Holocaust and Lunatic Fringe
Essay title: Holocaust and Lunatic Fringe
Behrens and Rosen asked, “What sort of people were responsible for the Holocaust, and for the long list of other atrocities that seem to blight the human record in every generation? Is it a lunatic fringe, a few sick but powerful people who are responsible for atrocities?” and the responded with “If so, then we decent folk neednt ever look inside ourselves to understand evil since ever lurks out there.” Behrens and Rosen use this to construe that evil does not lurk only in lunatics but the ordinary person as well. Everyone is capable any act possible, the circumstances and the environment play an important role on what a person is capable of doing.
Doris Lessing uses this to state that individuals will conform to the majority because of societys pressures and lose individualism. Lessing uses the fact that because of western societies are well educated in different ways, free to make choices that this makes the individual, but people never think to look at their lives and see that they are no longer and individual because they are conforming to the pressures of society. She uses the fact that people often socialize with “like-minded” people often forces to make decisions that our peers make. She declares that, “We find our thinking changing because we belong to a group. It is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissident opinion, as a member of a group.” She goes on to review several experiments that involved conforming to groups.
Stanley Milgrams experiment shows that people many times conform to do what an authority figure says or orders. Despite moral apprehensions, a person might continue to do what they know is wrong. Milgram used ordinary people of all different types of life in his experiment and showed that many of them will continue until they are told to stop. It is not a “lunatic fringe” that will go against what is morally right, but it is a majority that will. Milgram says that it is easier going against ones own principles then disobeying an authoritative figure.
Milgrams results and Behrens and Rosens argument, as well as Lessings all demonstrate each other. Milgram shows that it easy for people to go with authority, Behrens and Rosen state that it is not a lunatic fringe but instead ordinary people, and Lessing saying that people will conform to groups. Groups are typically an authority figure. People will typically not speak their mind if the other members in a group disagree with ones opinion on a matter. A group can tell an individual to do something, and the individual will find it more difficult to refuse the groups order. This takes away the distinguishing line between a lunatic and an ordinary person. A person will do an act despite their own wish if they feel that they will be praised by the group.
Lessings argument shows why so much more trouble happens when there is a group of people rather than an individual. The individual will not typically commit acts of vandalism, however many times an individual in a group will. The individual feels that he will not be held responsible for his own actions because he is part of a group. Milgrams experiment shows how a person will continue on because he or she does not feel that they will not be held responsible for their own actions, once