Wisdom Is Where You Find It

You can find wisdom in the most unlikely of places, like for instance the testimony of Hermann Goering in an interview before he committed suicide at Neuremberg in 1946. How on earth can a drug addled Nazi general and obvious sociopath have something wise to impart? Because such a man truly understands the nature of war, that's how.

"Herman Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials:

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Full context:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp"

And history repeats itself...

p.s. There will be some who will totally discount the above, simply because of who it came from. Just realize that we tend to divide pivotal figures in history into either the "good" or "evil" camp as a matter of course, and that this is usually a mistake. My three favorite examples of this phenomenon are Dr. Martin Luther King, Mohandes Ghandi, and Mother Teresa. All three are lauded figures of "good" in 20th century history, but take the tiniest effort at understanding their history and you realize they were simply people that did what their convictions bid of them, and weren't always good or noble in the literal sense.

Dr. King did indeed spearhead the Civil Rights Movement in America, and he used his christian pulpit as a rallying point. But those who know the history of the movement also know his most influential lieutenants were secular atheists, because southern baptists didn't want anything to do with the boat he was rocking. After his death they all magically stepped in and claimed credit of course. His extramarital infidelity is also a matter of history, and well documented, but this sort of thing gets swept under the rug. These truths in no way detract from the good that he did, but they do show that Dr. King was merely a man who was as fallible as the next guy. Incidentally he got his ideas of non-violent protest not from christianity, but from Ghandi.

Mohandes Ghandi spearheaded India's non-violent protest against british colonial rule of India. He however did not get his ideas of non-violent protest from Hinduism but from Jianism, an obscure pacifist religious sect located in northern India. He was also a racist who viewed africans as less than human. This is well documented during his early days as a news reporter in northern africa. He also had weird ideas about chastity and health, which led to his lifelong habits of sleeping with young girls to tempt himself (as part of his interpretation of the Yoga doctrine), and his obsessions with enema's. So yeah, Ghandi was a freaking nutter, but a nutter who in the context of his day did good things for his fellow Indians.

Mother Teresa. Sigh... There's little good I can say about her. Though she won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Calcutta, and spent her whole life raising money for the Catholic Church, one must remember that none of the money she raised for the church was ever spent in her hospices. Hospices that lacked even the basics in medical care. She can be lauded for diligently spreading the word of peace and love over the course of her lifetime, but in practice she did almost nothing for either peace or love other than talk about it. In the end she was just a silly woman with good intentions who let her religious precepts hold her back from anything remotely resembling true greatness.

When one takes away the distorting lens of history, and realizes that historical figures and historical moments cannot easily be condensed into a few paragraphs for a classroom discussion, one realizes that it is all too easy to stop looking at historical figures as simply people.

When you do realize that even the best people in history were just as flawed as you or I, you can also realize that perhaps even the worst people in history were just as flawed. And this is what makes the above quote from a monster like Hermann Goering matter.