I don't know, but it's going around in circles now. I still think Darcy's doing a great job though!Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I don't know, but it's going around in circles now. I still think Darcy's doing a great job though!
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.
Last edited by cafolini; 03-15-2012 at 06:41 PM.
This is from page 21:
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.
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.
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 03-15-2012 at 08:57 PM.
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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.
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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.
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 -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 you go on, like after a binge on falsehood and absurdity your mind continues ever to vomit this false and absurd stuff without end.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.
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.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.
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.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.
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.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.
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.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.
Last edited by Darcy88; 03-15-2012 at 10:30 PM.
This thread =
No.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. - MortalterrorShe'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.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
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.This thread =
Youre quite the wordsmith, Darcy.
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.
.....
Last edited by Darcy88; 03-16-2012 at 12:57 AM. Reason: I don't know how I did it but I made a post in here that I meant to post in another thread. Hahaha. I need to sleep. Badly.
Thank you Mortalterror for rewrding my view.
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.No.
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.
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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?
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.
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.
If that is falsehood and absurdity, challenge it, with valid arguments. I am quite confident that won't happen.
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.
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.
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...
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.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
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