What We Learned From the Nazis:
Deconstructing Identity and the Death of Empathy
After recently being turned away from a doctor’s appointment by a receptionist/assistant for being 30 seconds late over the 15 minute cut off period, it occurred to me that the postmodern era is a very different social time frame than any other human period.
I had taken a long laborious journey to get to an appointment with a doctor so that I could deal with a personal health issue. I was feeling better already as a took the elevator up the lofty tower as I was dealing with my problem the best way I could: by seeking the advice and consultation of an expert who knew ore than me.
The Hippocratic oath is a mantra of comfort and compassion. I’ve always trusted doctors and nurses because they’ve chosen to study the human body and learn how to heal it. But my surrender to the support of experts was et and thwarted by a stronger human force: That of bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is “a system of administration that is characterized by a “hierarchy of authority, specialization of functions, and adherence to fixed rules.”
The word bureaucracy comes from the old French word bureau, which means “writing desk”, and the Latin word -cracy, which means “power”. Literally, the power of the desk or rather the power of those who sit at desks.
Here are some other persistent characteristics of bureaucracy:
- Complex systems:
Bureaucracies are complex organizations with multilayered systems and processes. most, if not all of which are kept hidden from the outsider or those who are subject to the powers of the bureaucracy - Division of labor:
Each employee in a bureaucracy has a specialized skill set and responsibilities.That is referred to as their job; as in “I’m just doing my job” - Red tape:
Bureaucracies can be characterized by officialism, red tape, and proliferation. - Slow decision-making:
Bureaucracies are often described as having procedures that slow down decision-making. Because the longer it takes, the more likely the subject will give up. Bureaucracy wins!
oBureaucracies can be found in many different types of organizations, including: Government agencies, Corporations, Societies, Nonprofit organizations, and Clubs.
Bureaucracy nos pervades every aspect of human reality from work place to school place to banks to courts to stores and of course to doctor’s office
So what am I complaining about?
Complex concentrations of people require complex systems to manage the needs of those people. Surely the efficient management of people and resources is fundamental to the benefit of everyone. And why are you using the hyperbolic term ‘Nazi’ all the time? Nazis aren’t responsible for everything!
Oh, Yes they are.
The downside of bureaucracy is that although it is intended to create efficiencies it can only do so by repressing indeed quashing the subjective experience of the individual One cannot effectively coordinate thousands or millions of people if you treat them all as individuals. Instead bureaucracy use categorize people create artificial groupings based on status and position within the bureaucratic process. This ultimately enforces an abstraction an alienation fro the individual. y doctor’s receptionist was not concerned with e as an individual with a subjective experience but as a unit that had surpassed the rule of the “cut off” period by 30 seconds
I was no longer a patient seeking treatment. I was a unit within her process who had transgressed a regulation, a rule she was obligated to adhere to as part of “her job”. It wasn’t her fault she was preventing me from seeing my doctor, she was just “following orders”
(See where the ‘Nazi” part is working itself in?)
For the receptionist to have granted e 1 30 second reprieve to have ade an exception to the rule she would have had to see e as an individual having a subjective experience. She would have had to have empathy with my situation and valued my subjective experience as an individual ABOVE the demands of the bureaucracy that paid her wages.
She would have literally had to put on my shoes and you just can’t do that with hundreds, thousands or millions of people. No one can. So for a bureaucrat to do their job effectively they have to create a wall of alienation between themselves as human beings and the human beings they are processing
They must think numbers, units, quotas, targets, time frames, cut off periods, in order to do their job efficiently and to the satisfaction of her employer. Otherwise the employer will fire here (yet another statistic) and employ someone who can dehumanize others ore efficiently
Ok so we already know all this. What’s “Nazis” got to do with it? Nazis were over 60 years ago how could they teach us anything worth learning?
Within the context of a post industrial society, they taught us everything!
The Nazis were originally a fringe political party that spouted a mixture of pseudo socialist slogans with standardized uniforms and sparse rallies that was aimed at appealing to the impoverished working class who were suffering under the ass intense inflation in Germany at the time. This was largely due to the exorbitant war reparations Germany was forced to pay the allies as a punitive vengeance for losing WWI. Of course the German military government didn’t
pay the reparations the German people did. To the point of mass unemployment and near starvation.
the political environment was intense with gangs of Colunista fascists and anarchists openly fighting on the streets. It was into this environment a WWI lieutenant joined the Nazi Party and forever changed the face of not just Germany and Europe but the entire world. Hitler was ambitious and used any eans to accumulate and Anita in power first by infiltrating the already established Nazi Party and eliminating the old guard and then successfully catapulting this previously fringe party onto the forefront of political and military power
This is much better accounted for in other places
But my point is about what was exceptional not so much of the Nazis but of their style of governance that pervades our daily lives to this day
In the great American philosopher Hannah Arendt was covering the infamous Nurebourg trials of the defeated Nazi authorities, on behalf of the New Yorker magazine. She attended the trial of Adolph Eichmann a Nazi bureaucrat in person.
Eichmann Had been in charge of the the transport of Jews Colunista and homosexuals on trains to the infamous concentration camps. Eichmann‘s self defence was historically significant as is the Cruze of the argument I am presenting in this essay.
Eichmann Basically argued that he had no culpability in the extermination of illions of Jews (and others) because he didn’t know what happened at the end of the train rides. All he was responsible and accountable for was the rounding up and transport of Jews he had nothing to do with their extermination. He only fulfilled one function within a vast complex bureaucracy of death and therefore could not be held accountable for the actual deaths
He was only following orders
It this defence that ultimately failed that inspired Arendt to coin the term “the banality of evil” and her essay by that same title is well worth the read in understanding the role bureaucracy continues to play in the dehumanization and deconstruction of individuals
In general the true horror of the Nazi holocaust was not that they murded millions and millions of of people believe it or not. It was the systemized manner in which this genocide was coined with the full cooperation of the German people any of whom weren’t particularly anti septic. Germans Poles Albanians French all colluded in this ass genocide. Normal people like you and me willfully complied with the ass extermination of their fellow human beings
How an this be?
How can normal people be trained to behave like monsters?
Because ofthe systematic dehumanization of the individual and the deliberate killing of the capacity for empathy. The Nazi war and death industries were just that: the first post industrial genocide. No individual would have to bear the burden of accountability everyone was just part of a process just doing their job
By alienating the murderers from from their own empathy from their own ability to relate to the subjective experience of another human being it became easier. If these aren’t people but numbers quotas targets tie frames then what happens to the actual individuals is of no consequence the bureaucracy must be sustained I must keep my job, my rank, my position in the process at all costs
The Nazi genocide was a genius of post industrial organization a monument to bureaucratic efficiency. Down to the organizing and stacking of concentration viti’s personal effects into carefully organized piles of spectacles shoes hats teeth and the like. No human tribe or grouping had every orchestrated such an indifferent efficiency before in the history of the human race
And this was indeed the turning point of the 20th century and nothing has ever been the same again. Today each os us is subject to a similar dehumanization Our subjective experiences our actual lives have no value within a bureaucratic organization. We are our numbers, our passwords, our qualifications, our credentials not how we think feel of experience the world.
We are no more than our data.
And our value in how we are processed by faster and ore efficient bureaucratic machines.
The Science fiction nightmare of a future human world ruled by robots and machines isn’t tomorrow it’s today; only we weren’t taken over by machines we have surrendered without firing a shot
My answer to this present day dystopian nightmare?
Don’t stop fighting!
Rage Against the Machine!
Don’t put up with being treated as less than human!
Call the bureaucrats out. Try to convert the ones that you can; they’re still human after all. State you case. Share your subjective experience. Appeal to the remaining vestiges of empathy and common humanity that you can find.
Be kind, be caring, talk to people like people even when they respond like robots.
Don’t give up the fight and we may be able to save the world fro the Nazis after all!
Your subjective, individual comments are welcome below fellow human!
igorgoldkind
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