What Were They Thinking? We Can Be So Much Better Than This!

I often find myself drifting into thought while walking the countless trails in New England. When I was in school, they used to call it day dreaming. I prefer to think of it as “reflecting”. For I find if there exists a problem today, reflecting on the past… can often reveal the solution. There is no problem… from which we are burdened today… that hasn’t confronted our ancestors of the past.

Yet… no matter how many hundreds of miles walked… no matter how much reflection is had… there are some things I simply cannot wrap my head around. There are so many things happening today, reminiscent of some of the most awful actions of the past… which beg the question, whose answer continues to elude me today.

What were they thinking?

The Holocaust, Slavery, Genocides, Wars, segregation… the list goes on. I can understand how those in power will try and stay in power and do the most wretched things… to not lose that power. What I can’t understand, is how entire populations of their own citizens… allow them to do this. How do good men and women… allow… tolerate… empower… the most wicked of things to be done to so many people?

Trying to find a scientific answer, I found David Livingstone Smith, co-founder and director of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England. He says “the key to these most cruel acts is to sell the idea that… they are not human. When people dehumanize others, they conceive of them as subhuman creatures. By saying they are not human, only then can the process “liberate aggression and exclude the target of aggression from the moral community.”

Hmmm… makes sense….

“The Nazi’s described Jews as “Untermenschen”, or subhumans, they didn’t mean it metaphorically”, says Smith. “They didn’t mean they were like sub-humans, they meant they were literally subhuman.” The Nazi’s enlisted… and paid… hundreds of doctors and scientists to support them in their crazed ideology that Jews were not human. And while murdering tens of millions of them, they used this same “Not really human… to euthanize over 275,000 people who they deemed mentally unfit or physically challenged/dependent on someone else. They were an inconvenience… and not fully human.

But the real answer to my question, still escapes me. How could so many Germans, who grew up and had Jewish friends, one day turn, and on the order of the Govt and crazed leaders… kill those friends? Surely the German people knew Jews had Families? Had Sons and Daughters, Mothers and Fathers. They all loved, they laughed, they cried. How could any German… not look into the eyes of one of their Jewish Victims… and not see the spark of Human Life… a Spark of God himself… before they pulled the trigger or gassed them to death?

What were they thinking?

More recently, we witnessed in Rwanda the Hutu’s calling the Tutsis cockroaches… and then proceeding to hack to death, with machetes, 77% of the population. Over 500,000 dead in only 100 days. Neighbors, who one night dined with each other, hacking to death the same neighbor… the following night… with machetes! And the World and the US allowed it to happen.

What were they thinking?

And yes, it’s easy to be self-righteous, to look at another country’s spiritual flaws and outright sins… and say we are better. But then I look into the soul of my very own, dearly beloved “America”… and find our own sins.

Immediately I wonder… what was the mindset that allowed the US Government and the American people to support the Institution of Slavery and the brutalization of Blacks? I ask myself… How could any good person, knowing that one day they will see God, look at any black man, woman, or child… and not see clearly… that they were human beings? And when I ponder that question, my soul hears the echos of their cries and screams… enslaved families being torn apart. I hear the sizzle… as the burning steel brands their flesh with the mark of another man. I can smell the burnt flesh permeating the air surrounding the Slave markets. An odorous scent of death. Did they… who lived at the time… not feel this? Not see this? Not smell this?

Did they not look into the eyes of a black mother… while they ripped her baby away? Did they not see her tears? Did they not hear her scream? Did they really think she was not “Human”?

What were they thinking?

Now I understand that the US Government was always controlled by those with money. And those who had financial interests made fortunes on Slavery and presented the world with their own so-called Science. They hired Scientists and doctors who attested to the claim that Blacks… were not humans. They were not like Whites. They espoused physical differences in looks, bone density, facial features, muscle builds… and even said they did not have the same brain. The government supported it… allowed it… so it must be right. WRONG! They even tried to sell it to ordinary people, by invoking the Bible, saying that it clearly showed that mankind always enslaved others… and Christ never spoke directly against it.

I guess they missed the whole point that Christ said to Love one Another… and he came to offer freedom to those “enslaved”.

But really… how could the majority of good people… do nothing… and allow it to be? Did they try to absolve their conscience by blaming it on the Government and others? Whom am I to interfere in the rights of another? I don’t own slaves but it’s their choice. I guess, its ok for some to have choices… and others… not.

What were they thinking?

Then, if Slavery was not bad enough… up until 1964… one hundred years after slavery ended… half the country still would not allow Blacks to share the same spaces on buses, at restaurants, at baseball games or bathrooms. Colored Only… Whites Only…

Think about how insane that seems today… nearly one hundred years after Slavery… the Black Man was free… but still not considered… an Equal Human Being!

What were they thinking?

In all of these cases, I understand that many… denied the truth because it was convenient to do so. As genuine Science developed, it gave the world profound answers to many questions. Many of those answers conflicted with what was being taught, what was understood and the information of the age. If people had embraced the truth… lives would be changed, fortunes lost, and a fundamental self-reflection would have had to been made.

So, it was easier for individuals and nations… to disagree with the facts. To rely on the false information of those in power…. create their own facts… and simply ignore what everyone in their hearts and minds… always knew what was true. It was easier… more popular… to simply say they were not human.

For once the fact… that they were human… is acknowledged… all would have to change.

Tomorrow could never again be like yesterday. Once recognized as human life, the sacred duty to preserve that life, to defend that life, to assist that life… would be thrust upon all of us… and each of us individually.

To knowingly allow the voluntary slaughter, enslavement or exploitation of any innocent human being, no matter how wretched, or inconvenient that life was… would make us knowing and willing accomplices to that human being’s demise.

The light of truth dispels all shadows and lies… and opens the door for forgiveness and true redemption!

I have no doubts… that one day… in the future… my Grandchildren’s children… will look upon the age in which we live today…. and ask the same question of us.

How could they have allowed 63 million babies to be killed through Abortion?

The science was there, the research was there, the DNA was there… you could see it move in the belly… touch it… feel it…. hear its heartbeat…

What were they thinking?

…and only the silence of our ghosts will answer.

Sources:

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/nazi-racial-science
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5499222/
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/when-do-humans-begin-to-feel-pain
https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/338146

https://www.justfacts.com/abortion.asp#Science

Per the Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Allied Health, “fertilization” is “the process by which the male’s sperm unites with the female’s oocyte, creating a new life.”[54 ] [55 ] [56 ]
Per the medical textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, “fertilization” creates “a new combination of chromosomes that is different from that in the cells of either of the parents,” and this “is the beginning of a new human being.”[57] [58 ]
Per the National Human Genome Research Institute, “the extent of human genetic variation is such that no two humans, save identical twins, ever have been or will be genetically identical.”[59 ]
With the exception of identical twins, once a woman conceives a pre-birth human, the genetic odds against her conceiving the same one again are greater than 10⁶⁰⁰ to one.[60 ] In comparison, there are roughly 10⁸⁰ atoms in the known universe.[61 ]
While genetically the same, identical twins are biologically unique from each other due to epigenetic differences that affect the expression of their genes.[62 ] [63 ]