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Old 06-06-2009, 10:08 AM
 
4,511 posts, read 7,508,584 times
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please, please call Christo, immediately!! get all pics and posts of this one forever packed up in plastic!

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Old 06-06-2009, 10:33 AM
 
Location: Aloverton
6,560 posts, read 14,427,731 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GloryB View Post
I think it is always important to accept that people are made up of many layers. To only see the evil outer layer is not the same as recognizing under all that is a real person who had a life and feelings. No one is 100% bad (or good for that matter). It is when the bad takes precedence over the good that a person is capable of doing horrible things out of screwed up perspective.

In determining what went so terribly wrong....perhaps it will help us identify them in the future long before it gets out of hand.
I agree on the second part, but in the first I see a pervasive problem.

There are truly such things as ultimate good and ultimate evil out there. There are also a lot of shades of grey. So long as we do not give in to the pervasive need to see everything in a shade of grey, and scrabble for some redeeming virtue to assign to ultimate evil, or for that matter scrabble about to find some flaw in ultimate good, we are still capable of recognizing good and evil. Those who cannot see ultimate good or evil, I call the 'Mother Teresa was grumpy in the morning and Hitler liked Blondi' people.

My argument against them is simple: some evils are so evil and some goods are so good that they so dwarf any inherent opposition as to make that opposition utterly meaningless and unworthy of discussion except as a clinical personality study. For example, when you cause as much death and suffering of innocents as Hitler, it no longer mitigates anything that you're at least polite to women guests at Berchtesgaden. Likewise, when you devote your life and resources to helping others, becoming a virtual saint before you die, it no longer mitigates your goodness that you are rude once in awhile or that you leave cheesy tips. Your vast goodness outweighs any minor flaws.

Because it's inconvenient to refer to 99.99999999999% evil or good, we call those situations 100% evil or good. And that's quite reasonable. If we have no absolute barometer for evil and good then we can't know either when we see them.
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Old 06-09-2009, 11:04 AM
 
13,134 posts, read 40,564,287 times
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Originally Posted by Canerican View Post
I find these photos don't add much to what we already knew, but they are interesting the nonetheless.
Well stated Canerican as that was my take on them. I guess do to my Gramps always recanting his experiences to me when i was a kid in the 70's about when he was fighting in Patton's 3rd Army in 1944/1945 and then stationed there after the war has always made me infactuated with Germany during WW2 and especially with the Wehrmacht and High Command.
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Old 06-09-2009, 12:21 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,978,939 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Colossus_Antonis View Post
It's time to put him in historical perspective and not get bogged down by the emotional/social trend of the 20th/21st century.

If we are to draw a parallel between the big heads in history - alexander, the Caesars, Ghengis Khan, Xerxes etc.,
Oh, puleeze! There was a considerable leap in the guiding philosophical underpinning of human society in the period between the 13th Century (Khan) and Adolph Hilter, particularly in Western Europe. To not judge Hilter through 20th century lens is the height of ridiculousness. If Hilter wasn't 100% evil then whatever small percentage between a perfect 100% and where Hilter would lie on the scale is statistically insignificant. He was a sociopath of the highest order.
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Old 06-09-2009, 12:43 PM
 
Location: Aloverton
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto View Post
Oh, puleeze! There was a considerable leap in the guiding philosophical underpinning of human society in the period between the 13th Century (Khan) and Adolph Hilter, particularly in Western Europe. To not judge Hilter through 20th century lens is the height of ridiculousness. If Hilter wasn't 100% evil then whatever small percentage between a perfect 100% and where Hilter would lie on the scale is statistically insignificant. He was a sociopath of the highest order.
If Hitler wasn't 100% evil, then I shudder to think what it takes to qualify for the label. Deliberate ethnocide and genocide, and fairly successful at the latter.
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Old 06-09-2009, 01:05 PM
 
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There we go again...
Evil..Goodness...
100% evil....
Maniqueism...
Things aren't black and white.
Hitler was a product of his society.
He was just a very deranged man used by others that are still making money.
He was so crazy, that when those people that put him in power wanted to put him back in a box, they couldn't because Hitler was a madman, but not idiot.
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Old 06-09-2009, 01:12 PM
 
1,257 posts, read 3,427,762 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto View Post
Oh, puleeze! There was a considerable leap in the guiding philosophical underpinning of human society in the period between the 13th Century (Khan) and Adolph Hilter, particularly in Western Europe. To not judge Hilter through 20th century lens is the height of ridiculousness. If Hilter wasn't 100% evil then whatever small percentage between a perfect 100% and where Hilter would lie on the scale is statistically insignificant. He was a sociopath of the highest order.
---------

You can't judge Hitler through 20th century lenses BECAUSE he was MEDIEVAL.

NAZISM was Medieval, that's why they lost the war.

The great phylosophical bodies of Western European Thought, Humanism, Enciclopedism, Rationalism, Romantiscism were useful for pyres.

Just like Gengis Khan...
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Old 06-09-2009, 01:21 PM
 
Location: Aloverton
6,560 posts, read 14,427,731 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Leovigildo View Post
---------

You can't judge Hitler through 20th century lenses BECAUSE he was MEDIEVAL.

NAZISM was Medieval, that's why they lost the war.

The great phylosophical bodies of Western European Thought, Humanism, Enciclopedism, Rationalism, Romantiscism were useful for pyres.

Just like Gengis Khan...
This is like having one's brain waterboarded. To what must I confess in order to end the 'rendition'?
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Old 06-09-2009, 04:42 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,978,939 times
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Originally Posted by j_k_k View Post
This is like having one's brain waterboarded. To what must I confess in order to end the 'rendition'?
Some things just don't deserve a response.
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Old 06-10-2009, 12:12 AM
 
Location: West Los Angeles and Rancho Palos Verdes
13,580 posts, read 15,585,521 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by j_k_k View Post
If Hitler wasn't 100% evil, then I shudder to think what it takes to qualify for the label. Deliberate ethnocide and genocide, and fairly successful at the latter.
Deliberate ethnocide and genocide you say? Like Winston Churchill contemplated?

"I quite agree that it may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred per cent."

Winston Churchill's Secret Poison Gas Memo

Sounds kind of evil to me...sure we've the moral high ground?
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