews themselves. They did not flee the country en masse becaue they thought it could not go on forever.
By the time everyone realised what was actually happening there was nothing to be done beause the year 1933 had ended and dictatorship had been firmly established. And still the west did not realise what the extent of the damage was and only made caricatures of Hitler...
What could you have done apart from uselessly sacrificing your life for nothing much apart from the grief of your own family? Besides, people hardly knew what was happening, so that is irrelevant anyway.
Again, the Americans branded the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto who were resisting evacuation liars because they did not believe their reports of mass extermination in Poland adn branded them as exaggerated. They only believed it when they saw the piles of bodies, goods etc. So why would we from the outside have done anything to 'save' them if they were not being murdered anyway? I suppose, though, that people did not dare to ask themselves where all those Jews were going. A few must have done 2+2, but maybe did not dare to imagine 4 or even consider that it was possible to actually do 4... Tricky question, isn't it.
People are products of their genes and their environment. There's no such thing as a completely unconditioned, untaught, unguided person. Breivik's extreme ideas were there before him. They did not spring out of his own mind. And it says that when he was in school he protected kids who were being bullied, a far more admirable thing than Onkel Mengle giving sweets to the kids before vivisecting them. I think you're calling him evil (without extending the same courtesy to people like Mengele) because the shooting has a more personal impact on you, perhaps because it happened only a few months back, while the atrocities of the Holocaust have become stale with time and repitition.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. Evil is not the man who has been told for his whole career that Jews are inferior, gypsies the scum of the earth, and that it is ok to do experiments on people.
Looks like we are only disagreeing about names here. What you call 'slightly twisted and conditioned' I'm calling 'evil'.Quote:
You give one slightly twisted and conditioned personality power over others and he will do this of his own accord. That is what we are meant to learn from this, not call him evil. - Kiki
No, not because he made a more emotional impact on me because it was only a few months back, because Norway and the rest of Scandinavia are profoundly peaceful countries which have not seen murders in this kind of way. Had it been in the USA, I and the rest of the world would not have flinched. But, fine, don't call him evil then, although he had less cause to feel like this then Mengele had reason to believe he could use these people as guinea pigs in the literal sense of the word. Mengele had no cause to give these children sweets as they were his victims with or without them. He was not a white van man who had to win their confidence first to then abduct them.Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
You admit yourself that people are influenced by what they see then what is the chance that Mengele got his views somewhere else? Breivik lived in a society which does not even feel the need to lock its criminals up. Sure, Breivik's views came from somewhere else as most people's do, however, you cannot deny that nor his family nor his society decided his was the way to go. Although these problems flowing under the surface is what is being explored in crime fiction as Wallander and Stieg Larsson, amongst others.
I guess my 60 year old aunt who has a few grey hairs can no longer be correctly called a brunette since she has those few grey hairs and is therefore not "perfectly" brunette. I guess then that the heroic man who daily commits courageous selfless deeds such as risking his life to save a school house full of burning children or diving into icy rivers to retrieve people who've driven off the road into the water, I guess he is not a "good" man, even if his hobbies include running soup kitchens and traveling to disaster zones to dispense medical aid and food supplies, since he is not "perfectly good," he once cheated on his wife and he cuts people off while driving.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
No one fits that definition. You are denying that anyone is evil. I could find excuses for Breivick as valid as those you've made for Eichmann. Its a preposterous way of viewing things you have when it comes to recognizing the reality of evil.Quote:
Of course very few people adhere to that definition and that is the problem.
Not really. I said in a prior post that "evil is an essential part of humanity." I admit that I have evil in myself, the capacity to do evil. But I keep that potential for evil caged up and so it stays nothing more than potential.Quote:
As Juniperwoolf said below you post, the fact that we (or you) call them evil, means that they are essentially different from you yourself and so that it can never happen again. Yet it is part of man and it happens again and again. Yet we do not learn.
Some good points in there. But I would have opposed Hitler not only because of the holocaust but also because he was a tyrant, a freedom-subverting tyrant of the most wretched order.Quote:
Again, it seems to be difficult to explain to you that this was a gradual process. Maybe it is best understood by Darcy's words on a much more trivial subject: 'I was in the middle of it before I realised.' The Germans were in 1933 supporting Hitler and beating Jews on the street, cutting off their curls and such before they knew it. It was too late to do anything. Martyrdom is all well and good, but it would not have done anythig against this vast perpetuum mobile which rolled on until it rolled straight into the abbyss. At the point where they decided that they wanted pleasure, they turned away from any interest in the long term effects of that day's pleasure and they voted for him. The Weimar Republik failed to act when it was supposed to and somehow Hitler was tried for his coup in the wrong court. He should have been tried in Dresden where there was very little support, yet he was tried in Munich which only increased his popularity. Somehow, everyone seemed decided to subject Germany and Europe to this and everything failed which could have stemmed his advance. People got used to the kind of militaristic behaviour we now see as a threat in Hungary and they got used to yellow JUDENLADEN signs on the windows of shops. We now see this as a straight sign that something is wrong. They got used to people wearing yellow stars on their coats. They did not even flinch. The great power of this was that is was so gradual that it went unnoticed. If you see it now you wonder how people never objected to it, never got genuinely concerned about it, but this was over at least 10 years if not more.
The sad thing is that people did not want to act because there was no seeming danger. Not even Jews themselves. They did not flee the country en masse becaue they thought it could not go on forever.
By the time everyone realised what was actually happening there was nothing to be done beause the year 1933 had ended and dictatorship had been firmly established. And still the west did not realise what the extent of the damage was and only made caricatures of Hitler...
Sic semper tyrannis.
You really don't understand evil. It doesn't matter what is its cause, all that matters is that it is done. You think that by tracing the line of cause and effect back to evil's origination you somehow eliminate it. You don't. An evil person is a person who does evil things, plain and simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Look all kiki is trying to say is, yes it is very easy to point out how different Hitler was from you, and that is what everyone has done in human history. For human history is full of its Hitlers. But let us try instead to realize how simillar Hitler was to me and you. If we focus there we are trying to understand, instead of just looking at Hitler as the opressor, why dont we try to see Hitler the victim, Hitler the scared and weak and crying. Hitler who loved his mother like you or I, Hitler who walked the same walk of shame and lonliness that all german soldiers walked after the armistice. I just think focusing on how diffetent Hitler was from myself is choosing to ingore the truth. By looking at how simillar he was to me, I open my eyes and I see that not only do I have the same potential for evil within me, but that if it becomes unleashed I shall always be convinced I am unleashing my potential for goodness not evil.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Exactly. Identify and try to understand what it would have been like to be a victim, that's a big part of it and it's much easier to stomach too. But it's only half the story, half of the human condition; also try to understand the opressors. To deny that is to deny your own nature, which makes you blind to it. How are you going to control it if you can't even see it?
That is not all that Kiki is saying. Kiki argues that Hitler and Eichmann were not evil. Kiki argues that it is wrong to even condemn such men. These are incorrect and preposterous points of view. Yes, it is good to see in the evil of others the reflection of the potential for evil within ourselves. But that is as far as our understanding ought to go. Any further and you wind up going where Kiki has gone, absolving men of their crimes, refusing to condemn them, attributing their actions to prior causes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
You and Juniper hit on a good point, but the fact remains that there is a small segment of humanity which rapes and murders and commits atrocities. This segment is evil, such people act evilly where we would halt any such brutal impulse before acting on it. Or I guess we could say "hey, we're all capable of evil, Hitler wasn't so different from us, lets understand him, lets not condemn." Hogwash. Put his head on a pike I say. Defend the good with the same fanatical resolve with which evil men do their evil deeds.
This thread strongly needs a functioning definition of "evil." Not examples, something solid. Otherwise it'll be difficult to understand each other.
Evil is wrongdoing on a severe scale. Bursting in on your wife getting ploughed by some dude and killing him with your bare hands in a fit of uncontrolled rage is very wrong but its not evil. Picking up a random hitchhiker and cutting off their head is evil. I mark the pedophile who rapes children an evil person, but I don't think I'd say the same of one who has those same urges but exercises self-control and abstains from acting on them. Its a somewhat ambiguous term, like justice or happiness or goodness, but you know it when you see it.
Hahaha. You search the word "evil" on wikipedia and a picture of Hitler pops up, no joke.
Here is what it says in the introduction:
Quote:
Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of The Good. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its root motives and causes; however, evil is commonly associated with 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.[2] The philosophical question of whether morality is absolute or relative leads to questions about the nature of evil, with views falling into one of four opposed camps: moral absolutism, amoralism, moral relativism, and moral universalism.
I wholeheartedly concur with the part in bold.
all this thread needs to end this stupid discussion is understanding that as far as Hitler, the Holocaust, what happened in Russia, Babi Yar etc. the adjectives to describe fail to exist. and, Hitler was a great orator. omg. look at speech content on u tube. only staged progaganda events hitting the same nationalist hot buttons ad nauseum. the sum is that Hitler and his band of pathological thugs merely observed the most consistent lesson in history that started way back when on the fertile crescent that whoever has the latest army prevails. Goethe described this quite well and almost anticipated as Goethe's work does. this is what happened in Germany under Hitler and Russia under Stalin:
"that ancient truth, we will recite it. Give way to force
for might is right. And who would boldly offer strife than risk
your house, estate, and life?"