i finished the semester today!!!! ya! it was a terrific class followed by the most terrific day:)
this one is short because my eyes are stinging...because i am a bit tired:)
over and out.
ps...tomorrow i am delivering my application packet to ucla!
december is here!
christmas is in the air...really, i have been trying to avoid it at all costs due to the fact that i have a huge paper to submit...by the end of today. the closer christmas seems to be, the less time i seem to have before the semester is over.
i have been working on a paper for my darwin class...it is perhaps one of the greatest classes i have taken thus far. my paper is dealing with the influences of darwin on twentieth century germany, more specifically the holocaust. i have found that there is a belief that darwin himself was responsible for the horrendous events of the holocaust. that he is responsible for the murder of over six million jews. darwin is most known for his theory of evolution which is possible throught the process of natural selection. natural selection is the idea that the strong will survive while the weak perish. when darwin addressed this idea, he used many different examples, and yes, man kind was one of his examples. we need to remember that 19th century western civilization was all about conquering the unconquered. it was a time of discovery and one thing that many travelers came across where unrecognized tribes. these people were unable to communicate in a way europeans saw fit, so naturally, they were labeled "inferior". to many like darwin, according to the law of nature, it was just natural that the tribes would not win in the battle of savage vs. civilization.
by the time Hitler came to power, he had already been exposed to evolution and considered himself one of its most loyal supporters. hitler believed greatly in the extinction of the weaker races in order to preserve the ultimate superior race, and that race being the german people. he was able to take darwin's theory of evolution and fit it perfectly into what he was going to accomplish in germany. eugenics in germany was the result of the darwinian influence on hitler. a eugenics program was already under way even before the nazis took over. upon their arrival, a new set of laws to push jews out of everything and anything was set into motion. jews were released from their work places, forbidden to marry within the aryan race, stripped of the right to acquire knowledge through education, along with a number of other things. these laws are notoriously known as the nuremberg laws. this was the most successful way to weed jews out of anything german and yes indeed, they were successful. jews were compared to the lowest of life forms, the sewer rat, and in propaganda films, germans were told that extermination was absolutely necessary for superiority's sake.
genocide on yes, it is true that darwin dealt greatly with issues on superiority and inferiority but no one man is responsible for the acts of another, especially in this case. to try to put the blame of hitler on darwin's shoulders seems ludicrous. i know, call me crazy but that just seems crazy.
back to paper writing...