Thursday, March 28, 2013

I want this reading to make you mad

I want to hear your honest reactions to the reading about racial 'science' and book burning.  Does it make you angry, sad, do you laugh?  Do you just shrug?  And more importantly....WHY?

What is it about these readings (cite one specific area) that makes you react the way that you do, and what does it potentially say about your own life (possibility for continuity...)?

13 comments:

  1. I feel pity, anguish, as well as sadness; in the fact that science would be degraded and more importantly manipulated and malformed to such a horrific extent. Because racial 'science' is at its core a morally ambiguous idea trying to be justified by any means necessary. For example slavery, which also attempted justification the this pseudo-science as well as religion. This method of justification is no different. If i could direct these emotions to any particular section(s) of the reading it would have to be the entirety of pages 385 and 386.

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  2. I was very upset about the book burnings especially because so amny important texts were destroyed. The great thinkers of that time were burned in a pile. When people forget to learn and expand their minds through the great philosophers, historians, and authors of their day and of previous generations they are committing a heinous crime not only on themselves, but to their country. A lack of education is ruinous to any society. Most of this reading made me very annoyed, mostly at the fact that things were accepted by everyone. Many protests are started by a younger generation and to have university students actively supporting book burnings in very upsetting to me.

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  3. Pg.386 made me laugh just because of the way it casts any Jewish achievement as imitation. It was seen as so outlandish that the Jew mind could ever posses the same ingenuity that allowed German scientists to make these groundbreaking discoveries about the Jewish mind.

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  4. I think that I was the most upset with the book burning. Just the thought of these brilliant philosophers and book writers write all of these pieces. All the time and energy writing and revising just to have it burned and gone forever. It's not fair. It says, "The whole civilized world was shocked on the evening of May 10, 1933, the books displeasing to the Nazis were solemnly burned." "...I was a witness to the scene." If the Nazis thought a certain book was offending to them in any way they would burn them. And of course they took advantage of this. If they could have found books completely irrelevant to anything and if they felt like it, they would burn it. This is the part that stood out to me the most.

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  5. I felt disgusted and sick. Science is suppose to advance and benefit anybody who is willing to experience it. it seemed that Hitler was abusing science and the power that it can process. If you claim that your beliefs are backed by science, people are going to believe you much easier.

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  6. Even though I knew of such practices in Germany, I didn't know of them to such extent. It is awful to think that these people were just discriminated against all of a sudden. They were German citizens who had lived there for generations, and over night they were found 'inferior' which of course is a ridiculous claim.
    The book burning was also quite annoying to me because it was their hard work and in a way their culture being burnt in seconds.

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  7. I hate the idea of book burning, but then again even the banning of books really grinds my gears. The limitation of any form of knowledge/understanding is what limits a society from moving forward. We need the great philosophers in order to look at the different perspectives of people and to expand our span of thinking in order to think divergently about important issues and for the purpose of problem solving. so not only did the disrespect of great minds piss me off but also, the limiting of the range of information of people is the best way stop people from being wise enough to fix the problems that face them. as they say, "knowledge is power" and it's absolutely true.

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  8. I am upset about the "racial science"..it's a bunch of stereotypes and I think it's very degrading. It is sad to think about what Jews had to go through during this time. "Racial science" was just a lam excuse to target at the Jews even more. For example, it says "Observe the Jew: his way of walking, bearing, gestures, and movements when talking". EVERYONE tends to make gestures when talking. I don't understand why Jews were targeted at for being normal human beings.

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  9. On page 387, the way in which students learn how to tell a person race by a set number of things made me laugh. its stupid to think that just by analyzing the person and how they act/what they believe in. it reminds me of the movie Europa Europa and how the teacher picks the Yup and because he is jewish yup is shaking and very distraught, but the teacher says he is a perfect example of a germain man. This goes to show that all of the things listed are just ridiculous to take serious. if a nazi Teacher cant tell a jew ( the ultimate enemy of the Nazi's) apart from pure aryan germains then there is absolutely no basis in the teachings.

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  10. There are only so many adjectives that can describe my disgust towards this article. It is so hard to believe that people praised these insane claims; they were literally brainwashed. The area of the text that pulled on my hair was when Heinrich Hertz was mentioned. This scientist, who discovered electromagnetic waves, should be honored and awarded. However, Stark rebuttals this concept by explaining how Hertz was not a "full blooded" Jew; in fact, he had a German mother. In addition to this detail of the article, Stark proclaims that Jewish Science is not based on observation, but on their own view. He says they will engage in propaganda to manipulate others of their desired science...that is 100% hypocritical! Finally, the entirety of page 87 was just ridiculous - the subtitle itself is so messed up: "How we can learn to recognize a Person's Race".

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  11. This new "science" just seems absurd to me. I feel angry that people actually got away with these ways of thinking not only because of the fact that they are not true, but because one's intuition can tell in a heartbeat that they are not true. This is what discourages me the most because I have lost a little faith in the human race as a whole because so many people fell for this! I mean come on, the assignment of how to use the following steps to recognize race!?? That is so absurd! "Repeat this exercise with the pictures of great men of all nations and times" "Try to harmonize these determinations with the features of the racial soul" I can't help but laugh! How in the world did people actually take this seriously?

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  12. Of course this reading made me feel angry. This stupid idea of race having any influence on somebodys mind and this glorification of "Aryan Intelelct", I cannot repeat enough how ashamed I sometimes am to be a descendant of the generation who thought like that or let orhers put those thoughts in their head without reconsidering it one single minute. The fragment from the texbook was also completely absurd. As if it were a vital thing tomrecognize peoples races. Who the hell cares. But the worst was the reading from the german-jewish writer, his bitterness when he talked about the book burning and how Germans destroy European culture, cqlling it a fight against evil.

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  13. The best way to describe the speech about German Sciences and the JewISH Science is to use their own language to phrase it: is the born advocate who, unencumbered by regard for truth, mixes facts and imputations topsy-turvy in the endeavor to secure the court decision he desires. It seriously sounds like someone shoot himself in the foot to me, no thing more. Minds and attitude of the generation were twisted by solemnly nationalized propaganda back then, and that remind me of China's culture revolution back in the 50s and 60s, the government were burning books and commiting anti-inteleticual crimes to secure the court decision they desires.

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