[Xmca-l] Re: Hitler's World by T. Snyder

[David Preiss]

Dear colleagues,

I am sorry. I can't follow your thoughts. I just think that the essay is
informative and worth reading. I liked two ideas of the essay:

-The brute notion of nature adopted by Hitler, a strange mix of
pseudo-darwinism and, maybe, pseudo-romanticism? In some way it is a
naturalisation of culture as well.

-The paradoxical relationship Hitler established with science (or
technology) and how he understood the relationship between science and
nature. Technology was part and parcel of nature, ethical thinking not.

It is shocking how such strange blend of ideas could be used to rationalise
the extermination of the family of my grandparents and be adopted by such a
large amount of presumed civilised and educated people to support the
criminals that took over Germany 80 years ago.

When we see what is going on in Syria and Iraq these days, one wonders what
is the strange combination of ideas driving human beings to massacre each
other in a genocidal way again and how those ideas are not adequately
challenged by all of those that witness the events.

David





On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 1:04 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> This thread is enough to make a Buddhist out of one.
>
> With Peekaboo we’re back to Annalisa’s video of the child and the baby
> gorilla at the zoo playing peekaboo. I googled “peekaboo” and found that it
> “...is thought by developmental psychologists <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_psychology> to demonstrate an
> infant's inability to understand object permanence <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence>.” Am I wrong, or isn’t
> Heisenberg showing us that it’s impossible to prove such permanence?
> There’s no there there. As well, the “God particle” is no particle at all.
> It’s a field. Then there’s the closing of each of Mike’s posts from Boesch:
> "It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> object that creates history.”
>
> Thanks to Huw for Tolstoy. War and Peace challenges (some) conceptions of
> freedom and human agency. So does the quote from Boesch that ends each of
> Mike’s posts. But doesn’t Snyder point precisely to the failure of Hitler’s
> nihilistic project to come to terms with Boesch’s dilemma? I guess I’m
> pointing here myself to the crises of psychology that are at the heart of
> Vygotsky’s work.
>
> And, aren’t comedy and tragedy both figure and ground to one another? Back
> to Buddhism. Or am I totally off thread and off my rocker?
>
>  Henry
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 16, 2015, at 8:32 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Peekaboo is the difference between comedy and tragedy.
> >
> > Huw
> >
> > On 16 September 2015 at 15:02, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> ​Peekaboo, not Hitler's view of the world, is the topic thread here.
> >>
> >> mike​
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I hovered in uncertainty to reply, but, um…am I missing something?
> >>>
> >>> Honestly, I got more out of watching a toddler play peekaboo with a
> baby
> >>> ape: I certainly didn't feel nausea at the end.
> >>>
> >>> Oh and by the way, happy new year.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> >> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
> >>
>
>