Auschwitz Birkenau: Dehumanization

This article details the conditions of the death camps that murdered millions of people, mostly Jews, and how it ended. There are villains and heroes in this article, but mostly human beings who have the capacity to survive under difficult and barbaric conditions. 

We cannot afford to turn away from this history. We cannot afford to let someone else decide our values, manufacture consent, and dehumanize people in order to gain absolute control over nations. Auschwitz-Birkenau. My Jewish Learning. 

Your Task is to be Human

[Public domain], Wikimedia Commons

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. Ludwig Wittgenstein

The whole single great problem is what? Perhaps coming to terms with the diversity of life? Or is it daring to be human when the whole structure of your world wants you to be an example of the current value, such as making money?

There are many ways you can make money. For example the oldest profession - prostitution. But it is a dangerous one and not too well rewarded unless you learn how to prostitute whatever commodity is most highly prized.

Taking care of infants is not too high on the stock market. Teaching children and adults is fraught with conflict. Those who want to teach us how to think are often under attack. Trading in stocks and shares may be lucrative if you do it a particular way. Being a doctor or a lawyer is well paid in the Western capitalist world if your clients are rich - but if the human part of you also wants to help and not to harm then you may work for the poor and be poorly paid.

Can it be said that the measure of success is how much money you make? Of course it can and often is, but whether it's true or not requires some other study. For example, drug dealers might be the richest people on a short term basis.  Or a long term if you are the chief and not near the front where you will be required to torture and kill or be tortured and killed.

Generally humans have lots of nervous information blinking through the body and brain. When you are born you form an attachment to your mother if you're lucky. But that also means you form attachments to your father, your siblings, grand-parents, aunts or uncles.  If you are loved by them you can't help but love them back.  If they emphasize success, wealth, etc., more than unconditional love, then you may feel driven to find that elusive success that no-one really explains but expects you to achieve.

I think the problem is, that we live among so many lies about success and how to achieve it, that we are lost. Being human is taken for granted when we don't really understand what it means. Because of those messages blinking through our bodies we suffer pain - headaches, insomnia, sadness, fear.

Some harm themselves for the sake of approval, some dare not think for the pain of it, some come to the conclusion that the only way to survive is to wield power through intimidation because so much of our narrative glorifies the conqueror and silences the victim.  Some believe that the only way to win is to get rid of the blinking lights through addiction to work, power, drugs, alcohol - or whatever is available.

With each century it seems that our problems stem from symptoms caused by previous symptoms of not knowing what it means to be human. The extent to which we are willing to threaten all life on this planet in order to get a brief fix indicates to me we could lose our humanity forever and not even know it.

Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/ludwigwitt147258.html

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/ludwigwitt147258.html

Let Them Eat Guns: a glimpse of the future

How many people have been killed in the US by guns since Newtown? At the point of writing this post: 2, 519.  What does this mean in terms of years or decades into the future?

The proliferation of guns is only one part of the main story here. Really it tells of social despair and nihilism.

When "let them eat cake" was attributed to Marie Antoinette  it remained as an example of contempt for the public, the majority of whom were poor. Although there is no proof that Marie said those words, it reveals the power of words, of what they represent to the people. It reveals an attitude among the  ruling elite that sees commoners as a nuisance, like mice, rats or rabbits.  Something to trap and get rid of or turn into a resource, like factory workers or rabbit stew.

Since the 1700's we have survived cultures who taught that everyone who was not white, not male, not protestant, not rich - as the other, the enemy, the stranger.  Perhaps at one time violence was just violence but somewhere along the way we attempted to idealize our own and demonize the other to maintain a choreographed and predictable future. But instead of creating peace we find ourselves in chaos.

Some of our species, we might call a ruling elite, such as the heads of church, state and business, are attempting to maintain the status quo by keeping the masses economically powerless. However this is the messiest, most violent and chaotic way.  The countries that most eagerly embraced communism, the troubles or the Arab Spring, were those where the gap between the haves and have-nots were the greatest. The populations where there is no equality between genders and races, where marginalization is ritualized throughout the land and narrative, find they have no choice but to rebel, to seek revolution.

When power is centralized to a few, then power-over or hegemony is the way the unreflective choose to feel safe. They demand guns for the institutions in place to serve them; weapons of mass destruction against other nations; ideologies that create more, not less fear; gated communities; inhumane immigration policies; private health and private schools; larger more brutalized prisons; and routine torture.  Centralized power creates war as a means to keep the focus on the other-other  so the masses will not have time to see how they are being robbed.

Right now the planet has been purchased, if not legally, then by propaganda. The governments, the leaders, the laws, and the fifth estate have abandoned the future in favour of a false sense of power, because all over the world civil society with its freedom and responsibility is being systematically destroyed.

What we have to look forward to, if we don't engage with this theft, is one of incremental suicide.  Society is not status, not communism, not a shopping mall, and not celebrity.  Society is the way our species survives by caring for one another and by creating systems that celebrate the creative community. Society is about the love of humanity and the opportunity for our evolution.

This is not idealism. It is a re-direction from the glorification of violence (which is the first gate of terrorism) to the masses estranged from their own capacities through uncertainty and fear.

When ordinary people believe that they must carry a personal weapons to protect themselves, it is because they have not experienced the protection of justice and freedom, no matter how many times the words are trotted out.  Without justice and freedom life is not worth living.