I believe that in all human life there is an infinity of possibility. I don't believe it can be realized in a single human life. So I idealize humans as sacred with the understanding that they are not. This grades into other organisms as well, but less complex beings have more definite boundaries. So mosquito life can be instrumentalized if it results in malaria, and this is why we spray them en masse with insecticides.

The logic of inflicting cruelty to save lives works in the animal kingdom, but I don't extend it to us (or mammals generally but this is another discussion), so this is I think where we disagree. To me, extending this to human lives who suffer visibly results in the kind of thinking that ends in holocaust.

But I understand the counterargument. I understand why John Brown raided Harper's Ferry and why he refused to surrender. I also think he should have retreated into the mountains when he had the opportunity, but this is again another discussion. I just don't think another war will give us what we want, and this is I think what Frederick Douglas was getting at when he tried to dissuade Brown from carrying out the raid. Thanks for listening.

[–] elbucho@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, man. It's fucking messy, is what it is. We are sloshy bags of water and hormones feeding a mass of electrified gelatin. There's no ideal solution because there's no ideal human. We're all fucked up in so many different ways.

I understand intimately the sense of loss that violence brings, but I also understand that violence has historically been one of the most successful strategies for resolving conflict. I'm consequently a huge fan of the John Browns and Malcolm X's of the world, and not so much the MLK Jrs and Gandhis. Gandhi thought he could dissuade Hitler from genociding a people and plunging the entire world into a war by having a polite discussion. Churchill thought it needed to be bombs, tanks, infantry, and warships. Churchill was right.

On the other hand, I am also a huge fan of the Frederick Douglasses of the world. Courage doesn't only manifest itself on the battlefield. It also looks like petitioning the president for policy changes and reading a speech reminding everybody of why "Independence Day" isn't a universally beloved tradition.

I don't claim to have any of the answers. I believe that people are complicated, but also that good and evil are also things that exist. For example, I think that the majority of the people who voted for the Nazi party were doing so out of economic concerns, or anger at the wave of migrants taking German & Austrian jobs, or fear that they were the butt of the rest of the world's jokes. If you'd asked any of them before they voted whether they would be cool with industrialized murder of German citizens, they'd almost certainly say no. But that's what it turned out that they voted for. Hitler didn't pull the wool over anybody's eyes; he was pretty open about his intentions, even at the outset.

The people who voted for the Nazis had a myriad of different reasons for voting the way they did, but in the end, none of that matters. They contributed to one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen. Many of them even took a more active role in perpetrating that evil. Artists, comedians, writers, mechanics, doctors, scientists, grocers, homemakers, attorneys; people from every walk of life. Just your ordinary, average populace. All of them fucking evil.

The truth of the matter is, evil isn't some bald guy sitting in his volcanic lair stroking his persian cat while plotting the destruction of the world. Evil is very often banal. And that's the most insidious thing about it, in my opinion.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Having visited Berlin and Auschwitz, I agree with you. I just implore you not to take the perils of the military industrial complex required to defeat such evil lightly. Especially important is the alienation that it creates in its adherents, which prefigures additional evil. To paraphrase Einstein, our civilization will not survive the next world war.

Since you're into Douglass, here's a snippet from across the ocean. One of our greatest poets was Petőfi, who rallied the Hungarians to revolution against the Habsburgs. He died in the war but his compatriot, Kossuth, escaped and toured America, and much was written about him in Douglass' paper.

The parallels to today are uncanny, with a war in Crimea, a divided Europe, and an overstretched Anglo empire.

[–] elbucho@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Yes; trust me when I say that the parallels to the 1930s have filled me with anxiety these past few years, and especially so in the past 4 months. Thank you for the link about Petofi; I had not heard of him.