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.

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A Genocide/ Peer Pressure

So this week in Mr. Sutherland's class, we watched a video about people being put under a sick test that included people thinking that they were inducing shocks one people. It got me thinking, would I do that to someone? Sure I'm CAPABLE of it but I don't think i'd do it without a reason; if the person was a criminal with a record, I'd probably feel more obliged to go ahead with the tests, if the person was just a person though I don't think i'd go far enough as to give them a 'lethal' shock.

I thought it was a bit like the placebo effect, how if you THINK that it's doing something then it'll have an alternate reaction than if you knew it was false. If someone knew that the person they were 'shocking' was an actor then they wouldn't care; if someone knew that they were just getting the placebo then they wouldn't feel any improvement.

I also understood when they talked about how if someone SAW someone else administer the full test before they took it, then the results of the previous person would be similar to theirs. It's kind of like peer pressure. When you see someone doing something, whether you know them or not, you're more obliged to do it (even if it's a bad thing like smoking). This kind of pressure is everywhere. It kind of makes me wonder that if things like torture and killing can be made a 'normal thing' with something as simple as peer pressure, what ELSE could be accomplished with it? With todays economics and state of mind, another genocide is completely possible. Today, with the right mindset, we are capable of doing practically anything. That's why I don't usually understand when people say things like 'the germans were so stupid, blind, and cruel to do something like that to such innocent people. It's not like the holocaust was the first incident of a mass homicide, it happened (and happens) all over the place. When you're raised around a popular judgment of someone else, that judgement grows on you. Just look at the situation with Iran! People are killed and tortured for no decent reason all the time, the Nazis were just the first to really make it a full fledged genocide.

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