Obsolete Historical Questions

10/5/2021

When I was a university student, I took an English course called "Literature in Crisis" which focused primarily on literature that emerged from the twentieth-century catastrophes of Nazism and Communism. The reading list was anything but "light" and included works like Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago", Borowski's "This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen", Kosinski's "The Painted Bird", Grass's "The Tin Drum", and Levi's "Moments of Reprieve" among others.

The structure of the course was common and straightforward. We would read an assigned book, listen to the prof's thoughts, and then discuss the work as a group. These group talks invariably ended up concentrating on why and how questions.

Why didn't people living during these horrific times rise up to stop the evil?

Why didn't people resist?

How could average people allow themselves to be lulled into active complacency with obvious evil?

How did common, everyday people cope with the knowledge that they were active participants in such horrors?

How could people be so easily fooled by obvious lies?

How could they not see what was happening around them?

How could they live with themselves?

Why didn't more people fight against the evil?

And so on and so forth . . .

During these discussions, I intently observed the faces of my fellow students. In their eyes I could see that they believed they would have acted differently - that they would have fought the Bolsheviks with their bare hands - that they would have risked their lives to hide Jews in basements - that they would have cut holes in the fences around the concentration camps - that they would have assassinated Hitler and Stalin were they given the opportunity to do so.

And the thing is, they believed it. They were so sure of their own principles and values. They were so sure that they would never have behaved in the way people had behaved under the Nazis and the Soviets. They would have been different. They would have stood up. They would have resisted evil. They would have remained on the right side.

I sometimes wonder what those ex-fellow students of mine are doing now . . .

25 Comments

jorgen

10/5/2021 22:44:26

The people who never got in fights at school because they went to all white schools thought they would stand up. But the people who grew up in integrated schools and thus got in fights daily knew that you have to pick your battles and stick up for #1 not for people who will backstab you after you defend them. This one guy who grew up in such a situation (me of course) once defended an aquaintance elementary school from a bully only to have the aquaintance attack me afterwards as thanks. "I would have saved the Joos" says the white retard who grew up in all white schools. "Why should I save the Joos for them to then commit genocide against whites?" says the non-retard who knows how multiculturalism really works.

Francis Berger

10/6/2021 07:30:07

@ jorgen - Yes, but what I was getting at is much larger in scope.

Greg

10/6/2021 03:26:56

Your ex-fellow students? Why they are probably calling the police to report their neighbors for not wearing masks...

Fa Cube Itches

10/6/2021 06:09:33

There's another thing to consider - how, in every genocide that's ever happened - most of the victims just went along with it, even after it was obvious what was happening. It's a curious thing that outsiders have noticed from mid-century Europe, right through to Rwanda.

10/6/2021 07:33:58

@ FCI - Part of it could be Stockholm Syndrome, but I suspect it's mostly just survival instinct/thinking driven by fear.

If I keep my head down and go along with everything my persecutors tell me to do, I may just get out of this thing without losing my job, house, money, family, or life.

Fortinescue link

10/6/2021 08:35:40

Your question is hard to answer because you make a false assumption within it. The people of previous eras may have had a very different concept of good and evil, or a hundred-times better perception of circumstances of those times because they were living through them, not observing them many years later via contaminated writings.

10/6/2021 13:49:57

@Fortinescue - "people of previous eras may have had a very different concept of good and evil, or a hundred-times better perception of circumstances of those times because they were living through them, not observing them many years later via contaminated writings."

Yes, but that's the whole point. Of course people were different during the mid-twentieth century than they are now, but modern people assume they are infinitely better and more moral, which is difficult to substantiate, especially in light of the events that have transpired since 2020.

11/5/2021 06:53:45

@FB, this reply is disconnected with the origianal post. The post says you were tryiing to discuss why 'People living at those times failed to rise up ..."
Exactly what relevance does how modern people are better or more moral have to do with answering the questions of people's behavior long ago? Please have the courtesy of addressing whether your group attempted to formulate possible reasons for this behavior, in the context of those past times? Challenging the modern interpretation of the particular application of good and evil labels would be an excellent first step. Questioning the veracity of the reference books would be another [consider exaggeration, cherry-picking, omissions, asking about the motives of the authors]. Nobody seems to think any more.

bruce charlton

10/6/2021 09:00:49

@Frank: Also - as you said in the previous post - the future has become unimaginable; and Men are irreligious and unspiritual - therefore present comfort and convenience dominate unopposed, and these circumstances are easily manipulated to control behaviour.

10/6/2021 13:51:58

@ Bruce - Yes. People have never been more despiritualized. At the same time, they have never been more firmly convinced of their own morality and goodness.

Mike

10/6/2021 12:20:32

Sir,
From what we have noticed, it would seem that the basic inability to comprehend, and then accept, the truth of what is happening and where it will lead is what allows people to not act when it could matter. There is also the 'I'm just one person, what can I do?' thing, although after so many years of that idea being used by the environmental movement to impel action at a local level, one wonders how it can still be in play.
I suspect your classmates weren't really in a position to understand what they were talking about. The implications of action in these circumstances are many and varied, but they also are dangerous and potentially lethal. You can talk all you want about how brave you would be on the front end, but the consequences on the back end remain to be addressed.
This seems to be part of the difference.

10/6/2021 13:54:43

@ Mike - Current events have shown me that contemporary people tend to think very highly of their own innate goodness and discernment of evil, but these high opinions are rarely, if ever, supported by action or thought.

Mark Matis

10/6/2021 13:41:55

Do understand there was NO Jewish "Schindler" to help the Goyim avoid the gulags...

Michelle

10/6/2021 19:08:06

It is complete hubris- the plague of modern man. It's also the lack of imagination of the evil that men can do, and the inability to acknowledge it when they do it.

10/6/2021 20:31:15

@ Michelle - Well put.

Lady Mermaid link

10/6/2021 20:25:09

This is simply part of human nature. Peter swore to Jesus that he would die w/ him yet Jesus predicted that he would deny him when the time came. This past year and a half have shown me that I can be more conformist than I'd like to believe. I've had to repent of making compromises.

The hard truth is that Scripture itself refers to people as sheep. This is not meant to be an insult. However, most people are followers. Only a small minority throughout history have gone against the flow. They usually become a "natural aristocracy". Jesus warned that "broad is the way that leads to destruction". A good shepherd will lead his sheep in the right direction, but we are ruled by wolves who will devour the sheep.

I believe that the key to growing through this is to recognize that one can easily fall astray and not to be convinced of one's own goodness. It's also important to repent on a regular basis and always have a willing spirit despite weak flesh. Pray for those caught in the deception that they will eventually open their eyes. Pray that God will keep our eyes open and bring us back when we do stumble and fall.

10/6/2021 20:31:54

@ Lady Mermaid - Great comment!

Peter Schonberger

10/7/2021 07:59:54

First answer. I cannot explain to you how it feels to ride a camel if you never did. Second: my parents, myself did ride. I came out for behind the Iron Curtain. The duality of incessant brainwashing and exquisitely swift and brutal terror, both in the Third Reich and in USSR, later elsewhere as well, made of the overwhelming majority of people willing executioners. This was so there, it is so, will be so, everywhere, the ex-students included.

10/8/2021 18:56:51

I have been making the point to anyone who will listen about how the unvaxxed treatment by the system right now is analogous to what was happening in 1930s Germany. My husband and I right now, this very day, are fighting to keep our jobs. He works for one of the largest corporations on the planet, and while trying to make an argument that he and the 30 other people in his department should not be fired, he was told unempathethically that they were beyond that point, but that the company "respects" his rights and views and his freedom to make his own choice. (Laughable,
right?) Surprisingly, my small company actually took my spiritual pleas to heart and gave me a reprieve, for now.

Which brings me back to your post from a few days ago. We all have heard the phrase "never again" spoken by the apparent wiser enlightened breed of human that came out of the 1940s. How can the system and its colluders be shown, before its too late, that never again is right now, again? Is it even possible to show a group that they are in the wrong as that wrong is occurring? Do we have an example in history when a society did a course correction before an atrocity occurred?

10/8/2021 22:02:45

@ Michelle - It very much seems that everything is done to the level of the individual now. People either know for themselves or they don't. Convincing others has never seemed more difficult than it is now. As for corporations, well, that's a different thing altogether. Most people working in corporations feel no real sense of responsibility for anything they do at work. Individual are able to "dissolve" in a corporation. They're just following orders, in the same way people did in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. Nothing personal (literally). just following orders.

The purpose of this sort of demonic pressure is to manipulate and coerce people into doing things they do not want to do. Having said that, coercion is not willing compliance - and repentance is always available. But non-compliance may turn out to be the least "risky" choice in the end.

Pertaining to the final question - a good one - I'm not sure. Nothing springs to mind at the moment. I'll have to think about it a bit.

Aristophanes link

11/1/2021 23:49:49

Did you learn while in college to question your assumptions? Perhaps there were plenty of good reasons why the people of the time supported programs you oppose today, but the histories were written by people who wanted to erase them from memory. Did your class ask what motivations the perpetrators might have had, and which ones woud overcome your objections to the actions?

11/2/2021 07:52:05

@ Ari - If you're assuming that I believe what they taught about these subjects at college represents the truth, then you are sorely mistaken, oh wise one.

The problem is, most people do regard what they are taught in college as truth, and based on those false assumptions, they believe they will not only recognize totalitarian evil when it arises, but also actively resist it when it does. Needless to say, I doubt either has happened with the majority of my former classmates or the vast majority of humanity today.

Aristophanes

11/5/2021 07:07:34

Mr. Berger, I don't know when you went to college, but I have sensed a graduall degrading of the ability to reason well among college students, and in fact, think the contribution of most nonSTEM college work is negative to that end. As to totalitarian evil, I think today most recognize it as a necesary benefit to society. Just like in those examples you gave. Perhaps in 2205 some class will discuss how people could have sat still for the mandates, and not be able to comprehend why they did not rise up.

11/5/2021 07:58:50

@ Ari - Yes, I agree (sadly).

11/5/2021 08:07:18

@ Fortinescue - I was a student in the class, not the instructor. The instructor framed the course within a very narrow set of boundaries that never addressed the issues you raised for that would have require thinking, and thinking is not what college's are about these days (or 30 years ago!).

I did not participate in these discussions - I merely listened to them. They rarely, if ever, rose above the "I can't believe people behaved that way back then - thank goodness we are so much better than they were."

Your comment basically fills in the intentional blanks and implications I left in my post.

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Obsolete Historical Questions

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