Source Link: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/10/would_you_kill_baby_hitler.html
When I first glimpsed this question On Roger Eber's website, I immediately said yes. I wasn't proud of this quick response. An answer to this question represents many aspects of the person who answers it. Aspects such as: whether or not he / she holds morality up to a certain degree in their thinking; if they would prevent a horrible event even if it meant killing a baby; or if they would not commit this act, therefore allowing the Holocaust to occur. I should've been more patient with my answer and allowed myself time to reflect on what principles (if I truly have any) I shape my actions by.
When Roger Ebert posted this blog, many of his readers skimmed it and
then directly applied their responses to the title question. Because of
this and the actual point of the blog post, he renamed it "Did You
choose Your Religion?" Though I disagree with Mr. Ebert on A LOT of his
movie reviews, I thought this blog was quite insightful. He says how the
success of his career is mostly credited to the kindness of people and
good luck. He then equates that to the career of Hitler and how he
seemed to rise by coincidence, chance if you will. He was in the right
places at the right time with the right amount of determination. This is
an interesting point, because he then goes in the topic of how much
humans control their own destiny; if it is the environment that shapes
them or vice-versa. When taking in these points throughout the blog, ask
yourself: Would you kill baby Hitler?
Ebert gives a couple examples of the criteria people use to establish identity. This business of using saliva samples to determine whether Adolf Hitler had a Jewish ancestor seems frivolous, for reasons that follow from Ebert’s discussion of self-determination. I wasn’t sure what to draw from his summary of The Other Son, but it seems similarly reductive to place such high value on “biological roots.” Are biological roots the criteria for identity? Ebert seems to be saying that identity is formed from an accumulation of circumstances, blurring the strict measures of individual identity. I’m in the habit of thinking of myself as a discrete unit. But when one looks to attribute actions to that discrete self, separate things outside its skin, things get murky. Ebert’s simple example, “I didn’t make any of my own opportunities,” has profound implications. The experience of being a human may feel individual “on the inside,” but as agents, collaboration is inescapable. Human actors, taking actions that modify the world, seen “from the outside,” are not discrete units. To kill Hitler, one would have to kill many people.
ReplyDeleteI’m comforted by the thought that I am many people. It comforts against loneliness. But it complicates the question of responsibility. There does seem to be a moment when an individual may choose. Given all of the collaborative circumstances that have shaped a person’s life, there nonetheless seems to be a space left for discrete operation, which Ebert describes: “All I can take credit for is being ready for them [opportunities] when they occurred.” Despite his lack of agency in “the course of my life itself,” Ebert stills claims responsibility for his own response to circumstance. To claim that responsibility is to claim a non-collaborative self, which derails the logical progression of Ebert’s premise of a life created by others. If circumstantial events are beyond individual control, why should a momentary decision be different? I feel guided by my conscience, which discourages my true lusts. Who is in control? Whose collaboration?
I probably wouldn’t kill the infant Adolf because I have an inflated sense of my own moral agency and would wish to preserve some kind of illusion of exemption from the action… I would do nothing and so pretend to abstain, because I imagine myself a discrete unit which can disengage from the web of being (in which I’m actually entangled) and so preserve a pleasant self-image as a non-actor…
No Hitler, no Genocide?
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea of killing baby Hitler is very fascinating since it reminds me of Men in Black 3. Boris the animal, who got one arm cut by Agent K, time travels in order to change the history and kill Agent K. Of course he fails in the end. The cute Alien Griffin in the movie says, “Yes. But where there is death, there will always be death.” We have kept discussing the idea of whether it is “ No Hitler, no final solution”. I personally agree with Griffin’s words. Final solution would have happened even without the presence of Adolf Hitler and killing baby Hitler alone wouldn’t be enough to stop the tragedy.
WW1 and Treaty of Versailles deprived the arrogant German of Pride and weakened the nation. The economic crisis in 1929 further destabilized the country.
Admittedly, Adolf Hitler is an ambitious political animal. However, without those successive events that traumatized German, Hitler would have been the mundane insane Nazi who strived for power throughout his life but never succeeded. Also, the Final solution was not Hitler’s initial idea. Only after failure of emigrating the Jews and outbreak of WW2 did Hitler turn his mindset towards a final solution. All in all, each step along Hitler’s way towards the Final solution is unpredicted but necessary. Those events reacted together to produce a final solution and can go on without Hitler, who acted as a catalyst speeding up the process. Without Hitler, Holocaust would still have happened. Maybe the only difference of the equation is that someone else acted as the catalyst and carried all the blame of us.
Most of the crazy Nazis we depicted in our mind are actually ordinary, intelligent human beings. No one was born insane and with the hatred towards Jews. It was the environment they were in and coincidences happened in their life that determined who they were. How can we assert that baby Hitler is deemed to be a cold-blooded killer? Perhaps if the story of Hitler had a slightly different storyline, Hitler would have grown up to be an affectionate man.
Some pictures I found
Cute Griffin http://linkleak.se/sites/linkleak/files/screens/men-black-iii-2012-hdts-xvid-slickscreen_0.png
Baby Hitler http://cdn.motinetwork.net/motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0902/baby-hitler-baby-hitler-demotivational-poster-1235742829.jpg