The Triumph Of The Will

As Grace says, Peter the Great was a totalitarian dictator, and Hitler obviously was too. I agree that it is hard to compare the two due to the extremely different circumstances and time periods that they were both prevalent in. Hitler had a lot more technology and ability to control the media than Peter the Great had in his time. Cas told me to look at how Hitler gained his control and to what extent to which this control was taken. I am writing this blog post as i watch part of  "Triumph of the Will." This movie is a piece of Nazi Propaganda created by Leni Riefenstahl and it chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Wikipedia says, "The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation." Firstly, there has been no speaking for the first 8 minutes of the film and only a lot of intense nationalistic and triumphant music to support Hitler's parade down a long street filled with supporters. This movie further shows just how successfully Hitler converted the German nation to believe in what he advocated for. All of these people that are lined up with their arms in the air, saluting him, it's terrifying actually and almost cult-like. Now, in the movie the Nazi army is being humanized- they are laughing and joking around with a hose as they spray their friends and bathe. Wow! The Nazi's are awesome and so organized, careful, healthy, united, and supportive of their nation and their father figure of Hitler. Wow, in the movie they just called him "hail father!" Hitler does seem to be a god-like father figure- everyone supports, respects, and fears him. Do they love him? I don't know. This movie seems to show that they love "working" for him. As Hitler drives down the street once more (still no talking and we are 25 minutes into the movie) everyone is smiling- therefore i'd say that after watching this movie- i've come to the conclusion that Hitler's control was DEFINITELY all powerful and totalitarian.

I'm now curious to check the statistics for how many germans didn't follow hitler because r it looks to me like EVERYONE supported him.

Review: Henry VIII and Martin Luther

As part of my process for review, i thought i'd like to talk a bit about the answer to this question, "Compare and contrast the motives and actions of Martin Luther in the German States and King Henry VIII in England in bringing about religious change during the Reformation." I believe that Henry VIII was acting for his own selfish reasons and motivations of producing an heir and trying to gain power and reputation, whereas Martin Luther was strictly motivated by his cause and his need for justice of God. Martin Luther was able to gain the support of the German peasants (who believed religion would free them from their lords) and many German princes and towns (who thought religion would allow them to consolidate their political independence). Martin Luther’s motives did not have anything to do with trying to gain power or money of any sort- if anything he just wanted to deal with the problem of the justice of god. Martin believed that indulgences represented “the sin of selling grace in return for cash,” in the priesthood of all believers, salvation by faith alone, and that the bible was the word of God. Martin Luther took strong action through his writings of his 99 Theses in 1517. The printing press helped spread his word and it helped gain him “passionate popular support.” Luther did not back down off of his beliefs in Protestantism and showed his courage at the Diet of the Worms when he was proclaimed a heretic. Luther made a big impact on the german states because when individual princes took up Protestantism instead of following the catholic HRE it created unrest.
Whereas Henry VIII's actions were extremely selfish since he was having problems producing and heir to his throne and therefore he wanted to “divorce” his current wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn but the Pope wouldn’t allow the divorce because the Bible said it was “an unclean thing” for a man to take his brother’s wife and curse such a marriage with childlessness. The Pope also didn’t want to annul the marriage because it would look bad for the papacy. So Henry VIII in 1531, declared himself the “protector and only supreme head” of the church in England. Henry VIII broke from Rome and basically established the new Anglican Church, he also wrote the Six Articles, which conveyed that the English church still remained overwhelmingly Catholic in organization, doctrine, ritual, and language.

Therefore Henry VIII and Martin Luther, both advocated and made change happen in Europe, but they had different motivations.

COME ON GROUP! hitler's the worst...

So, this little meh blog project is slowly getting harder and harder since my group ISN'T responding. Oh well.

i want to argue that Hitler is a totalitarian dictator. obviously, everyone knows this. But in comparison to Peter the Great and Bismarck- neither of them fulfill the qualities of a totalitarian dictator as Hitler does. I want to look at how Hitler fully embodied the title of the FIRST totalitarian tyrant. i want to prove that he was the worst of the three. maybe zak and grace will disagree but honestly- after learning about the holocaust and what he did in WWII makes me believe that he was the worst. did either of the other two commit suicide? i know hitler did- probably just because he didn't want to get punished by others and he'd rather kill himself than apologize for killing so many people (especially a race of people that he thought inferior). I realize this post isn't adding a whole lot of new ideas- but i need help from my group: so please zak and grace look at my previous posts, look at this one- do you think i'm on the right track or perhaps you think that bismarck and peter the great were WAY worse? than we will actually have something to argue about. LET'S DO THIS TOGETHER!!

The Future of Europe

Mia's post really got me thinking: if we can't fight about blood and race and nations than what can we fight about? Cas, you asked us in class what the future of Europe looked like? Honestly, i think it's in human nature to fight, to be brutal, to kill, to take, to conquer, etc... I don't think that Europe could ever be truly unified or that the world could ever be truly unified. Now, that would be amazing and peaceful and PERFECT. But perfection is an absolute that is impossible to attain. We will always fight- it's obviously in our past. If there is one thing i've learned from reading this textbook it's that EVERYONE is involved in some kind of war or disagreement. Some country is always fighting another country over money, oil, blood, or perhaps even religion as Mia pointed out. 

I just searched on google for "the future of europe" and found this website about how the European Union is going to commit suicide because the union CANNOT find common identity- which i find totally true: they've tried numerous times such as with the League of Nations- but these things fail. Nationalism of the individual nation usually outweighs the nationalism of a continent. I mean it's not like Canada, Mexico, and the USA are best friends with one common identity. It's too hard to find this common identity when each country is so freaking different! The website also claims that in the European Union there is a decline in population which "is a pretext to massive migration." Also that there is a huge amount of unemployment and bad governance. Now this is just an opinion- but i mean: Europe doesn't exactly look like it's on the best path right now, but neither is the United States of America.  I have no idea what the world will look like in 50 years or which country will be on the top. Will it still be the USA? who knows? What will we be fighting about then- still oil? still religion? still money? still boundaries? still blood? my guess is- we will find something to fight about!

This is still happening?

I just want to say that i am appalled by what i am reading in the textbook, "The Serbs and Croats, both of whom disliked the Muslim Bosnians, were especially well equipped and organized. They rained shells and bullets on towns and villages, burned houses with families inside, imprisoned Muslim men in detention camps and starved them to death, and raped thousands of Bosnian women. All sides committed atrocities. The Serbs...carried out the worst crimes. these included what came to be called ethnic cleansing... campaigns of murder and terror" (1044). SERIOUSLY? I would've thought that by now, people would've learned to stop all this ethnic cleansing. After learning about the holocaust and all the anti-semitism- I had hoped that as I continued to learn more about the history of Europe and of the world i would learn that man is better than this: better than killing someone just because he/she is different. I know that may sound cliché or corny or whatever, but it is honestly what I am thinking and feeling. I am outraged by reading of the horrors of mankind. Maybe I am just snapping right now because it's hard to learn about the history of Europe and see just how horrible (and obviously how great) man can be. But truly, those people that did "ethnic cleansing" are showing that their true essence (existentialism) is EVIL.

In both Czechoslavakia and Yugoslavia- there was a mix of people that belonged to different races, traditions, etc... but there was still a lack of toleration. Ethnic tension that had been suppressed by "centralized communist governments" returned and racial violence continued throughout Eastern Europe (1044). As I keep reading, I learn that even more ethnic cleansing occurred when the Serbs forced hundreds of thousands of Albanians from their homes in 1999. 1999 was during my lifetime- that is what scares me. THIS IS STILL HAPPENING? 

Solidarity in Poland!

The textbook talks about how polish workers in 1980 organized strikes and laid out several key demands: "first, they objected to working conditions imposed by the government to combat a severe economic crisis. Second, they protested high prices and, especially shortages, both of which had roots in government policy and priorities. Above all, though, the Polish workers in Solidarity demanded truly independent labor unions instead of labor organizations sponsored by the government" (1039). By questioning high prices, working conditions, and the basis of the structure of the labor unions- the workers were questioning the socialist government- and therefore questioning communism as a whole. This clearly angered the mother country of the Soviet Union. The Soviet response was that this solidarity movement (lead by Lech Walesa) was the "growth of anti-sovietism in Poland" and that this aroused hatred among poles towards the Soviet Union and Soviet people and to go even further, the response said that this meant "to break the bonds of fraternal friendship linking our peoples and as a result to tear Poland from the socialist community and to liquidate socialism in Poland." I found this to be EXTREME- but I guess that if the Soviets didn't overreact, then Poland might drop out of theWarsaw Pact and be lost to democracy forever and ever. This website claims that "Solidarity was an independent labour union instrumental in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, and the primary catalyst that would transform Poland from a repressive communist satellite to the EU member democracy it is today." In my opinion, I am happy that Poland is now a democracy today and no longer a communist state.

In most of these documents, something that i found interesting was that the communists in the Soviet Union had a very strong fear of this anti-soviet power building up in Poland, and it reminded me a little bit of the fear of communism that took hold of western europe and the United States in particular (which in turn lead to the concept of containment). I guess you are always afraid of THE OTHER!

Something else that I noticed was the brilliant diplomacy of Wojciech Jaruzelski's Announcement of Martial Law in Poland. I just liked how he announced that the soviet union would be bringing in their army into Poland for the "sole task of the protection of legal order in the country and the creation of executive guarantees that will make it possible to restore order and discipline." I just think that Wojciech was able to please the people of Poland and the Soviets by mentioning the "Polish-Soviet alliance...which will remain, the cornerstone of the Polish raison d'etat, the guarantee of the inviolability of our borders." Of course Wojciech did have to repress Solidarity itself. 

All in all, I feel as though this incident in Poland was mainly just one of the factors that caused the collapse of communism. 

Zak and Grace...now back to our discussion!

Okay, so basically GROUP- i figured since our conversation has died in the past couple weeks and neither of you answered the questions i posed in my last post- i'll bring our conversation back to the root of our debate: totalitarianism. You guys should check out this website because it compares a totalitarian regime and a dictatorship once again showing that a totalitarian regime wants TOTAL control, and not merely political control and the tot. regime is usually lead by a "charismatic leader," in Germany's situation that charismatic leader would be Mr. Adolf Hitler. This video, Hitler spoke with great conviction the words, "germany will be revenged, a new and greater reich will rise form the ashes, every german will have a job and bread." The masses responded in favor of this man who had a "stronger will" than the rest of the people. Maybe I have mentioned this before, but i am certain that cas has talked about this in class- that Rousseau's concept of the general will, played a big role in the coming about of the Totalitarian state.  Wikipedia says that " Jacob Talmon characterized Rousseau's "general will" as leading to a Totalitarian Democracy because, Talmon argued, the state subjected its citizens to the supposedly infallible will of the tyranny of the majority." If I am not mistaken, with the concept of the general will, if the people were unhappy with the way they were being lead, they could uproot the leaders and rule the country with a better general will. Hitler certainly uprooted Germany, took control (even if he was democratically elected), and made the citizens follow this supposed "infallible will of the tyranny of the majority." 

So now that i've proposed this link between Rousseau's general will and Hitler's totalitarian state- do either of you guys agree with me or disagree with me? Perhaps you can think back to another philosopher from the enlightenment that influenced the coming of the totalitarian state? ANY NEW IDEAS? 

The Three Fates

To be perfectly honest, I'm having trouble grasping what existentialism truly is. JED talks about how existentialism usually questions humanity's existence, but i found that on this website existentialism is defined as a philosophy that "assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves". This certainly combats the previous concepts of free will and pre-determination. Also- ideas about fate and how we never can be in charge of our own choices since it is also planned out for us by fate. Who knows, maybe the three fates do exist and they are weaving our lives together with a bunch of colorful threads. Our lives and deaths are in their hands. Unlikely, but in my mind, not completely impossible. But more on that definition that I found, I like the part about how people are responsible for what they make of themselves- this is definitely true. Just like how Sysiphus makes his own conscious choices and is responsible for his own actions and therefore for his own punishment of being forced to push this rock up the hill forever and ever and all of eternity! His is also conscious of his fate when he watches the rock roll back down the hill. I found this part about what Camus was saying absolutely fascinating: "he is superior to his fate. he is stronger than his rock. if this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious."  This may seem random, but this concept of how it is tragic because he understands and is conscious of his ever-lasting fate, reminds me of this story that we read in spanish called San Manuel Bueno Mártir where it talked about la cruz del nacimiento (literally: the cross of birth). Basically, our original sin of being born makes life tragic if we are conscious of this fact because we will always go through life knowing that we can never escape sin. It's connected because of this concept of being conscious of our punishment or our sin- therefore making life tragic. Granted, this is just my opinion. The rest of what Camus was talking about definitely went over my head a little bit... Something about Absurdism  and happiness being "two sons of the same earth." What does that even mean?? 

Oh Sweden!

SWEDEN IS RIDICULOUS! I had no idea that Sweden is so focused on this "antisecrecy model" where tax returns are public documents. I found that entire second article on how more people lost their chances at being government officials due to problems with taxes than with extramarital affairs: "democrat Gary Hart lost his bid for the U.S. presidency in 1988 after admitting to an extramarital affair" VERSUS "social democrat Mona Sahlin lost her shot at the swedish prime minister's post seven years later after acknowledging she used her government cash card to buy 600 kronor worth of chocolate, diapers, and perfume." I mean TAXES vs. AFFAIRS- to me it just seems that having an affair is a sign of disloyalty to one's spouse and perhaps even to one's country, but a small, probably accidental, cheat on one's taxes is just a sign of stupidity or the human race's lack of perfection. 

Also, I was very surprised at how everyone has "free access to official documents" and how children are regarded as full citizens who not only have the right to know their true father, but their opinion can also play a part in the divorce. I just don't agree with this because children are too young to know what is best for them and kids under 18 should not be able to make some decisions just because they are considered "full citizens." I mean, also the whole law on corporal punishment- how spanking is illegal- a little ridiculous. I mean spanking is bad- but there shouldn't be a LAW against it. That's one step too far. How is this concept so idealistic? I mean sweden is very open with communication and trust for sure. Everyone has a say in the community and there isn't really much of a PRIVATE LIFE. Therefore it is a very communitarian society where the only sense of individualism is "the island, the archipelago, and the sailboat" and the only sense of deviant behavior in swedish society is with violence, alcoholism, and drugs.  I guess, i just don't really see the appeal to having no private life and no ability to converse because people in Sweden "never raise their voices and rarely gesticulate" (especially since gesticulation is a skill and hobby of mine!) 

Why didn't we blow ourselves up during the Cold War?

After completing that simulation today in class- it's hard to see why we didn't blow ourselves up. The USSR gave us an ultimatum that we didn't want to follow or abide by, so we went against their wishes but i didn't actually think they'd blow us up. I mean, I honestly wanted to blow them up too, but this is just a game: not the real thing. I definitely couldn't live with knowing that I killed MILLIONS of people with the push of a button. They had a partial victory and we had total defeat: okay, i can live with that. I realize my team didn't save the United States, but at least we didn't succumb to their level and resort to blowing things up in order to get their way. That's one of the reasons I think we didn't all blow the world up- it's because no one wanted to be the first to strike, no one wanted to be blamed for the war. If the USSR shot first, then we could counterattack and blame all the destruction on the evil communists. BUT if we struck first than all the blame would be on us. We would be blamed for all the destruction and deaths in the USSR and the US citizens (that would still be alive) would find it hard to blame the USSR for something that they didn't even start. It's just like in any fight, both sides want to win and blow stuff up, but no one also wants to strike first. It's partially about fear as well, fear of what exactly would happen if we pushed the button and nuked the world. I know they all saw what happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but that's Asia- what exactly would our home country, the USA, look like if most of it was ruins, ruins, and more ruins covered in nuclear radiation? Therefore, I think that we didn't blow ourselves up during the Cold War because we were scared of what would happen and we didn't want to be blamed for the destruction of the world. I mean, who would want that kind of guilt? the guilt of killing millions! DAVID JONATHAN AND NATE! YOU KILLED MILLIONS/you destroyed the USA! OH WELL!