no thyme to relax
Greetings! I haven't had a computer since I got home 5 days ago. I haven't read LJ yet. I hope nothing bad has happened. All I can do is use this sluggish 15-minute library terminal, so I will just post an excerpt from a book I have been reading, The Holocaust in American Life by Peter Novick. Remember when I was sad about this as a teenager?
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It's a truism -- Philosophy 101 -- that we nver directly encounter events, only representations of events, which offer different versions of events. The more highly charged the event, the more evocative it is, the greater the incentive to become invested in different versions of it. An illustration. No text from the Holocaust is more often quoted than Martin Niemöller's confession of his moral failure during the 1930s:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist--so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat--so I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew--so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.
Time magazine, Vice President Al Gore, and a speaker at the 1992 Republican Convention follow the example of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in moving Jews from last to first place: "First they came for the Jews." Time, Gore, and the Republican Speaker omitted Communists and Social Democrats; Gore omitted trade unionists as well. All three added Catholics (not on Niemöller's original list). Catholics are also added to the version of the quotation inscribed on the Holocast memorial in Boston, a heavily Catholic city. The U.S. Holocaust Museum preserves the list intact except for prudently omitting Communists. Other versions include homosexuals on Niemöller's list. (The quotation has been invoked for causes ranging from Jewish settlement in the West Bank to freedom of the insurance agency from government regulation.)
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It's a truism -- Philosophy 101 -- that we nver directly encounter events, only representations of events, which offer different versions of events. The more highly charged the event, the more evocative it is, the greater the incentive to become invested in different versions of it. An illustration. No text from the Holocaust is more often quoted than Martin Niemöller's confession of his moral failure during the 1930s:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist--so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat--so I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew--so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.
Time magazine, Vice President Al Gore, and a speaker at the 1992 Republican Convention follow the example of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in moving Jews from last to first place: "First they came for the Jews." Time, Gore, and the Republican Speaker omitted Communists and Social Democrats; Gore omitted trade unionists as well. All three added Catholics (not on Niemöller's original list). Catholics are also added to the version of the quotation inscribed on the Holocast memorial in Boston, a heavily Catholic city. The U.S. Holocaust Museum preserves the list intact except for prudently omitting Communists. Other versions include homosexuals on Niemöller's list. (The quotation has been invoked for causes ranging from Jewish settlement in the West Bank to freedom of the insurance agency from government regulation.)