a path totally devoid of empathy
Jan. 26th, 2026 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f0rrestAfter much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I guess I would have been a Nazi.
Yes, I know that opening sentence is inflammatory, click-baity even, but please bear with me, because I think this topic, which is actually more of a hypothetical thought experiment, is really worth discussing, as it reveals something about our personal ethics.
Last night, a friend and I were talking about current events, particularly the ICE situation, and the conversation inevitably landed on Nazi Germany. After some lengthy back and forth, the conclusion we came to was that, yes, back in the 1940s, if I had been a German citizen, I would have likely been a Nazi, maybe not ideologically, but I would have been labeled one.
And yes, again, I know this sounds really evil. And maybe it is, I don’t know. I'm still unsure myself. The question of “good” and “evil” was actually the catalyst for this whole conversation, which is something I’ll get into here shortly.
But first, some background. On March 16, 1935, Adolf Hitler introduced universal conscription, basically a draft: any man between the ages of 18 and 45 was subject to military service. Those who denied the call to serve the Nazi war machine were labeled Wehrdienstverweigerer, or “military service refuser,” arrested by the Gestapo, and prosecuted for Kriegsverrat, or “treason in wartime.” And it wasn’t just the refusers who were labeled as traitors, but also their families, the Nazis called this idea “Sippenhaft,” the idea that if someone defied Hitler, that person’s entire family shared moral guilt. The Nazis used this idea to prosecute the families of traitors, evicting them, imprisoning them, and sometimes even sending them to concentration camps.
So, back to my friend’s and my conversation, which was prompted by the recent murders carried out by ICE agents, which we both agreed were unjust and awful. During that conversation, my friend said something that bothered me. He said, “Anyone who works for ICE is evil.” I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with this assertion. Being pretentiously entrenched in Buddhist ideology, I told him that, first, this idea of “good” and “evil” is a harmful duality, that simply labeling people “evil” leads to bad outcomes, as it dehumanizes people and leaves no room for nuance. Second, I told him that these things are more complicated than they seem, that not everyone has a choice in their occupation. To this, my friend retorted, “Sure they do, everyone has a choice; they either enlist for ICE or they don’t. It’s that simple.” And sure, in our current time, maybe he’s right, maybe it is that simple, after all, there is no ICE draft, so maybe he got me there. But, being stubborn, I thought the point I was trying to make was still valid, though I might have been using a bad example, so I posited a hypothetical to try to illustrate my point further. I said, “Let’s say there’s a draft, and all people between this and that age are subject to serve ICE. Would you dodge this draft, labeling yourself a traitor and potentially landing yourself in prison, or would you enlist?” And he said, “Of course I would dodge the draft. What kind of question is that? That’s the only right thing to do.” And I said, “What if, in dodging the draft, your family would also be labeled traitors, and they too would be thrown in prison?” I was trying to illustrate my original point: that these things are more complicated than they seem. And still he said, “I would do the right thing and dodge the draft.” To which I said, “But is that truly the right thing to do here? Isn’t there now more at stake than just yourself?” And he said, “Maybe, but you should always act in accordance with your values and the greater good of society.” So I said, “Even if it gets your family killed?” And it was at this point that my friend assumed, I guess, that I was defending ICE, so he brought Nazis into the mix to illustrate his own point, as evoking Nazis is often the most extreme rhetorical move one can make in these types of debates, so he said, “You’re pretty much saying that if you lived in Nazi Germany, you would be a Nazi.” And me, having a wife and two children, I said, “Yes, maybe I would.” And he said, “Wouldn’t that compromise your values, make you feel terrible?” And I said, “Maybe, but I think I would feel worse if my wife and children died in a concentration camp.” And that’s kind of where we left it.
The whole point I was trying to make was that I have a hard time labeling someone as “evil” without understanding the full systems at play or the person’s entire decision-making process. Like the example above, if there were a draft and your family could be punished if you refused this draft, are you comfortable refusing the draft? At that point, you would not only be making a choice for yourself but also for your entire family, and this choice comes with heavy consequences for everyone involved. Is it fair to force such a choice, such a consequence, on your entire family? In refusing the draft, you may feel good about having stood up for your ideals, but will your son feel good when he’s dying in a concentration camp? “I may be starving, but at least my dad stood up for what he believed.” Sure, you could take your family and try to flee the country, but this also carries a huge risk. And sure, you could say that, in refusing the draft, you’re not the one actually sending your family to the concentration camp, the Nazi state is, and that’s true, you didn’t create the diabolical systems at play here, and those who did create it are more likely the “evil” ones in this scenario, but it’s also true that you’re aware of the consequences in this situation, you’re aware of the fact that if you refused to enlist then your family might be killed, and given you have that awareness of the consequences, your choice now carries a certain responsibility, specifically a responsibility for the wellbeing of your family. So, knowing the consequences, would you still choose to risk your family’s lives, for your own personal ideals? Ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t make any difference? If you refuse the draft, what happens? You die, your family potentially dies, and then the Nazis just recruit some other dude to fight for them, and thus the war machine rages on. Is this individual act of defiance truly worth it?
The potential responses to the draft may be simple in principle, either “yes” or “no,” but the decision tree for those responses is not so simple. You could deny the draft and potentially get your family killed, maybe run away, take your family with you, or you could compromise your values, enlist, and fight for the Nazis, at which point maybe you could do a bad job on purpose, avoid killing people on the battlefield or whatever, sneakily clinging to your idealism while working within the confines of the diabolical system. But which choice is the right one here? It seems morally abhorrent to join the Nazi army, but it also seems morally abhorrent to knowingly risk the lives of your family by not joining the Nazi army.
At some point in the conversation with my friend, I got the impression that he was just not getting it, that maybe my hypothetical was too complicated. So I crafted a new one, a distilled version. I said, “let’s say the Nazis gather you and your family up, put you in a room, hold a gun to your head, then tell you, ‘join the Nazi army right now or I kill you and your entire family.’ What would you do in that situation?” But my friend refused to engage in this new hypothetical; he didn’t even bother to answer the question, instead he said, “That’s ridiculous, that would never happen.”
Oh, but it did happen, my friend. It happened all the time. In Nazi Germany, there may have been a few levels of abstraction between the guns and the heads of your loved ones, but the guns were still squarely pointed there. This happened to millions of people back then. So, knowing this, can we truly call a man “evil” if he’s simply doing what’s best for his family?
I would love to say that if I had been a citizen in Nazi Germany, I would have rebelled against the fascist government and died for my ideals, and maybe I would have done this if I were a single guy with no dependents. But are things ever that simple?
Like the concepts of “good” and “evil,” we often approach these situations from a black-and-white perspective, which leaves no room for nuance, and I believe this kind of thinking leads us down a dark path, a path in which we view those who don’t always make the “morally righteous” choices as vile monsters deserving of nothing more than death.
And is this not the same path as the Nazi ideology, a path totally devoid of empathy?
Yes, I know that opening sentence is inflammatory, click-baity even, but please bear with me, because I think this topic, which is actually more of a hypothetical thought experiment, is really worth discussing, as it reveals something about our personal ethics.
Last night, a friend and I were talking about current events, particularly the ICE situation, and the conversation inevitably landed on Nazi Germany. After some lengthy back and forth, the conclusion we came to was that, yes, back in the 1940s, if I had been a German citizen, I would have likely been a Nazi, maybe not ideologically, but I would have been labeled one.
And yes, again, I know this sounds really evil. And maybe it is, I don’t know. I'm still unsure myself. The question of “good” and “evil” was actually the catalyst for this whole conversation, which is something I’ll get into here shortly.
But first, some background. On March 16, 1935, Adolf Hitler introduced universal conscription, basically a draft: any man between the ages of 18 and 45 was subject to military service. Those who denied the call to serve the Nazi war machine were labeled Wehrdienstverweigerer, or “military service refuser,” arrested by the Gestapo, and prosecuted for Kriegsverrat, or “treason in wartime.” And it wasn’t just the refusers who were labeled as traitors, but also their families, the Nazis called this idea “Sippenhaft,” the idea that if someone defied Hitler, that person’s entire family shared moral guilt. The Nazis used this idea to prosecute the families of traitors, evicting them, imprisoning them, and sometimes even sending them to concentration camps.
So, back to my friend’s and my conversation, which was prompted by the recent murders carried out by ICE agents, which we both agreed were unjust and awful. During that conversation, my friend said something that bothered me. He said, “Anyone who works for ICE is evil.” I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with this assertion. Being pretentiously entrenched in Buddhist ideology, I told him that, first, this idea of “good” and “evil” is a harmful duality, that simply labeling people “evil” leads to bad outcomes, as it dehumanizes people and leaves no room for nuance. Second, I told him that these things are more complicated than they seem, that not everyone has a choice in their occupation. To this, my friend retorted, “Sure they do, everyone has a choice; they either enlist for ICE or they don’t. It’s that simple.” And sure, in our current time, maybe he’s right, maybe it is that simple, after all, there is no ICE draft, so maybe he got me there. But, being stubborn, I thought the point I was trying to make was still valid, though I might have been using a bad example, so I posited a hypothetical to try to illustrate my point further. I said, “Let’s say there’s a draft, and all people between this and that age are subject to serve ICE. Would you dodge this draft, labeling yourself a traitor and potentially landing yourself in prison, or would you enlist?” And he said, “Of course I would dodge the draft. What kind of question is that? That’s the only right thing to do.” And I said, “What if, in dodging the draft, your family would also be labeled traitors, and they too would be thrown in prison?” I was trying to illustrate my original point: that these things are more complicated than they seem. And still he said, “I would do the right thing and dodge the draft.” To which I said, “But is that truly the right thing to do here? Isn’t there now more at stake than just yourself?” And he said, “Maybe, but you should always act in accordance with your values and the greater good of society.” So I said, “Even if it gets your family killed?” And it was at this point that my friend assumed, I guess, that I was defending ICE, so he brought Nazis into the mix to illustrate his own point, as evoking Nazis is often the most extreme rhetorical move one can make in these types of debates, so he said, “You’re pretty much saying that if you lived in Nazi Germany, you would be a Nazi.” And me, having a wife and two children, I said, “Yes, maybe I would.” And he said, “Wouldn’t that compromise your values, make you feel terrible?” And I said, “Maybe, but I think I would feel worse if my wife and children died in a concentration camp.” And that’s kind of where we left it.
The whole point I was trying to make was that I have a hard time labeling someone as “evil” without understanding the full systems at play or the person’s entire decision-making process. Like the example above, if there were a draft and your family could be punished if you refused this draft, are you comfortable refusing the draft? At that point, you would not only be making a choice for yourself but also for your entire family, and this choice comes with heavy consequences for everyone involved. Is it fair to force such a choice, such a consequence, on your entire family? In refusing the draft, you may feel good about having stood up for your ideals, but will your son feel good when he’s dying in a concentration camp? “I may be starving, but at least my dad stood up for what he believed.” Sure, you could take your family and try to flee the country, but this also carries a huge risk. And sure, you could say that, in refusing the draft, you’re not the one actually sending your family to the concentration camp, the Nazi state is, and that’s true, you didn’t create the diabolical systems at play here, and those who did create it are more likely the “evil” ones in this scenario, but it’s also true that you’re aware of the consequences in this situation, you’re aware of the fact that if you refused to enlist then your family might be killed, and given you have that awareness of the consequences, your choice now carries a certain responsibility, specifically a responsibility for the wellbeing of your family. So, knowing the consequences, would you still choose to risk your family’s lives, for your own personal ideals? Ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t make any difference? If you refuse the draft, what happens? You die, your family potentially dies, and then the Nazis just recruit some other dude to fight for them, and thus the war machine rages on. Is this individual act of defiance truly worth it?
The potential responses to the draft may be simple in principle, either “yes” or “no,” but the decision tree for those responses is not so simple. You could deny the draft and potentially get your family killed, maybe run away, take your family with you, or you could compromise your values, enlist, and fight for the Nazis, at which point maybe you could do a bad job on purpose, avoid killing people on the battlefield or whatever, sneakily clinging to your idealism while working within the confines of the diabolical system. But which choice is the right one here? It seems morally abhorrent to join the Nazi army, but it also seems morally abhorrent to knowingly risk the lives of your family by not joining the Nazi army.
At some point in the conversation with my friend, I got the impression that he was just not getting it, that maybe my hypothetical was too complicated. So I crafted a new one, a distilled version. I said, “let’s say the Nazis gather you and your family up, put you in a room, hold a gun to your head, then tell you, ‘join the Nazi army right now or I kill you and your entire family.’ What would you do in that situation?” But my friend refused to engage in this new hypothetical; he didn’t even bother to answer the question, instead he said, “That’s ridiculous, that would never happen.”
Oh, but it did happen, my friend. It happened all the time. In Nazi Germany, there may have been a few levels of abstraction between the guns and the heads of your loved ones, but the guns were still squarely pointed there. This happened to millions of people back then. So, knowing this, can we truly call a man “evil” if he’s simply doing what’s best for his family?
I would love to say that if I had been a citizen in Nazi Germany, I would have rebelled against the fascist government and died for my ideals, and maybe I would have done this if I were a single guy with no dependents. But are things ever that simple?
Like the concepts of “good” and “evil,” we often approach these situations from a black-and-white perspective, which leaves no room for nuance, and I believe this kind of thinking leads us down a dark path, a path in which we view those who don’t always make the “morally righteous” choices as vile monsters deserving of nothing more than death.
And is this not the same path as the Nazi ideology, a path totally devoid of empathy?
no subject
Date: 2026-01-26 09:50 pm (UTC)I think at this point the what-would-you-do-in-Nazi-Germany question is a distraction. What are we going to do here, now? What are we doing? And I feel fairly certain from what I've seen of your ideas and opinions and actions, that you're putting good stuff out in the world. E.g., in real life you spent time with that self-published author at the park, and in fiction you wrote that story about Black Santa. Was that actively fighting the current administration? No, but it's asserting a world in which people care about each other and recognize racism as stupid.
--but yeah, definitely I agree w/your final two paragraphs.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-26 11:58 pm (UTC)That was a nice entry that I think aligns well with what I'm saying, how we have a tendency to collectively view others as "the enemy" when really most of them are just everyday people trying to survive, many without choice due to the snowball of things that brought them to wherever they happen to be in life.
I agree that the Nazi thing is tired and played out, and probably not productive. Despite what some vehemently insist, we do not live in Nazi Germany, and we can do things that could potentially make a difference, although, to their point, the things we can do without being brutally beaten and shot while prone are indeed dwindling.
Musings after reading this
Date: 2026-01-27 02:44 am (UTC)Could it be they have "much at stake"? Jobs, family gathering, social things to attend to, hobbies, etc.
This way of thinking absolves the person who pretends they're part of a brave resistance by speaking words, yet acting not. Do they think one more "righteous" vote or donation to a feckless political party who seems pretty complicit to me by this point, about as oppositional as this friend seems to be (e.g. passive, while full of sound and fury, etc...)
Is "not joining" the same as actually resisting? Or is it to be complicit by silence?
I don't mean "posting on line" but going back to that example - sitting in the streets. It seems to me, this brave face is masking a lot of impotence (and frankly I know well what it is, because I'm just as guilty, if I am to judge myself accurately)
Is this not at the very least "the banality of evil"?
Does one let "evil" have its way, and it's only bad if one participates (I mean I guess this might be the Buddhist stance actually)? Does one have a moral duty to oppose in any way they can? Or only in ways that are comfortable. Does this friend pay taxes? Does he feel complicit in funding this fascist regime?
Is he purposefully withholding his taxes the way he would dodge the draft? If not it is just one more layer of distance, a step removed where he can feel good about saying the right things, and just praying that it will all work out.
IDK. I think a lot of people think they're a lot stronger and braver and tough than they actually are. And a lot of people are misinformed of what resistance to something even is.
Is it possible uh... Your friend is a sociopath? LOL (or, I mean... you're buddhist. so... (jk jk, but I have noticed a tendency to say "whatever" from my Buddhist friends and while talking about Right Action end up being more Taoist than actually Buddhist.) IDK I think I'm scrambling here and running out of my brain power just spitting random thoughts at the end there.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-27 01:58 pm (UTC)Re: Musings after reading this
Date: 2026-01-27 03:18 pm (UTC)I would not consider myself a Buddhist, although many Buddhist ideas do resonate with me, particularly ideas from the Zen school of thought, like non-attachment, non-duality, "kill the Buddha," and the focus on direct experience over doctrine. I also like the idea of meditation, but my mind is too restless to be still for more than two minutes, and my legs are too weak to maintain a Zazen position. Of course, a Zen master would tell me to suck it up and just do it, and then they'd probably smack me on the head a few times as a sort of pedagogical awakening technique, as they have been known to do.
What's curious about Buddhism, which as you probably know is less a religion and more a philosophy or collection of ideas, and even that, "collection of ideas," is something Zen practitioners would probably disagree with, is that if you read some of the history, there are accounts of Buddhists fighting back against invasions of their lands and temples. It's funny how, in the face of violence, Buddhist texts have been reinterpreted to justify breaking the core tenet of nonviolence; idealism seems to slip away in the face of harsh reality. Although, to be fair, plenty of Buddhist practitioners simply rolled over, or sat lotus to be more accurate, in the face of hostile takeover; and I would say that those practitioners are practicing a truer, purer form of Buddhist teaching, although I question that practice when it enables large-scale injustice.
In terms of my friend being a sociopath, maybe, but I don't think so. I've always thought I was more of a sociopath than any of my friends, to be honest, as I'm not very emotionally empathetic. My empathy is almost all intellectual, which might be just as good if we are solely concerned about outcomes, I don't know. On a fundamental level, I subscribe to the ideology outlined on the poster hanging in most kindergarten classrooms, the one that says something like, "Treat others how you would like to be treated," with hearts and bears all around it. I think you should be nice to people because, if not, people will not be nice to you. This is a selfish ideology when you get right down to it, but it's one of those selfish ideologies that produces good outcomes, I think. Anyway. I'm rambling. But no, my friend is probably not a sociopath, or maybe he is, I don't know. Can we ever truly know the contents of another person's soul? I think not. I can make some assumptions, however, and all those assumptions would align closely with what you said. I think in the real world, offline, if given enough pressure, my friend would join the Nazi army because he wouldn't want his family to be killed. I think he is not comfortable admitting that because, one, it sounds bad on paper, and two, because he has not thought it through. Outrage blinds common sense. What annoys me about it, however, is that he's not honest with himself. He's said stuff before like, "Someone should just kill Donald Trump," and I'm like, "Why don't you do it?" and then he'll post hoc come up with a bunch of rationalizations for why he himself wouldn't do the deed. "It would make him a martyr. Someone worse might replace him. &c. &c." So it's obvious to me that, one, he doesn't believe what he's actually saying, and two, he's just saying this stuff because, in the online leftist echo chambers he inhabits, it's the "cool" thing to say. This has always been a problem, but in the year 2026 of our Lord especially, thinking for yourself is harder than ever. I don't blame him, however. I just feel bad for him sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-27 03:24 pm (UTC)To your point, I do think opinions are based on reasoning in almost all cases, but often, to use your word, it's a hollow reasoning, sometimes as simple as, "well, everyone seems to hate this thing and those people seem to have good reasons and I also like those people and want to fit in so I too hate this thing."
Good Piece
Date: 2026-01-27 05:42 pm (UTC)There are folks out there, and it is an uncomfortably large percentage, whose moral palette only consists of two colors. Welcome to the west today.
Look, a lot of goes back to the now taught truism that you are special and your opinion matters. Neither of these two beliefs are anything but beliefs, there is no evidence that it is true a vast majority of the time. The world is a lot bigger than you and you need to adapt to it, it has no responsibility to adapt to you.
I am not at all certain that we are living in times comparable to 1930's and 1940's Europe. Truth be told, I am not at all certain that the images we have embedded in our brains concerning that period have any validity any more save for justification of one groups desire for privilege over another group.
Nope, you are right about how you are evaluating the situation. There is no good answer and you don't have any power to make the change. The choices made to survive situations are never that of good and evil. They are simply an individual's best guess on how to survive in the dance of the elephants.
The world is a morally ambiguous place and sometimes the best that you can do is live through the troubles.
Re: Musings after reading this
Date: 2026-01-27 06:58 pm (UTC)No-one really knows how they'd feel until they were put in that position, I think.
I mean I've said many horrific violent vengeful things too. And I know in my heart that's not what I stand for, but... after Pretti's death in particular, I just wanted people to go grab some flamethrowers and "Fire melts ICE". But I know that's not good for society at large or the individuals on each side.
Re: Good Piece
Date: 2026-01-27 07:05 pm (UTC)My friend posited that "No, we are not Nazi Germany, we are like the fall of the Soviet Union" which I think is more accurate. And that's still not pleasant.
I half wonder if people subconsciously feel like if it's Nazi Germany there is a clear battle that can be won outright, and "the world is safe for democracy". I do agree that it's shorthand. I used to be very pedantic about the word fascism, but use it more loosely these days (I used to insist if it didn't involve corporatism (actual fascist corporatism, not the misunderstood liberal understanding that they use to excuse their use of the term; individual trades having official positions in the government). But arguably even Mussolini's Fascism was "no true fascism" going by that.
I thought it would be more like US Know-Nothing Populism, and it is somewhat that. Combined with collapse of empire.
The problem I think is that you can't say however many characters that is in a single pythy word. MAGA is the word describe what MAGA is, to be honest, and they define what it is by their actions (not words). Precedents can hold analogies and insights in how to deal with it, and if you map the wrong context you have the wrong solution. So I think it's important people use the right metaphors, but even then, people seem to think you can tackle a problem the same way something has historically been tackled despite changes in society, technology, etc...