Posted by Sigismund on August 5, 2009, at 15:30:18
In reply to sigi, posted by manic666 on August 5, 2009, at 6:24:47
Manic, people are here, for the first time in months. How pleasant it is to be able to chat.
Around the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII there were a number of programs I saw. Reading about Europe from 1900 to 1950 seemed a good way of finding out about the human project and putting myself in a position to have a good long think about it. I didn't have much trouble putting myself in the mental space of a devoted Nazi or communist. I particularly liked films from the former USSR about the German occupation....I saw one from Byelorussia, just of the fate of one village and its inhabitants, and then at the end there was a list of all the villages and towns destroyed. It's a remarkable thing that two ideologies that both sought human triumph (or whatever the f*ck it was they sought, part from destruction) should have managed to kill the better part of 50 million people. There are 2 little bits of trivia about Stalin just hanging around my consciousness...the first was that he tried to find a way of breeding humans with apes to get a reliable work force. The second was when a boatload of prisoners from Vladivostok to Magadan maybe rioted. The captain poured water below decks and they arrived as blocks of ice.
What a piece of work is man.
poster:Sigismund
thread:910058
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20090221/msgs/910414.html