MindThe Beginner

A lifetime ago (well actually 70 years to the day) a horrid part of modern history started. The second world war. Millions died and millions more were scarred for life.Today I’d like to give you my view of a few factors that played a role in the onset of this war that are still alive today and we all struggle with.

First off there’s the laziness of humans. If possible we’d like others to think for us and to decide for us. We then eagerly follow those people, becoming a tribe blindly following the leader of the pack. Shut down all rational thought and agree with the leader. How often does this happen in daily life? In board rooms where management sits there quietly and agrees with everything the CEO has to say. Or on a smaller level just following whatever plans the biggest kid in class has to say in fear of being beaten or just because he’s the biggest boy and so it seems logical to sacrifice individuality just to become part of his tribe.

Secondly we have a terrible habit just about everybody has: blame someone else for your own misfortune. After all, you can’t do anything wrong right? You’re perfect, it was the other guy. Admitting your own mistakes is hard, apologizing to others for your mistakes is even worse. And because we don’t like this feeling (it makes us feel weak or something) we just blame others and hope nobody catches on and realize the mistake was our own.

A tribe leader can combine these two traits into a terrible mix. Blame someone else and tell the tribe how to deal with those others. Well, we all know how this ended. On a far smaller scale however it still happens every single day.

Same old, same old

70 years on, we still make the same mistakes, almost on a daily basis. The only difference is mass-media (at near instant speed) that can be used to keep others in check. Something like the second world war can’t happen again. Modern weapons are to powerful and -in the Western world at least- there are to many controlling agencies, laws and agreements between countries. Wars have a totally different playing field today. With the push of a button a whole city can be obliterated, thousands of kilometers from the front. I wonder how the war would have ended if after invading Poland someone would have pushed that button and reduced the whole of Berlin to ashed, including the tribe leader.

Because of mass media people do think a bit more for themselves. On the other hand, Internet has given minority groups (like those people with the white pointy hats in the USA) a way to communicate and distribute their ideas far more effectively than “the moustache” could ever dream of.

The danger of ignorance

Something often heard is that the German citizens had no knowledge of the camps whatsoever and no knowledge of the systematic destruction of the Jews. I do believe those people, I see no reason not too. If the web existed back then however, there would have to be some very powerful restricting to be done in order for this news not to get out there. I can think of only one country trying to limit Internet access nowadays (China..) and although they try, they don’t succeed totally. Every now and then news does get out and information does go in.

Would the tribe still follow it’s leader if they knew about the camps?

We will never know.

All I know is that the Internet is both a blessing and a curse. We can get all the information we want, but at the same time there’s all that info we don’t want. It offers hate groups an easy way to spread their hate.

I just hope that people who find information on the net keep thinking for themselves and don’t believe a single source of information.

70 Years, and still we make the same mistakes. If I live to see another 70 years I hope the lessons will be learned but I doubt it, history has a way of repeating its self.

Sorry for the rant, somehow this just rolled out and seems to have some value to it. It’s not a perfect post, I didn’t do any editing and wrote this one down in one go trying to capture my thoughts as I was going along. I hope it makes some sense to you, if not please do join me in discussion.

If you’re wondering what the photo is, it’s a part of a monument in the Westerbork concentration camp, each star represents an individual who stayed at Westerbork and died in a German camp.  102.000 in total… A single star for every life.