In his Autobiography, the yoga master, Paramahansa Yogananda, recounts a story from his childhood about a rare disagreement between his mother and father. The story is best told in his own words:
“Please give me ten rupees for a hapless woman who has just arrived at the house.” Mother’s smile had its own persuasion.
“Why ten rupees? One is enough.” Father added a justification: “When my father and grandparents died suddenly, I had my first experience of poverty. My only breakfast, before walking miles to my school, was a small banana. Later, at the university, I was in such need that I applied to a wealthy judge for aid of one rupee per month. He declined, remarking that even a rupee is important."
“How bitterly you recall the denial of that rupee!” Mother’s heart had an instant logic. “Do you want this woman also to remember painfully your refusal of ten rupees, which she needs urgently?”
Not surprisingly, Yogananda’s father gave in.
I have written about the mechanism of evil, which is to deny responsibility for the pain and failure that come to us in life, assume the identity of victim, and project the responsibility and blame onto an oppressor who becomes our embodiment of evil. Our sense of victimhood and lack of responsibility allows us to "justify" our own violence and evil, which is to say it is "just" under the circumstances. Yogananda's story demonstrates that mechanism, but it also demonstrates the mechanism of goodness.
The mechanism of goodness begins with an acceptance of whatever comes to us in life. This is easiest to do when we understand that the law of cause and effect extends to human actions, and that all of our experiences are the effects of past causes – whether in this life, or in some other. If one does not accept this, it is extremely difficult to avoid feeling that one is a victim of an unjust world. If one feels the world is unjust, one cannot really feel that God is just. And one cannot feel either secure or loved if one is fundamentally alienated from God.
A curious corollary of “victimhood”, is that it tends to focus the entire attention of the “victim" on him or herself – his or her suffering, the injustice that has been visited upon him or her, the unfairness of his or her situation. Completely self-focused, the “victim” is unaware of his or her effects on others, and also to their suffering.
This is well demonstrated in Yogananda’s story. Though his father had a vivid memory of how he felt at having his request for a rupee denied by the judge, he was more than willing to deny the request for ten rupees of the woman at the door. I call this mechanism the “law of equal suffering.” I went through it, so why shouldn't you? The “equal suffering” principle is widespread, as any army private, law firm associate or resident physician will attest. However it may be justified by its practitioners, the fact is, it is retribution and nothing else.
The mechanism of goodness is quite the reverse. Rather than focusing on oneself as the victim of past suffering, it focuses on the one who is suffering in the present. Rather than requiring equal suffering of one’s fellowman, it seeks to avoid it. “Given that I know what it feels like to suffer, I will do what I can so that others do not have to suffer.” This is empathy. And its application can truly change the world.
Empathy was perhaps most famously expressed by Jesus on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” In the extremity of dying, he thought not of himself, but of his murderers. Every Christian knows these words, but most feel it is beyond them to practice. “Christ was divine,” they would say. “But we are human.” But those who would say this are not truly Christians, for they are ignoring the words of Christ spoken at the Last Supper.
“This is my commandment,” he said, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
THE MECHANISM OF EVIL
On June 5, 2009, President Obama visited the site of the infamous Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. With him were German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and well-known Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel. Following the visit, all three made public remarks.
In her remarks, Chancellor Merkel described the “horror and shock” she felt at the camp's atrocities. “We, the Germans,” she said, “are faced with the agonizing question how and why – how could this happen? How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe and the world?”
However, Ms Merkel suggested no answer to the question. Rather, she seemed content with the idea that the act of remembrance, in itself, somehow guards against the repetition of evil.
“[L]et me emphasize, we Germans see it as part of our country's raison d'être to keep the everlasting memory alive of the break with civilization that was the Shoah. Only in this way will we be able to shape our future.”
Elie Weisel saw a similar value in remembering the Holocaust, but his outlook was darker. Referring to his father, who died at Buchenwald, he said, “I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I will speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will [but]…. What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure …. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”
In his remarks, Obama also repeated the refrain of remembrance. He referred to a great uncle who had been among the American forces that liberated Buchenwald, and “returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months.”
Obama spoke of Eisenhower’s intuitive understanding that people would be reluctant to confront the horror of what had occurred. “[T]hat’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp. He invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness and ordered photographs and films to be made. And he insisted on viewing every corner of these camps so that -- and I quote -- he could ‘be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.’”
Obama went on to speak of the good that occurred at Buchenwald, the risks prisoners took and the sacrifices they made for each other. Then he said something else.
What he said was not picked up in the press or replayed on the nightly news or even taken out of context and debated to death by the talking heads on cable. It was one unelaborated sentence. But when I heard it, I was thunderstruck. Because in a few short words, he identified the REAL value of remembering the Holocaust. He said: “[J]ust as we identify with the victims, it is also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."
In other words, Obama was suggesting that the lesson of the Holocaust is not the “human capacity for evil” in some abstract sense. Rather, it is for us to reflect upon our OWN capacity for evil. Until we have done that, until we have seen and understood the source of evil within ourselves, that evil will be repeated.
* * *
The 1920s was a time of prosperity in the United States, but it was not so in Germany. Germany had lost World War I and, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been forced to accept responsibility “for all loss and damage” suffered by the allies. As a result, it was required to pay reparations. Initially, these were set at 269 billion gold marks, or about $382 billion in current dollars, and it was demanded that this sum be paid in annual installments over about 60 years, in gold. Within a year, the mark declined from 60 to the dollar to 8000 to the dollar, as the government printed money in an attempt to pay the debt. In a period of 6 months, between June and December, 1923, the German cost of living increased 1600%.
Despite what it said in the Versailles Treaty, the German people never accepted responsibility for World War I. In fact, many weren’t even convinced they had lost it. Since they didn’t feel they were at fault for their situation, when the hyperinflation came, they needed someone to blame. This turned out to be the government, the bankers, and the speculators. Many in the latter two groups were Jews.
Historically, the Jews had been barred from owning land in Europe, so they tended to engage in commerce and hold their wealth in precious gems and gold. (Reflected in common Jewish names like Gold, Silver, Pearl, Diamond, Ruby and various offshoots). At the same time, Christians were barred by the Church from lending money at interest. This combination of factors lead to the rise of Jews in the banking sector. Fortunately – or perhaps ultimately, as it turned out, unfortunately – gold and jewels don’t lose value in a hyperinflationary environment, while government bonds do. As a result, the German hyperinflation in the 1920s made the Jews wealthier than ever relative to the general population. This situation fueled the rise of anti-Semitism, and contributed to the rise of its chief proponent, Adolph Hitler. By the time of the German defeat in 1945, six million Jews, or about 72% of the Jewish population, had been murdered.
Soviet forces were the first to liberate a major Nazi death camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in July 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the Bellzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.
In January, 1945, the Soviets liberated largest camp of all -- Auschwitz. The Nazis had previously forced the majority of the prisoners to march away from the advancing Soviet troops (the so-called “death marches”), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. But there was abundant evidence of mass murder. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found hundreds of thousands of men’s suits, more than 800,000 women’s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.
Nevertheless, the discovery of these horrors did not end anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews occurred in Eastern Europe through the 1940s and 1950s. A pogrom organized by the secret police in Kielce, Poland in 1946, resulted in the death of 42 Jews and the injury of 40 others out of a population of 200. The perpetrators of the attack were Catholics, who had, themselves, been persecuted by the Nazis.
Soviet anti-Semitism is well documented, even though the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and even though the Soviets suffered greater casualties than any other nation in the war – 23 million people, including over 11 million civilians.
Did these people learn anything at all?
The Zionist movement, seeking “to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” got started in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans, who were less than enthusiastic about a group of European Jews making trouble among the local Arabs.
During World War I, The British needed Jewish financial support in their fight against the Germans. This lead to the adoption of a declaration stating that the British Government “views with favor the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.” The Balfour Declaration, as it was called, was formally endorsed by the League of Nations after the end of the war, but nothing was done to implement it.
As Jews drifted into Palestine over the next several decades, they were met with a series of riots among local Arabs. The British, who had been given the mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations, saw their financial interests more closely allied with the Arabs, as oil was developed in the region. Finding the Balfour Declaration an inconvenience, the British ignored it. Jewish immigration to Palestine was sharply curtailed under the so-called 1939 White Paper, and in March, 1940, the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of region.
After the end of the second World War, some suggested that British restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine had contributed to the loss of life in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the British continued to thwart it, imprisoning attempted immigrants at prison camps on the Island of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, several groups of Jews who had made it to Palestine formed armed militias. Fed up with British intrigue and intransigence, they undertook a program of armed resistance. This took the form of kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings – the most infamous of which occurred in 1946, when the Irgun bombed British Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 92 people died, most of them civilians.
Many of the Jewish terrorists – it is hard to see why the term doe not apply – were victims of Nazi atrocities. A great majority of these men had relatives who died in the camps; some were survivors themselves.
What had these people learned?
Ultimately, it was not Jewish terrorism that lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but the negative publicity generated by the heavy-handed British attempts to halt Jewish migration. In the U.S., this publicity led to a Congressional delay in granting Britain desperately needed economic aid. Caught between the U.S. Congress and its Arab allies, which continued to oppose a Jewish homeland, Britain finally decided the best course was to wash its hands of the issue and refer it for resolution to the United Nations.
In November, 1947 a General Assembly resolution called for the evacuation of the British and the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the creation of an Israeli State was declared.
But the creation of an ethnically-defined state required that those who were not of that ethnicity be removed.
War between Palestinian Arabs and Jews broke out as soon as the General Assembly resolution was passed. Following declaration of the Israeli state, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces to participate in the invasion. But at the same time, Jews were streaming into Palestine in increasing numbers from the battlefields of Europe. Ultimately, the tide turned and the Arab forces were defeated. In March 1949, a permanent cease fire went into effect and two months later, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations.
By that time, over 700,000 Palestinians had moved out of Israeli-controlled territory according to United Nations statistics. How many left voluntarily and how many were forcibly evicted will never be known.
The Jews did not start the 1948 war with the Arabs, but they were not forgiving victors.
“Never Again” has become something of a rallying cry for many Jews since the Holocaust. Indeed, it is the official slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the Jews will never again tolerate behavior among themselves that is reminiscent of the Nazis? Not at all. Rather – as explained on the JDL website – “Never Again means first and foremost that Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to our deaths. … JDL upholds … all necessary means – strength, force and even violence as a last resort.” So, in other words, the learned is not the necessity of treating other people with humanity, but the necessity of fighting against others people’s inhumanity.
This is not much of a lesson.
Since the declaration of the State of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs have fought four major wars and have lived in a constant cycle of attack, reprisal and belligerence.
This is not to blame the Jews. In human affairs, their behavior has been the rule, not the exception. What the Israelis have done is no different from what the Pasestinians have done. What Bin Laden has done is no different from what George Bush has done and none of it is different from what the Nazis have done.
Rather than taking responsibility for what life has brought to them, rather than trying to deal with life constructively, all of them took the easy course. They took the course that requires no introspection, no self-analysis, and no humility. They saw themselves as victims and others as oppressors. They saw themselves as right and others as wrong. Rather than understanding their own capacity for evil, they externalized that evil and projected it onto someone else.
This is the fundamental mechanism of evil. This is how evil reproduces itself.
In her remarks, Chancellor Merkel described the “horror and shock” she felt at the camp's atrocities. “We, the Germans,” she said, “are faced with the agonizing question how and why – how could this happen? How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe and the world?”
However, Ms Merkel suggested no answer to the question. Rather, she seemed content with the idea that the act of remembrance, in itself, somehow guards against the repetition of evil.
“[L]et me emphasize, we Germans see it as part of our country's raison d'être to keep the everlasting memory alive of the break with civilization that was the Shoah. Only in this way will we be able to shape our future.”
Elie Weisel saw a similar value in remembering the Holocaust, but his outlook was darker. Referring to his father, who died at Buchenwald, he said, “I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I will speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will [but]…. What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure …. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”
In his remarks, Obama also repeated the refrain of remembrance. He referred to a great uncle who had been among the American forces that liberated Buchenwald, and “returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months.”
Obama spoke of Eisenhower’s intuitive understanding that people would be reluctant to confront the horror of what had occurred. “[T]hat’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp. He invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness and ordered photographs and films to be made. And he insisted on viewing every corner of these camps so that -- and I quote -- he could ‘be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.’”
Obama went on to speak of the good that occurred at Buchenwald, the risks prisoners took and the sacrifices they made for each other. Then he said something else.
What he said was not picked up in the press or replayed on the nightly news or even taken out of context and debated to death by the talking heads on cable. It was one unelaborated sentence. But when I heard it, I was thunderstruck. Because in a few short words, he identified the REAL value of remembering the Holocaust. He said: “[J]ust as we identify with the victims, it is also important for us, I think, to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human as well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves."
In other words, Obama was suggesting that the lesson of the Holocaust is not the “human capacity for evil” in some abstract sense. Rather, it is for us to reflect upon our OWN capacity for evil. Until we have done that, until we have seen and understood the source of evil within ourselves, that evil will be repeated.
* * *
The 1920s was a time of prosperity in the United States, but it was not so in Germany. Germany had lost World War I and, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been forced to accept responsibility “for all loss and damage” suffered by the allies. As a result, it was required to pay reparations. Initially, these were set at 269 billion gold marks, or about $382 billion in current dollars, and it was demanded that this sum be paid in annual installments over about 60 years, in gold. Within a year, the mark declined from 60 to the dollar to 8000 to the dollar, as the government printed money in an attempt to pay the debt. In a period of 6 months, between June and December, 1923, the German cost of living increased 1600%.
Despite what it said in the Versailles Treaty, the German people never accepted responsibility for World War I. In fact, many weren’t even convinced they had lost it. Since they didn’t feel they were at fault for their situation, when the hyperinflation came, they needed someone to blame. This turned out to be the government, the bankers, and the speculators. Many in the latter two groups were Jews.
Historically, the Jews had been barred from owning land in Europe, so they tended to engage in commerce and hold their wealth in precious gems and gold. (Reflected in common Jewish names like Gold, Silver, Pearl, Diamond, Ruby and various offshoots). At the same time, Christians were barred by the Church from lending money at interest. This combination of factors lead to the rise of Jews in the banking sector. Fortunately – or perhaps ultimately, as it turned out, unfortunately – gold and jewels don’t lose value in a hyperinflationary environment, while government bonds do. As a result, the German hyperinflation in the 1920s made the Jews wealthier than ever relative to the general population. This situation fueled the rise of anti-Semitism, and contributed to the rise of its chief proponent, Adolph Hitler. By the time of the German defeat in 1945, six million Jews, or about 72% of the Jewish population, had been murdered.
Soviet forces were the first to liberate a major Nazi death camp, reaching Majdanek, Poland, in July 1944. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the Bellzec, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.
In January, 1945, the Soviets liberated largest camp of all -- Auschwitz. The Nazis had previously forced the majority of the prisoners to march away from the advancing Soviet troops (the so-called “death marches”), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. But there was abundant evidence of mass murder. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found hundreds of thousands of men’s suits, more than 800,000 women’s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.
Nevertheless, the discovery of these horrors did not end anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews occurred in Eastern Europe through the 1940s and 1950s. A pogrom organized by the secret police in Kielce, Poland in 1946, resulted in the death of 42 Jews and the injury of 40 others out of a population of 200. The perpetrators of the attack were Catholics, who had, themselves, been persecuted by the Nazis.
Soviet anti-Semitism is well documented, even though the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and even though the Soviets suffered greater casualties than any other nation in the war – 23 million people, including over 11 million civilians.
Did these people learn anything at all?
The Zionist movement, seeking “to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” got started in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At the time, Palestine was ruled by the Ottomans, who were less than enthusiastic about a group of European Jews making trouble among the local Arabs.
During World War I, The British needed Jewish financial support in their fight against the Germans. This lead to the adoption of a declaration stating that the British Government “views with favor the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.” The Balfour Declaration, as it was called, was formally endorsed by the League of Nations after the end of the war, but nothing was done to implement it.
As Jews drifted into Palestine over the next several decades, they were met with a series of riots among local Arabs. The British, who had been given the mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations, saw their financial interests more closely allied with the Arabs, as oil was developed in the region. Finding the Balfour Declaration an inconvenience, the British ignored it. Jewish immigration to Palestine was sharply curtailed under the so-called 1939 White Paper, and in March, 1940, the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of region.
After the end of the second World War, some suggested that British restrictions on Jewish migration to Palestine had contributed to the loss of life in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the British continued to thwart it, imprisoning attempted immigrants at prison camps on the Island of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, several groups of Jews who had made it to Palestine formed armed militias. Fed up with British intrigue and intransigence, they undertook a program of armed resistance. This took the form of kidnappings, acts of sabotage and bombings – the most infamous of which occurred in 1946, when the Irgun bombed British Headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 92 people died, most of them civilians.
Many of the Jewish terrorists – it is hard to see why the term doe not apply – were victims of Nazi atrocities. A great majority of these men had relatives who died in the camps; some were survivors themselves.
What had these people learned?
Ultimately, it was not Jewish terrorism that lead to the creation of a Jewish homeland, but the negative publicity generated by the heavy-handed British attempts to halt Jewish migration. In the U.S., this publicity led to a Congressional delay in granting Britain desperately needed economic aid. Caught between the U.S. Congress and its Arab allies, which continued to oppose a Jewish homeland, Britain finally decided the best course was to wash its hands of the issue and refer it for resolution to the United Nations.
In November, 1947 a General Assembly resolution called for the evacuation of the British and the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left Haifa, and the creation of an Israeli State was declared.
But the creation of an ethnically-defined state required that those who were not of that ethnicity be removed.
War between Palestinian Arabs and Jews broke out as soon as the General Assembly resolution was passed. Following declaration of the Israeli state, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war. Saudi-Arabia and Sudan also sent forces to participate in the invasion. But at the same time, Jews were streaming into Palestine in increasing numbers from the battlefields of Europe. Ultimately, the tide turned and the Arab forces were defeated. In March 1949, a permanent cease fire went into effect and two months later, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations.
By that time, over 700,000 Palestinians had moved out of Israeli-controlled territory according to United Nations statistics. How many left voluntarily and how many were forcibly evicted will never be known.
The Jews did not start the 1948 war with the Arabs, but they were not forgiving victors.
“Never Again” has become something of a rallying cry for many Jews since the Holocaust. Indeed, it is the official slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the Jews will never again tolerate behavior among themselves that is reminiscent of the Nazis? Not at all. Rather – as explained on the JDL website – “Never Again means first and foremost that Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to our deaths. … JDL upholds … all necessary means – strength, force and even violence as a last resort.” So, in other words, the learned is not the necessity of treating other people with humanity, but the necessity of fighting against others people’s inhumanity.
This is not much of a lesson.
Since the declaration of the State of Israel, the Jews and the Arabs have fought four major wars and have lived in a constant cycle of attack, reprisal and belligerence.
This is not to blame the Jews. In human affairs, their behavior has been the rule, not the exception. What the Israelis have done is no different from what the Pasestinians have done. What Bin Laden has done is no different from what George Bush has done and none of it is different from what the Nazis have done.
Rather than taking responsibility for what life has brought to them, rather than trying to deal with life constructively, all of them took the easy course. They took the course that requires no introspection, no self-analysis, and no humility. They saw themselves as victims and others as oppressors. They saw themselves as right and others as wrong. Rather than understanding their own capacity for evil, they externalized that evil and projected it onto someone else.
This is the fundamental mechanism of evil. This is how evil reproduces itself.
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