hmm...

So today me and a friend were having a discussion about the holocaust and the radical effects that it had on almost everything. A lot of people don't really see that it didn't just effect the Jews and such, it effected everyone. If it didn't then why would we be reading about it? We sympathize with the Jews because of the horrible things that happened to them. Something else that bothered me though was that my friend started to refer to the Nazis just as the Germans. Now at first I assumed it to be more or less of a slip of the tongue, but after a while I asked her about it. I believe I said something along the lines of 'hey well... just because all of the Nazis were Germans doesn't mean that all of the German's were Nazis.' and she kind of went off at me for no valid reason about why the German people would join such a cult knowing their intentions.

Well... why does anyone join a cult ever? Why do we do the things that we do in school? Why do we act the way we act? It's not just because we were born that way, to me it all depend on how we were raised. As people grow up they develop a strong need to want to relate to someone, to 'fit in' as it were; people will do almost anything for it. There are studies that show that people who join cults are just as intelligent and sane as the general public (when they join.) When we get cut off from a group that we've associated with, like if a kid has to move to a new place or are pushed away from a social class, people tend to lose the edge that they had previously. That's when most cults start to sound appealing. In fact today most cult members lead very happy successful lives! There's nothing wrong with that either; to me people can believe whatever they want to believe, I just get a little edgy when someone bashes it; especially when people start to talk about the Nazis.

A lot of people get into groups because they were raised to as well, people with christian parents usually ended up being christian; it's the same for almost all religions. As a child you'll believe whatever your parents tell you because why would they lie? It's the reason most kids believe in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there's no reason NOT to believe in them!

Now I guess I sound like I'm supporting the Nazis here but I'm not, I'm just defending the people in it. Having power like that will almost always go to your head, just like the study that mr. Sutherland showed us. The Nazis never believed that what they were doing was wrong, most of them might have been raised to believe that the Jewish people deserved what they got. Now obviously they didn't, and the way they were treated was cruel and inhumane! We can't just scoff at the things that other people choose when we all could do it too.

I kind of jumped around a lot here.. sorry if it doesn't make much sense.