From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 06 1999 - 02:24:27 MST
Robert Owen wrote:
>
> I'm afraid you will find it
> incomprehensible when I tell you that I feel personal shame and guilt over
> these hideous events.
Incomprehensible? No, not at all. I find it entirely comprehensible
within the human social memes. "I am German", "Germany did evil", "I am
evil". That was my point, that you need to look at yourself and say, "I
am human", not "I am German". (I, for one, find it a bit offputting to
hear the phrase "six million" rather than "eleven million".) Unless
you're a lot older than I'd guess, you bear precisely no more and
precisely no less guilt for the Holocaust than I do. I think the
segment of German society that is tired of national shame is on to
something. I admire modern Germany for its consistent stand against
anything that smacks of its dark days, from their support of Israel to
their being in the forefront of the war on Serbia (that I personally
despised the war does not change this). If Germany wants to play
anti-Nazi policeman and hero of the third millennium, great. I just
don't think they should be doing it from guilt. But what the heck, not
my country.
> Did you deliberately set up a straw man, or did you misread my post?
No, I just saw an opportunity to post something I'd been meaning to say,
and ran with it.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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