Europe and the Future of Politics

[shakahislop]

trauma is a big aspect of some societies. in rwanda it's pretty obvious, it's all very subdued. you see come through in a thousand ways in afghanistan. it's longer ago but you can see threads of it still in europe i think, especially in the countries where the fighting was most intense

 

[version]

trauma is a big aspect of some societies.

Israel's surely the most glaring example.

 

[yyaldrin]

i've often thought it's the reason why most germans can't laugh, or have joy, or smile. or why they are so eager to tell you what you are doing wrong, or to snitch on you, or to obey the rules. i've once heard someone describing it as the french having "joie de vivre", and the germans having the exact opposite of that.

is it surprising if you consider that this was the way german children were raised during the second world war and decades after that;

Haarer viewed children, especially babies, as nuisances whose wills needed to be broken. “The child is to be fed, bathed, and dried off; apart from that left completely alone,” she counseled. She recommended that children be isolated for 24 hours after the birth; instead of using “insipid-distorted ‘children’s language,’” the mother should speak to her child only in “sensible German”; and if the child cries, let him cry.

Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today

The Nazi regime urged German mothers to ignore their toddlers’ emotional needs—the better to raise hardened soldiers and followers. Attachment researchers say that the harmful effects of that teaching may be affecting later generations

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[version]

The Nazis didn't spring from a vacuum. You could keep going back and finding things which could be interpreted as leading to subsequent traumas.

 

[shakahislop]

The Nazis didn't spring from a vacuum. You could keep going back and finding things which could be interpreted as leading to subsequent traumas.

yeah you're right

 

[yyaldrin]

trauma is a big aspect of some societies. in rwanda it's pretty obvious, it's all very subdued. you see come through in a thousand ways in afghanistan. it's longer ago but you can see threads of it still in europe i think, especially in the countries where the fighting was most intense

don't they often come up with rwanda as a positive example of a society recovering from such trauma?

 

[version]

There's that Christopher Hitchens review of one of the Baader-Meinhof films where he points out some of the most violent post-war leftist groups emerged in the Axis countries, i.e. countries traumatised by fascist governments and military defeat: "the Japanese Red Army... West Germany’s Red Army Faction... and the Red Brigades in Italy."

 

[GhostofKinski]

There were European wars before those two.

No doubt. I like the ones that are named after how long they lasted.
7 years war
30 years war
And my favorite: the 100 years war, or as it was named at the time, Operation Swift Resolution.