Azarkon

Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust, but he's a scapegoat for society's role in aiding his rise to power (and his anti-Semitism was reflective of German anti-Semitism at the time; in fact, it was a factor in his popular support). As I said in one of my earliest posts, it's never just the leaders who shape national destiny: it's also the people who, actively or passively, consent to his leadership. I know that you'll never accept the idea that a person must take responsibility for something that occured before he was born, but understand that it's neither vindictiveness nor resentment that drives this principle. I don't argue for societal guilt so that I can take revenge on people for what they didn't so, nor to create resentment between two peoples. I argue for societal guilt because it's proven that if a society feels genuinely guilty about what it did, then said society will opt to change for the better, and to ensure that it never occurs again. On the other hand, if a society does NOT feel guilty about its past, then it will regard such a past with nostalgia and seek to return to it, as Germany did after WW1. Such is the reason why criticisms of a country's policies with regards to its past are fully justified: because if a society refuses to acknowledge its past mistakes, then it's bound to repeat them, and the world has a responsibility - to humanity itself - to prevent any society from repeating the mistakes of the past. It's not about individuals and guilt-trips. It's about recognizing what was wrong about a society's past and taking steps to correct them. This responsibility must rise on the shoulders of those who inhabit said society, who must come to understand that their neighbors' bitterness is not something to be dismissed as simple guilt-tripping, but a direct reflection of their society's legacy. If they don't take steps to correcting such a view, no one will, and they'll simply be setting themselves up for another tragedy.

Nuclear war would most certainly not reset the clock unless humans became extinct, in which case eh, the animals that survived might resent us Regardless, the reason Germany is not allowed to celebrate its war heroes is a symbolic one: it's not so much about what would happen directly after the celebration, but what would be signified by such an act (in this case, the resurgence of German militarism), even if that did not come about. Europe has a rather long memory of what Germany did during WW2, so it's not likely to acede to such a symbolic gesture unless it feels that Germany is truly repentent of its wartime society. Whether the Germans resent that or not is up to them - I could easily see Germans resenting people trying to control what they do while being repentent of wartime society, so it's not by any stretch of the imagination a simple matter, and there are valid arguments on both sides. Japan is in a similar situation, except that rewriting history books so that they don't present any indication of Japanese atrocity during the war is blatant idiocy and shows Japan's unrepentence towards militaristic nationalism. Here is a case where the critics of Japan's policy in this matter have the upper hand, in my evaluation. A society is a continuation of its past. Therefore, in accepting responsibility of the present you are accepting responsibility for the past's continuations into the present. A nation's conception of its own history is a perfect example of the past's continuation into the present: the "right" thing to do here is not to glorify the hell out of your past via skewed revisionism but to take responsibility for the truth of that past. If a society cannot even do that, how can it hope to take responsibility for the present? (and from history, very few such societies actually take responsibility for their actions in the present - they scapegoat the "powerful leaders in charge")

If the society today is truly independent of the society of the past then there is no need for collective guilt, because society would then not be guilty of its actions in the past. But it's precisely the continuation of society that necessitates collective guilt, because a society does *not* merely die with its leaders. Like I said, modern society possess many undesirable elements from past societies: discrimination, imperialism, ethocentrism, etc. All of these attributes constitute a continuation of the society that committed atrocities. If we are to remove them, we must first recognize the fact that they exist and that they are undesirable - and the only way we can do this is by admitting that those past societies were wrong and that our society still retains many attributes of those societies. That's the function of societal guilt: to confess that our society was wrong in the past, to realize that our current society is a continuation of the past in many cases, and to correct the mistakes in modern society as a result. This cannot be done without first admitting that our society was wrong in the past, and that implies a sense of guilt; but not a personal one - the guilt is directed squarely at current society insofar as it is a continuation of the past. If modern society is completely free from the past, then it is exonerated. Germans are not allowed to celebrate their war heroes because to do so represents a return to the past, to the system of military glorification, which is seen by many as the fundamental flaw of German society. Their "guilt" should not be seen as the guilt of being German but rather the guilt of having a militaristic society in the past. They are exonerated insofar as their modern society is free of that militaristic past, and there would be no self-loathing here if the Germans were truly repentent of that militaristic society in the past. After all, why would you loath yourself over not celebrating war heroes if you truly, in a genuine way, rejected militarism? Course, I suspect that German self-loathing does not rise from being unable to celebrate war heroes as much as it rises from being in a subject position due to having lost the war and thus forced to do what the victors say. That's a different issue and has little to do with whether societal guilt produces self-loathing. For example, very few people today feel personal guilt over America's history of slavery. However, many feel *collective* guilt over the country's past and that's been the driving force of racial equality and an end to discrimination. If such a guilt disappeared before racial discrimination is completely eliminated, people would more likely assume a position of complacency and thus inaction - stifling civil rights progress in the process. It is by keeping the memories of slavery strong that we are able to make social progress in making sure that it never occurs again. Thus is societal guilt a positive force in the world. Likewise, if I didn't think that modern Japanese society is in danger of reverting to its militaristic past because of how much hasn't changed, I wouldn't be insisting on societal guilt.

If guilt over your society's past is enough to make you resent the victims and loath yourself, then I daresay you're overreacting. Self-loathing is a reaction of personal guilt, not collective guilt. People who feel the pangs of collective guilt loath the society that is the perpetrator and then attempt to change said society. They don't loath themselves, especially if they didn't support the society (which they wouldn't if they feel that it is guilty) in the first place. Of course, to you everything may simply be personal guilt, in which case yeah I can see why you'd react with self-loathing and resentment. But that defeats the whole purpose of collective guilt, as then the target of guilt is not society but people. That's not what I'm arguing for, and never was. Notice that I never said that we should blame a country's people for the actions of their ancestors. Rather, we blame the country's system and those who *choose* to support the system. The former leads to hatred and animosity between people. The latter can lead, if it's allowed to take seed, to a better world.

Can't you see that just by "getting the source of the tax," you're proving the existence of societal guilt? The source of the tax is not the black guy whose house rent you've just raised. It's the government, and a specifically the persons who introduced and approved the tax. But you don't go after them, you go after the people who you perceive as being the "source," which is to say the African American society that supposedly clamored for the tax (regardless of whether said black person was part of this clamoring or not). Clearly, you hold them responsible for a tax that another party imposed. In doing so, you're acknowledging the fact that one group can be held responsible for the direct actions of another. That is essentially what societal guilt is all about: society must be held responsible for the direct actions of its constituents. It really doesn't matter if you think this is double standard or not, whether it's about guilt or innocence. The point is that you acknowledge the existence of agency beyond the direct perpetrators of an action. That's equivalent to my claim, and very contradictory to your own claim which is that every man is only responsible for his own actions. The black guy you're raising the rent on is not responsible for the tax (at least not directly; he might've helped elect the senator who passed the bill, but how is that different from the average joe who helped elect Hitler who massacred the Jews?), but you hold him responsible for the actions of society. Henceforth, my point is proven.

Except that's not the same thing. If society decides to tax for slavery reparations, the authority comes from society. If you decide to tax some black guys house till it evens out, the authority comes from your personal sense of vindictiveness. In the former case, society bears the responsibility for its taxes. In the latter case, you alone are responsible. If we're talking in terms of guilt, this is the difference between collective and personal guilt, and you obviously support it since instead of getting back at those who are taxing you (which you'd do if you really believed that societal guilt does not exist), you're getting back at people who are part of the society you feel you've been wronged by. Thus, by your own example, I proclaim that society must be held accountable for its own actions.

And if said crime was institutional and legal, such as slavery? You throw around the idea of locking people up alot, but what do you do when those who are doing the locking are the criminals - when society itself is the perpetrator? Except you're not innocent. The country you're born in and the priviledges you're surrounded with are built upon the backs of slaves and taken from the hands of Native Americans. Sure, you weren't there, but you're enjoying the benefits of what used to be theirs, and your system continues to discriminate against them. That in and of itself is a crime that transcends any barriers of generation. They want both. Justice for the institutions that brought them low. A fat settlement check that'll compensate for the products of that discrimination. They deserve both. You may laugh at me, but I weep for you. Depends on whether that person committed the crime out of his own volition or because he was coerced into doing so by a system I support. The reason they don't see those acts as mistakes is because they don't feel guilty about them. And the reason other people SUPPORT them is because THEY don't feel guilty about those mistakes either. It's not about making innocent people feel guilty so that sociopaths take over. The only reason those sociopaths can take over is through exploiting the masses' indignity at being blamed for something they, supposedly, did not commit. But of course this is just a common excuse. Regardless, I feel we've reached an impasse. You can keep on believing what you do, but I maintain that society has a responsibility, and that those who support society are, therefore, collective guilty of society's mistakes. No man is an island onto himself, and while you are only responsible for your own actions, there's a certain action called "supporting the government" that places you in direct responsibility of your government's actions.

When one man commits a crime, it is a personal crime. When tens of thousands of men commit the same crime, it is a societal crime. It's okay for us to disagree on individual responsibility vs. societal responsibility, as Steve put it, but I hardly think that your assertion of societal responsibility being a cause for resentment apt. Yes, this has been argued in the past (in fact, the Treaty of Versailles is used as an example of when societal responsibility created deeper resentments), but what one observes in each circumstance where a society feels resentment at being held responsible for its past is the common thread that said society is not at all repentent. That is, said society resents its guilt only because it disbelieves that such a guilt exists, only because it holds itself as to never having been wrong. If it genuinely believed in its guilt, resentment would not have arisen. Much as in the case of individuals, true guilt begets regret and then redeemption. It is the ones who are charged guilty but who do not believe that they are that resents their charges. Therefore, bracketing the question of whether societal guilt truly exists or not, my insistence that its existence is a positive force is not at all preposterous. If we *truly* felt guilty about our past we would not resent those who hold us to it. Instead, we would seek to address that guilt through correcting our mistakes. This could only lead to a better world. It is only when a society consisting of people who think very much like you (ie no societal responsibility possible) are charged with societal guilt that the opposite happens, that resentment begins to stir against both the judges and the victims. This is self-righteousness: the declaration that "I was never wrong!" It is a fine declaration, but it does not lead itself to building a better world. Instead, it is doomed to repeat the mistakes of its past because it refuses to acknowledge them. Yeah, your claim does not preclude the possibility of learning from "other people's" mistakes, but it is common sense that no one learns as much from other people's mistaks as they do from their own. Instead, we opt for the opinion that we'll never become like them: "surely, we'll never be like the Nazis. Surely, we can never commit such acts." And in doing so we forfeit all the lessons we have learned because as many historians have observed, it is NORMAL people who commit these crimes, it is people who never believed that they were capable of such horrors. And so it is that modern American society is faced with dealing with torture in prisons and CIA cover-ups: we thought that we were righteous enough; we thought we were immune to corruption. We are wrong, and we are wrong because we refuse to learn from past mistakes when the same situations occured in Vietnam and WW2. In the final analysis, stressing the "innocence" of all modern societies is a recipe for a repeat of the past.

SP, we're going in circles. I answered that question a very long time ago and repeatedly since then when I say that it is *society* that is at fault, not the individuals. If you can't accept this, if you refuse to acknowledge the idea that a society can ever be at fault, then we obviously can't agree on anything. Your whole argument is based on the idea that only people can be at fault, and therefore people who were "not there" have a blank slate. I maintain that this is true only with respect to personal guilt. I identify a separate, collective guilt that I attribute to a entire society and its outlooks. If you don't accept that this exists, then we're not even past step 1 in this discussion. Look, let's consider a example other than WW2. Consider slavery. Who's at fault here? The slave owners? The slave traders? The people who made the slavery laws? The South? Clearly it's not a few people that's at fault here, and I maintain that even if we took every person in that generation out of the equation slavery would remain because it is institutional, because it's a way of life. It was the way of life that had to change, it was the national ideology, the whole conception of blacks as being inferior. *THAT* there is why society can be at fault, and why I maintain that slavery is a fundamentally collective guilt on the American people, one which the government had done much to address even now. Sure, we can argue today that none of us were there back during the times of slavery and therefore we shouldn't be held responsible for the plight of the blacks. But we *bear that guilt* nevertheless as long as vestiges of that time (ie racial discrimination) remain in American society. And it is *good* that we bear that guilt as long as racism exists in society because it serves as a grim reminder of what could happen if we moved down that path again. Never forget. That is what the Japanese survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki told to their generation, and what has been passed down since then to modern Japan. So it is with the world: never forget the evils of the past. If you bear its guilt, it is only because remnants of the past remain even to this day. It is not for us to determine what society we are born into, but the Christians are right in that we are born, always, with original sin: not the sin of we as individuals, but the sins of our history, our society. In Christianity, these sins can only be removed when we confess them and when we repent them sincerely. So it is with society's sins.

I don't know. Repeat offenders are charged more heavily than one time offenders, are they not? Still, I see your point, and my contention would be that my beef is not so much that Japanese racists should be treated with greater hatred, but that a society should not be allowed to forget the past, which is the whole point of this thread, I suppose. I go further than that, though, to say that it's justified that a society should feel guilty about its past so long as remnants of the past's failures remain within that society. A nation may be exonerated (though it should never forget) from its horrendous past the moment all vestiges of the factors that contributed to that past are corrected; but before such a moment, it is prudent to remind every society the evils of their past (though not in a vengenful manner). Only so, only *with the burden of our guilt*, can we progress beyond the past. We're all human and we all make mistakes. That is acceptable. What's unacceptable is not learning from your mistakes. What's abominable is not even admitting to them.

Well, the Crusades were waged for economical reasons, but through religious justification. The point of contention in this case would be that Christianity is blamed because it provided a convenient ideology that could be easily exploited. A continuation of that blame would implicate that even today, Christianity is used as a convenient ideology, and as such its adherents are to blame for such stupidity as, say, the advent of intelligent design and Bush's "I am on a mission from God." Still, since *most* Christians regard these adherents as extremists who are no longer operating within modern Christian sensibilities, there's a clear reason to believe that modern Christianity is no longer to blame for these problems.

I did your again saying that just because person A did this then person B 50 years on just because they happen to be nationality X will do the same. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, I said that if they refuse to acknowledge that they were even wrong in the past, then they're bound to do the same thing. Huge difference: if you learn from your mistakes, you will not repeat them. If you don't, you will. I criticize the latter, not the former. Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, shame on me. It's far worse to commit the same mistake twice than it is to do so once, and if Japan does, eventually, revert, then the responsibility would not only lie with Japan but with the world for being blind a second time. Like I said, society is responsible for the conduct of its constituents. If a society commits a crime, then it must be held responsible and subsequently correct such a mistake. Herein lies progress. If we don't even hold to this, then we're never going to create a better world, only a technologically superior one that is more capable of inflicting mass destruction.

Read the rest of the post before you comment. Seriously.

I hate, and with good reason, Germany and Japan as they were back during WW2. I hate the system that drove these two nations to launch ethocentric wars of aggression and massacre against the world. I hate the system that blinded the public to the actions of ruthless, cruel dictators. I hate the fact that these ruthless, cruel dictators were representative of ideologies that were actually popular during the times. But pertinent to this thread, there is only one "hatred" that is relevant, and that's the continuation of the problems I outlined above in modern society. I hate racism and xenophobia, both of which are on the rise in Japan. I hate militarism and ultranationalism, both of which are again resurfacing. And most of all, I hate the patriotic blindness that has come over the world, once again. A country's apologies are meaningless. Sincerity in correcting a societal failure demonstrates true repentence and signals a country's real ascendancy beyond its past. I do not hate modern Germany/Japan. I hate the elements in those countries that refuse to acknowledge that they were ever wrong, that refuse to demonstrate that they are willing to change their society in response to those failures. That a xenophobic, racist extremism is on the rise in Japan has many contributing factors, but not the least is the fact that many people in Japan refuse to acknowledge the fact that their society, and not merely the military regime, might have been partially responsible for WW2. This is what I recognize as a justified criticism, and what I believe is required for the progress of human civilization. Scapegoating leaders without looking at the society that brought them to power is like missing the forest for the trees.

Where did I say I hated modern Germany/Japan? Point it out to me.

Ridiculous. Btw, ad hominem attacks don't help your case.

If their society has not changed since those days, then yeah, those societies must still be blamed for their past actions. But they've changed, haven't they? It's not at all an unrealistic image. A narrow caricature, yes (for there are many other attributes of German society outside of aggression), but not unrealistic. Many analysts of German culture agree with me that up to the end of WW2 German philosophy priviledges strength of arms and conquest. That Japan has a militaristic culture is also blatantly obvious. I fail to see your attempt here to disseminate some sort of equivalence between all cultures with regards to social outlook, which is absolutely not the case: American culture differs from European culture differs from Asian cultures. I do not dismiss it. But it's not the only factor, either. The Treaty of Versailles destabilized German society to the point where the Weimar Republic could not have survived. But it did not force the Germans to follow Hitler once the Treaty of Versailles was overturned. That they followed him through thick and thin, knowing that he's waging a war of aggression against Europe, is the problem with German society at the time. Let's not forget that Germany imposed a far worse treaty to Russia, btw. I do hate the Germany (the entire damn state, not merely Hitler and his cronies) that slaughtered 6+ million people in its ethnocentric blindness, as well as the Germany that repeatedly began wars of aggression towards other countries. I do not hate modern Germany, because it appears that modern Germany has learned from its mistakes. There's a huge difference between the two. Btw, you need to brush up on your history if you think Germany was not the aggressor in WW1, though here Russia might have to hold equal responsibility.

This is the reason why your assessment of my views is wrong. I do not totally ignore the social change that's occured. On the contrary, that's the basis of my entire argument: that society is what's at fault, and therefore a change in society would absolve a nation of its guilt *if* said change corrects the failures of the previous society. By the same token, if society does *not* change, it doesn't matter whether the "people responsible" are dead or not - society would *remain* guilty of its crimes because it's bound to repeat its history. As long as German society was based upon the philosophy of military conquest and survival of the strongest, it was bound to repeat again and again its military aggression towards neighboring states (whether it be the ancient Germans who sacked the Roman Empire, Bismarck and his "blood and iron" realpolitiks, Wilhelm II and his glorious war of conquest, or Hitler and the Aryan ubermensche manifest destiny). Only by disarming Germany and reconstituting the roots of its society (on economics) have the world finally received a state capable of co-existing within the EU. Mind, much has changed in German society and philosophy since the days of Hitler, which is the reason why you don't see as many people complaining about Germany. The same can be said for Japan, except that Japan is even less repentent than Germany and seems to be drifting back to its militaristic roots again - hence the barrage of criticism from neighboring countries who question just how much Japanese society has really changed from the days of WW2. Whether they are right or not is a matter of controversy, but the underlying idea is not: it is society that must bear the responsibility of collective guilt in the case of what a nation does, not a few individuals. By the same token, America society is as responsible for Bush's deeds as Bush himself.

That shows how little you know about Nazi Germany. Go read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for a classic study of the forces that propelled the regime, and its follow-up criticisms and extensions. Your analogy of the hammer really makes no sense here, since a nation consists of both the means and the ends, both the hammer and the wielder, so to speak. For a modern example, Japan's current obsession over military prowess combined with its feelings of superiority towards its Asian neighbors are in part a remnant of the system that Japan had during WW2 (and further back, as well). Those who support this aspect of the current national system are guilty and thus deserving of WW2-inspired blame towards modern Japanese society. If they can't learn from their past, why should their victims stand by, given what they know of what happened last time Japan had a powerful military while looking down upon neighboring nations? The criticism is therefore wholly justified on the basis of national guilt: we wouldn't be able to institute such a blame if South Korea wanted a powerful military, because South Korea never demonstrated a history of aggression. Japan's history, however, remains relevant to its system even today, and as a result it must be judged in terms of its history, since it is not sincerely repentent.

Without having read the book I wouldn't know what he meant by "uniquely Germanic evil," but I do want to emphasize that Germany was not always Nazi Germany, and that specific historical and national forces brought about the system that operated immediately before and during WW1-WW2. This system was responsible for the crime far moreso than the few persons who gave the orders. I am a firm believer that we are the products of forces around us. I do not believe that an individual is strictly tabula rasa with the total freedom to choose between right and wrong. In fact, "right" and "wrong" do not themselves exist as static pillars but are shaped by the same forces that shape a person. In Nazi Germany, the destruction of Jews and the subjugation of "lesser" races was considered good. It is the system that creates such a philosophy that must be, in my view, held responsible for the products of said society. Thus I reiterate my argument: a nation, taken as the gestalt of its social, political, economical, and ideological forces, must be held responsible for its actions. Those who choose to collaborate with such a nation as patriots/nationalists inherit, henceforth, the guilt of said nation. Their guilt ends when they acknowledge and repent the failures of the system of which they are a part and help to correct it for the betterment of the world. Until then, they are accomplices in the crime, passively or actively, and therefore deserving of the same blame that is attributed to the nation. Put simply: if you support a system that practices genocide, then you must be held responsible for said genocide. This is not a personal guilt, but a collective one, and it is in a collective way that it must be dealt with. That is, we deal with irredeemable criminal persons by killing them. We deal with irredeemable criminal nations by destroying the nation which, in this case, means destroying the system that holds such a nation together and then rebuilding it, which is exactly what we tried to do in Germany and in Japan, with various degrees of success.

And it's exactly these "historical forces" that constitute a nation. Hence the necessity of holding it responsible.

But we have already established have we not , that there is no justice in trying the son of a murderer for his fathers crimes. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Except this analogy doesn't hold if a nation is not the "son" but the same "father" that perpetrated the crime. As I said, a nation needs to be treated like a living organism because that's what it is: national policy determines the kind of people that are raised under the nation, and insofar as that's concerned a nation is guilty until it undergoes a fundamental, repentent change. In terms of your analogy, the nation is guilty because it is the father until it proves itself to be a repentent son. A generation and a group of leaders may die, but a system survives until it is purposefully killed and replaced by a better system.

You're guilty not only by what you do, but also by what you don't do. But even beyond that, tell me: who do you blame in a situation where a few people take power and the masses remain ignorant of their atrocities, blindly loyal to their propaganda? You don't blame these few people alone. You have to blame the masses (for their ignorance and blind patriotism) and/or the system (for its procurement of said ignorance and patriotism). Otherwise you are never going to progress, since even if you killed all the evil dictators, you'll simply be setting yourself up for the same crime the next time they came along. That's why we must blame national systems: because if we didn't, then we've learned nothing. Example: wartime Japan was ruled by a small clique of military dictators. By your argument, these dictators are the only ones responsible for the war crimes. But if we got rid of these dictators, would Japan have gone a different path? I doubt it. Others would have risen to take their place, and they would've repeated the same mistakes. Only through rebuilding the nation from the ground up can we ensure peace, because it's the nation that's at fault, far moreso than the few men who lead it.

Revenge should not play into the equation. Yes, the natural inclination towards the guilty is revenge, but that's not the reason we came up with guilt. Guilt is there for the sake of justice and as a catalyst for change. What can change the nature of a man? Regret can - and there can be no regret without guilt - and there can be no guilt if you constantly scapegoat a few for the failings of a nation.

I'd lke to see you support that statement. Hitler kill millions of Jews by himself? Ha! You're the one looking for scapegoats, and these "great big evil men" are it. Sure, they're more responsible than others, but they wouldn't be there if they didn't have the support of others. So why would I blame them alone, and not those who supported them?