An excerpt from a book of my fathers called "Hitler Youth" by Hans Siemen (1940).
"The next morning, however, when I tred to remember what Goring had acually said, I could think of nothing. Nothing but things at which I had had to laugh, his parodies of the party speakers, his mimichig of the Jews, and various jokes and witticisms. But once again I had heard nothing serious about Ntional-Socialism. I decided to wait a bit longer, and was ashamed of myself for having quickly joined in the shouts of "Heil!" p85
.... But I still knew as good as nothing of ational-Socalism, and quite innocently I asked one leader after another o give me some idea as to what to read on the subject.
A fine response I met with! None of them had any idea themselves. And what's more they didn't want to.
During the time I was in the Hitler-Youth I got to know at least fifty to sixty leaders, from the most junior to the most senior, young men who had been in the party for years. And I can honestly say that there was not a single one among them who would have been able to explain o himself or anyone else what National-Socialism really was. It was very rare for one of them ever to have read the Party programme." p86
I am interested by this because this has been my exact experience in Religion. Feeling very silly as a kid I once put my hand up in Sunday school and asked how Jesus dying on the cross had saved our sins. I thought I must have missed something or was just stupid and so wanted to get this clear as it seemed quite important. The teacher grew angry and I thought I was in trouble for being stupid. But it turned out that no one knew. That was one of the most extra-ordinary things I ever saw. People believing, even teaching something they didn't even know themselves! But actually this is the norm. I found the same thing in Buddhism would you believe!!
I have sort these answers ever since and really throughout religion no one actualy knows anywhere, and those who seem to know you find eventually are giving a simplified picture.
The truth is that people come together in groups for its own sake. And people don't like to know what they are doing most of the time, its just more comfortable following the herd. Thus group membership is to be completely scorned and avoided.
A search for happiness in poverty. Happiness with personal loss, and a challenge to the wisdom of economic growth and environmental exploitation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"The Jewish Fallacy" OR "The Inauthenticity of the West"
I initially thought to start up a discussion to formalise what I was going to name the "Jewish Fallacy" and I'm sure there is ...
-
The classic antimony is between : (1) action that is chosen freely and (2) action that comes about through physical causation. To date no ...
-
Well that was quite interesting ChatGPT can't really "think" of anything to detract from the argument that Jews have no clai...
-
There are few people in England I meet these days who do not think we are being ruled by an non-democratic elite. The question is just who t...
No comments:
Post a Comment