So Roberta Allen’s Sandbox Writing Challenge for this week wants to know, “What don’t you understand?”
To put it plain and simple — hardly anything! But that’s not a bad thing. Because as Plato (the younger) points out, knowing that you don’t understand (know) is the first step to understanding (knowing). Does that make sense? If I don’t recognize that I don’t understand things, how am I going to realize I need to take the time to learn stuff? That covers a LOT of “not understanding” territory.
So that’s the humorous, light side of answering this question. The serious side is I don’t understand how people can deliberately take someone’s life. That’s a conundrum that’s plagued me since I began reading histories of WWII. I’m not saying I don’t understand that lives are taken in times of war. We humans are a capricious race and it often causes us a lot of trouble.
What I’m referring to is how someone can intentionally put an end to the life other people just because… I’ve been trying to get my mind around the Holocaust for years now. Around how a leader could single out an entire race of people to be destroyed. It just doesn’t compute with me. Every time I find myself thinking about it, my “computer freezes up and my hard drive crashes.” My mind will not let me go there.
But I reckon that’s maybe a good thing because if I ever DO begin to understand that motivation, it probably would mean my life had taken a turn for the worse. So I guess I would hasten to add that SOMETIMES its a GOOD thing we don’t understand everything.
(Was that answer a cop-out?)
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Picture Credit: memegenerator.net
Impromptu Promptlings 
I’ve started this comment so many times in response both to your post and to the comments. Basically, I disagree with explanations of psychopathy (which is an artificial psychological construct) and missing chromosomes. The answer of course is highly complex as we humans are. Anyway, you did focus on Hitler, and there are many books about him, including medical. But one I read not so long ago, which gave an interesting perspective is the Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft. It provided an intellectual context for the development of his beliefs, the social context which propagated those further, and the political context in which he was manoeuvred into power. I like this sandbox challenge, it’s a very interesting question indeed.
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I know you have a point. I would have believed Hitler was pure evil from the get go except for one book I read, “Hitler: the Memoir of a Nazi Insider Who Turned Against the Fuher” by Ernst Hanfstaengl. Hanfstaengl was Hitler’s foreign press secretary. In the book he follows Hitler from like day one, early, early on, and shows how the men surrounding him — especially while he was in prison — fundamentally changed who he was. I found the book fascinating and it opened up a lot of questions for me about the supposed “evil from birth” idea. Great comment, Safar! (Are you done reading papers now??? Assuming you survived?)
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I’ve always had an issue with the portrayal of people in dichotomous terms of good and evil. It’s good when people search that bit deeper for the background to someone’s actions.
Happily finished the papers now – very intensive period. Life starts again!
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Yay! You survived! I started reading your blog last night and fell asleep. Have to get back to it this morning. Though I was half asleep when I was reading, didn’t have something to do with this? I shall go see!!!
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I remember from lectures years ago someone trying to describe the difference between mental illness and psychopathy -‘there’s the mad people. Then there’s the bad people. And then there’s the mad bad people (psychopaths)’ The true psychopath has no conscience. Doesn’t care about anyone else except themselves. Add to that megalomania and you’re beginning to get close to the people like Hitler.
Psychopathy is a genetic condition – a missing chromosome. Can’t be changed.
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Interesting. I din’t now there were so many different kinds of crazy-arse people in the world. Just like a d*mn box of chocolates!!! (Sorry Mrs. Gump for borrowing your illustration.)
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Yep , just some of those d*mn chocolates are too bitter !
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Oh man, that Plato quote. I almost used that for my yearbook!
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Yeah, he’s a perdy smart dude. Good advice. eh? 🙂
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There’s no understanding evil C 😔
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You’d think I’d have figured that out by now, wouldn’t you? 😦
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I think you could drive your own self crazy trying to understand…
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