How The Holocaust Became a Reality

There is no doubt that many have a gripe with the idea of Western Humanities and question its credibility as a subject. An example of this comes from philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who argued that Western Civilization does not exist and it is merely a “euphemism for white”. He believes the idea needs to be given up completely. Appiah mentions that critics of the west have made it “bound to become a term of dispraise…emphasizing slavery, subjugation, racism, militarism, and genocide”. It is not arguable that themes from this course tend to coincide with such ideals but there is a layer of optimism within our humanities texts as well. I have found great value in this course for it has given me greater insights into humanity. It has sparked deeper thoughts that seesaw between having hope and hopelessness in humanity. The parallels and relevance between humanities thinkers text’s and today’s society are undeniable, and I believe not studying them would be a disservice to students. This course afforded me the opportunity to see things from a different or unique perspective, which I find to be vital when learning about the world.

The article “Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism” gave a point of view I never once considered: that communism actually helped women in some way. The author interviewed Ms. Durcheva, who lived through Eastern European Communism. She said “the Republic gave me my freedom, Democracy took some of that freedom away”. I only thought of the stereotypical communist society of a grey world of misery; but for women such as Durcheva, Communism painted a different picture. According to the article, women enjoyed sex more because they had stability. Women had divorce and reproductive rights, “this reduced the social costs of accidental pregnancy and lowered the opportunity costs of becoming a mother. Another point made in the article was that mothers were given maternity leave after pregnancy. This issue of having a proper maternity leave is very pressing in modern American society, many mothers do not get the luxury of an adequate maternity leave unless they do not want a job to return to.

Looking at a different viewpoint was a catalyst for thinking about ways modern society influences families and reproductive rights. I believe that American women tend to struggle when trying to enter the workforce and become a mother. As well as the ongoing threat that abortion rights and birth control might become less accessible looms over many young women. Zygmunt Bauman presented an interesting interpretation on how the Holocaust became a reality. Many in modern society have a difficult time coping with the idea that people were capable of committing such a mass atrocity. He argues that even though the immediate effects of the Holocaust are hidden in history, “these once familiar of our civilization…have not gone away. Neither has, therefore, the possibility of another Holocaust”. Bauman recognizes that “the unimaginable ought to be imagined”. His argument presented ideas of hopelessness in humanity.

He recognized that we live in a society that made the idea of the Holocaust attainable and did nothing to stop it. Hitler carried out his plan for the mass murder of the Jewish people in order to create, in his eyes, a better racially pure Aryan world. This idea of being racially pure is dangerous and can be echoed in today’s media when discussing immigration into the United States. Collectively as a society it is accepted that a mass genocide like that could never happen again, but as Bauman points out, it has. He give the example of how the Ewe massacred the Ibos, “having first called the, vermin, criminals, money-grabbers, and subhumans without culture”, this rhetoric is all too familiar to Hitler’s reasonings for extermination of the Jews. There is much power behind the claim that moderity helped create the Holocaust, as he says it “did not just mysteriously avoid a clash with the social norms…it was these norms that made the holocaust feasible”.

This creates for a fearful future, of what are we capable of doing next. Who is the next scapegoat? I think modern society has become desensitized to atrocities. After watching the video in class on the aftermath of the Holocaust, the comments from my peers included how numbed they were to the horrific images. There is no doubt that today’s media is full of perpetual violence and gruesome bloody TV shows such as The Walking Dead, which contributes to this numbing reaction. This connects to Baudrillard’s claim that our world is one of stimulated hyperreality. He recognized that “America is violent and abominable. We should not seek to deny either of these aspects, nor reconcile them”. We see morbidity on TV shows, movies, and YouTube so frequently that real footage of dead and emaciated bodies becomes less horrifying.

The footage becomes a part of “the uncanny realm of the deja vu”, which seems unrealistic in a hyperreal world of excessive engagement of violence. Voltaire examined the foolishness of having ceaseless optimism. Using satire he voiced the underlying theme of the value of hardwork and “that we must cultivate our garden”. He recognized that wealth is not everything in life by saying, ‘you see how perishable are the riches of this world. Nothing can endure but virtue”. The takeaway from Candide is that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, but if we work towards it we can make our own lives better, by focusing on our own “garden”. Voltaire ridicules optimism when Pangloss remarks, “things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end”; yet Voltaire’s underlying theme is hopeful that people can work to make their own best end. This idea can be applied to modern society, it is indisputable that our world is not the best of all possible worlds. This idea was a stimulate to think about how my generation has the opportunity to voice our beliefs to try to cultivate our garden.

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