Blogging Around

Obviously, I posted this on Graicey's blog in response to her post about the book, The Most Dangerous Game, and how the human need for survival can drive people to extreme measures that some can fathom and others find impossible:

Wow, Graciey, I really agree with what you said here. I've never read the book, The Most Dangerous Game, but I've been told the premise and discussed it with a friend once. One of the reasons I'm so interested in psychology and the limits of the human existance goes back to my family history in the Holocaust. Most people know that my grandmother survived both Auschwitz and Terezinstadt concentration camps, I mean, I bring it up sometimes in class discussion when it's relevant. But I don't know if people know that I think about it more than I let on. I drive myself crazy analyzing the choices of the Nazis who killed so much of my family. And it frightens me a little, but I've realized that they obviously didn't view the people they killed as human beings. And I bet once they started killing, it got easier and easier. I've come to the unfortunate conlusion that it's ignorant to assume that all people view life in the same regard as we do in the "civilized world" of today. If one can shift their mind a tiny bit, all the normal rules simply don't apply. These people are in an entirely different league. And Graicey, sorry for being so verbose, but your entry really got me thinking! :-D

The second comment is in response to Merrick's post about nature vs. nurture in determining whether Assef is a true sociopath:

You bring up a good point here. Assef must have been influenced by his environment; after all, I know people who have a sibling who is their polar opposite, just a genuinely horrible human being. There's no genetic explanation for why one child turned out so right and one turned out so wrong. This must apply to Assef; his parents seem to be respectible people. Also, I usually forget to look for the reasons behind Hitler's extermination of Jewish people. And when I think about, I'm sure there were members of Hitler's family who turned out to be fully functioning members of society, not leaders of a Holocaust. I always just see him as a "bad apple" or someone who is just wrong in the brain. But there's really was an economic depression and times were desperate in Hitler's Germany. And we all know what desperate times call for...