How can the world forgive Germany?

dudalb said:
Well somebody sure outed himself as having "issues" with the Jews in this thread...
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Wudang said:
Oh no. He's just asking questions about why the Jews deserved to suffer the Holocaust. After all there must have been something they did to attract the violence.
The excuse offered by every rape-apologist, wife beater apologist, bully apologist and similar scum for many years. CF "she was asking for it" "well now look what you made me do".
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Have the decency to address the 'someone' directly.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
In another thread I'd mentioned watching the series The World at War.

It's appalling what the Nazis did, in every country they occupied. It's horrible that so many German citizens ignored it, or were happy to benefit from it.

I understand that an entire generation had been conditioned by Nazi propaganda to think Jewish people inferior, and the German people naturally better.

But the systematic atrocities. The infrastructure and bureaucracy built to carry out those atrocities.

Combined with the war just two decades gone by... how can the world ever forgive the German people??
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Most of the German population of today would not have even been alive during the war so they have nothing to be forgiven for. People can't be blamed for anything that happened before they were born. In world war 2 both sides committed war crimes and both sides committed atrocities. The fact that the entire democratic world allied itself with totalitarian soviet communisim which had killed tens of millions of its own citizens is totally sick!
The USSR was responsible for man made famines, mass executions and purges which murdered millions yet Churchill and Roosevelt both supported Stalin -
www.holodomor.org.uk
www.katyn.org.au
Churchill and the British government allowed millions of Indians to starve to death - http://codoh.com/library/document/1436
The biggest act of ethnic cleansing in European history was not against Jews it was against Germans. Over 10 million were forced to leave their homes in Eastern Europe by the soviet communists at gunpoint during and after world war 2. 600 000 perished. Have you seen any Hollywood movies or tv series about this ethnic cleansing which was approved of by Roosevelt and Churchill and then Truman and Attlee -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_after_World_War_II
 
Gawdzilla said:
It doesn't work like that. You don't have a discreet point on a bell curve for each human being.

Try this: The most common IQ is, IIRC the current number, 110.
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The normal distribution (Bell Curve) has mean, median and mode all equal. if 110 is the most common number than , yes you would expect that to be the average intelligence too.

To any reasonable approximation given that we are talking about tens or hundreds of millions of individuals.
 
In relation to thread content, is it to be said that the higher the intelligence, the less likely evil will manifest in the word?
Is that the argument? The reason IQ was brought into the discussion?
 
Navigator said:
Well Jimbob I think Math is not spelt 'Maths' but that aside, my question 'by who's reckoning' is not answered.
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That depends where you live. In the UK it is maths, not math, which makes sense as it is a shortened form of mathematics.
 
Multivac said:
That depends where you live. In the UK it is maths, not math, which makes sense as it is a shortened form of mathematics.
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Yes and in the US it is "math", which makes sense as it is a contraction of mathematics

That was my point :p
 
Gawdzilla said:
It doesn't work like that. You don't have a discreet point on a bell curve for each human being.

Try this: The most common IQ is, IIRC the current number, 110.
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I know it doesn't work like that, but it's a good rule of thumb, especially for large numbers, and assuming that the average really is 100.
 
Navigator said:
In relation to thread content, is it to be said that the higher the intelligence, the less likely evil will manifest in the word?
Is that the argument? The reason IQ was brought into the discussion?
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I'm not sure IQ correlates with "evil", especially since what constitutes evil varies greatly depending on who you ask and when.
 
My question is, if you're having a hard time forgiving Germany, just think about this: how can you forgive Humanity?!

I mean, every atrocity ever committed was committed by humans!

So, Monkety Ghost, given what humans did in the 1940s, how can you forgive yourself?
 
Roboramma said:
My question is, if you're having a hard time forgiving Germany, just think about this: how can you forgive Humanity?!
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Humanity is not the problem. this is because humanity is a vast array of different things not all supporting the same agenda.
Parts of humanity are very much into finding ways to make things a lot better.
So it is not really about forgiving humanity as much as it is forgiving the atrocities some humans decided to support.
Most humans prefer the prospect of peace and harmony and look for ways to support that.

I mean, every atrocity ever committed was committed by humans!
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Are you suggesting that humans caused this?

If you would say 'that is different because it is nature and cannot be considered atrocities' then I can agree.
What I am interested in is how if a human being does the same kind of thing, it is considered atrocity, even that nature created human beings (as many believe).
Is there something I are not understanding here?
We consciously make the decision as to what constitutes an atrocity but also say we need to sometimes do atrocious things in the name of peace and harmony etc.
Hiroshima springs to mind.

I can forgive myself that other humans are atrocious. I would find it harder to do (genuinely) if I supported or was supported by any atrocity.

I suspect that my position in the world did at least in part come from atrocious activity - even that this was way in the past long before I was actually born.
So I need to think about that and at the very least see to it that I do my part to make sure it never happens again.
That can go a long way towards any healing any shame I have about being human.
 
Navigator, I think the ironic nature of my post should have been made clear by the last sentence.

I was making a point, not actually trying to say that we should all feel guilty. I only feel guilty about the things that I actually did, not the things that people who have something in common with me (like country of birth, or skin colour, or species) did.

I thought my point was pretty obvious, but whatever.
 
spin0 said:
In 1906 Finland became the second country in the world and the first in Europe to introduce universal suffrage. In the following 1907 parliamentary elections world's first female MPs were elected (19 of 200 MPs).
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Well, no country has ever had universal suffrage. There has never been a true democracy...there are age minimums in every nation I know of. Not sure about historical varieties. But 20-30% of most nations' populace are denied a vote. Very, very far from "universal".


Anyway, very interesting and rather candid thread.

To the OP: I can imagine the visceral impact seeing such a docu can have. But there are a horde of other pictures/videos of absolutely horrible incidents, such as mutilations in Africa, skinning alive in Asia, body pieces in Iraq, etc. All tend to verify that many humans can either a) be absolutely evil, and/or b) be basically bystanders who don't have the power to stop atrocities as they're going on. And not even voice it for fear of becoming a target themselves.

Who, for example, as an American in 1942 would've spoken up loudly against interning the Japanese? Who now is speaking up against current surveillance and Constitutional violations? To disagree with a regime, be it dictatorial or democratic, is to paint a target on you. And since, well protection values usually go: Self->family->tribe, almost everyone will put not put themselves or family in danger for the purpose of protecting someone outside of the tribe. Those who DO are great people. Who I imagine also more often suffer being murdered and their families murdered than those who don't.



Unfortunately practical/applied morality is socially defined by "whatever force in power decides what morality is". And if you degree you may gain attention.
 
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