On monsters....
Jun. 17th, 2006 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyIt's time for this rant again.
I keep hearing that Hitler was a monster. No, don't do anything to attempt to understand what went on in the Holocaust, Hitler was simply a monster.
As nice, pat answers go, it's pretty good - bad things happen because of monsters. As explanations go... not so much. Yup, millions of people died because one person was a monster. No reason, he just was. It happens, let's move on.
Huh?
As I see it, there are two problems with this argument. By calling him a monster, we've effectively removed him from humanity (we couldn't be like that, we couldn't harm people like that, we're not monsters) and absolved him, to an extent, of his crimes (oh, he was a monster. Yes, it was evil, but he was a monster. What could be done?). He's not a person who was responsible for monstrous things, he's just not human at all.
But that can't be true. If we are to accept the proposition that Hitler was simply a monster, we either have to believe that he was born evil, at which point we're treading very close to our own bits of racism (Hitler was born evil, some people can be born evil, maybe that can be predicted, maybe certain groups are more prone to being evil....) or else we're saying that there was some point at which we can clearly say "Hitler isn't a person anymore, he's just a monster". Like, what? One day he was a good guy, bit of a crap artist, and the next he wakes up and says "Just for fun, I'm going to start killing people, see how many I can get away with!"? I don't think so.
The man was a person, just like the rest of us, though we would like to distance ourselves from that. He made choices every day which led him, in the end, to be responsible for atrocities.
And there's the other thing. So we say "Hitler was a monster". Okay. Well, what about all the other high-ranking Nazis? They were monsters too, right? And what about the people who actually got their hands dirty doing the work? They were monsters - how could they not be? And now that we've said that, what about those responsible for other genocides, the ones that happen with depressing regularity in this world of ours?
How many monsters can humanity have?
We can keep by this arbitrary standard - those who do a certain amount of harm are monsters, perhaps? - but that doesn't do anything to actually stop the harm. Why do atrocities happen? "Well, some people are monsters. Hitler was a monster, and so are the people responsible for Darfur, and...."
No.
The nice, pat answer isn't the good answer. It's the answer that absolves us (and to an extent, the guilty) for any responsibility in these crimes. The Holocaust - couldn't be stopped, Hitler was a monster. Yeah - a monster who got 10% of the German population to listen to him, and others to follow along. I don't buy that answer. I can't - maybe if we'd paid more attention to the conditions in Germany at the time, maybe if we paid more attention in the rest of the world now, maybe we could stop breeding these "monsters", stop these problems before they start.
But you can't do that if you attribute problems to the fact that some people (who are nothing like you or yours could ever be, which, given the sheer amount of genocide I know about, I *highly* doubt) are inexplicably monsters.
I don't know the conditions that would lead people to participate in genocide. I don't know the conditions that would even lead people to participate in other forms of bigotry. I don't know how to stop this. I *do* know that stopping it means understanding it - and understanding it means standing up and saying "Look, genocide? Monstrous, but it's still the act of human beings. Any act of bigotry you can imagine, big or small? It's all the work of humans." It means coming to the situation with the attitude that the people involved are, in fact, people - their motivations can be understood, they can stop harming others, they can change.
You can't change monsters, can't stop monsters. But you can change humans. Not sure how, yet - give me some time - but you can change the prejudices of ordinary humans *before* they reach the point where they're harming others.
I keep hearing that Hitler was a monster. No, don't do anything to attempt to understand what went on in the Holocaust, Hitler was simply a monster.
As nice, pat answers go, it's pretty good - bad things happen because of monsters. As explanations go... not so much. Yup, millions of people died because one person was a monster. No reason, he just was. It happens, let's move on.
Huh?
As I see it, there are two problems with this argument. By calling him a monster, we've effectively removed him from humanity (we couldn't be like that, we couldn't harm people like that, we're not monsters) and absolved him, to an extent, of his crimes (oh, he was a monster. Yes, it was evil, but he was a monster. What could be done?). He's not a person who was responsible for monstrous things, he's just not human at all.
But that can't be true. If we are to accept the proposition that Hitler was simply a monster, we either have to believe that he was born evil, at which point we're treading very close to our own bits of racism (Hitler was born evil, some people can be born evil, maybe that can be predicted, maybe certain groups are more prone to being evil....) or else we're saying that there was some point at which we can clearly say "Hitler isn't a person anymore, he's just a monster". Like, what? One day he was a good guy, bit of a crap artist, and the next he wakes up and says "Just for fun, I'm going to start killing people, see how many I can get away with!"? I don't think so.
The man was a person, just like the rest of us, though we would like to distance ourselves from that. He made choices every day which led him, in the end, to be responsible for atrocities.
And there's the other thing. So we say "Hitler was a monster". Okay. Well, what about all the other high-ranking Nazis? They were monsters too, right? And what about the people who actually got their hands dirty doing the work? They were monsters - how could they not be? And now that we've said that, what about those responsible for other genocides, the ones that happen with depressing regularity in this world of ours?
How many monsters can humanity have?
We can keep by this arbitrary standard - those who do a certain amount of harm are monsters, perhaps? - but that doesn't do anything to actually stop the harm. Why do atrocities happen? "Well, some people are monsters. Hitler was a monster, and so are the people responsible for Darfur, and...."
No.
The nice, pat answer isn't the good answer. It's the answer that absolves us (and to an extent, the guilty) for any responsibility in these crimes. The Holocaust - couldn't be stopped, Hitler was a monster. Yeah - a monster who got 10% of the German population to listen to him, and others to follow along. I don't buy that answer. I can't - maybe if we'd paid more attention to the conditions in Germany at the time, maybe if we paid more attention in the rest of the world now, maybe we could stop breeding these "monsters", stop these problems before they start.
But you can't do that if you attribute problems to the fact that some people (who are nothing like you or yours could ever be, which, given the sheer amount of genocide I know about, I *highly* doubt) are inexplicably monsters.
I don't know the conditions that would lead people to participate in genocide. I don't know the conditions that would even lead people to participate in other forms of bigotry. I don't know how to stop this. I *do* know that stopping it means understanding it - and understanding it means standing up and saying "Look, genocide? Monstrous, but it's still the act of human beings. Any act of bigotry you can imagine, big or small? It's all the work of humans." It means coming to the situation with the attitude that the people involved are, in fact, people - their motivations can be understood, they can stop harming others, they can change.
You can't change monsters, can't stop monsters. But you can change humans. Not sure how, yet - give me some time - but you can change the prejudices of ordinary humans *before* they reach the point where they're harming others.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 01:03 am (UTC)You'll also hear about Asch's (or is it Asche? it's been a while) experiments showing how difficult it is for someone to speak up with a dissenting view when there is a perceived unanimous opinion.
You might hear about Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, showing how people are highly prone to adopting the roles that they are given.
And yes, you might hear about psychopaths. A small percentage of the population actually is kind of monstrous. They have no concern for anyone's opinions but themselves, and the ones that get noticed are the ones who become serial killers. They are generally arrogant and viscious and actively different from all other humans, as best as is known. They actually could be described as monsters, and they are not like the average person. They will do things that most people will not. However, there is no evidence that I'm aware of that Hitler was a psychopath. And there is a lot of reason to believe that most of the people involved in the Holocaust were not psychopaths. They were acting the way most people will in teh circumstances they were put in. And that is what makes the Holocaust (or other genocides I know less about) so incredibly scary. Because they are people acting the way people are prone to act.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 01:09 am (UTC)And it's the latter people who acted the way most people will act under similar pressures. It's a scary part of humanity, but studying it helps us learn how to control evironments to make it happen less. And no, not everyone will act this way. We even know some of the factors that will cause people to not act that way. But whenever people are acting in a way that 50% or more people will in the same situation, I do not feel you can call the people monsters. You have to look at it as a societal/environmental problem. And, as you say, watch for such factors so we can try to change the situations precisely because it is so easy for people to get to a point where they are torturing and killing other people.