Stupid People and Evil

[kokopelle]

Two events have come together to cause me to ponder. The first was a Dutch originating NPR radio show on the placement of a plaque for Dutch survivors of German WWII concentration camp. I can't seem to find a web link for it at this time. One of the survivors was asked what she felt towards the German people. Her response (paraphrasing) was "how could they be so stupid to follow their leaders?" Sometimes I feel this way in these modern times. I look at rational, intelligent human beings, and wonder why the heck they follow whom they do, and do the things they do. I was at a point of tears listening to the NPR show.

I was near weeping in retrospection of the evil of man. I know... in other blogs I decry the existence of something called Evil. I am revamping the word here, lowering it to a lower case state, to reflect human-on-human evil. In his book, "People of the Lie", Dr. Peck's definition of evil is the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of another. Peck further defines evil as “that force residing either inside or outside of human beings that seeks to kill life and liveliness".

I believe that the recognition of evil springs from it's contrasting behavior with other human expressions. There are times when life is ended in order for transformations to occur. The outcome is the differentiation between the evil destruction of life and the transformative destruction of life. Outcome springs from intention. Thus, there is room to say that there are human intentions that are inherently evil, by Peck's definition. The outcome of the Holocaust cannot be seen as transformative. The intentions of the Holocaust are not defendable as good. IMO, there is a natural conclusion that the Holocaust was an evil thing.

So, I've been left in a place that had me doubting the sanity of the world (again). I could not come up with a good "why" for the stupidity of people. Again, this stupidity is not a thing of the past. There are people in my own society that would burn my shamanic loving butt at the stake if they could get away with it. It would be for my own good... to save my soul. I tell myself that people don't get these ideas on their own. They have help from a leadership or group. Where is the sanity here?

A LJ friend had a posting today pointing at the article about Philip Zimbardo, known for his famous Stanford Prison Experiment in the early 70s. Philip states,

"You could put virtually anybody in it and you're going to get this kind of evil behavior," he continued. "The Pentagon and the military say that the Abu Ghraib scandal is the result of a few bad apples in an otherwise good barrel. That's the dispositional analysis. The social psychologist in me, and the consensus among many of my colleagues in experimental social psychology, says that's the wrong analysis. It's not the bad apples, it's the bad barrels that corrupt good people. Understanding the abuses at this Iraqi prison starts with an analysis of both the situational and systematic forces operating on those soldiers working the night shift in that 'little shop of horrors.'"

This puts a perspective on bad leaders, stupid people, and so on. Something to think about as I continue to form my world vision.

Comments

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Outcome springs from intention? And yet the reason that Hitler's Germany was supported by the people was because they believed in his intentions, to transform Germany and the world by ridding it of the sick and the foreign. That was their intent and yet outcome was radically different.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

The two seem radically different, but it did happen. Any opinions on why?

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Because outcomes are about actions and intentions are about keeping yourself happy with your actions as much as they are about dictating your actions.

A lot of people know what they have to do because they know what they want to do. A lot of people can't handle what they feel they have to do so they tell themselves that they want something better.

As far as Hitler's Germany... There was a lot that was said that made sense, but it was tragically misaligned. You have to be willing to suffer in order to evolve, but you can't export suffering. The Germans thought they could make the Jews and the leftists and the gypsies and the Slavs and all other undesirables suffer. They thought that they didn't need to change. But at the same time, they offered up their sons and daughters... They had already suffered during the Depression. It was egotism and the opposite of egotism. I really can't explain what went wrong in a mere journal entry. I recommend The Politics of Cultural Despair by Fritz Stern. It was a fifty year lead-up to fascism.

Maybe it's a natural style of government, that we talk about intentions but necessarily the common people can't tell one policy from another. They don't know economics, or international affairs, or law enforcement, or prison management, or battle. But they get to discuss the goals all the same. That's the fundamental absurdity at the heart of all government, whether or not it calls itself democracy. Germany elected Hitler. He said he'd do certain things; he did no such thing. But he made the people think he would. Of course, this is debated--some argue that Germany knew exactly what it was getting, that it was seeking destruction.

Intention that motivates action is about logic. But you know that sometimes methodical movement toward one's goal is not popular. Sometimes we act as we feel we must, even if it makes no sense. That's a good thing and that's a bad thing, too. But there is no necessary intersection between intent and act.

Nazi Germany was at once a paroxysm of violent irrationality and a methodical exercise in rationalized, mechanized destruction. It is a terrible koan, something to meditate on rather than unwind.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

Astute words. Thank you for your analysis. In your opinion, are there any similarities in the fascism of the past and the motivations behind the mixture of recent dogmatic American patriotism?

The emphasis I am looking at is the "if you are against us, you are with our enemies" mindset. In my world, this patriotic mindset goes hand-in-hand with the religious fervor of "if you are not with our God, you are really really really bad". To me, this is not a good combination, edging us that much closer to a kind of fascism.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, that's the thing. Fascism isn't just extremism, or polarization, or hatred. Fascism's a much bigger complex.

Use of high technology while denigrating the science that led to such technology.
Extreme nostalgia.
A vicious, paradoxical cycle of feelings--one moment all-powerful and superior, the next impotent and surrounded by enemies.
A desire, above all, for simplicity.
A distrust of modernity even as one exhibits all the traits of modern man.
Reverence of both self-sacrifice and economic selfishness.
Insincere cult of the soldier.
Distrust of integration, view of ethnic pluralism as damaging to purity.
Decrease in realism abroad, a view of nations as essentially divided into betters and lessers.
An apocalyptic worldview, the notion that an ultimate battle is coming between light and darkness.

Those are some similarities that I see. But there's a lot more to fascism. And when it comes down to it, there's the question of what is "essential" fascism. I don't know. What traits are necessary to constitute fascism and which ones are merely optional conditions? I don't know.

Fascism is the radicalization of conservatism, the injection of left-wing attitudes to what is a movement that marches with the blessing of the old right. Corporations funded Hitler, aristocrats saw him as crass but useful, and soldiers trusted him because he'd been there. And yet he subverted the old ways. He wasn't a monarchist, he didn't really believe in economic freedom, and he was a terrible general if a genius in tactics.

Umberto Eco wrote a good list of fascism's attributes. Read it over--I mostly agree with his observations. Particularly where he says that fascism is the politicization of individual suffering and angst. That's what worries me most. People today want to make a worldly issue of their own identity crises. That's deadly.

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

[greensh.livejournal.com]

"Particularly where he says that fascism is the politicization of individual suffering and angst."

A very powerful thought, especially considering that suffering is part of the human condition. It puts the fascism in an equal-opportunity light, with everyone tasked to be on guard for the attributes.

[iskender.livejournal.com]

True. But government can help you with poverty, social alienation, even sickness. It may not do so well, but it can.

Politics should never be a father, or a mother. Politics should never provide basic happiness. It is a material thing. It should help you have a life in which you can be happy, but never think that it can make you happy.

That's what worries me (among other things). We don't want leaders who do anything right. We want leaders who make us feel good about ourselves. We live in a world where we don't want others to be fed but we want leaders to give us a sense of identity and belonging. That's worship.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

I checked out the website you gave. From it I compiled a list of fascist attributes.

1) cult of tradition.
2) rejection of modernism.
3) action for action's sake.
4) disagreement is treason.
5) fear of difference.
6) appeal to a frustrated middle class,
7) obsession with a plot
8) humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
9) pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.
10) life is permanent warfare.
11) contempt for the weak.
12) everybody is educated to become a hero
13) the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
14) selective populism
15) Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

From where I stand, it is really scary how many of these are mirrored in recent/current American political thought. That's just how I feel. In response to those who would wish to save me from myself, I am reminded of the lyrics from the Billy Joel song...

You may be right
I may be crazy
But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for
It's too late to fight
It's too late to change me
You may be wrong for all I know
But you may be right

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Cool. Just don't forget that the fascists didn't want to save anyone else. They wanted to be saved. That's the difference between fascism and a nanny-state. A nanny-stater says that we must fix others. A fascist says "Fix me, purify me," and anyone else who's flawed or weak is either a slave or sent to the death camps.