Are we all capable of being slaveowners or nazis?
for some time now, this is a question I have pondered alot.
I was not unfamiliar with the slave history of the U.S. and knew it was a big reason for the Civil War, I became more aware of the current racial issues in America courtesy of The Daily Show and the George Floyd riots (along with binging Watchmen) turbo-charged my desire to know more about it.
and I read Night by Elie Wiesel when I was in high school and recently read Maus, neither of which are shy to fully express the horrors the Jews went through in the Holocaust.
And the recent discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous children from Residential school in Canada have sent me down that rabbit-hole of learning exactly what the catholic church was up to in these parts.
But I think where I get stuck is I believe that everyone is capable of empathy for a fellow human being. besides the psychopaths and sociopaths, I think we all have an innate capability to care when we see someone crying or in a bad place.
And yet, those atrocities suggest that we can be condition to turn off our ability for empathy to quite an extreme degree? Is that something that can happen to all of us?
Not sure if this thread will be taken down as I don't know the potential for this to start a good discussion, just wasn't sure where else to post it.
There’s a lot of layers to this.
First:
Depends on how direct. Not every German in Nazi German likely identified as a Nazi. Not every Nazi worked a gas chamber. Living day to day in Nazi Germany after your economy went from trash fire to pretty good again was easy enough in comparison to having the ability to day after day kill unarmed people in droves.
People, by and large, want to be left the fuck alone to live their lives. And they want their loved ones to live too. Kids talk hot shit about giving their lives for the cause. Adults understand what they’d do to protect their children/family/friends. Chinas communist revolution or Pol Pots reign were “enlightening “ examples when it comes to both self preservation and the saving of loved ones but this is everywhere. And that’s before you get to the hopelessness. Are you going to risk the lives of you and everyone you know just for nothing to change?
Further, yes we can be bent and desensitized. “Othering” your victims is a very well documented method of making people mostly ok with harming or killing other people. “They have it coming” is a great way to justify ignoring all that empathy you’ve got and harming other people because well they aren’t really people are they, right? Or they believe things that mean they have it coming?
There’s so so so much more to this, but ultimately people only have so much room to care and only so much they’re willing to risk. The quote goes
“the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, but doing nothing is what most people would love to do.
I'm going to add a very personal example here. My great-great grandfather was convicted of high treason, along with a few other men he associated with, for printing materials opposing Hitler. He was imprisoned then moved about concentration camps. He died in Dachau in 1941. From what I can tell, while he was imprisoned, my great-grandmother wrote him to ask if she could join the Hitlerjugend.
After he died and her mother died, she went to live with an aunt and uncle who also became political prisoners. She then left Germany and began working as a telephone operator in one of the German helferinnen (female auxiliary services) groups. Researchers say this choice was usually made because of the opportunities it provided, not explicitly with helping the war effort or political aims in mind. Based on my personal time with her and what I know of her youth and early adulthood, she was probably trying to not stand out and protect herself.
I hope to make different decisions, but I choose not to think less of her for what she did in an extremely bitter time in her life. I think her choices are a reflection of the fact that many people will make decisions that they believe will give them the best chance of survival or improving their lot. Rarely will people make self-sacrificing decisions based on moral principles when it comes down to brass tacks.
Regarding those that simply want to live without being concerned with the sociopolitical environment around them, I found the book Pachinko pretty remarkable for the way it presented this, particularly from Sunja's perspective.
About slaveowners... in 1860, when there were more than 4 million (holy shit that's fucked) slaves in America, 10% of families owned 84% of slaves. Which is of course because the majority of slaves were on plantations and there were often dozens to one slaveowner family. Additionally, at the time 75% of US families did not own slaves at all.
So it's not exactly a situation where slaveownership was ever the norm. A lot of people tolerated its existence to some degree, but they didn't own slaves themselves. That was mostly a privilege of the elite. If any of us were alive at the time, there's a really good chance we wouldn't have been slaveowners regardless of our morality.
The same is true of Nazi germany. A relatively small percentage of the population participated (willingly) in the worst of the atrocities.
Also true of what the colonists did to the native Americans. Same goes for the horrors of European colonization all over the world. All the wars too. Climate change probably belongs on the list as well.
Of course the rest of the population in each instance tolerated the existence of the atrocities in that they didn't devote their lives to ending them, but that's not the same as being a slaveowner or an actual nazi.
So I'd say no, statistically we don't have any reason to believe that any of us could be (extremely bad thing here). But we are all indirectly complicit in extremely bad things. We're doing it now with gaza. We did it during the oil motivated wars in the middle east. We haven't stopped multinational corporations from pillaging the earth. If you benefit from living in a nation that uses its power to fuck with people you're complicit to some degree in the fuckery.
I don't judge anyone for that. It's all most people can do to take care of their people and themselves, and cheers to them for that.
Note that I'm not saying we can't/shouldn't do more.
Others have touched on selfishness and fear, balanced out by @post_below bringing up that it wasn't everyone.
One more: self righteousness.
The residential schools genocides were not motivated by selfish stealing of land or wealth (already done), or fear of own survival or fear of an out group gaining power. The indigenous people had thoroughly been robbed and marginalized already by that point. They were motivated by "making society better" by "killing the Indian in the child". The indigenous cultures didn't value the same things as the new and now dominant cultures, so they have to be "brought up to speed" or else magically disappear by the newer generation losing connection with the old.
I have even seen this sentiment expressed "half jokingly" on liberal and "enlightened" crowds like Tildes. Take the kids away; make parents get a license first; outlaw [backwards culture]; celebrate destruction of [backwards culture] or at least cheer its decline.
This sentiment is a corruption of a good thing, of embracing progress and cheering for good. But it is very often blurred with the false colloary, of cheering for the demise and loss of something we don't value. And, always, watch out for "good" being just a local term for your team vs theirs.
But here's the magical thing about culture: culture is what a group of people deeply value and find meaning and identity from. You can't destroy even KKK or Gravy Seals or MAGA med beds culture without breaking the hearts of the people who embrace those values.
So what do we do. Surely some culture must be eradicated? How can the potentially redeemable human vessel be cleansed of the tumour of their worthless+harmful culture?
If the residential schools had been done gently, would that have been okay?
Parents who paid very handsomely to send their beloved children to places like elan.school wanted to improve them, to get I don't know, drugs or ADHD or laziness or defiance or whatever out of the child. It wasn't a gentle school, but I would posit that even had they been, the premise of "let's put gentle pressure on someone to change them" is another way of saying "let's hurt them".
So with all that said, no we're not all going to be Nazis, but we often have the tendancy to support policies that make it painful for others, "for their own good".
Jesus parable about leaving the weeds to grow with the wheat has always struck me as being a lesson against purging groups of people based on any specific criteria.
I'm no longer taking things on faith, but I appreciate wisdom where I find it.
Wisdom.
The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares
Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
(Matthew 13:24-30)
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I don't know how many times and in how many ways Jesus could have repeated Himself more: don't judge, He's the judge. If one is a theist: you're not God. If one is an atheist: you're still not God.
After very recently listening to a Bible Project podcast episode that nuances “do not judge,” I feel I’d be remiss to point out that there is a call to point out sin within the church. In the context of this larger discussion, I do feel a call and command to make certain types of communal judgements exclusively among the church, but not extending outside.
Matthew 18:15-20 (NIV)
15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
Oh! Yes, thank you -- certain responsibilities are on "borrowed power" and needed for life here temporarily. Being parents for example, come with a heavy and potentially soul damning responsibility unto those they are responsible for under their care. So too the religious and cultural leaders - which is why Jesus had the harshest words for that crowd. Exposing wrongdoing is a necessary evil ....
I am in the middle of reading @moonchild 's link about John Woolman. Perhaps judging ourselves too harshly, and not judging ourselves at all are both ditches we can fall off the horse into from either side.
We are flawed and we will make many mistakes. Perhaps the safest way is what @DefinitelyNotAFae suggested we keep in mind: people are kind. Whether we end up hurting others despite our actions or inactions, in knowledge or in ignorance, through word or deed, we can try to balance things out with an overabundance of love.
A parent may be wrong some times but hopefully the child will remember the wider pattern of love.
First, fully agree with you comment about people not being god.
Couple of things I find interesting in the context of your two-levels-up comment (summarized as "be careful about erasing someone else's cultural identity just because it is different from yours")
Matthew 13:36-42 (David Bentley Hart)
Then, sending the crowds away, he went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain the parable of the field's darnel-weeds to us." And in reply he said, "The one sowing the good seed is the Son of Man; And the field is the cosmos; and the good seed-these are the sons of the Kingdom; and the darnel-weeds are the sons of the wicked one, And the enemy who sowed them is the Slanderer; and the harvest is the consummation of the age, and the reapers are angels. Therefore, just as the darnel-weeds are gathered and consumed by fire, so it will be at the consummation of the age; The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather up out of his Kingdom all the snares that cause stumbling, as well as the workers of lawlessness, And will throw them into the furnace of fire; there will be weeping and grinding of teeth there. Then the just will shine out like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Let him who has ears hear.
Not gathering the weeds early is not done for the benefit of the weeds, but for the protection of the wheat. Sort of a "better ten weeds grow up then one wheat plant be destroyed."
I think it's easy to think of the in-group as the wheat, and the out-group as the weeds. This interpretation would be common in my experience. Even if someone notices the "don't judge" part of it, the focus would be on "watching out for those God damned (literally) weeds".
This is what has pushed me away from the Christian practice as seen in Evangelical white churches in the United States.The way that Jesus talked about the Kingdom was that it was all encompassing. His teachings were all about how you relate to other people care and compassion. So focusing on whether someone else is wheat or weed is a red herring. But when people get their hands on those ideas, they are distorted into something that is about exercising power over others.
To bring things back around to the main topic, this is what's dangerous about religion when it's used in this way. These distorted ideas can co-opt otherwise good people, and leaning back on God as the authority for doing something co-opts the feeling of faith. Because it's hard to reject that feeling, it becomes hard to reject those ideas, even if there's something about them that doesn't seem right.
I realized that most people here are not looking to the Bible as the final source of guidance, but for me, with my background, it's hard to get away from probing the text for meaning.
Bang on. The lesson here (I think) is that plants shouldn't even be trying to pull up other plants. I don't know that modern people reading this will come away with the insight that yes, I am a (literal) angel and I unilaterally declare it to be harvest time, and I am going to seperate the wheat from the tares. But in fact it is often what happens. It shouldn't be that way and you're right to reject it wherever you see it.
If all religions disappeared on earth today we would still have tribalism and self righteousness the next day. Not to say you're wrong to point out where lots of complacent evil seem to gather, but y'know, just ... that's my tribe. Sorry.
This is true, and I think the tribalism can be blamed even when coupled with religion. But the point I was trying to make is that religion supercharges tribalism. When the reason for taking a harmful position is "because God said so" or "because the Bible says so", it borrows that greater authority and deflects responsibility from the leadership.
To be clear though, I am speaking out of my own experiences and viewpoint, not trying to make a universal statement.
I’m not sure implying that immigrants or any other out group are children of satan is all that much better of a message, from a modern humanist angle.
edit: to add more, the point of "tares" in the parable is that tares look exactly like wheat in the early stages of growth. The parable implies that the devil will seed non-believers, who appear like true believers in the beginning.
At most, you can say that the parable tells mortals to not try to weed out the nonbelievers too early, not because all humans are equal, or that all beliefs are justifiable, or that the wheat grows better because of diversity, but because you may accidentally root out true believers, and God is super cool and omnipotent so he'll deal with it. All the tares end up burning in hell.
(And the metaphor breaks down a bit, since Jesus's interpretation implies that the reapers are angels, which also implies the farmer is god, who should be able to tell the tares from the wheat anyway since he's omnipotent)
First of all, I am sorry if I have detracted from the thread and said things that may upset you. Thank you for taking the time and I truly believe you and I are on the same page more than we differ. :) *friendship rays across the ether ~~~~~
The parable is about literal spawn of the devil, not human beings, however fallen, broken, wounded and mired in mistakes we might be. Hell was made for them, not poorly behaved humans. Sin is a wound and an injury, not a precondition.
I know some sects preach otherwise and yeah, I don't think it's true and I certainly don't like their cosmology. That whole "sons of Cain" thing was used to justify slavery and genocides and all sorts of awful business. Don't even get me started on the whole "some humans were created destined for hell" thing .....lies lies lies! And what murders have been committed under that banner! So I understand if you read it and thought, yup this is exactly what they say when they need a rallying cry against [outgroup]....yeah, that whole attitude is self righteousness.
And I think we can both agree that anybody who wants to see any other human being plucked out, cast into or surely belong in hell, is at the very least misguided , and has some explaining to do on this plane and any other.
I'm not particularly upset, but I just don't think any pieces of religious text is particularly useful as a modern guide for ethical behavior. Or, to be more broad, any text written by humans thousands of years ago.
If you interpret the "tares" in The Parable of Wheat and Tares as literal devils, to be honest it seems a bit pointless, since I don't believe devils exist (what are historical examples of devils? Hitler? Stalin?), which kinda removes the need to try and differentiate them.
If you expand to mean "sinners", "evil people", "people who wish to do harm unto good people", then 1) it violates modern humanist principles of human equivalence, that someone can be fundamentally "evil" isn't really something we believe in today; 2) it also contradicts modern society. We do judge people we believe are evil, it's the criminal justice system, and although it is certainly flawed in every incarnation I don't think a lot of people believe we'd be better off without it.
To go on a broader meta point, to pluck out "don't discriminate" from the parable is having to omit a whole lot of it (especially since Jesus, ostensibly, analyzes and tells us the "whole" meaning in scripture), and twist the remaining bits. You can get good messages out, but religion is fundamentally conservative - it'll always be chained by the fundamental principle of religious belief.
As an example, here's a parable I made up in 5 minutes which I think much more closely aligns with modern humanist beliefs about diversity and immigration:
A farmer woke up one morning to see his wheat fields covered with cloves. His servants came to him, and asked if they should engage in plucking the cloves from the lands, as his neighbor had done. The farmer refused, saying thusly
"Why should we pluck them? Cloves restore and protect the land. Let them grow, and the wheat shall be more plentiful for it"
As the years passed, the farmer's land remained bountiful and fertile, while his neighbors land grew barren and desolate, forcing them to leave.
Hitler and Stalin (Mao, Pol Pot et al) are definitely also human and I hope they don't go to hell or suffer in eternity either. Jesus was a refugee as a baby and his people had been hated minorities living in "someone else land" until .... recently.....which.... Nevermind.
I like your parable about immigration a lot. But, you know, I do disagree that texts written thousands of years ago aren't useful as a guide for ethical behavior. The bit about making sure your harvest has leftovers for people to glean, the part about sold land returning to the original owners after a period of some years, not lending out money for interests, an eye only for an eye and no further ...... I'm looking around the landscape of land hoarders and robber barons capitalists and punitive penal codes, and there are ancient improvements we havent tried yet.
Of course. Nazis, or slaveowners, or whatever group you want to name, were humans just as much as any of us. Most of us are capable of empathy, but are fundamentally able to prioritize self interests above all else in times of duress. In the current time, as a resident of a developed nation, it's rare to see this materialize, but it's there. We are social creatures capable of caring for others insofar as it enables our continued survival, and that it has, but the more people are pushed beyond that the more the former breaks down.
The word “we” is doing a lot of work here. I guess it’s true in some sense that if I grew up in ancient Rome then I’d probably have thought slavery was entirely normal. But I’d also be an entirely different person, so I’m not sure what to make of that. Through some unknown combination of genetics and environment, human beings vary quite a lot, and sometimes people are scary. Hitler was human.
Another way to interpret your question might be to ask how much people can change starting with who they are today. I don’t think people are so flexible that they could become someone else entirely.
you may find https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/on-john-woolman to be of interest
Thank you for sharing this. What a fascinating man!
The hand of God (or "Humanity" or "Progress" etc) works with or without us. Sometimes we get "present time" validation, but most of the time we don't. John struggled and ran a race far far ahead of his time. I wish that he had a few more companions who ran shoulder to shoulder with him. Even one or two companions would have made the struggle less unbearable. I slightly disagree that he died without seeing the fruits of his labour though: he clearly believed in resurrection of the dead and the life thereafter. Got front row seats. But even if not, the privilege of participating, in synergy with A Greater thing, in works that will make sense in the near future, is very exciting and available to us every day.
And on this platform we do have companions. Every time someone mentions they're vegan for environmental reasons I am encouraged to at least try one more meal. When someone mentions they're doing a charity thing, or doing work for free software, or working against enshittification, I'm encouraged to try a little bit more. This is how community nourishes us and sustains us.
What a timely read, thank you for sharing. Maybe for Thanksgiving it's important for me to remember I don't need that second house or third property, I don't need a bigger barn because I ran out of room to store my hoarded treasures, I don't need to buy more trinkets online, and there are better ways to spend money and time.
To a large degree, yeah, we are very capable of dehumanizing "out" groups. This manifests itself in various degrees and can be taken to extreme levels under extreme circumstances. I hesitate to say "all of us" because even in Nazi Germany there were small pockets of resistance. And for a lot of Germans it was more or less something they knew was happening at some level, but seeing Jewish neighbors (who at that point have been vilified for some time) being taken away is somewhat different from actually seeing what is done to them. Knowing on an intellectual level is different from experiencing it.
So a portion of humanity is certainly capable of all sorts of atrocities, a larger portion of humanity is capable of facilitating it or turning a blind eye as long as they are not directly involved.
Im seeing a lot of good ideas, but id argue cruelty on a societal level can be better explaind by the greed of a few breeding desperation in the masses.
I get the sense that a lot of people look at the current trajectory of geopolitics, in the face of wholesale atrocities, and we want to know whats the domino keeping the mob off our doorstep.
But all the propaganda, debased language and whitewashed history doesn't exactly help the discussion. Because humanity on the whole is a messy timeline of desperate actions. Good and bad are decided after the fact. Hell, Thanksgiving is probably the prime example of exactly why thinking about the topic is so challenging. Would you blame any native American for calling other races on their ancestral land today, colonizers? Where would that crime sit on the spectrum next to Nazi and slave-owner? Because multiple cultures across a continent were all but eradicated and the survivors subjected to generations of indignity to this day. And we enjoy a privlaged life for it.
I don't want to come across as edgy or crass. Nazis, slavers and colonizers are all their own flavor of evil. But on the lines of what post_below pointed out, for every captain that was loving the idea wiping out the natives in the name of the empire, there were tens of thousands of people from a place where every square foot and gold coin was already spoken for by royals and loards. That virgin land was a once in a history opportunity and those pagan savages weren't using all of it anyway.
For every plantation owner or rail baron importing slaves by the thousands, there were a hundred southern families unsure if they'd make the winter. Those extra hands would go a long way, especially if they weren't a drain.
Every nazi general, looting Jews that were industrially murdered, was probably leading towns of Germans who fathers were killed or horrifically traumatized in a pointless war while their family was likely in hopeless debt and the world had left them to rot.
And this is just fairly recent, post (ish) enlightenment, history. Empathetic, humanist morality is a fairly modern invention. One that only really holds water in a post-scarcity society.
Slight tangent but, as I tried to get at this in the coffee thread yesterday; we also do not apply these moral standards at anything that risks our abundance. We talk a big game about fair trade and sweatshops, child workers and slave mines. But if its already happening out of sight, we might as well enjoy it. We say it should be the responsibility of the corporations that facilitate it, but its rarely a matter of policy or legislation, unless tied to some other agenda. For example, the biggest argument against a living minimum wage or UBI that protects everyone for the long term, is that it might raise my prices now.
Tangent aside, i think the reason why tension is ramping up and civility is slipping, is that we are right back in an age of scarcity. The Trump landslide is the prime example. They're doing a job of sanitizing it, but his platforms, associations and rhetoric are hateful and regressive. But most people dont care because they dont have a hope of land ownership, a relationship, a family, healthcare and even groceries are looking shaky.
I don't think most of these people are racist, sexist, homophobic nazis. I think they saw the vice president talk about how the economy was fixed. Fixed meant busting unions and letting tech companies lay off by the thousands and not halting ai development and mishandling major conflicts and flaking on student loans and homes drying up and prices still being high; all while companies show record profits. Maybe the administration had a reason for all of that. But you cant expect people to make rational, long term decisions when they dont think there is a long term.
Demogogues prey on popular resentments and fears. When resentments are high, an authoritarian demogogue is very dangerous. I agree with you that a more balanced economy with widespread prosperity significantly reduces that risk.
EDIT added one sentence at the end as this was more negative than I had intended.
One doesn't need to be evil to be complicit. One can care and still fail to act. It's an illusion to think we're better than the non-Nazis Germans when we have allowed and continue to allow all that is happening in the world.
Empathy fatigue: The world is too big, there's too much bad news. We become desensitized to it, becoming numb.
Bias: Our brains aren't meant to deal with the scope of information we receive and across time and distace. We are biased to care more about and act to help the person we can see drowning than the millions around the world we can't see dying, etc.
The feeling of powerlessness: While I'll continue to vote for non-conservative parties, doing so doesn't change much. The poor are still struggling, people continue to abuse their power, the world isn't safe for so many people, etc. For the past 2 years I've worked for a non-profit that helps communities...but trying to make my 37.5 hours a week count...doesn't seem to make a difference.
Fear / personal survival: How many people in Nazi Germany didn't speak up/take to the streets/etc out of fear for their lives?
Mental health: I'm not alone in this -- My mental health has gotten worse post-pandemic. I'm struggling to do just the basic things and failing. How the heck and I'm also going to change the world?
I think of myself as being very far left but I'm worn down. Which issue do I fight? When and for what should I take to the streets and protest? How do I do this with ADHD/Depression/Anxiety/OCD that I'm struggling to manage? We're frogs and the water is boiling but at what point do we act? What should we do? Is it too late?
One doesn't need to be evil to be complicit. One can care and still fail to act. We are all complicit in creating / maintaining the status quo of this world. Let's all work to make the world better.
You pick one thing and work on it. There's no "best" answer. Animal shelters need volunteers and donations alongside those starving in war zones. Don't let the feeling of needing to fix everything while the world falls apart keep you from doing anything.
If we're judged on whether we were perfect, we'll all fail that standard. You do the best you can each day. And if one day that's "exist" then exist is all that's asked of you.
None of us have to save the world alone. Just put good back into the world as you are able.
Thanks for your comment - I agree and have volunteered for many different roles. While I may not have moved the needle on a more global sense, I know I have affected individual people's lives (and animals' lives - I used to volunteer to teach people how to train their dogs). I'm just feeling sad as my beloved job is ending tomorrow and let that impact my writing. Thanks for sharing and caring!
I understand, and by no means was I suggesting you hadn't done the work. 💜 One day at a time
I'd like to piggie back and say you've already picked your thing and you're currently working on it - by contributing to a non-profit and in so many other ways. I think sometimes just existing and surviving so that others can hear from you and be affected by your existence and your kindness is our best way to protest. Don't let them get all of us, y'know. For every one German citizen who stayed home instead of being at a parade, their crowd is one person smaller. I think it's important to hang on just so that we up the chances of that one person drowning has someone nearby to pull them up.
I really like your analogy. Thanks for sharing.
Also -- tomorrow is my last day at the org. It's been a good 2-year run. After I take time to rest and renew, I'll play my favourite ongoing game of "What do I want to do when I grow up?" I've been looking at https://80000hours.org/start-here/ and while I'm way past their age demographic, it's been interesting to see what fields and types of jobs they've determined could have the most impact.
Congratulations on your two years, and to many more!! I'm way way way past but, y'know, still early in the day to do good :) thank you for your encouragement and impact
Yes. Otherwise it wouldn't be such a danger that societies have to watch out for. On a tangential note, if legit OCD can be overcome with proper training/guidance/counseling, why not empathy? It might take more effort, but I doubt it is akin to reaching the speed of light.
Well, in our attempts to teach empathy to psychopaths, it actually backfires and teaches them to manipulate better.
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson touches on this. Apparently psychopaths were given LSD and it only made them more dangerous because they learned to fake empathy much better.
Similarly there are plenty of people whose OCD cannot be "overcome.". Managed is often a better term for those folks, and even then, not always well.
That's terrifying.
No, because people have opposed cruelty and evil for as long as both have existed. It is not inevitable, but it requires active, ongoing conscious opposition And as much as "people are selfish", people are also kind. We are both things and can't be absolved of either (any) side of our nature.
If we cannot believe that we can be better, then there's no point.
I believe the most important reason is that we want to belong, and if we are in danger, either through fear (whether the threat is real or not) or at risk of losing personal things like freedom, your house, your job or any other thing that we've been told to risk losing, we want to cling together and are willing to listen to a possible solution being presented by the loudest voices (whether that is actually going to help or not).
The status quo is what it is for a reason and a lot of people are inflexible to see it any other way. To be able to deal with change is one of the biggest boons we have as humans but we sadly delve too little into that power and instead settle for tribalism. This is why we are able to just walk straight into fascism and by doing so and paradoxically, change anyway but making life for a ton of people a lot worse.
Yes.
IMHO people are pack animals. It is a rare person who will go against what almost everyone in their society does.
I don't feel qualified to speak towards slaveowners or nazi's but I think what I might be qualified to speak on is applicable. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
The Venn diagram of television programming that I like and television programming that my wife likes overlaps heavily on true crime, and not much else. We like to spend time together watching tv, so we end up watching A LOT more true crime than either of us would ever watch individually.
The shows we tend to enjoy the most delve into the life and mind of the perpetrator. I honestly cannot think of a single show where it isn't at least heavily implied that the perpetrator experienced significant traumatic abuse early in life. Some relatively rare shows include significant information about the person or persons who abused the perpetrator and invariably they too experienced significant mental trauma, often as not early in life.
All of which emboldens me to posit that trauma begets trauma begets trauma...
I've seen many discussions around the economic atrocities post WW1 directly leading to WW2.
I've seen many discussions around the utter brutality of trench and chemical warfare in WW1.
I've not seen many discussions about how, and how badly the men who were 'lucky' enough to survive WW1 came home and passed their trauma(s) on to their wives, to their children and to other members of their communities.
All of which is to say, with rare exceptions, I believe we're all born innocent blank canvasses. Given sufficient trauma (the earlier the better) and opportunity, we are all capable of pretty much anything.
"Hurt people hurt people" is what I have observed as well. The great wars had a lot of folks come back haunted, yeah. Sometimes there's a kind of harm that's multigenerational or culturally experienced even if not directly from ones' early childhood or parents: a kind of moral injury or environmental reasons. Folks also had lead exposure, infections that hurt your brain, malnutrition etc. Also maybe some horrific family secret created a hushed poison, or a community collectively responsible for great human suffering, or casual cruelty towards man and beasts. Just being in an environment where you can observe brutality and starvation easily inside and outside of one's home probably does something bad to folks.
On the plus side, there are lots of people who have been exposed to trauma who turn out kinder and more empathetic than most. The wars inspired a lot of prose and poetry about the horrors, which inspired a great many pacifists. There are many who work hard to and successfully "break the cycle" of generational trauma. I honestly do feel that as a whole we've collectively become much better people than 100 years ago.
100%, we are ultimately products of our environment, if you're raised to believe something and everyone around you that you meet also believes that thing and you're never given proper exposure to opposing ideas, then you're much less likely to budge from that status quo. I imagine it's also pretty hard to take stock of all the people in your life and confront that they may be supportive of or contributors to these kinds of atrocious activities or worldviews.
I may get some flak for this, but if you want a perfect modern example of this that you yourself likely are or at least once were complicit in, just look at animal agriculture.
You may find Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt and/or a detailed treatment of Stanley Milgram's work worth reading.
Both are discussions of the ways that normal people can be led to do horrible things. Neither is unimpeachable, of course, but they're both good and well-known works.
For me, there are two very important lessons from Milgram's work in particular. First is to know that humans are susceptible to influence by authority figures. Even the knowledge that this is a thing that happens can help you resist that influence. Second, not everybody fell prey to the influence. It is possible to stand up for ones principles.