One of them is The Holocaust; no, not that exactly. What
looms in thought is what makes mankind so capable of evil? The Holocaust is the
penultimate symbol of evil. In our historical life time. It is relatively
recent; 1930’s and 1940’s. The Second World War. Our parents and grandparents
fought the war. The Greatest Generation saved the world from evil incarnate.
That’s what I’m talking about. I know time marches on and
the youngest among us don’t know what we are talking about unless they have
reached that part in world history class. But history records it and won’t let
us forget it. The Holocaust. The Evil.
There are those who deny The Holocaust occurred. They are
deniers of truth and fact. It was real. Man can be that cruel. That unfeeling.
This is what looms in my mind. I cannot shake it. It is always there.
I’m a person of hope. Is hope the absence of evil? Not quite.
But they are polar opposites I think. If evil is the point, what is the purpose
of life? No, the opposite of evil is the purpose of life. We live to give lie
to evil. And that comes mainly from our power to hope.
Or love. Caring about an other. Stepping outside one’s self
to experience the other. And learn to free self of inhibition. To drink in the
other. To love it; to embrace what is not in the self. Otherness. Caring.
Loving. Hoping.
Not evil.
The Holocaust reminds us of the abyss. The deepest, darkest
moment of life. Of terror. Of meaninglessness. It was real. It means we are
still capable of repeating history. Will we allow this? Could we possibly let
another holocaust happen?
One wants to believe it not possible. But you and I know
that it is possible. What does it take? Carelessness? Selfishness? Not paying
attention? Not standing up to basic questions of honesty and truth? Of
faithfulness and loyalty to others and ideals?
I worry that the unthinkable can happen. Not the death and
destruction. No, the unfairness; the un-rightness. The nothingness of it. The
dead will not feel the pain or horror but in their last instant. But the rest
of us will live the on-going terror that we let it happen.
Taliban. Mujahedin. Muslim extremists. Syria Egypt Belarus Somalia Chad
This is the business of NATO. This is the abyss we are
attempting to avoid. How does collaboration approach this goal? Is it
effective? Are there leaders to push it to success? Or are we nations too
inward to know, to reach out and save others from the abyss? So that we all may
avoid the same.
And yet there are protestors of G8 countries and their
periodic meetings; and of NATO conferences where differences are ironed out and
futures mapped out. Where strengths are focused on helping people of lesser
means, those who will become the cause
célèbre of the next holocaust? We
must help them. We must build world peace. We must share the load with others.
That’s how we all learn to get along. That is the building of peace, one idea
at a time, one brick at a time, one dollar at a time. So lives will be saved.
So futures will be saved.
For all of our sakes.
The Holocaust happened. It taught us. Have we learned?
May 21, 2012
The thing that we miss I think is this: The Holocaust did not happen because the people who made it happen were mean or evil in their intent. (Okay, some where, they found a place there, but that was not the original intent of the 'founders' of the concept.) The Holocaust happened because one person became convinced that their idea of what was right and good was better, more divinely ordained, than all others.
ReplyDeleteSee: The Holocaust was not done to KILL PEOPLE or be MEAN to people but to IMPROVE THE RACE as a whole for the future good of humanity. It is a hard concept to grasp, that the people who did what to us seems horrible, did it in the name, to them, of good, of progress, of improvement.
This is the same for most great horrors. Those poor men who blew up our Twin Towers did not do it to be mean or cause terror. They were not motivated by being able to cause death. They did it to send a message to turn people away from what they thought was dooming them to eternal damnation and to turn them to what they trusted ultimately would save more than it would harm.
Look at every horror deeply enough and honestly enough and you will find someone who thinks they have arrived a some 'greater truth' or 'higher calling' and they do tragic things to people here and now, in the short term, with the intent of bringing humanity closer in the long term to their 'truth'.
We think this is about meanness and evil, but it is about arrogance and self-rightiousness and deciding that one knows what is 'good for' other people. If that arrogant and self-rightious 'do-gooder' thinks they have the power of a god, all all knowing all powerful being behind them, they will be even more willing to dedicate all their resources and skills to their task.
Until we acknowledge this ultimate truth, that horrible enterprises are entered into with 'good' 'honorable', even 'glorious', intentions, we will always be prone to another one. But to admit this means that we have to admit that those that we call evil are not that much different from each of us. To what lengths would we go if we believed we knew the ultimate truth that could 'save' humanity? It is terrifying to admit that those people are motivated by the same things we are, doing 'good', but ultimately, that is the case. I don't know how we can use that to prevent future horrors, but I just feel that until we admit to that basic concept, we will be unsuccessful in preventing horrors.
NATO differs from all of that little in one respect: It is willing to send in bombers and guns to kill people in order to ultimately save them. How is NATO to know if their 'higher good' really is? Is there some way to ever just totally get beyond the need to kill in order to save? Does NATO do enough to press nations to talk, to negotiate, to compromise, so that we can end the need to kill to save?
I don't have any answers, I just feel like getting past the idea that there is 'good and evil' to accepting that what we thing of as 'evil' was done for 'good' in the thinking of others. I feel like getting past that psychological hurdle, accepting it as part of human psychology, meaning we are ALL EACH OF US capable of the greated horror if only we possessed a belief of some greater good strongly enough, only then can we begin to figure out how to end and prevent 'holocausts'.
To be clear, I am not justifying those travesties. I am not saying the Holocaust was justified because someone thought it would ultimately make humanity better. It was NOT. It WAS horrible. But to claim it was done by evil fore evil means we can't ever solve the problem and prevent more. I am merely saying that TO THE PERPS, these crimes or usually done with what seems to them to be GOOD intentions. The woman who drowned her babies in Naperville did not do it to harm them but to send them to a better place bacause she thought she was a failure as a mother. She meant to be 'kind' to them. She was wrong wrong wrong, but as long as we brand her 'evil' and dismiss her as that, we doom ourselves to not be able to prevent it from happening again.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult leap of thinking to try to comprehend the motivations of evil deeds as 'good', to figure out what their ultimate 'good' goals was, but until we can figure that out, we are looking at the problems all wrong.
To just harm a few people out of truly evil intent on your own is possible. But in order to motivate a large number, to herald a big army of followers, you must be able to couch your goals in terms of 'do gooding', to motivate them with some ultimate 'embetterment'. So the bigger the travesty, the more people were involved in doing it, the more likely that somehow it was motivated by some sort of long term goal of making humanity better.
Thanks for your comments. Appreciated. I'm using evil in the broadest of terms. The downer for me is that evil or highly negative actions, regardless of their intent, are possible. Doing something about such actions is the responsibility of us all. Trying to avoid repeats of the action of course.
DeleteI think we need to be reminded that horrible things can happen on our watch and we need to speak up to counter them whenever possible.