Fogetting the Holocaust

Recently I received thru the email, a powerpoint presentation that was condemning the UK for banning the teaching of the holocaust in its school systems. This email offended me with its prejudiced style, odd spelling contractions, over use of caps, and lack of purpose. Oh, plus the fact that it completely ignores the facts and still spouts drivel with vigor. Yet another chain email spread about by mass hysteria and dogmatic assumptions. But it did get me thinking. Is there a reason to remember The Holocaust?

The Holocaust makes just a small portion of the total genocide perpetrated in the last century, what about other travesties in recent history? The genocide in Rwanda, atrocities in Sudan and Cambodia, Sierra Leone and blood diamond wars, Algeria, India, Pakistan, Ireland, Ethiopia, Kosovo, and Hiroshima. Have we have already forgotten those?

Must we remember The Holocaust to know the travesties that man can cause? Must we remember to know how far hate can take us? How it can blind entire nations, consume the heart, and destroy the soul? Must we remember the individuals, the Kitty Genovese’s, to know of this trait in humans that make us inhuman and to know that perhaps man truly is evil, or at the very least prone to fall into evil. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Now I don’t write this by way of suggesting we forget or of supporting those who wish it gone. But to make a comment about history, about what concerns us in our lives, how we hold on to some things but let others pass us by or fall off, and perhaps a little about education, about whose role it is to educate and who determines what we should learn.

I propose that remembrance of itself is unimportant, that alone it is not enough. We need to know that history will happen again and that we could again sit by and watch it unfold as we did, to say this is not my concern and put it out of our minds. To remember and to see in ourselves the human frailties and weaknesses that causes these shameful marks on the name of man. Then we need to fight against our weaknesses. Perhaps then we will have learned from history and stop the cycle of repetition.

I will leave off with a section from Elie Wiesel’s speech ‘The Perils of Indifference’ and I would highly suggest looking up and reading the entire thing.

“… indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.”

This is who I am

I have always held a fascination with philosophy, how people view the world and thus how they deal in life and more interesting what questions then occupy their thoughts. This is something worth thinking about, yet philosophy has a cruel habit of enticing you in with the promise of answers to life's great questions. Who am I?, Why am I here? Where am I going? What is worth spending my limited time at? Yet time and time again as I run fascinated and dazzled thru philosophy's golden gates I am brought face to face not with answers but questions. Deeper I dive and there they are more questions, always under and behind that question is yet another, and another, and another.. philosophy is an bottomless well of questions. You come in wondering Who Am I?? but now you have stayed adrift in it too long and have lost everything, "Who are you?" That's what I am here to find out "Is there even a you?" Yes there must be, I exist in the world. "Which world is that? is there even a world to exist in?" Yes, I see it, touch it and feel it "Ahh but are not perceptions merely you trying to put form to that which is external to you?" Perhaps "So the world may, in fact, not exist?" Well I suppose that is a possibility, but I think therefore I am "Trite, but how can you be sure there is thought and that it originates from you?" umm, well I. Wait who are you? "Am I not you?" Ah ha, so I do exist! "We have not established that yet." *curses*.... .. "I ask again Do you even exist?" I don't know maybe, but if I don't exist then neither do you "That is most probable yes." You are not going to help me at all are you? "If you wanted answers you should have taken math." Great.

And so then after you lose yourself you try to escape to claw yourself to stable ground by assuming you exist and starting there "that's cheating" I'm ignoring you "You can't do that forever I will always be here!" stop it.

And thus you end up back where you started only this time with more questions. And this is why I love philosophy, it argues much better then I do.

"I am glad you think so highly of me"

shut up

Carrying on. I ran across this poem and decided it was largely genius.

Who Am I?

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who am I? They often tell me

I stepped from my cell’s confinement

Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,

Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me

I used to speak to my warders

Freely and friendly and clearly,

As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I bore the days of misfortune

Equally, smilingly, proudly,

Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?

Or am I only what I myself know of myself?

Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,

Struggling for breath, as though hands were

compressing my throat,

Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,

Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,

Tossing in expectation of great events,

Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,

Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,

Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

There at the beginning of the second paragraph "Am I then really all that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I myself know of myself?" Self perception theory states that we develop our attitudes by observing our behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused them, thus we develop our knowledge of our attitudes in the same manner we develop them in others and they in us. So am I really who I think I am or am I who others think I am, if we perceive who we are in similar manners could not they be more accurate in seeing who I am then I am in seeing myself?? I am outnumbered, If all others are in agreement of who I am and mine is the only dissenting voice who is wrong? Or are we all deluding ourselves and think that we understand others cause we think we understand ourselves?

Am I anything other then what you see in me? On a sufficient timeline that will be my legacy, am I anything other then your rememberances? When I am gone who will I be but what I am in you. So I pray to all who care to remember me, lie a little for me. Perhaps then when I am become something more then I am now, I will have become good enough and deserve the rememberance.