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[CCBC-Net] Teaching the holocaust
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From: Hastings, Waller <hastingw>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:07:32 -0500
Well, I'll start by saying I'M sorry, but this comment,
> I think you should let the books and facts speak for themselves, and
> possibly keep your personal opinions out of the classroom.
Coming as it did after expressing a series of *opinions* as *facts*, is itself arguable.
I have said in other forums and continue to believe that we cannot overcome the problem of evil in the world if we subscribe to beliefs such as are encompassed by a statement like "I for one know for a fact that I am NOT capable of doing evil." We might like to believe it - but history shows that great evil is often accomplished by people who are certain that they themselves are incapable of doing evil. Sure, Hitler was mad - but ALL of the German people were not, and the genocide of the Third Reich would not have been possible without the complicity of many ordinary Germans who thought they were doing the "right" thing.
And what of the devastation visited on the native peoples of North America by European colonization? Where do you identify the insanity there - what individuals' madness accounted for the killings and forced movement of Native Americans onto reservations? (One of my current projects is to understand L. Frank Baum's 1891 call for the extermination of the Sioux people - was he mad?) Or President Roosevelt's order that Japanese Americans be put into isolation camps during WWII - an action that was certainly shameful and, many would argue, evil. Yet "ordinary people" accepted it - as many continue to accept the imprisonment of hundreds of people by the U.S. government at Guantanamo for over four years without charges being filed, without even the right or opportunity to visit with legal counsel. Are the people who condone such actions ALL "mad"? Are the soldiers who committed atrocities at Abu Ghraib "evil"? Their actions were certainly evil.
If all these things are promulgated by people who believe themselves "incapable of doing evil," then of course, the actions can't be evil - but they sure *look* evil to impartial observers. Remember the psychological studies that were done in which "ordinary people" were induced to inflict torture on others through a gradual process of increasing the jolt that would be delivered through a machine.
I can think of no more dangerous stance to take than the assertion that one is somehow incapable of evil. The insistence that those who do evil are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of us is an easy moral position that absolves us from thinking about the consequences of our own actions or non-actions. Only if we recognize our own capacity to commit evil can we have any real hope of reducing the amount of evil that there is in the world.
waller hastings northern state university aberdeen, sd 57401 hastingw at northern.edu
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." - Oliver Cromwell, to his enemies
Received on Thu 27 Apr 2006 11:07:32 AM CDT
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:07:32 -0500
Well, I'll start by saying I'M sorry, but this comment,
> I think you should let the books and facts speak for themselves, and
> possibly keep your personal opinions out of the classroom.
Coming as it did after expressing a series of *opinions* as *facts*, is itself arguable.
I have said in other forums and continue to believe that we cannot overcome the problem of evil in the world if we subscribe to beliefs such as are encompassed by a statement like "I for one know for a fact that I am NOT capable of doing evil." We might like to believe it - but history shows that great evil is often accomplished by people who are certain that they themselves are incapable of doing evil. Sure, Hitler was mad - but ALL of the German people were not, and the genocide of the Third Reich would not have been possible without the complicity of many ordinary Germans who thought they were doing the "right" thing.
And what of the devastation visited on the native peoples of North America by European colonization? Where do you identify the insanity there - what individuals' madness accounted for the killings and forced movement of Native Americans onto reservations? (One of my current projects is to understand L. Frank Baum's 1891 call for the extermination of the Sioux people - was he mad?) Or President Roosevelt's order that Japanese Americans be put into isolation camps during WWII - an action that was certainly shameful and, many would argue, evil. Yet "ordinary people" accepted it - as many continue to accept the imprisonment of hundreds of people by the U.S. government at Guantanamo for over four years without charges being filed, without even the right or opportunity to visit with legal counsel. Are the people who condone such actions ALL "mad"? Are the soldiers who committed atrocities at Abu Ghraib "evil"? Their actions were certainly evil.
If all these things are promulgated by people who believe themselves "incapable of doing evil," then of course, the actions can't be evil - but they sure *look* evil to impartial observers. Remember the psychological studies that were done in which "ordinary people" were induced to inflict torture on others through a gradual process of increasing the jolt that would be delivered through a machine.
I can think of no more dangerous stance to take than the assertion that one is somehow incapable of evil. The insistence that those who do evil are somehow qualitatively different from the rest of us is an easy moral position that absolves us from thinking about the consequences of our own actions or non-actions. Only if we recognize our own capacity to commit evil can we have any real hope of reducing the amount of evil that there is in the world.
waller hastings northern state university aberdeen, sd 57401 hastingw at northern.edu
"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." - Oliver Cromwell, to his enemies
Received on Thu 27 Apr 2006 11:07:32 AM CDT
