Nice reply, thanks. Yes, as Charlie Chaplin said, "life is a tragedy in closeup, a comedy in longshot." It really is just all tragic in some ways.
But yeah, that was the point I was making about the youth on the U-boat.
Although the Hilter thing I'm not so sure of. I'm not by any means trying to excuse him...just understand him. And, yes, I do think we can understand evil somewhat even if to say it was Joker-style done for the sake of mayhem and chaos. Evil is a lot like art in that way. The opposite really--destruction rather than creation.
What I'm saying is that even as captain of the Nazi machine, there was method in the madness that makes him no less evil, but fully human. Humanity can be evil sometimes--often--even if I believe we lean towards good most of the time. In that way it makes evil--as has been pointed out before by people far smarter than me--quite boring and weak. It's the common low road and to understand, say, the Holocaust is to try to understand our very worst qualities by knowing that they are also pathetically easy to channel.
Light and dark is a good metaphor for that reason, right? It takes spark and energy to create light. Darkness thrives in the absence of that.
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Date: 2008-12-31 10:40 pm (UTC)From:But yeah, that was the point I was making about the youth on the U-boat.
Although the Hilter thing I'm not so sure of. I'm not by any means trying to excuse him...just understand him. And, yes, I do think we can understand evil somewhat even if to say it was Joker-style done for the sake of mayhem and chaos. Evil is a lot like art in that way. The opposite really--destruction rather than creation.
What I'm saying is that even as captain of the Nazi machine, there was method in the madness that makes him no less evil, but fully human. Humanity can be evil sometimes--often--even if I believe we lean towards good most of the time. In that way it makes evil--as has been pointed out before by people far smarter than me--quite boring and weak. It's the common low road and to understand, say, the Holocaust is to try to understand our very worst qualities by knowing that they are also pathetically easy to channel.
Light and dark is a good metaphor for that reason, right? It takes spark and energy to create light. Darkness thrives in the absence of that.