Norm Paper

PAPER # 1: BREAKING A NORM NAME: Nisha Tommy A standard is a rule of right activity authoritative upon the individuals from a gathering and serving to guide, control, or manages appropriate and worthy conduct. Accepted practices are bunch held convictions about how individuals ought to carry on in a given setting. Sociologists portray standards as casual understandings that administer society’s practices, while clinicians have received a progressively broad definition, perceiving littler gathering units, similar to a group or an office, may likewise support standards independent or notwithstanding social or cultural expectations.The mental definition underlines accepted practices' conduct part, expressing standards have two measurements: how much conduct is displayed and how much the gathering endorses of that conduct. The individuals living in the general public create normal practices. These standards have its significance and pay a fundamental job in the socialization of an individual and embellishment of character. There are some significant elements of accepted practices, which have basic influence in the smooth of the general public. These are control conduct, orchestrate the general public, and peace. I decided to abuse an accepted practice when riding on the elevator.I did this in a medical clinic condition where specialists, attendants, experts, and for the most part patients were around me. I observed the response of ten unique gatherings all through the test to get the best outcome. It is incorporated distinctive nationality and diverse age gathering. I rode the lift multiple times yet as opposed to standing the â€Å"normal† way which is confronting the entryway an implicit accepted practice I stood the incorrect route remaining by the entryway taking a gander at the rear of the lift. I felt entirely awkward for the initial barely any occasions however, after that I began getting a charge out of people’s nonverbal reactions.Stil l it is difficult to break a standard by intentionally breaking it. I got different responses. A few people gaze at me as though I was not typical. Some feigned exacerbation and others frightened their brow. Some of them inquired as to whether I was alright. A few couples looked one another and grinned. Some shook their head. Some of them didn’t take a gander at me at all they were looking on the floor. One of the representatives asked me â€Å"Do you work here? Which office accomplish you work for? † One individual asked me â€Å"Do you have lifts in your country†? One individual asked me â€Å"how long have you been in US†? After my answer she made a facial expression.The question â€Å"Are you alright? ’’ negated my theory and refuted it which was regardless of whether I stand the incorrect path in the lift and conflict with the normal practice at that point individuals still won’t truly respond. This examination refuted my specul ation. While I had thought I wouldn’t get any responses I did as a general rule get numerous responses from gazing to being inquired as to whether I was alright. Numerous individuals gazed at me as if there was a major issue with me or even felt awkward around me. My theory was refuted in light of the fact that plainly breaking an accepted practice is more huge than I had assumed.The explore demonstrated a great deal about normal practices and breaking them. It indicated the criticalness of accepted practices how much normal practices assume a job in the public eye and individuals as people act. The accepted practice I broke was certain yet it end up being so incredible in how individuals saw me and how they responded. I standing the incorrect way changed the manner in which a few people felt in the lift they began to feel awkward in light of the fact that my activities conflicted with the accepted practice which is standing confronting the entryway and anything that conflict s with the accepted practice isn't normal.The signal was little yet it demonstrated to produce more prominent responses. This analysis demonstrates that there are such things as accepted practices that aren’t even officially expressed and as a general public standards are set with regards to how once ought to carry on and when broken one is met responses and seen as various and â€Å"not normal†. Indeed, even in quick paced places where individuals will in general be excessively occupied or they are pushed or even too wiped out to even think about noticing, individuals notice the breaking of accepted practices and respond toward it since that is the manner by which individuals were instructed to take a gander at distinctively the individuals who don’t follow the social norm.I had accepted that in United State where the demeanor of disapproving of your business is the thing that individuals shape their lives around this would not be the situation yet I wasn't rig ht. Clinging to normal practices is obviously a major piece of people’s lives and shapes the manner in which they act. What astonished me about the outcomes was the manner in which individuals acted toward me how a few people were feeling awkward. This astounded me since they were acting like there may be some kind of problem with me since I was standing the incorrect way. The man who inquired as to whether I am alright stunned me the most on the grounds that I didn’t anticipate that anybody should really solicit me this.All from this additionally shows how the earth assumes a job in a person’s life. The accepted practices of a spot which vary all around shapes the general public it sets the social code. Particularly on account of the man who inquired as to whether I was alright. His conduct and the remainder of the trial bunch demonstrated how me breaking the normal practice influences me as well as the individuals around me and changes the manner in which I am seen to the world. He would have most likely not asked me this is I was standing the correct way. But since I damaged the accepted practice his conduct and responses changed.The bunches acted distinctively as a result of the variable which had a significant effect. One can get adjustment to clarify these outcomes. Society in general has figured out how to adjust so as not to be the oddball. The social based principles that were caused individuals all in all to have figured out how to change their conduct to comply with the all inclusive social code so they aren’t extraordinary. Furthermore, when they see somebody who acts contrastingly they consider them to be â€Å"weird† unique. Individuals like behaviorists would state have been â€Å"shaped† a specific way a socially satisfactory which is the reason individuals responded the manner in which they did to me.I conflicted with everybody the guidelines of society by not accommodating subsequently I was the oddba ll. In the event that it weren’t for the normal practices, at that point perhaps I would not have gotten the responses I did in light of the fact that there wouldn’t be anything to accommodate as well. One can surmise that a portion of the responses indicated the accompanying of the accepted practice of not being impolite. While some of them gazed they didn't do anything as not to be discourteous which is in its own specific manner following a normal practice of obligingness. This test has shown me fundamentally significantly increasingly about normal practices and society. I got the opportunity to see firsthand how accepted practices work and the amount they assume a job in everyone’s day by day lives.I figured out how individuals respond toward individuals who don’t follow the normal practices and break them. On the off chance that this test was led elsewhere I would state unquestionably the outcomes would be unique, in light of the fact that the spot m akes the accepted practices. Each condition is extraordinary and society makes decide dependent on that. What may be worthy in one spot probably won't be so satisfactory in another and the other way around. For instance in some spot standing endlessly at a not too bad separation is viewed as ill bred that is conflicting with the normal practice though in America that isn't the situation. Here standing excessively close is breaking the social norm.The results may have been progressively uncommon or there may have not been any response whatsoever. This examination helped in giving the criticalness of accepted practices. The analysis likewise demonstrated to show the distinction among following and breaking normal practices. In the wake of breaking the accepted practice I got the opportunity to see numerous responses which refuted my speculation and demonstrated how similarity strongly affects society. By standing in reverse in a lift I broke the accepted practice of standing confronti ng the rear of the lift and henceforth I turned into the oddball. I delighted in doing this investigation all in all.

Act 2 Scenes 8-10 Essay -- Aboriginals Moore River Australia Essays

Act 2 Scenes 8-10 The scene begins at superintendent’s office at Moore waterway Native settlement, the date set 10 April 1933. It speaks to an organization of white force a position of constrained repression and congruity. The significance of the development of this spot is to give a mechanism for the Aboriginals to oppose such congruity, as exhibited by Joe and Mary getting away from white control. It strengthens the topic of the play â€â€˜the refusal of native individuals to submit to the methods of European invaders’ The 1930’s spoke to two significant political defining moments of Western Australia. Initially, the loss of the James Mitchell’s seat as the head of Northam to the work government exemplifies changing white perspectives by choosing a more pleasant government framework. In past scenes, Mitchell’s edgy endeavor to win the political decision by sending the Aboriginals to Moore River as a demonstration of racial isolation mirrors his disparity and abuse of his political authority. The second political worry at this verifiable point was the achievement of the withdrawal submission vote. This severance of the 1930’s was driven by the association Dominion League of Western Australia and in achievement of withdrawal, Western Australia would split away from alliance and the standard of the Commonwealth of Australia, thusly having territory status like that of New Zealand. Notwithstanding the supported decisions in favor of the withdrawal choice, by 1935 the recommendation to Parliament was denied WA despite everything remained dad...

Introducing the Class of 2013 Twins Chandler 13 and Taylor 13

Introducing the Class of 2013 Twins Chandler 13 and Taylor 13 Continuing our series Introducing the Class of 2013, today we have a pair of stories about a terrific pair of young women Chandler 13 and Taylor 13 Jonte 13 Sean 13 Terence 13 Christy 13 Twin co-valedictorians set for MIT Originally posted on: Friday, May 29, 2009 by Adam Freeman COLLIER COUNTY: A set of twin girls in Collier County have a lot more in common than just their looks. Theyre also graduating at the top of their class as co-valedictorians. Out of 75 students graduating from the Community School of Naples, what are the chances of two tying as valedictorians? If you knew anything about the Burfield twins, it would have been a sure bet from the beginning. Like many twins, Chandler and Taylor Burfield play the same sports and share the same friends. But unlike most twins, they each carry a 4.76 GPA. We both worked so hard throughout high school, so its just wonderful that were able to do this together and share this honor, said Chandler. The girls are also co-captains of the track team as well as members of the swim team and the National Honor Society. But they are far from heated rivals. We definitely dont let the other one win, but I think its a healthy competition, said Taylor. Their mom, Elise Burfield, is one person who has no person telling the two apart. She pointed out Taylor is one inch taller and one minute older. We dont even think theyre twins. They dont look alike to us. Their personalities are totally different, she said. Both girls plan to attend MIT in the fall. They say its not because they want to be together, but because MIT is such a great school. When we were deciding where to go to college, we werent deciding together. We each made our own decision, but it happened to be the same decision, Chandler said, When we asked the twins what they plan to major in this fall, the both said the same thing math and economics. Great minds think alike: Twins at Community School share valedictorian title Posted May 28, 2009 at 7:57 p.m. NAPLES Community School of Naples seniors Taylor and Chandler Burfield share many things. The same last name, the same birthday, the same grade point average and, tonight, the same stage. The twin sisters will share the valedictorian title at The Community Schools graduation Friday evening. Its nice to be able to share this with her, said Taylor, 18, who is one minute older than Chandler. As for competition between the two? It was friendly, they both said. I think we push each other and that is a positive thing, said Taylor. Chandler agreed. We are competing, but we are both happy for each others successes, she said. Case in point, Chandler cheered her sister on last week when Taylor was named Collier Countys Winged Foot winner. The Burfield sisters are the daughters of Elise and Mark Burfield. They have one younger sister, Tristan, 13. At the Community School of Naples, both were on the Mu Alpha Theta team, were co-captains of cross country and track and swam for the Seahawks, among other things. This fall, both sisters are headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chandler is leaning toward majoring in mathematics or economics. Taylor is thinking about mathematics, engineering or economics. Both, however, are planning to continue their running careers at MIT. This is a great new opportunity. We will be exposed to so many new things, said Taylor. We are going to a school with the best academics and a really great, dedicated team to run with. But the more immediate concern is what to say in their graduation speeches. When asked about the advice they would give to their fellow classmates, Taylor immediately piped up. I would tell them to have confidence in themselves and to push themselves, she said. They have great potential. Chandler looked at her sister. I was going to say the same thing, she said. Taylor laughed. This is why we have to work to make sure our speeches are different, she said. Chandler, thinking for a moment, said she would tell her classmates not to be afraid to try new things. You should explore all of the things you want to do, she said. Friend and fellow graduate Mary Kate Murphy knows they will be fine graduation night. Everyone at this school is talented in a different way, she said. Some, like the Burfields, are good in everything. The Community School of Naples graduation will be held at 4:30 p.m. today in the Community School of Naples Field House, 13275 Livingston Road.

Physics of Karate Essay - 1080 Words

The basic ideas behind any style of karate can in general be reduced to the goal of achieving the most effective movements with the least effort. Specifically, with a strike such as a punch, kick, knife-hand or similar, the karateka attempts to move smoothly through the strikes, conserving energy towards the impact point. When thought about in terms of energy, the most common equation is that of rotational kinetic energy, or KE=(1/2)mv^2 + (1/2)Iω^2. Another way to think about a strike is to attempt to focus as much force as possible at the point of impact. In many strikes, this is facilitated by drawing an almost straight line with the striking tool from the original point of rest to the point of impact. This is based on the†¦show more content†¦The feet are placed about shoulder-width apart, the front leg is bent so that the toes cannot be seen, the back leg is straight, and there is constant pressure down through the heel of the back leg. The upper body should be leaned very slightly forward in preperation of movement, and the torso and hips dropped downwards to ground the stance. Because this is a stable stance, the various forces acting on the body must be equalized somehow. The main force is the one caused by extension of the back leg into the ground (a). This is held in check by dropping the torso into the stance and allowing the friction on the front foot from the ground, ÃŽ ¼b + ~(1/3)ÃŽ ¼mg where ÃŽ ¼ is the coefficient of static friction, and b is the force of the body attempting to move forward due to a, and the tensing of the front leg quads to keep the stance in place. If the stance is correct, this force is easily released to throw into techniques, either by using it as a spring to pull the reverse leg forward for a kick, or by rotating the body or otherwise neutralizing the check imposed by the front leg to throw some other technique, such as a punch. Reverse Punch Equations: F=ma ÃŽ ¤=IÃŽ ± ÃŽ ±=a/r v=ωr centripetal acc: a=(v^2)/r=ω^2r A reverse punch is a punch thrown over the back leg. For example, from a front stance with the right leg back, a reverse punch would be executed with the right arm. Punches, as with manyShow MoreRelatedLets Love Sport876 Words   |  4 Pagesvarious kind of microbes. According to scientists’ researches, during playing sport body produces Endorphin which actually it pushes out the toxic materials and keeps the heat of the body in balance. The other advantage of playing sport on individual physics is having better body shape. Throughout history, people can’t give-up their interest in their body and also now many people love to have an attractive body shape and they do sport to be more fit. Naturally, by doing sport body automatically decreaseRead MoreThe Haunting Of Hill House1249 Words   |  5 PagesPrecession of Simulacra†. 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I Am Hiding At The Top Of The Staircase Crying - 974 Words

I’m hiding at the top of the staircase crying to the sound of my parents fighting. It’s almost a routine now. Only this time it’s different, my mother is leaving. I uncover myself because there’s no way I’m staying home with this monster. My persistence ensures me a seat at some peace; otherwise it was chaos and imprisonment I couldn’t cease. The very next day I wake for school only this time stronger knowing school is the only positive aspect in my life. In a way it’s the only thing that’s ever been there for me because all my hard work pays off with good grades. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case when I go back home today, so I walk the halls with a smile, for no one can see the burden I carry. I will never forget the effect Mrs. Daily had on me. She was one person who truly supported and believed in me when no one else in my life thought I existed. She knew I was bright so every day she would pull me out of recess or break time and have me read higher leveled books. 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Nazi Germany Totalitarian State Free Essays

string(43) " do for all their lost treasures together\." THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE Report from Germany HANNAH ARENDT waste the moral structure of Western society, committing crimes that nobody would have believed possible, while her conquerors buried in rubble the visible marks of more than a thousand years of German history. Then into this devastated land, truncated by the Oder-Neisse borderline and hardly able to sustain its demoralized and exhausted population, streamed millions of people from the Eastern provinces, from the Balkans and from Eastern Europe, adding to the general picture of catastrophe the peculiarly modem touches of physical homelessness, social rootlessness, and political rightlessness. The wisdom of Allied policy in expelling all German-speaking minorities from non-German countries-as though there was not enough homelessness in the world alreadymay be doubted. We will write a custom essay sample on Nazi Germany Totalitarian State or any similar topic only for you Order Now But the fact is that European peoples who had experienced the murderous demographic politics of Germany during the war were seized with horror, even more than with wrath, at the very idea of having to live together with Germans in the same territory. The sight of Germany’s destroyed cities and the knowledge of German concentration and extermination camps have covered Europe with a cloud of melancholy. Together, they have made the memory of the last war more poignant and more persistent, the fear of future wars more actual. Not the â€Å"German problem,† insofar as it is a national one within the comity of European nations, but HANNAH ARENDT is author of a just completed IN LESS than six years Germany laid the nightmare of Germany in its physical, moral, and political ruin has become almost as decisive an element in the general atmosphere of European life as the Communist movements. But nowhere is this nightmare of destruction and horror less felt and less talked about than in Germany itself. A lack of response is evident everywhere, and it is difficult to say whether this signifies a half-conscious refusal to yield to grief or a genuine inability to feel. Amid the ruins, Germans mail each other picture postcards still showing the cathedrals and market places, the public buildings and bridges that no longer exist. And the indifference with which they walk through the rubble has its exact counterpart in the absence of mourning for the dead, or in the apathy with which they react, or rather fail to react, to the fate of the refugees in their midst. This general lack of emotion, at any rate this apparent heartlessness, sometimes covered over with cheap sentimentality, is only the most conspicuous outward symptom of a deep-rooted, stubborn, and at times vicious refusal to face and come to terms with what really happened. INDIvERENE, and the irritation that comes when indifference is challenged, can be tested on many intellectual levels. The most obvious experiment is to state expressis verbis what the other fellow has noticed from the beginning of the conversation, namely, that you are a Jew. This is usually followed by a little embarrassed pause; and then comesnot a personal question, such as ‘Where did you go after you left Germany? â€Å"; no sign of sympathy, such as ‘What happened to your family? â€Å"-but a deluge of stories about how Germans have suffered (true enough, of course, but beside the point); and if the object of this little experiment happens to be educated and intelligent, he will proceed to draw up a balance between German suffering and the suffering of others, the implication being that one side cancels the other and ork on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism, soon to be published by Harcourt, Brace. Her writings on history, philosophy, and political theory in COMMENTARY and other periodicals have won her a wide reputation. This report on Germany was written after a recent stay of several months in that country. Dr. Arendt was born in Germany, studied under Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg, and earned her doctorate at that univers ity. She came to this country in 1941. 342 THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE e may as well proceed to a more promising topic of conversation. Similarly evasive is the standard reaction to the ruins. When there is any overt reaction at all, it consists of a sigh followed by the half-rhetorical, halfwistful question, â€Å"Why must mankind always wage wars? † The average German looks for the causes of the last war not in the acts of the Nazi regime, but in the events that led to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. 343 BUT, whether faced or evaded, the realities f Nazi crimes, of war and defeat, still visibly dominate the whole fabric of German life, and the Germans have developed various devices for dodging their shocking impact. The reality of the death-factories is transformed into a mere potentiality: Germans did only what others are capable of doing (with many illustrative examples, of course) or what others will do in the near future; therefore, anybody who brings up thi s topic is ipso facto suspected of self-righteousness. In this context, Allied policy in Germany is frequently explained as a campaign of successful revenge, even though it later turns out that the German who offers this interpretation is quite aware that most of the things he complains of were either the immediate consequence of the lost war or happened outside the will and control of the Western powers. But the insistence that there must be a careful scheme of revenge serves as a consoling argument, demonstrating the equal sinfulness of all men. The reality of the destruction that surrounds every German is dissolved into a reflective but not very deep-rooted self-pity, easily dissipated when ugly little one-story structures that might have been imported from some Main Street in America spring up on some of the great avenues to conceal fragmentarily the grimness of the landscape, and to offer an abundance of provincial elegance in super-modern display windows. In France and Great Britain, people feel a greater sadness about the relatively few landmarks destroyed in the war than the Germans do for all their lost treasures together. You read "Nazi Germany Totalitarian State" in category "Essay examples" The boastful hope is expressed in Germany that the country will become the â€Å"most modern† in Europe; yet it is mere talk, and some person who has just voiced that hope will insist a few minutes later, at another turn in the conversation, that the next war will do to all European cities what this one did to Germany’s-which of course is possible, but signifies again only the transformation of reality into potentiality. The undertone of satisfaction that one often detects in the Germans’ talk about the next war expresses no sinister renewal of German lans of conquest, as sq many observers have maintained, but is only another device for escaping reality: in an eventual equality of destruction, the German situation would lose its acuteness. S course, an escape fromalone; all the peoresponsibility. In this the Germans are not ples of Western Europe have developed the habit of blaming their misfortunes on some force out of their reach: it may be America and the Atla ntic Pact today, the legacy of Nazi occupation tomorrow, and history in general every day of the week. But this attitude is more pronounced in Germany, where the temptation to blame everything under the sun on the occupying powers is difficult to resist: in the British zone everything is blamed on British fear of German competition; in the French zone on French nationalism; and in the American zone, where things are better in every respect, on American ignorance of the European mentality. The complaints are only natural, and they all contain a kernel of truth; but behind them is a stubborn unwillingness to make use of the many possibilities left to German initiative. This is perhaps most clearly revealed in the German newspapers, which express all their convictions in a carefully cultivated style of Schadenfreude, malicious joy in ruination. It is as though the Germans, denied the power to rule the world, had fallen in love with impotence as such, and now find a positive pleasure in contemplating international tensions and the unavoidable mistakes that occur in the business of governing, regardless of the possible consequences for themselves. Fear of Russian aggression does not necessarily result in an unequivocal pro-American attitude, but often leads to a determined neutrality, as though it were as absurd to take sides in the conflict as it would be to take sides in an earthquake. The awareness that neutrality will not change one’s fate makes it in turn impossible to translate this mood into a rational policy, and the mood itself, by its very irrationality, becomes even more bitter. CUCH an escape from reality is also, of 344 BUT COMMENTARY count of what actually happened, and to eliminate the teachers who have become incapable of doing so. The danger to German academic life is not only from those who hold that freedom of speech should be exchanged for a dictatorship in which a single unfounded, irresponsible opinion would acquire a monopoly over all others, but equally from those who ignore facts and reality and establish their private opinions, not necessarily as the only right ones, but as opinions that are as justified as others. The unreality and irrelevance of most of these opinions, as compared with the grim relevance of the experience of those who hold them, is sharply underlined by their having been formed before 1933. There is an almost instinctive urge to take refuge in the thoughts and ideas one held before anything compromising had happened. The result is that while Germany has changed beyond recognition-physically and psychologically-people talk and behave superficially as though absolutely nothing had happened since 1932. The authors of the few really important books written in Germany since 1933 or published since 1945 were already famous twenty and twenty-five years ago. The younger generation seems to be petrified, inarticulate, incapable of consistent thought. A young German art historian, guiding his audience among the masterpieces of the Berlin Museum, which had been sent on tour through several American cities, pointed to the Ancient Egyptian statue of Nefertiti as the sculpture â€Å"for which the whole world envies us,† and then proceeded to say (a) that even the Americans had not â€Å"dared† to carry this â€Å"symbol of the Berlin collections† to the United States, and (b) that because of the â€Å"intervention of the Americans,† the British did not â€Å"dare† to carry the Nefretete to the British Museum. The two contradictory attitudes to the Americans were separated by only a single sentence: the speaker, devoid of convictions, was merely groping automatically among the cliches with which his mind was furnished to find the one that might fit the occasion. The cliches have more often an old-fashioned nationalistic than an outspoken Nazi tone, but in any case one seeks in vain to discover behind them a consistent point of view, be it even a bad one. With the downfall of Nazism, the Germans found themselves again exposed to he B perhapshabit most striking andasfrightening aspect of the German flight from of treating facts though reality is the they were mere opinions. For example, the question of who started the last war, by no means a hotly debated issue, is answered by a surprising variety of opinions. An otherwise quite normally intelligent woman in Southern Germany told me that the Russians had begun the war with an attack on Danzig; this is only the crudest of many examples. Nor is this transformation of facts into opinions restricted to the war question; in all fields there is a kind of gentlemen’s agreement by which everyone has a right to his ignorance under the pretext that everyone has a right to his opinion-and behind this is the tacit assumption that opinions really do riot matter. This is a very serious thing, not only because it often makes discussion so hopeless (one does not ordinarily carry a reference library along everywhere), but primarily because the average German honestly believes this free-for-all, this nihilistic relativity about facts, to be the essence of democracy. In fact, of course, it is a legacy of the Nazi regime. The lies of totalitarian propaganda are distinguished from the normal lying of nontotalitarian regimes in times of emergency by their consistent denial of the importance of facts in general: all facts can be changed and all lies can be made true. The Nazi impress on the German mind consists primarily in a conditioning whereby reality has ceased to be the sum total of hard inescapable facts and has become a conglomeration of everchanging events and slogans in which a thing can be true today and false tomorrow. This conditioning may be precisely one of the reasons for the surprisingly few traces of any lasting Nazi indoctrination, as well as for an equally surprising lack of interest in the refuting of Nazi doctrines. What one is up against is not indoctrination but the incapacity or unwillingness to distinguish altogether between fact and opinion. A discussion about the events of the Spanish Civil War will be conducted on the same level as a discussion of the theoretical merits and shortcomings of democracy. Thus the problem at the German universities is not so much to reintroduce freedom to teach as to reestablish honest research, to confront the student with an unbiased ac- THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE facts and reality. But the experience of totalitarianism has robbed them of all spontaneous speech and comprehension, so that now, having no official line to guide them, they are, as it were, speechless, incapable of articulating thoughts and adequately expressing their feelings. The intellectual atmosphere is clouded with vague pointless generalities, with opinions formed long before the events they are supposed to fit actually happened; one is oppressed by a kind of pervasive public stupidity which cannot be trusted to judge correctly the most elementary events, and which, for example, makes it possible for a newspaper to complain, â€Å"The world at large once again deserted us†-a statement comparable for blind self-centeredness to the remark Ernst Juenger in his war diaries (Strahlungen, 949) tells of having overheard in a conversation about Russian prisoners assigned to work near Hannover: â€Å"It seems there are scoundrels among them. They steal food from the dogs. As Juenger observes, â€Å"One often has the impression that the German middle classes are possessed by the devil. † rHE 345 economic and industrial conditions, and very little is done for the welfare of the masses of the people. Yet none of these facts can explain the atmosph ere of feverish busyness on the one hand and the comparatively mediocre production on the other. Beneath the surface, the German attitude to work has undergone a deep change. The old virtue of seeking excellence in the finished product, no matter what the working conditions, has yielded to a mere blind need to keep busy, a greedy craving for something to do every moment of the day. Watching the Germans busily stumble through the ruins of a thousand years of their own history, shrugging their shoulders at the destroyed landmarks or resentful when reminded of the deeds of horror that haunt the whole surrounding world, one comes to realize that busyness has become their chief defense against reality. And one wants to cry out: But this is not real-real are the ruins, real are the past horrors, real are the dead whom you have forgotten. But they are living ghosts, whom speech and argument, the glance of human eyes and the mourning of human hearts, no longer touch. THERE are, of course, many Germans whom this description does not fit. Above all, there is Berlin, whose people, in the midst of the most horrible physical destruction, have remained intact. I do not know why this hould be so, but customs, manners, speech, approaches to people, are in the smallest details so absolutely different from everything one sees and has to face in the rest of Germany, that Berlin i s almost like another country. There is hardly any resentment in Berlin’ against the victors and apparently never was; while the first saturation bombings from England were pulverizing the city, Berliners are reported to have crawled out of their cellars and, seeing one block after another gone, remarked: â€Å"Well, if the Tommies mean to keep this up, they’ll soon have to bring their own houses with them. † There is no embarrassment and no guilt-feeling, but frank and detailed recital of what happened to Berlin’s Jews at the beginning of the war. Most important of all, in Berlin the people still actively hate Hitler, and even though they have more reason than other Germans to feel themselves pawns in international politics, they do not feel impotent but are con- rapidity with which, after the currency I reform, everyday life in Germany returned to normal and reconstruction began in all fields, has become the talk of Europe. Without a doubt, people nowhere work so hard and long as in Germany. It is a well-known fact that Germans have for generations been overfond of working; and their present industriousness seems at first glance to give substance to the opinion that Germany is still potentially the most dangerous European nation. There are, moreover, many strong incentives for work. Unemployment is rampant and the position of the trade unions is so weak that compensation for overtime is not even demanded by the workers, who frequently refuse to report it to the unions; the housing situation is worse than the many new buildings would seem to indicate: business and office buildings for the great industrial and insurance companies have an unquestioned priority over dwelling units, and the result is that people prefer going to work on Saturdays and even Sundays to staying at home in overcrowded apartments. In rebuilding, as in almost all areas of German life, everything is done (often in a most spectacular way) to restore a facsimile of pre-war 346 COMMENTARY olidarity all the more consoling because it could express itself only in such intangible gestures of emotion as a glance or a handclasp, which assumed a significance out of all proportion. The emergence from this overheated intimacy of danger into the crude egotism and spreading shallowness of postwar life has been a truly heartbreaking experience for many people. (It may be remarked that today in the Eastern zone, with its police regime, this time almost universally detested by the population, an even stronger atmosphere of comradeship, intimacy, and halfspoken sign language prevails than under the Nazis, so that it is often precisely the best elements in the Eastern zone who find it difficult to make up their minds to move to the West. ) inced that their attitudes count for something; given half a chance, they will at least sell their lives dear. The Berliners work just as hard as other people in Germany, but they are less busy, they will take time to show one around the ruins and will somewhat solemnly recite the names of the streets that are gone. It is hard to believe, but it seems there is something in the Berliners’ claim that Hitler never entirely succeeded in conquering them. They are remarkably well-informed and have kept their sense of humor and their characteristically ironical friendliness. The only change in the people-apart from their having become somewhat sadder and less ready for laughter-is that â€Å"Red Berlin† is now violently anti-Communist. But here again there is an important difference between Berlin and the rest of Germany: only Berliners take the trouble to point out clearly the similarities between Hitler and Stalin, and only Berliners bother to tell you that they are of course not against the Russian people-a sentiment all the more remarkable if one remembers what happened to the Berliners, many of whom had welcomed the Red Army as the true liberator, during the first months of occupation, and what is still happening to them in the Eastern sector. Berlin is an exception, but unfortunately not a very important one. For the city is hermetically sealed off and has little intercourse with the rest of the country, except that one meets people everywhere who because of the uncertainty there left Berlin for the Western zones and now complain bitterly of their loneliness and disgust. Indeed, there are quite a number of Germans who are â€Å"different†; but they use up their energy in efforts to penetrate the stifli ng atmosphere that surrounds them, and remain completely isolated. In a way these people are today worse off psychologically than in the worst years of Hitler’s terror. In the last years of the war, there did exist a vague comradeship of opposition among all who for one reason or another were against the regime. Together they hoped for the day of defeat, and since -apart from the few well-known exceptions -they had no real intention of doing anything to hasten that day, they could enjoy the charm of a half-imaginary rebellion. The very danger involved in even the mere thought of opposition created a sentiment of II r the failure of the three devices used by nERHAms the saddest part of a sad story is the Western Allies to solve the moral, economic, and political problem of Germany. Denazification, revival of free enterprise, and federalization are certainly not the cause of present conditions in Germany, but they have helped to conceal and thus to perpetuate moral confusion, economic chaos, social injustice, and political impotence. Denazification rested on the assumption that there were objective criteria not only for clear-cut distinction between Nazis and nonNazis, but for the whole Nazi hierarchy ranging from little sympathizer to war criminal. From the beginning, the whole system, based upon length of party membership, ranks and offices held, date of first entrance, etc. , was very complicated, and involved almost everyone. The very few who had been able to keep alive outside the stream of life in Hitler Germany were exempt, and of course rightly so; but they were joined by a number of very different characters who had been lucky or cautious or influential enough to avoid the many annoyances of party membership: men who had actually been prominent in Nazi Germany but now were not required to go through the denazification process. Some of these gentlemen, mostly of the upper middle classes, have by now established open contact with their less fortunate colleagues, jailed for some war crime. This they do partly to seek advice in economic and industrial matters, but also because they have THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE at last become bored with hypocrisy. The injustices of the denazification system were simple and monotonous: the city-employed garbage collector, who under Hider had to become a party member or look for another job, was caught in the denazification net, while his superiors either went scot-free because they knew how to manage these matters, or else suffered the same penalty as he: to them, of course, a much less serious matter. Worse than these daily injustices was the fact that the system, devised to draw clear moral and political distinctions in the chaos of a completely disorganized people, actually tended to blur even the few genuine distinctions that had survived the Nazi regime. Active opponents to the regime naturally had to enter a Nazi organization in order to camouflage their illegal activities, and these members of such resistance movement as had existed in Germany were caught in the same net as their enemies, to the great pleasure of the latter. In theory, it was possible to present proofs of anti-Nazi activity; but not only was it difficult to convince occupation officers without the slightest experience of the intricacies of a terror regime; there was also the danger that the applicant might compromise himself in the eyes of the authorities, who were, after all, primarily interested in peace and order, by showing too convincingly that he had been capable of independent thought and rebellious action. It is doubtful, however, that the denazification program has stifled new political formations in Germany that might conceivably have grown out of the resistance to Nazism, since the resistance movement itself had so very little vitality in the first place. But there is no doubt that denazification has created an unwholesome new community of interest among the more-or-less compromised, those who for opportunistic reasons had become more-or-less convinced Nazis. This powerful group of slightly dubious characters excludes both those who kept their integrity and those who participated in any resounding way in the Nazi movement. It would be inaccurate in either case to think of exclusion as based on specific political convictions: the elimination of confirmed anti-Nazis does not prove the others to be confirmed Nazis, and the elimination of â€Å"famous† Nazis does not mean that the others hate Nazism. It is simply that the denazification program has been a direct 347 threat to livelihood and existence, and the majority have tried to relieve the pressure by a system of mutual assurance that the whole thing need not be taken too seriously. Such assurance can be gained only from those who are as much and as little compromised as oneself. Those who became Nazis out of conviction as well as those who kept their integrity are felt to constitute an alien and threatening element, partly because they cannot be frightened by their past, but also because their very existence is living testimony that something really serious happened, that some decisive act was committed. Thus it has come about that not only the active Nazis but the convinced anti-Nazis are excluded from positions of power and influence in Germany today; this is the most significant symptom of the German intelligentsia’s unwillingness to take its own past seriously or to shoulder the burden of responsibility bequeathed to it by the Hitler regime. The community of interest that exists among the more-or-less compromised is further strengthened by the general Germanbut not only German! -attitude to official questionnaires. In contrast to Anglo-Saxon and American habits, Europeans do not always believe in telling the absolute truth when an official body asks embarrassing questions. In countries whose legal system does not allow one to give testimony in one’s own cause, lying is considered no great sin if the truth happens to prejudice one’s chances. Thus for many Germans there is a discrepancy between their answers to military government questionnaires and the truth as known to their neighbors; and so the bonds of duplicity are strengthened. Yet it was not even conscious dishonesty that defeated the denazification program. A great number of Germans, especially among the more educated, apparently are no longer capable of telling the truth even if they want to. All those who became Nazis after 933 yielded to some kind of pressure, which ranged from the crude threat to life and livelihood, to various considerations of career, to reflections about the â€Å"irresistible stream of history. In the cases of physical or economic pressure, there should have been the possibility of mental reservation, of acquiring with cynicism that absolutely necessary me mbership card. But, curiously, it seems that very few Germans were capable of such healthy COMMENTARY cynicism; what bothered them was not the fess their own guilt are in many cases altomembership card but the mental reservation, gether innocent in the ordinary, down-toso that they often ended by adding to their earth sense, whereas those who are guilty of enforced enrollment the necessary convicsomething real have the calmest consciences tions, in order to shed the burden of duplicin the world. The recently published postity. Today, they have a certain inclination war diary of Knut Hamsun, which has found to remember only the initial pressure, which a large and enthusiastic audience in Gerwas real enough; from their belated inner admany, gives testimony on the highest level justment to Nazi doctrines, dictated by conto this horrible innocence that transforms itscience, they have drawn the half-conscious self into a persecution complex when conconclusion that it was their conscience itself fronted with the judgment of a morally inthat betrayed them-an experience that does tact world. not exactly promote moral improvement. Ernst Juenger’s war diaries offer perhaps Certainly the impact of an everyday life the best and most honest evidence of the wholly permeated by Nazi doctrines and tremendous difficulties the individual enpractices was not easy to resist. The position counters in keeping himself and his standof an anti-Nazi resembled that of a normal ards of truth and morality intact in a world pers on who happens to be thrown into an where truth and morality have lost all visible insane asylum where all the inmates have expression. Despite the undeniable influence exactly the same delusion: it becomes difficult of Juenger’s earlier writings on certain memunder such circumstances to trust one’s own bers of the Nazi intelligentsia, he was an acsenses. And there was the continual added tive anti-Nazi from the first to the last day of strain of behaving according to the rules of the regime, proving that the somewhat oldthe insane environment, which after all was fashioned notion of honor, once current in the only tangible reality, in which a man the Prussian officer corps, was quite sufficient could never afford to lose his sense of direcfor individual resistance. Yet even this untion. This demanded an ever-present awarequestionable integrity has a ollow ring; it ness of one’s whole existence, an attention is as though morality had ceased to work and that could never relax into the automatic rehad become an empty shell into which the actions we all use to cope with the many person who has to li ve, function, and survive daily situations. The absence of such autoall day long, retires for the night and solitude matic reactions is the chief element in the only. Day and night become nightmares of anxiety of maladjustment; and although, obeach other. The moral judgment, reserved jectively speaking, maladjustment in Nazi for the night, is a nightmare of fear of being society signified mental normality, the strain discovered by day; and the life of the day is of maladjustment on the individual was just a nightmare of horror in the betrayal of the as great as in a normal society. intact conscience that functions only by The deep moral confusion in Germany tonight. ay, which has grown out of this Nazi-fabricated confusion of truth with reality, is more than amorality and has deeper causes than mere wickedness. The so-called â€Å"good Germans† are often as misled in their moral judgments of themselves and others as those who simply refuse to recognize that anything wrong or out of the ordinary was done by Germany at all. Quite a number of Germans who are even somewhat over-emphatic about German guilt in general and their own guilt in particular become curiously confused if they are forced to articulate their opinions; they may make a mountain out of some irrelevant molehill, while some real enormity escapes their notice altogether. One variation. f this confusion is that Germans who conIN VnEW of the very complicated moral situa- 348 1 tion of the country at the close of the war, it is not surprising that the gravest single error in the American denazification policy occurred in its initial effort to arouse the conscience of the German people to the enormity of the crimes committed in their name and under conditions of organized complicity. In the early days of occupation, posters appeared everywhere showing the photographed horrors of Buchenwald with a finger pointing at the spectator, and the text: â€Å"You are guilty. † For a majority of the population these pictures were the first authentic knowledge of what had een done in their name. How could they feel guilty if they had not even THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE known? All they saw was the pointed finger, clearly indicating the wrong person. From this error they concluded that the whole poster was a propaganda lie. Thus, at least, runs the story one hears time and again in Germany. The story is true enough so far as it goes; yet it does not explain the very violent reaction to these posters, which even today has not died down, and it does not explain the affronting neglect of the content of the photographs. Both the violence and the neglect are called forth by the hidden truth of the poster rather than by its obvious error. For while the German people were not informed of all Nazi crimes and were even deliberately kept ignorant of their exact nature, the Nazis had seen to it that every German knew some horrible story to be true, and he did not need a detailed knowledge of all the horrors committed in his name to realize that he had been made accomplice to unspeakable crimes. This is a sad story which is not made less sad by the realization that, under the circumstances, the Allied powers had very little choice. The only conceivable alternative to the denazification program would have been a revolution-the outbreak of the German people’s spontaneous wrath against all those they knew to be prominent members of the Nazi regime. Uncontrolled and bloody as such an uprising might have been, it certainly would have followed better standards of justice than a paper procedure. But the revolution did not come to pass, and not primarily because it was difficult to organize under the eyes of four foreign armies. It is only too likely that not a single soldier, German or foreign, would have been needed to shield the real culprits from the wrath of the people. This wrath does not exist today, and apparently it has never existed. the denazification program inadequate to the moral and political situation at the end of the war; it quickly came into conflict with American plans for the reconstruction and re-education of Germany. To rebuild the German economy along lines of free enterprise seemed a plausible enough anti-Nazi measure, since the Nazi economy had been a clearly planned economy, although it had not-or perhaps not yet -touched property conditions in the country. But the factory owners as a class had 349 NOTwas only been good Nazis, or at least strong supporters of a regime that had offered, in exchange for some relinquishment of private control, to bring the whole European trade and industrial system into German hands. In this, German businessmen behaved no differently from businessmen in other countries in the imperialist era: the imperialist-minded businessman is no believer in free enterprise-on the contrary, he sees state intervention as the only guarantee of safe returns from his farflung enterprises. It is true enough that the German businessmen, unlike the old-style imperialists, did not control the state but were used by the party for party interests. But this difference, decisive as it might have become in the long run, had not yet appeared in its full force. In exchange for state-guaranteed expansion, the German business class had been ready enough to liquidate some of its more conspicuous positions of power, especially over the working class. A controlled economic system, with greater safeguards for workers’ interests, had therefore come to be the strongest single attraction of the Nazi regime for both working class and upper middle class. Here again, the development did not run its course, and state-owned, or rather party-owned, slavery as we know it in Russia had not yet become a threat to German workers (though of course it had been the chief threat to the working classes of all other European countries during the war). The result has been that planned economy in Germany, with no Communist connotations, is remembered as the only safeguard against unemployment and over-exploitation. The reintroduction of truly free enterprise meant handing over the factories and the control of economic life to those who, even if a little wrong about the ultimate consequences of Nazism, had been staunch supporters of the regime for all practical purposes. If they had not had much real power under the Nazis, they had enjoyed all the pleasures of status, and this regardless of actual membership in the party. And since the end of the war, together with almost unlimited power over economic life, they have regained their old power over the working class-that is, the only class in Germany which, though it had welcomed state intervention as insurance against unemployment, had never been wholeheartedly Nazi. In 350 COMMENTARY were former members of the SS, the expellees have a clear-cut political program and can rely upon a certain group solidarity, two elements conspicuously absent in all other strata of the population. Their program is the reestablishment of a powerful Germany which would make it possible for them to return to their former homes in the East and take their revenge on the populations that expelled them. In the meantime, they are busy hating and despising the native German population, which received them with something less than fraternal sentiments. As distinguished from the problem posed by the remnants of the Nazi movement, the refugee problem could be solved by energetic and intelligent economic measures. That, failing such measures, the refugees have been driven into a position where they had virtually no choice but to establish a party of their own if they wanted their interests to be represented at all, is in no small part the fault of the present regime, and more specifically of the influence of the free-enterprise slogan as it has been understood or misunderstood by Germans. Public funds are used for credit to big enterprises; encouragement of small enterprises (many of the refugees are skilled workers and craftsmen), especially in the form of cooperatives, has been almost completely neglected. The amount of money spent for the benefit of the refugees varies from one Land to the other, but the amounts are nearly always hopelessly inadequate, not only in terms of absolute help but also in proportion to the general state budget. Recent proposals by the Bonn government to reduce business taxes-a clear index to the government’s economic policy-would have decreased the available funds for refugees even more sharply. The fact that the occupation authorities vetoed this measure may offer some hope that the American authorities are coming to understand that the free-enterprise slogan has different connotations in Germany, and in Europe in general, from those that surround it in the United States. T IS indeed one of the chief handicaps of I American policy in Europe that this difference is not clearly understood. The American system, where the power of industrial management is strongly counterbalanced by the power of organized labor, would hardly seem acceptable to the European believer in free other words, at the time when denazification was the official watchword of Allied policy in Germany, power was returned to people whose Nazi sympathies were a matter of record, and power was taken away from those whose untrustworthiness with regard to the Nazis had been the only somewhat established fact in an otherwise fluctuating situation. To make things worse, the power returned to the industrialists was freed even of the feeble controls that had existed under the Weimar Republic. The trade unions which the Nazis had wiped out were not reinstated to their former position-partly because they lacked competent personnel and partly because they were suspected of anti-capitalist convictions-and the efforts of the unions to regain their former influence over the workers failed badly, with the result that by now they have lost the little confidence they may have inherited from memories of former times. The socialists’ stubborn attack on the Schuman plan may look foolish to the outside world. This attack, however, can be properly understood (though hardly excused) only if one bears in mind that, under present circumstances, the combination of the Rhine-Ruhr industry with French industry might very well mean an even more concerted and better supported assault on the workers’ standard of living. The mere fact that the Bonn government, frequently considered a mere facade for the interests of the industrialists, has supported the plan so heartily, seems reas on enough for suspicion. For, unfortunately, the German upper middle classes have neither learned nor forgotten from the past; they still believe, despite a wealth of experience to the contrary, that a large â€Å"labor reserve†-that is, considerable unemployment-is a healthy economic sign, and they are satisfied if they can keep wages down in this way. THE economic issue is considerably sharpened by the problem of the refugees, which is the greatest economic and social problem of present-day Germany. So long as these people are not resettled, they will constitute a grave political danger, precisely because they have been driven into a political vacuum. In common with the comparatively few convinced Nazis who are still left in Germany and who almost without exception THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE enterprise; in Europe, the trade unions even in their best days were never among the established powers, but always led the uncertain existence of a mildly rebellious force operating with varying success in an everlasting battle against the employers. In America, moreover, there is a certain reluctance, shared by employers and workers, to resort to state intervention; sometimes the mere threat of state arbitration may bring the disputing parties back to bilateral negotiations. In Germany, both workers and employers have only one idea in their heads: that the state must throw its full weight on the side of their interests. With the possible exception of the Scandinavians, no European citizenry has the political maturity of Americans, for whom a certain amount of responsibility, i. e. , of moderation in the pursuit of self-interest, is almost a matter of course. Furthermore, this is still a country of abundance and of opportunity, so that the talk of free initiative has not yet become meaningless; and the very dimensions of the American economy tend to defeat over-all planning. But in European countries, where national territories have continually shrunk in proportion to industrial capacity, most people are firmly convinced that even the present standard of living can be guaranteed only if there is some measure of planning to assure everyone a just share in the national income. Behind the loose and wholly unjustified talk of American â€Å"imperialism† in Europe, looms the not so unjustified fear that the introduction of the American economic system into Europe, or rather American support of the economic status quo, can only result in a miserably low standard of living for the masses. The social and political stability of the Scandinavian countries results partly from strong trade unions, partly from the role of cooperatives in economic life, and partly from a wisely exerted state intervention. These factors indicate at least the general direction that the solution of European economic and social problems might take if unsolved political problems did not interfere and if the general world situation allowed enough time. In Germany, at any rate, the system of free enterprise has led quickly to cut-throat practices, monopolization, and trustification, regardless of all efforts of the American authorities to prevent these developments. 351 I0OLITICALLY, the most serious aspect of the I situation is not, as might be expected, the rising dissatisfaction of the working classes. The tragic history of the German socialist parties seems to have exhausted their vitality; never before has the German working class been in a less revolutionary mood. There is a certain embittered resignation to a system that is â€Å"sold† to them under the trade name of democracy, but this resentment will hardly cause any trouble; on the contrary, it is almost a guarantee that any regime, however good or bad, will be acceptable, as a matter of indifference. An altogether different and really dangerous side of the matter is that since the situation of the workers has become more hopeless, more insecure, and more miserable than before, the old fear of â€Å"proletarianization† has received new and powerful motivation. This fear especially grips the middle classes, who once again lost their money through the currency reform, in contrast to the industrialists whose fortunes were secure in real properties. The financial status of the middleclass Germans, especially if they lost their belongings in the bombings or are refugees, differs in no way from that of the ordinary worker’s family. But the idea of having to share the worker’s lot for a lifetime is forbidding indeed. To avoid this, the younger people therefore try desperately to scrape together a few marks to enter one of the many universitiesall of them overcrowded. It is their only chance to keep their middle-class status and to escape the misery of a proletarianized life. Everywhere in Germany one is told that in a few years there will be enough lawyers, physicians, teachers, art historians, philosophers, and theologians to form a breadline stretching over all the highways. And most of these potentially unemployed academicians will have earned their degrees at the price of appalling sacrifices; many students live on a monthly income of sixty or seventy marks, which means chronic undernourishment and complete abstention from even the most modest pleasures, such as a glass of wine or an evening at the movies. Academic requiremeans in general are not much lower than they used to be, so that the fanatic devotion of these young people to their studies, prompted as it may be by quite non-intellectual motives, is interrupted only by re- 352 COMMENTARY might counteract the Nazi megalomania which had taught Germans to think in continents and plan in centuries. But the failure of the Laender governments is already almost a matter of record. It is a failure in the only political field where the Germans have been left alone almost from the beginning of the occupation, and where success or failure was independent of Germany’s status on the international scene. To some extent, of course, the failure of the local governments can be blamed upon the general climate of German life created by denazification and the social consequences of a ruthless economic policy; but this explanation sounds valid only if one wilfully ignores the great degree of freedom that was granted to the Germans in the Laender governments. The truth is that centralization, as it was accomplished by nation-states and as it was established in Germany, not by Hitler but by Bismarck, succeeded in destroying all authentic desire for local autonomy and in undermining the political vitality of all provincial or municipal bodies. Whatever is left of such traditions has assumed a hopelessly reactionary character and has petrified into the cheapest kind of folklore. Local government in most instances has liberated the most vicious local conflicts, creating chaos everywhere because there is no power great enough to overawe conflicting factions. The element of public responsibility and even of national interest being conspicuously absent, local politics tends to deteriorate quickly into the lowest possible form of plain corruption. The dubious political past of everybody who is experienced (and the â€Å"inexperienced† elements have by now been rather ruthlessly eliminated), and the low salaries paid to the civil servants, together open the door to all kinds of mismanagement: many public officials can easily be blackmailed, and many more find it very difficult to resist the temptation to augment their salaries by accepting bribes. The Bonn government has little direct connection with the Laender governments: it is neither controlled by them nor does it exercise any noticeable control over them. The only functioning links between Bonn and the Laender governments are the party machines, which rule supreme in all questions of personnel and administration, and which, in sharp contrast to the â€Å"small state† structure curring spells of hard manual labor to earn a little extra money. Nobody in Germany seems to doubt that the tremendous sacrifices of the student generation can only end in severe disappointment, and nobody seems to give this problem much serious thought. The only solution would be the closing of a number of German universities, combined with a pitiless screening of the high school graduates, perhaps even the introduction of the otherwise questionable French system of competitive examinations in which the number of successful candidates is determined beforehand by the number of available places. Instead of a discussion along these or other lines, the Bavarian government only recently opened one more (the fourth) university in Bavaria, and the French occupation authorities, in some ill-advised urge to improve German culture, have actually opened a brand new university in Mainz-which means that six thousand students have come to aggravate the already quite hopeless housing situation in a city almost completely destroyed. And indeed a rather desperate courage would be required under present conditions to take measures that would forcibly empty the universities; it would be like depriving a despairing man of his last chance, even though this chance had become a gambler’s chance. What course political development will take in Germany when a whole class of frustrated and starving intellectuals is let loose on an indifferent and sullen population, is anybody’s guess. hose observers of Allied policy in who viewed denazification with misgivings and saw that a system of free enterprise could lead only to the aggrandizement of politically undesirable elements, placed considerable hope on the federalization program, under which Germany was divided into Laender (states) with extensive powers of local self-government. It seemed indisputably right in so many ways: it would act as a safeguard against accumulation of power, and thus appease the understandable if exaggerated fears of Germany’s neighbors; it would prepare the German people for the hoped-for federalization of Europe; it would teach grass-roots democracy in the field of communal or local affairs where people had their immediate interests and were supposed to know the ropes, and thus EGermany VEN THE AFTERMATH OF NAZI RULE of the country, are more centralized than ever and therefore represent the only visible power. This is a dangerous situation, but in itself it is not necessarily the worst that could have happened. The real trouble comes from the nature of the party machines themselves. The present parties are continuations of the pre-Hitler parties-that is, of the parties that ‘Hitler found it so surprisingly easy to destroy. They are in many cases run by the same people and are dominated by the old ideologies and the old tactics. However, only the tactics have somehow preserved their vitality; the ideologies are carried along simply for tradition’s sake and because a German party cannot very well exist without a Weltanschauung. One cannot even say that the ideologies have survived for want of something better; it is rather as though the Germans, after their experience with Nazi ideology, have become convinced that just about anything will do. The party machines are primarily interested in providing jobs and favors for their members, and they are allpowerful to do so. This means that they tend to attract the most opportunistic elements of the population. Far from encouraging initiative of any kind, they are afraid of young people with new ideas. In short, they have been reborn in senility. Consequently, what little there is of political interest and discussion occurs in small circles outside the parties and outside the public institutions. Each of these small groups, because of the political vacuum and the general corruption of public life around them, is the potential nucleus for a new movement; for the parties have not only failed to enlist the support of the German intelligentsia, they have also convinced the masses that they do not represent their interests. TEm melancholy story of postwar Germany is not one of missed opportunities. In our 353 eagerness to find a definite culprit and definable mistakes we tend to overlook the more fundamental lessons this story may teach us. When all is said, the twofold question remains: What could one reasonably expect from a people after twelve years of totalitarian rule? What could one reasonably expect from an occupation confronted with the impossible task of putting back on its feet a people that had lost the ground from under it? But it would be well to remember and try to understand the experience of the occupation of Germany, for we are all too likely to see it repeated in our lifetime on a gigantic scale. Unfortunately, the liberation of a people from totalitarianism is not likely to come to pass merely through â€Å"the breakdown of communications and centralized control [which] might well enable the brave Russian peoples to free themselves from a tyranny far worse than that of the Czars,† as Churchill put it in his recent speech to the Assembly of the Council of Europe. The German example shows that help from the outside is not likely to set free indigenous forces of selfhelp, and that totalitarian rule is something more than merely the worst kind of tyranny. Totalitarianism kills the roots. Politically speaking, the present conditions of German life have a greater significance as an object lesson for the consequences of totalitarianism than as a demonstration of the so-called German problem in itself. This problem, like all other European problems, could be solved only in a federated Europe; but even such a solution seems of little relevance in view of the imminent political crisis of these coming years. Neither a regenerated nor an unregenerated Germany is likely to play a great role in it. And this knowledge of the ultimate futility of any political initiative on their part in the present struggle is not the least potent factor in the Germans’ reluctance to face the reality of their destroyed country. How to cite Nazi Germany Totalitarian State, Essay examples

Blindness In King Lear And Oed Essay free essay sample

, Research Paper The two plants King Lear by William Shakespeare and Oedipus the King by Sophocles portion similar subjects. One such subject is sight versus sightlessness. In Shakespeare # 8217 ; s King Lear the issue of sight versus sightlessness is a repeating subject. In Shakespearian footings, every bit good as in Sohpocles # 8217 ; Oedipus the King, being blind does non merely mention to the physical inability to see. Blindness is used in these two plants to demo a mental defect some of the characters possess and vision is non derived entirely from physical sight. In King Lear, Gloucester and Lear are two premier illustrations Shakespeare incorporates into this subject, every bit good as Oedipus in Oedipus the King. Blindness is the cause of the ruin of the tragic hero Oedipus. Not merely does his sightlessness appear physically but besides selfishly, like Lear. In both dramas, Lear and Oedipus likewise hold a high place in their several states. Lear is the King of Britain and Oedipus is the King of Thebes. Both male monarchs, because of their high place in society are supposed to be able to separate the good from the bad. Unfortunately, their deficiency of insight prevents them from making so. Gloucester is a premier illustration of a character, like Lear and Oedipus, who lacks penetration but regains it when he is blinded physically. Gloucester is the aging Earl, a good adult male with a long tally of bad fortune. His jobs are with his two boies, Edgar and Edmund. Gloucester # 8217 ; s vision is really much like Lear # 8217 ; s and Oedipus # 8217 ; . These three characters are unable to see what is traveling on around them. Lear # 8217 ; s deficiency of penetration is seen through his three girls, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. The # 8220 ; love trial # 8221 ; at the beginning of Act 1, scene I sets the tone for this highly complicated drama. Lear demands that his girls turn out how much they love him. Rather than being a true trial of their love for him, the trial seems to ask for or even demand flattery. Lear provinces, # 8220 ; Tell me, my daughters/ Since now we will deprive us both of regulation, / Interest of district, attentions of state-/ Which of you shall we state doth love us must, / That we our largest premium may extent/ Where nature doth with virtue challenge? # 8221 ; ( I, i, 48-53 ) . Goneril and Regan, by their addresss flatter their male parent. Goneril provinces, # 8220 ; Sir, I love you more than words can exert the affair ; / Dearer than eyesight, infinite, and Liberty ; / Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, / No less than life ; with grace, wellness, beauty, honour # 8221 ; ( I, i, 55-61 ) . Regan besides replies to her male parent # 8221 ; I find she names my really title of love ( I, i, 71 ) . However, when Cordelia says # 8220 ; I love your majesty/ Harmonizing to my bond, no more nor less # 8221 ; ( I, i, 92-93 ) , Lear can non see what these words truly intend. Goneril and Regan are seting on an act when they declare their love for Lear. When Cordelia states her love for Lear she does non desire to tie in her true love for her male parent with her sisters false love. He sees the fa fruit drink that her sisters # 8217 ; put on which is why she states her love in this mode. Goneril and Regan, nevertheless, fool Lear ; into believing that they love him while Cordelia does non. Kent who has sufficient penetration, unlike Lear, is able to see through the duologue and knows that Cordelia is the lone girl who really loves Lear. Kent tries to convert Lear of this by stating # 8220 ; Answer my life my judgement, / Thy youngest girl does non love th ee least, / Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds/ Revert no hollowness # 8221 ; ( I, i, 150-154 ) . Lear nevertheless, lacks the penetration that Kent has. He merely sees what is on the surface and can non understand the deeper purposes of the girls # 8217 ; addresss. As Lear # 8217 ; s choler grows from the statement, his foresight diminishes as he becomes progressively irrational and shockable. When Lear disowns Cordelia, he says, # 8220 ; Thou hast her France. Let her be thine, for we/ Have no such girl, nor shall of all time see/ That face of hers once more # 8221 ; ( I, i, 262-264 ) . Ironically, he subsequently discovers that Cordelia is the lone girl he wants to see, inquiring her to forgive and bury. Lear states # 8220 ; When 1000 dost inquire me blessing, I # 8217 ; ll kneel down/ And inquire thee forgiveness ; so we # 8217 ; ll live, / And pray, and sing, and state old narratives and laugh, # 8220 ; ( V, three, 10-12 ) . By this clip, he has eventually sta rted to derive some discretion, but it is excessively late. His deficiency of foreknowledge has condemned him from the beginning, and really cost him his and his girl # 8217 ; s life. In Lear # 8217 ; s character, one sees that physical sight does non needfully warrant clear sight. Gloucester besides shows us that prior to the loss of his eyes that his vision was really much like Lear # 8217 ; s. Gloucester # 8217 ; s deficiency of penetration besides keeps him from seeing what is traveling on around him. Alternatively, he merely sees what is presented to him on the surface. His sightlessness psychologically denies him the ability to see the goodness of Edgar and the immorality of Edmund, his two boies. Although Edgar is the good and loving boy, Gloucester disowns him, like Lear disinherit his girl Cordelia. Gloucester is ready to kill his boy Edgar, who would subsequently salvage his life. Gloucester # 8217 ; s sightlessness begins when Edmund convinces him by agencies of a bad missive that Edgar is plotting to kill him to derive Earldom. When Edmund shows him the missive that is purportedly from Edgar, it takes really small convincing for Gloucester to believe it. This shows that Gloucester’s character is easy manipulated because of the love he has for Edmund. Gloucester exclaims, â€Å"O scoundrel, villain-his really sentiment in the letter/ Abhorred scoundrel, unnatural, detested, beastly villain-worse than beastly! † ( 78-79 ) . He does non even inquiry if Edgar would make something like this because he fails to see Edgar as the good boy. The thought of Edmund being after the earldom neer occurs to him. At this point, Gloucester’s life is headed toward the way of damnation, similar to Lear, because of deficiency of penetration. Near the terminal of the drama, Gloucester eventually regains his sight and realizes that Edgar had saved his life disguised as PoorTom, a mendicant. He realizes that Edmund is the evil boy and had planned to take over the earldom. Gloucester provinces, # 8220 ; I stumbled when I saw full oft # 8217 ; tis seen/ Our agencies secure us, and our mere defects/ Prove our trade goods. O beloved boy Edgar, / The nutrient of thy abused father # 8217 ; s wrath-/ Might I but live to see thee in my touch/ I # 8217 ; vitamin Ds say I had eyes once more # 8221 ; ( IV, I, 18-24 ) . This is dry because his inability to see the worlds of his boies occurred when he had physical sight but was mentally unsighted ; but his ability to see the true nature of his boies occurred after holding his eyes plucked out by the Duke of Cornwall, doing him sightlessness. From this point onwards, Gloucester learns to see clearly by utilizing his bosom to see alternatively of his eyes. Oedipus, in Oedipus the King, like Gloucester and Lear in King Lear, besides lacked insight. Oedipus was fated from birth to kill his male parent and get married his female parent. Excessive pride fuels his inability to believe the prognostication. Oedipus does work out the conundrum of the sphinx and marry. He does non, nevertheless, know that he has fulfilled the prognostication. Oedipus is so blinded by his ain narcissistic ego that he believes that since he was the lone 1 who was able to work out the conundrum of the sphinx that he is the lone one capable of happening out the slayer of King Laius. Oedipus provinces, # 8220 ; No, I # 8217 ; ll start again-I # 8217 ; ll convey it all to light myself! Apollo is right, and so are you, Creon, to turn our attending back to the murdered adult male. Now you have me to contend for you, you # 8217 ; ll see! I am the land # 8217 ; s retaliator by all rights, and Apollo # 8217 ; s title-holder to # 8221 ; ( 149-155 ) . Oedipus makes it his responsibility and aspiration to seek out the liquidator of King Laius. Ironically, when Tiresias, a blind prophesier claims # 8220 ; you with your cherished eyes, you # 8217 ; re blind to the corruptness of your life, to the house you live in, those you live with-who are your parents? Do you cognize? All knowing you are the flagellum of your ain flesh and blood # 8221 ; ( 470-474 ) , Oedipus does non believe him. He believes he speaks bunk. Oedipus does non even give it a 2nd idea that possibly this is true or to the fact that he did kill a adult male on his manner to Thebes. Oedipus, compared to Gloucester and his boies, believes that Tiresias is plotting against him along with his brother-in-law Creon. After several testimonies, Oedipus opens his eyes and accepts the incrimination. In order to present justness for his wrongs in killing his male parent and get marrieding his female parent, Oedipus chooses to blind himself. Unlike Lear and Gloucester, Oedipus took affairs into his ain custodies for his failure to open his eyes to see the truth. Just before Oedipus blinds himself he realizes what he has done. Oedipus provinces, # 8220 ; O god-all semen true, all explosion to visible radiation! O light-now Lashkar-e-Taiba me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last-cursed in my birth, cursed in matrimony, cursed in lives I cut down with these custodies! # 8221 ; Oedipus has now exposed his comforter. His life, like Lear and Gloucester # 8217 ; s is proven to be a prevarication because of his symbolical sightlessness and his false cognition. As you have seen, the characters that suffer the most in the dramas King Lear and Oedipus the King are Lear, Gloucester, and Oedipus. Their narratives are similar in many ways ; nevertheless, while Lear easy goes huffy, Gloucester and Oedipus are blinded but remain sane, to a certain extent. Oedipus, Lear and Gloucester seem to be able to comprehend certain tinkles more clearly after they lose their sight or saneness. Lear realizes merely as he begins to travel huffy that Cordelia loves him and that Goneril and Regan are flatters ; he comes to understand the failing of human nature, the emptiness of royal claims to power, and the similarity of all human existences as he rambles in his insanity. Gloucester, for his portion, comes to understand which boy is truly good and which is bad at the minute of his blinding. Like Gloucester, Oedipus sees his errors as he is about to blind himself. Unlike Oedipus, both Lear and Gloucester sink into desperation before their deceases. It is besides interesting to observe that Lear # 8217 ; s eyesight neglect in the minutes merely before he dies, while Gloucester whishes himself insane so he could more easy bear his wretchedness. Oedipus, unlike Lear and Gloucester, takes a whole different path and exiles himself so the he does non hold to populate with his shame. 344