Mary Mullen: We all should address our ethical weaknesses
I recently visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It was an experience that I wish I could forget. And yet, I hope I never do.
The Holocaust seems so far removed from 21st-century America. Across an ocean and six decades, it is easy to imagine that “those people” who committed “those atrocities” were barbarians living centuries ago before we knew about God and about psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
According to Maslow, human needs can be separated into five tiered categories. Our basest physiological needs must be met before our higher needs of safety, love, esteem, and eventually self-actualization can be realized.
The Holocaust happened in modern times, not when life was a raw struggle for survival.
The German people lived together in cities and drove cars and ate in restaurants and enjoyed theater and art. They worked, married, had babies, celebrated life and ceremoniously buried their dead.
They lived much as we live today.
How can we understand such atrocities? I overheard comments of incredulity, horror, head shaking and finger pointing: “How can anyone do this to another human being? How could good people have allowed this to happen?”
Most of the people walking through that museum could comfortably remove themselves from what they saw. Most failed to see a connection within themselves.
We live in a civilized society, after all, not Nazi Germany.
And yet many Germans believed that they lived in a civilized society as well. Many claimed to be unaware of the horrors that were happening. If we are not vigilant, we too can be taught lies, turn a blind eye, and be deceived into thinking and behaving in ways that future generations may someday recognize as inhumane.
The truth is that under certain conditions – conditions that usually involve fear – all human beings are capable of the most despicable of acts. Even Jesus chastised his disciples for calling him good, knowing that only God is good.
The destruction of unwanted people in Germany was accomplished in stages. Seeds were sown over years.
Insidious beliefs that “others” were threatening the very fabric of good society were planted. Attitudes of superiority were nurtured.
Watching films about Hitler’s Youth Corps reiterated the importance of how and what we teach our children.
What does this mean to you and me living our day-to-day lives 60 years later as we strive for the top of Maslow’s hierarchy?
It means we no longer can allow ourselves the luxury of inattention to those in need. It means we no longer can validate our own existence by diminishing that of another.
It means we take responsibility for our smallest of thoughts and actions and we recognize that these small acts, combined with all small acts everywhere, create a much larger world.
It means we must treat our fellow human beings with the same dignity that we wish to be treated. It means we live our faith rather than talk about it.
To not succumb to temptation, the Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. That means that every thought, every word, in every instance, matters.
Moment to moment, we must nurture either love or hate, courage or fear, and know that our choice will help to create the world that we live in. To save the world, we must save ourselves.
Granted, these actions pale in comparison to genocide. But living by this “Golden Rule” is truly the only way to ensure that genocides cease in our world.
We must correct our own character, individual act by individual act. Only then will we be able to resist the temptation of conquering each other in word and deed.
Only when every one of us knows that all of the faults we see in the outside world lie within ourselves, and accept the burdensome responsibility of free will and choose love rather than hate, can we hope to live in a world free of a Holocaust, an Abu Ghraib, or a Darfur.
And every day that I remember what I saw in that museum in Washington, D.C., I will pray to be delivered from the temptation of evil.
I hope I never forget.