posted by jenni on August 11th, 2012 at 11:42AM
I think we all start off relatively similar as infants, then, as Adorno says, something happens to traumatize or break people down and allows evil or hatred to be a dominating emotion that destroys all logical thought. As he states again, this is what we need to figure out, what has happened to these individuals and how can we help them. The Nazis probably loved their own partners and children very much. They were just taught that certain people are not worthy of love, which sadly still happens today.
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posted by dennisn on August 11th, 2012 at 4:21PM
Yep. One thing that certainly happens, is kids aren't taught to value their own reasoning. What stopped me from becoming an atheist earlier was not so much the logical arguments, but the social pressures I experienced to conform. Blind conformity to unreasonable rules is the norm in child-rearing even today. "Because I said so." In fact, Statism is a perfect example of this mentality -- a blind belief in unreasonable things like "the social contract" -- things which make little logical sense, but are propped up almost entirely by social pressure. The denigration of reason.
Without respect for reason, anything is possible. Like an SS officer kissing his kids good bye as he goes to work, murdering his kid's friends. Compartmentalization. Cognitive dissonance. |
