Nazis and the Nature of Evil

[Madner Kami]

and maybe I do have some negative aspects in common with Hitler and other historical monsters but my point was that those monsters did not have any positive traits in common with normal human beings.

You do realize that, in order to disprove your absolutely silly point, all one has to do is, find one trait about "Hitler and other historical monsters" that is a good thing about them?

Hitler was an animal lover. Did you know, that he personally comitted a number of people into concentration camps, who broke german animal welfare laws? The vast majority of the Nazi elite were environmentalists, animal lovers and conservationists as well, for example Heinrich Himmler of all people, wanted to outlaw hunting.

Did you know that all that Stalin left behind when he died, were a couple of uniforms and old boots, plus some money gained from the selling of his publications? Probably the least corrupt politician, but definitly the least self-enriching dictator in the entire history of humanity.

Do you want me to go on?

[Dragon Ball Fan]

and maybe I do have some negative aspects in common with Hitler and other historical monsters but my point was that those monsters did not have any positive traits in common with normal human beings.

You do realize that, in order to disprove your absolutely silly point, all one has to do is, find one trait about "Hitler and other historical monsters" that is a good thing about them?

Hitler was an animal lover. Did you know, that he personally comitted a number of people into concentration camps, who broke german animal welfare laws? The vast majority of the Nazi elite were environmentalists, animal lovers and conservationists as well, for example Heinrich Himmler of all people, wanted to outlaw hunting.

Did you know that all that Stalin left behind when he died, were a couple of uniforms and old boots, plus some money gained from the selling of his publications? Probably the least corrupt politician, but definitly the least self-enriching dictator in the entire history of humanity.

Do you want me to go on?

I still insist those were acts to make the average citizen of their countries to make them think they wern't all bad.

[Madner Kami]

Ah, I see. So you are going to ignore reality, put your fingers in your ears and sing aloud "LALALALALALA".

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Ah, I see. So you are going to ignore reality, put your fingers in your ears and sing aloud "LALALALALALA".

how do you know he wasn't doing all that for altimeter motives? he gave his workers cruises just to keep them loyal and for no other reason, after all.

[TGLS]

Ah, I see. So you are going to ignore reality, put your fingers in your ears and sing aloud "LALALALALALA".

how do you know he wasn't doing all that for altimeter motives? he gave his workers cruises just to keep them loyal and for no other reason, after all.

How do you know that moral people actually exist, and not just doing everything to signal virtue and gain the benefits thereof?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Ah, I see. So you are going to ignore reality, put your fingers in your ears and sing aloud "LALALALALALA".

how do you know he wasn't doing all that for altimeter motives? he gave his workers cruises just to keep them loyal and for no other reason, after all.

How do you know that moral people actually exist, and not just doing everything to signal virtue and gain the benefits thereof?

Morality isn't really an all or nothing thing. It's a learned construct that people exhibit.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Ah, I see. So you are going to ignore reality, put your fingers in your ears and sing aloud "LALALALALALA".

how do you know he wasn't doing all that for altimeter motives? he gave his workers cruises just to keep them loyal and for no other reason, after all.

How do you know that moral people actually exist, and not just doing everything to signal virtue and gain the benefits thereof?

Morality isn't really an all or nothing thing. It's a learned construct that people exhibit.

from my experience, it is more or less, all or nothing. again, I can see certain circumstances that would drive someone to immoral behavior but outright genocide can only be done by a psychopath. and that's another thing, I am not really using the clinical term but the colloquial team.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think there's really a clinical distinction of it. To say that someone is completely immoral would just mean that they're incapable of doing anything because it's good.

And what's "your experience" supposed to have to do with outright genocide?

[Madner Kami]

from my experience, it is more or less, all or nothing. again, I can see certain circumstances that would drive someone to immoral behavior but outright genocide can only be done by a psychopath. and that's another thing, I am not really using the clinical term but the colloquial team.

Your experience is clearly very limited. All it takes to make a perfectly reasonable and nice person into a murderer, is giving them a good enough reason. And this has nothing to do with psychopathy or mental illness, it's a question of conviction and sometimes upbringing. I'm willing to bet, that if I would send you back in time to before Hitler's rise to power, you'd happily declare that you'd murder him. Funnily enough, almost everyone would say so without even considering that they'd become a murderer then, who killed someone who has not done anything wrong so far. You need to point that out to people in the first place, which is usually done by creating the baby-condition ("Would you kill baby Hitler?"), as if it would make any difference whether you kill an (as of yet) innocent man or an innocent baby. That most people actually need that distinction to even consider their potential murder wrong, should give you a clear point about how wrong your assumption is.

As for Hitler, to our knowledge, he never killed a single person in his life. He only ever ordered killings or signed death warrants, but not once in his life did he fire a gun at someone or put the torch to a living human being. Ever. That guy appears to me as a complete wuss and a very empathetic person by nature and the only thing that made him what he was, was his fanatic love of his twisted image of Germany and the German People. This is what allowed him to become the monster he ended up being.

As for Stalin, he was a brutal, uncompromising, power-hungry shitstain, but he was not born that way. Those were traits he learned due to the brutal opression of the tsarist regime and as far as we can tell, he absolutely believed in communism. But he also believed that he was the only one who could deliver it and he was willing to "walk over corpses" (as we say in Germany, closest translation in spirit is "to stop for nothing", afaik) in order to achieve a goal he considered truely transcendant. He was willing to do a thousand wrongs, to achieve the one single thing he considered the ultimate good.

Looks familiar? For good reason, because it's the same story over and over again, across all of history and it nicely returns to my first paragraph. The difference between a decent person and a monster is a goal the decent person considers worth killing for.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

from my experience, it is more or less, all or nothing. again, I can see certain circumstances that would drive someone to immoral behavior but outright genocide can only be done by a psychopath. and that's another thing, I am not really using the clinical term but the colloquial team.

Your experience is clearly very limited. All it takes to make a perfectly reasonable and nice person into a murderer, is giving them a good enough reason. And this has nothing to do with psychopathy or mental illness, it's a question of conviction and sometimes upbringing. I'm willing to bet, that if I would send you back in time to before Hitler's rise to power, you'd happily declare that you'd murder him. Funnily enough, almost everyone would say so without even considering that they'd become a murderer then, who killed someone who has not done anything wrong so far. You need to point that out to people in the first place, which is usually done by creating the baby-condition ("Would you kill baby Hitler?"), as if it would make any difference whether you kill an (as of yet) innocent man or an innocent baby. That most people actually need that distinction to even consider their potential murder wrong, should give you a clear point about how wrong your assumption is.

As for Hitler, to our knowledge, he never killed a single person in his life. He only ever ordered killings or signed death warrants, but not once in his life did he fire a gun at someone or put the torch to a living human being. Ever. That guy appears to me as a complete wuss and a very empathetic person by nature and the only thing that made him what he was, was his fanatic love of his twisted image of Germany and the German People. This is what allowed him to become the monster he ended up being.

As for Stalin, he was a brutal, uncompromising, power-hungry shitstain, but he was not born that way. Those were traits he learned due to the brutal opression of the tsarist regime and as far as we can tell, he absolutely believed in communism. But he also believed that he was the only one who could deliver it and he was willing to "walk over corpses" (as we say in Germany, closest translation in spirit is "to stop for nothing", afaik) in order to achieve a goal he considered truely transcendant. He was willing to do a thousand wrongs, to achieve the one single thing he considered the ultimate good.

Looks familiar? For good reason, because it's the same story over and over again, across all of history and it nicely returns to my first paragraph. The difference between a decent person and a monster is a goal the decent person considers worth killing for.

the example in your first paragraph doesn't work, in that scenario, I would know for a fact that Hitler would grow up to be a mass murderer, that was not the case with anyone the Nazis killed. and no, there is absolutely no circumstances were I could think think a cause is worth killing a whole group of people for. if the Jewish people really did ruin Germany, maybe I could comprehend his actions but he only committed genocide against them simply because he didn't like them and made the average citizen think they ruined the country to go along with it.

and I will say this again, I admit I took this hypothetical from Doctor Who but if Hitler's scientists invented a biological weapon that killed on contact and would wipe out all life on Earth, do you really thing he wouldn't use it? after all, Hitler wanted power and what is a greater power for one to have then the power to end all life?