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Maybe don't assist the Nazis and then genocide Poland or something, idk 20th Century History (media.piefed.social)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] 9 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Without weighing in on the actual issue, I find it disappointing how everybody wants easy black-and-white answers.

Most of the major villains in history also did nice things. A comedian, I think Norm MacDonald, had a bit about how Hitler had a dog, and so that dog probably thought Hitler was the best person in the world.

People are just like that. Most people, even most of the worst people, see themselves as good people. When they're called out, they say things like, "You'd have done the same." And they believe it. They believe that everybody else would do evil things if simply given the opportunity. And they also do good things, and they're convinced that they're good people. The bad stuff they do is just the same thing anybody would do, right?

If good acts disqualified a person from being evil, then almost nobody would be evil, and purely evil people would rarely rise to the top, as they'd get killed early in life.

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  • [–] [S] 18 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Fuck, man, there's a place between "Everything is good or evil" and "Nothing is good and evil" that doesn't require anyone to fucking glaze some of the most murderous dictators to ever walk the fucking earth.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I must have written my comment wrong for you to have misinterpreted my meaning that badly. The point, relevant to Stalin, is that nothing good he did is going to make him a good person.

    I didn't glaze anyone. I even went so far as to say I was specifically not talking about Stalin.

    Yes, Stalin is way over on the far evil side of the scale, but it doesn't do you any good to pretend like the scale doesn't exist.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

    I must have written my comment wrong for you to have misinterpreted my meaning that badly. The point, relevant to Stalin, is that nothing good he did is going to make him a good person.

    Then your comment has nothing to do with the actual meme or topic at hand?

    If someone says "Hitler was a real shithead, take note of all these shitty things he did, and look at these people making apologia for these shitty things." and someone walks in and immediately opens with "Without weighing in on the actual issue, I find it disappointing how everybody wants easy black-and-white answers", what exactly do you think that would imply?

    I didn’t glaze anyone. I even went so far as to say I was specifically not talking about Stalin.

    Immediately opining in a discussion about two of the worst genocidal dictators in human history that "things aren't just black and white" incredibly strongly implies that there is a 'less black' interpretation of one or both of them.

    "It's just in the abstract!" is a weak defence if the literal example that you're ignoring (the topic of conversation here) disputes the abstract.

    Condemning two of the worst human beings to ever disgrace the earth is not a symbol of craving black-and-white answers to all of life.

    Yes, Stalin is way over on the far evil side of the scale, but it doesn’t do you any good to pretend like the scale doesn’t exist.

    ...

    ... where do I even vaguely imply that there aren't degrees of good and evil.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (3 children)

    First, can I say that I think we generally agree, and I don't like the feeling of being attacked by a person who is marked as a mod in their comment? It makes me feel like if I don't defend my point, then I'll receive some sort of punishment due to an imbalance of power. But it also feels like I need to walk on eggshells, because if I defend myself by, say, pointing out a mistake a mod makes, I could receive some sort of punishment, as well.

    Maybe it's my experience from Reddit, but it feels bad to have a debate with a mod, even if I think it's because my comment was misinterpreted by the mod. It's the imbalance of power.

    Then your comment has nothing to do with the actual meme or topic at hand?

    It's a tangential point, so it has something to do with the topic, tangentially. I am talking about the idea that you can point to one good thing that changes a bad person into a good person, or even one bad thing that changes a good person into a bad person. And how I find that concept fundamentally absurd. The topic is Stalin apologists, so I brought up Hitler, instead, as a person in the same category.

    If someone says “Hitler was a real shithead, take note of all these shitty things he did, and look at these people making apologia for these shitty things.” and someone walks in and immediately opens with “Without weighing in on the actual issue, I find it disappointing how everybody wants easy black-and-white answers”, what exactly do you think that would imply?

    The problem is that I agree with that sentiment, first, but if you're asking how I would interpret it, I would read the rest of their comment to see what they meant specifically.

    Immediately opining in a discussion about two of the worst genocidal dictators in human history that “things aren’t just black and white” incredibly strongly implies that there is a ‘less black’ interpretation of one or both of them.

    If there's no "less black" interpretation of both Hitler or Stalin, then it would be impossible to compare them with each other. They're both just perfectly black. Then, there's no scale. There's no degrees. There's no room for a worse monster to arise in the future.

    where do I even vaguely imply that there aren’t degrees of good and evil.

    Well, my comment was about how there are degrees of good and evil, and how somebody apologizing for an overwhelmingly evil person by showing something less evil that they did doesn't excuse their behavior, and your response started with: "Fuck, man," which is a statement that you not only disagree, but that you think my point is egregious or exasperating. That is the vague implication.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    It makes me feel like if I don’t defend my point, then I’ll receive some sort of punishment due to an imbalance of power.

    You won't.

    But it also feels like I need to walk on eggshells, because if I defend myself by, say, pointing out a mistake a mod makes, I could receive some sort of punishment, as well.

    I've gotten into cursing matches with people on here who still aren't banned or punished for it. Doubt you can say worse.

    It’s a tangential point, so it has something to do with the topic, tangentially. I am talking about the idea that you can point to one good thing that changes a bad person into a good person, or even one bad thing that changes a good person into a bad person. The topic is Stalin apologists, so I brought up Hitler, instead, as a person in the same category.

    But the Stalin apologists in the meme aren't arguing one good thing redeemed his evil, they're arguing that what he did wasn't evil.

    The problem is that I agree with that sentiment, first, but if you’re asking how I would interpret it, I would read the rest of their comment to see what they meant specifically.

    But each sentence is also read within the context of what was stated prior. And in our particular case, the sentences that follow are about how bad people are convinced they're good too.

    If there’s no “less black” interpretation of both Hitler or Stalin, then it would be impossible to compare them with each other. They’re both just perfectly black. Then, there’s no scale. There’s no degrees. There’s no room for a worse monster to arise in the future.

    There's no 'less black' interpretation of Hitler or Stalin insofar as there is no reasonable way to interpret their behavior as less-than-evil, not as in "There is no way anyone could ever be worse than either of them."

    If I say someone getting raped is evil, full stop, that doesn't mean that I think that multiple people getting raped isn't worse. It means I don't believe there's a less-black interpretation of someone getting raped.

    Well, my comment was about how there are degrees of good and evil, and how somebody apologizing for an overwhelmingly evil person by showing something less evil that they did doesn’t excuse their behavior, and your response started with: “Fuck, man,” which is a statement that you not only disagree, but that you think my point is egregious or exasperating. That is the vague implication.

    Fuck, man, there’s a place between “Everything is good or evil” and “Nothing is good and evil”

    That would point pretty clearly towards a worldview acknowledging degrees of good and evil.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    Doubt you can say worse.

    Then I should say that I actually thought my point wasn't tangential as much as fundamental. Sorry, that was me walking on eggshells.

    But the Stalin apologists in the meme aren’t arguing one good thing redeemed his evil, they’re arguing that what he did wasn’t evil.

    I believe this is the point where we interpreted the comic differently. The comic says, "But Stalin switched to the allies." And I think that's the comic pointing out a good thing that he did that they were saying excused his bad actions, and that is mostly what I was talking about.

    If you interpreted the comic as if everything is evil actions cast in a good light, then that's another interpretation. After all, he obviously didn't join the allies out of benevolence. Or maybe you saw that as a statement that was only made on the way to their statement about Poland.

    There’s no ‘less black’ interpretation of Hitler or Stalin insofar as there is no reasonable way to interpret their behavior as less-than-evil, not as in “There is no way anyone could ever be worse than either of them.”

    This, I think is related to our different interpretations of the comic. I was talking about the idea that if Stalin saved a cat in a tree, then that does affect his placement on the scale (but it can't balance out all the bad that he did). Whereas I believe that you were saying that all of the things the comic was saying about Stalin were truly evil things that push things towards the evil side, and shouldn't be excused.

    Fuck, man, there’s a place between “Everything is good or evil” and “Nothing is good and evil”

    That would point pretty clearly towards a worldview acknowledging degrees of good and evil.

    Bear with me for a moment. I interpreted your comment as if you were saying that you thought I meant "nothing is good and evil", because otherwise, I'd have thought you were trying to make my same point and you'd have no reason to disagree with me.

    I thought you meant that if it wasn't "Everything is good or evil" or "nothing is good and evil", then you're saying it's simple subjectivity objectivity, sort of saying that the concepts of "good" and "evil" don't exist, and all shades of gray are the same. It sounds like a silly thing to believe, but I have heard people argue it before. When you said "there's a place between", I interpreted that to mean there's a place to argue, not that shades of gray exist.

    I can see now that I completely misinterpreted your meaning. The meaning you intended is a much more straightforward reading. I just didn't get it because it started with "Fuck, man", which put me into a defensive frame of mind.

    Edit: I think I meant "objectivity" instead of "subjectivity," so I changed it. But it's late and I might just be confused. That entire section of the comment is rather confusing. It's hard to explain a reasonable thought process that comes to a weird conclusion.

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