Re: Getting your work critiqued (but by whom?)

Stuart wrote:

> Ignoring the fact that you may as well just have said 'no' here,
> _Schindler's List_ (the film, at least - not read the book) is replete
> with scenes showing the complicity of ordinary people in the Holocaust.
> Are you suggesting that the entire population of Germany (save those
> who showed the courage of Oskar Schindler) was evil?  

I think this makes your point very well, (I know far more about Germany
than about Stalin's Russia or any of the other hotbeds of evil brought
up in this discussion, so I shall stick with it)

Undoubtedly, Germany had more than its share of psychopaths - people who
fully believed 'they are not human, they have lost all rights to being
treated as humans, therefore it is not a sin to kill them.' Are those
evil people? Quite probably. They still have motivations other than 'be
evil.' The system allowed them to rise to the top and gain
respectability, and that is a very evil situation indeed.

There are also people who can rationalise atrocities to themselves -
'yes, they are human, but _they are in my way_ and the only way I can
protect my family/work for the greater good of the world/stop them once
and for all is to kill them.' 

There are those who are aware that they are doing something wrong, or
become aware of it later - they might be brainwashed into believing
they're right at the time. With a lot of them the atrocities they commit
sit uneasily.

There are those who have no wish to know that atrocities are committed
in their name; but they will not dig too deep for fear of what they
might find. They have a certain unease, but for the moment, they manage
to push all such thoughts aside.

There are those who believe the lies they are told without examining
them closely. 

All of them contribute to evil deeds. They commit sins of omission -
they do not wonder where their neighbours go when they are collected by
the secret police in the middle of the night. They do not ask why, years
before a war is declared, having burnable rubbish in your attic is
declared an offense, and why, in peacetime, they are holding air raid
drills. They do not ask why it becomes an offense to sing in a choir
that is not member of the politicalised roof organisation. And they
harbour in their hearts, willingly or with a somewhat guilty conscience,
the conviction that if only someone else was stopped from ruining their
lives, their situation would be much better.

Yesterday, it was Jude verrecke. [1] Today, it is Auslaender raus. [2]

It is the onlookers, the bystanders, who are the vehicle of evil, yet
each of them is not.


Catja

[1] Jew, die like an animal. Admittedly, that's the worst of the lot.
[2] Foreigners out. Where the lines between foreigners and guest workers
are drawn pretty much arbitrarily.