{"id":111532,"date":"2020-03-12T08:50:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T12:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=111532"},"modified":"2020-03-12T08:50:22","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T12:50:22","slug":"column-the-musings-of-a-simple-country-man-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=111532","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: The Musings of a Simple Country Man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How can good people become bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you tell the people lies long enough, they will soon\nbelieve them as truth.\u201d \u2013 Nazi Germany 1930s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThe rebel is the person who says \u2018no\u2019.\u201d \u2013\nAlbert Camus<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a\nquestion that I am struggling to understand. There are so many examples of good\npeople who become bad, evil monsters. \nWhy?  I\u2019m scared because I don\u2019t\nknow why.  Under the right circumstances,\ncould I become that monster too?  I think\nnot, but so did millions of Germans in the 1930s and early 1940s who \u201cSieg\nHeil\u2019ed\u201d and lock stepped an authoritarian nation into depravity and\nunimaginable barbarity.  History records\nmany other examples both before and after Germany\u2019s evil empire\u2019s ambitions\nfailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course,\nthere are many theories as to why and how people can turn into monsters.  I try to make some sense from them but I am\nmore confused than enlightened.  I sense\nit needs a far deeper thinker to understand the complicated explanations.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do think, however,\nthat we should try more than we do to learn how good people can become\nevil.  We live in a very dangerous and\nunpredictable age:  a world of vast\nproblems, highly inflammatory political tensions within and between nations.  Simply, our age is chaotic and highly\nunstable and a clear and present danger to all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric Hoffer\nhas warned that from this instability and chaos there is no telling what people\nmight resort to \u201cin order to give meaning and purpose to their lives\u201d\u2026   Hoffer goes on to say \u201call mass movements\nbreed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance \u2013 each one\nof them as capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity, all of them demand\nblind faith and single hearted allegiance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most\nauthoritarian movements initially appeal most to the poor, insulated, injured,\ndispossessed, and yes bored.  A\ncharismatic leader promises a new hope, a rosy vision, a better life and an\nescape from a debased life.  Dazzled by\nthe glorious times, the movement\u2019s followers will accept crude absurdities and\ntrivial nonsense as the gospel truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authoritarian\nmass movements also gain power by being unintelligible make believe and\nunverifiable.  The \u201cleader\u201d urges his\nfollowers to seek truth with their hearts and not their minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Hoffer\nnotes, \u201call active mass movements strive to impose a fact proof screen between\nthe faithful and realities of the world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we have\nseen throughout history and at present, there is no telling to what extremes of\ncruelty and ruthlessness man is capable of going when freed from fears,\nhesitations, doubts and the faintest stirrings of decency.  When we lose our independence in a mass\nmovement, we find a new freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, and murder\nwithout shame or remorse.  Good people\nbecome evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychologist\nStanley Milgram notes that experiments show how ordinary good people can be\nturned into torturers.  With numbing\nregularity, good people will knuckle under the demands of authority and do\nhorrible things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erich Fromm\nwrites \u201cwe produce machines that are like men and men who are like\nmachines.\u201d  Immoral conformity,\nhysterical nationalism, dehumanizing pressures of industrial civilization must\nbe continually rebutted by society\u2019s \u201crebels\u201d who say no to the forces of\nlemmings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must\nfight evil doers who view humans as abstractions.  When we begin to hate foreigners, it is an\nindication that America has lost confidence in our way of life.  Lost in the authoritarian mentality are\ntolerance, empathy, good will and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\ndesperately needs more rebels who aren\u2019t afraid to say \u201cno\u201d to the mindless\nmasses and their dangerous leaders, at all levels if democracy and the rule of\nlaw are to survive for the future.  The\ndie is cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these\nare just the musings of a simple country man and his wife, Lois, continuing to\nlive free and independent in the hills of rural Brookfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: Hobie Morris is a\nBrookfield resident and simple country man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can good people become bad? By Hobie Morris \u201cIf you tell the people lies long enough, they will soon believe them as truth.\u201d \u2013 Nazi Germany 1930s  \u201cThe rebel is the person who says \u2018no\u2019.\u201d \u2013 Albert Camus It is a question that I am struggling to understand. There are so many examples of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-t0U","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}