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> “The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation underlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he sp
by hypertexthero 5y ago
> “The proximity of his workplace and his home is convenient, but there is a serious political motivation underlying it, too. When Steidl was a teen-ager, he spent several weeks volunteering at Auschwitz, clearing paths for visitors and sleeping in a former barracks. His father had served in the German Army, and Steidl participated in a program that had been established, he said, to show young Germans “what the parents had done. The experience helped him confront ‘the dark side of Germany.’ One thing that he contemplated was the ethics of separating one’s work from one’s domestic life. ‘I read about how the homes of the officers were outside the concentration camp, where they had a wife and children, and a little dog, and they were the nicest people you can expect,’ he told me. ‘And then they were going to work—they were shooting and murdering and sending people to death. So I also thought that it makes a huge difference when you are not isolated from your work, when working and living is a symbiosis. Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment. You are working there all day, and then in the evening you drive home and you have your pleasant place to stay, with clean air, while poor people have to live with the dirt you are producing. I control my noise, because I am sleeping there, with an open window, every night.’”
—Gerhard Steidl
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl-is-making-books-an-art-form https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/gerhard-steidl...
- Aunche 5y agoPeople don't spontaneously decide that conducting murder in a concentration camp is a morally acceptable career path. The Nazis succeeded in the first place because they injected their politics into every aspect of life. Politics-free spaces create additional friction that impedes the rise of radical ideology.
- greesil 5y agoThat would be true if there was no difference between seeking equality and justice vs. scapegoating Naziesque goose-stepping grievances. I say this as someone who gets annoyed by politically active coworkers. Not all ideologies are created equally.
- visarga 5y ago> seeking equality and justice Equality of outcome or opportunity? That matters. I'd support one but not the other. I lived under Communism until 1989 and I know what equal outcome looks like after decades of having its run. There is no incentive to excel and all the incentives to conform because equality comes before merit. After some time the whole society slides into poverty. What I don't like is to put ideology over humans, meaning to prefer abstractions and reifications over concrete realities and ignore those realities. Fighting for justice on a societal level can often be blind to personal details. It's usually us vs them and personal details don't matter, in that regard it's similar to war, dehumanising their opponents in order to make them legitimate targets.
- inglor_cz 5y agoHello fellow Eastern European. Yeah, a quest for societal justice can absolutely turn into an egg-breaking rampage with promise of a tasty omelette sometimes in the unspecified glorious future. We have seen it and are a bit sceptical. The USA was spared this particular disaster. Perhaps we could point out the case of the Prohibition or War on Drugs to our American friends? These, too, were/are moral crusades ostensibly led by the noblest of intentions, in practice steamrolling individuals without mercy and giving incentive to rise of brutal criminal organizations.
- lucian1900 5y agoIt’s disingenuous to blame all problems our countries had before 89 on socialism, while ignoring the constant blockade and attack from the Western European countries and the US.
- kortilla 5y agoA country the size of the USSR does not need resources from other countries to survive. If communism was effective, the blockades would have been irrelevant.
- lucian1900 5y ago
- 7952 5y agoA lot of Nazi's really did believe that they were in the right. That Jew's really were an inhuman invader presenting an existential threat. Of course that is an incredibly fragile idea to hold. There needed to be an institutional structure that tied those views to everyday practical and emotional needs. You hold those views because your power, prestige, money and family safety depended on holding those views. You suck up to you Nazi boss, whos suck's up to his boss in turn, all the way up to Hitler. And weirdly this is how a lot of companies act. Deep down everyone knows that the corporation is a lie. But slowly and surely your words turn into a stream of carefully crafted shibboleth's and cultural references. And you get a promotion and a new car. Your family is safe and your place in the pecking order confirmed. And every few years a new set of words enter the vocabulary that clear out a few oldies and cycle the structure. The problem here is not politics per-se but top-down command structures that allow viewpoints to be weaponized for career promotion.
- darkerside 5y agoThere's more truth to this than people want to admit. I would add a nuance that it wasn't just about injecting politics, but a certain brand, with no room for others. If we have politics with tolerance, it's a completely different outcome.
- throwaway3699 5y agoWe're not actually trying to equate working on email products at Basecamp to working at Auschwitz are we? It's an interesting anecdote but it hardly serves a useful function here.
- greesil 5y agoTry and look deeper. Sometimes an extreme example at the 99.9999th percentile can bound the problem. In this case, it demonstrates how well people can separate work from home.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoI would say the quote does not demonstrate the delineation between work and non-work. It's about in-group vs out-group bias. If the quote were about Nazi's coming home and hanging out with ethnically diverse friends, that would demonstrate considerable work vs home culture.
- greesil 5y agoI'm sorry, but I disagree
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoSubstantiate it if you're going to comment.
- greesil 5y agoI don't even know where to begin. How did you come up with in group vs out group? Who in this is the in group?
- chefgoldbluum 5y agoGerman nationals vs other. They’re suggesting OP is drawing a false analogy by framing the compartmentalisation through employment and ignoring the ethnic divisions.
- riccardomc 5y agoI think this story actually proves the point. In this case, people were monsters at work and respectable people at home. Therefore it works the other way around too: someone can worship Satan in a death metal band in his private life and work at a Catholic school. The very definition of maturity is assuming the role appropriate to the situation. What I think might influence my decisions, but in my job is my duty to set aside what I think and act in the interest of my employer. Not mine. Now we live in a time where your work identity an personal are conflated into one. Your work is who you are. There's no longer life beyond it. Maybe is a good thing... But it's certainly exhausting to me. Everyone putting up their best behavior all the time.
- kortilla 5y ago> Normally, when you have a business and you produce something industrial, you have the plant somewhere and it makes a lot of dirt, and poison, and noise, and destroys the environment. That’s... not how industry works anymore. The reason you don’t want to live in an industrial park is because they are bright, loud, and take up a ton of space so they destroy walkability. To the larger point though. It’s a bit daft to compare not talking about politics to shooting Jews. The German guards most certainly discussed what they were doing and felt that it was the right thing. If we’re going for melodramatic comparisons, political echo chambers in the workplace lead to the type of groupthink that result in real gas chambers.