Vintage Power Hitler

cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
buzzardbreath said:
I try to photoshop shit but apple made me upgrade my laptop so many times that now it takes 5 minutes for PS to open. Used to be lightning fast, fuck apple.
Sorry for raining on the Hitler parade peeps, but joking about that douche isn't all that funny.
About a pound.
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Joking about that douche is one way my "grandfatherland's" people could hold their heads a little higher. I believe it serves a valuable purpose. It focuses attention on, and somewhat demystifies, the massive evils (deliberate and tragicomic, both) done by that man and an enthusiastically (later nervously) enthusiastic populace.

The lesson is that Hitler is a completely ordinary sort of human animal. For my generation, he was the Warning:

look how easy it is for ordinary humans to organize systematic atrocity in the notional search for national purpose/excellence. Adolf Hitler was a pretty ordinary guy, Allied psychiatric propaganda aside. We ALL have this kind of human evil inside us.

(The PC movement would have you believe that evil guys like that are "inhuman". That is a lie with now-visible consequences as our social mores dissolve.This evil can be the excuse for an even more invasive counterevil. One does not fight totalitarianism with totalitarian methods for more than a generation before it guts the society. Look around.)

Our esteamed President is just such a guy, held in check by a system he presumably controls far less well than the boys in Berlin did. The warning suggests we, the voting citizens, keep an eye on him and his minions and write letters to our representatives etc. when he starts to make the trains run on time and we see folks creeping about downtown with the regulation green leaf sewn onto their shirts.
 
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buzzardbreath

buzzardbreath

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
Joking about that douche is one way my "grandfatherland's" people could hold their heads a little higher. I believe it serves a valuable purpose. It focuses attention on, and somewhat demystifies, the massive evils (deliberate and tragicomic, both) done by that man and an enthusiasytically (later nervously) enthusiastic populace.

The lesson is that Hitler is a completely ordinary sort of human animal. For my generation, he was the Warning:

look how easy it is for ordinary humans to organize systematic atrocity in the notional search for national purpose/excellence. Adolf Hitler was a pretty ordinary guy, Allied psychiatric propaganda aside. We ALL have this kind of human evil inside us.

(The PC movement would have you believe that evil guys like that are "inhuman". That is a lie with now-visible consequences as our social mores dissolve.This evil can be the excuse for an even more invasive counterevil. One does not fight totalitarianism with totalitarian methods for more than a generation before it guts the society. Look around.)

Our esteamed President is just such a guy, held in check by a system he presumably controls far less well than the boys in Berlin did. The warning suggests we, the voting citizens, keep an eye on him and his minions and write letters to our representatives etc. when he starts to make the trains run on time and we see folks creeping about downtown with the regulation green leaf sewn onto their shirts.
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Not sure everyone is quite as philosophically gifted as you and can understand all this at the next level. But, cups half full from where I sit. You make some great points.

Now, are we born with "evil" intentions or is it learned?
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
buzzardbreath said:
Not sure everyone is quite as philosophically gifted as you and can understand all this at the next level. But, cups half full from where I sit. You make some great points.

Now, are we born with "evil" intentions or is it learned?
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I think we are predators. This is a fact that receives frowns from Nice People. Look how kittens play. It is cruel, but it is evil to the mouse. Is it evil to the cat?

I believe we all have the capacity for boundless evil. The acts of becoming 1) self-aware and 2) civilized (socialized is a popular word now) require that we use our massive forebrain honestly to assess whether our impulses conform to our principles, to identify those that do not - and to reduce or convert the ones that don't.

In a nutshell, I believe evil is innate to any of us, and the ability to contain it is a learned skill. And not only among humans but in any pack or herd, socialization is learned.

Thus is is very important for us to agree that Hitler and his oligarchs did great evil, but there is a very popular idea that people who do such things are "not quite human". This is the not-always-expressed self-forgiving prejudice by Nice People that I oppose. I think it is morally dishonest and real-world harmful.

What makes it harder is that every day I unearth prejudices just like that one (cognitive prejudices as opposed to the simpler schematic ones that fuel e.g. racism) in myself. So I don't always practice what I preach. The message remains sound and important, I still think. (With the massive forebrain designed to allow us to live with each other.)
 
buzzardbreath

buzzardbreath

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
I think we are predators. This is a fact that receives frowns from Nice People. Look how kittens play. It is cruel, but it is evil to the mouse. Is it evil to the cat?

I believe we all have the capacity for boundless evil. The acts of becoming 1) self-aware and 2) civilized (socialized is a popular word now) require that we use our massive forebrain honestly to assess whether our impulses conform to our principles, to identify those that do not - and to reduce or convert the ones that don't.

In a nutshell, I believe evil is innate to any of us, and the ability to contain it is a learned skill. And not only among humans but in any pack or herd, socialization is learned.

Thus is is very important for us to agree that Hitler and his oligarchs did great evil, but there is a very popular idea that people who do such things are "not quite human". This is the not-always-expressed self-forgiving prejudice by Nice People that I oppose. I think it is morally dishonest and real-world harmful.

What makes it harder is that every day I unearth prejudices just like that one (cognitive prejudices as opposed to the simpler schematic ones that fuel e.g. racism) in myself. So I don't always practice what I preach. The message remains sound and important, I still think. (With the massive forebrain designed to allow us to live with each other.)
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You would have some great conversations with a Chinese professor I once had (if you could understand him). I was taking a Chinese Philosophy class which was essentially about Chinese religions. Good stuff, and makes one ponder the linear aspects of Christianity vs. Buddhism or Taoism, where it seems all is recycled in some grand circle of the universes energy. In the ancient days of China the people would simply have a revolution and flush the crap emperor out, and then eventually get another one that is supposed to follow the natural ways of the universe...and if not, the revolt again. I can't remember exact verbiage or examples...too much alcohol has cauterized my brain.

I hear what you're saying and we must learn that people, especially the hitlers, are in fact men with emotions that can make irrational decisions under the right combination of influences. We should learn from the past. Maybe Trump will check that box, learn from the past, seeing he is supposedly a big history buff. I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm weary. And you better practice what you preach ;-)
 
R

RealisticMTA-8

Member
cannabineer said:
The lesson is that Hitler is a completely ordinary sort of human animal. For my generation, he was the Warning:

look how easy it is for ordinary humans to organize systematic atrocity in the notional search for national purpose/excellence. Adolf Hitler was a pretty ordinary guy, Allied psychiatric propaganda aside. We ALL have this kind of human evil inside us.
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One could argue that Hitler was at least competent.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
RealisticMTA-8 said:
One could argue that Hitler was at least competent.
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That is a fascinating argument for two reasons I can articulate.

1) Was he really so? I will not look at his prewar performance, on the general principle that war is the test that has mattered, perhaps until now and in general.

Looking at his wartime record, he made a number of truly bad decisions: operation Barbarossa, fucking with Rommel, misusing air power. He nixed a big bomber ... and then decreed that the jet engine be used poorly. Other examples abound, but this is not an alt-hist forum.

So I contend he failed the competency in the Final Jeopardy round.

B) The other, and this is imo the big one, is what your brief comment implies. It is the oddly Calvinist notion that success equates to moral goodness: "might makes right". This is a common human reaction and one that I have seen used as a "wedge" to legitimize some of the more unsavory deeds by powerful people.

Does Hitler's having done some great things (economic recovery in Germany, those roads, the finest war machine on the planet) justify, mitigate, forgive ... his obvious atrocities (nine million dead, of which only six now get much press, and the scary thing is he sold it as Necessary)?

I contend that the answer is No. The difference between principle and pure predatory thinking (as codified e.g. by Macchiavelli) is codified by the question of the end justifying the means. This is the hinge of principled society ... that we recognize universally-observed limits on what we do. I think it is fundamentally evil to do what we want ... and then use our single or massed intellects to sell it as moral right or necessity. This leads to an entire generation of people who grew up with such a cognitive disconnect that the propagation of logically fallacious but populistic arguments are easy to instill and propagate. It makes us weak ... which ultimately leads us to fail the Calvinistic function test, whose pinnacle is performance in total war.

Thus I see two problems with the idea you suggest. Ultimately both boil down to the idea that the implied evolutionary advantage does not apply.
 
curious2garden

curious2garden

Well-Known Mod
Staff member
cannabineer said:
I think we are predators. This is a fact that receives frowns from Nice People. Look how kittens play. It is cruel, but it is evil to the mouse. Is it evil to the cat?

I believe we all have the capacity for boundless evil. The acts of becoming 1) self-aware and 2) civilized (socialized is a popular word now) require that we use our massive forebrain honestly to assess whether our impulses conform to our principles, to identify those that do not - and to reduce or convert the ones that don't.

In a nutshell, I believe evil is innate to any of us, and the ability to contain it is a learned skill. And not only among humans but in any pack or herd, socialization is learned.

Thus is is very important for us to agree that Hitler and his oligarchs did great evil, but there is a very popular idea that people who do such things are "not quite human". This is the not-always-expressed self-forgiving prejudice by Nice People that I oppose. I think it is morally dishonest and real-world harmful.

What makes it harder is that every day I unearth prejudices just like that one (cognitive prejudices as opposed to the simpler schematic ones that fuel e.g. racism) in myself. So I don't always practice what I preach. The message remains sound and important, I still think. (With the massive forebrain designed to allow us to live with each other.)
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LOL evil is perspective
 
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