Food for Thought

APPETIZER:

Shame is not the feeling that you did something wrong.
Shame is the feeling that you are wrong.

There isn't much else to say. I just heard this in class during a video about stuttering and I've been thinking about it ever since, just about how true it was. Have you ever tried to define shame? I think before I would have probably said it was similar to guilt, but I'm beginning to realize how distinctly different shame is. Which is why I think shame can be so much more debilitating than guilt.

STARTER SALAD:

I have always sort of had this fascination with the Holocaust. I know that sounds sick and strange. But whenever I consider what happened during the Holocaust -- the brainwashing, the Nazi Youth, the concentration camps -- I have this nagging need to understand how something so crazy could happen. How could people be so blind and so cruel and so confused? I keep trying to put myself in their places and see if I can imagine thinking how those people thought. It sounds crazy to other people, I bet, the fact that I do this, but I can't help it.

Some movies I've seen lately have furthered my consideration of the Holocaust. Swing Kids is about the Nazi Youth movement and a story about transformations and decisions that people younger than me made when Hitler was implementing his "plan." And then there is this foreign film Fateless about a Jewish boy in a concentration camp. People in the concentration camps changed too .... of course they had to ... but it is interesting to consider how and why some changed "for the good" and some "for the bad." Some prisoners began complying and acting as authority figures for the Nazis, mistreating their fellow prisoners and lording over them ... maybe for power ... or just for food. And some clung to hope and each other, allowing their souls to survive, even if they were crumpled.

ENTREE:

Of course the salad only serves to compliment the entreé. So a similar topic will be addressed.

Before I went to Chile, I sort of always just figured the Holocaust was the only historical event of its kind. Obviously there have been mass murders before, surely, but you always hear so much about the Holocaust in history classes. In 8th grade, we not only studied WWII and the Holocaust in history but it was the theme of all our reading in English too. Then, when we started studying Chile's history, one of the main topics that still affects Chilean politics and personal beliefs to this day was the dictatorship of Pinochet. To make it short, he and three others overthrew President Allende (and his socialist agenda ... with the support of the US via the CIA). Afterwards Pinochet took all the power for himself and began opening torture camps throughout the country for people he thought were a threat to his power or opposed his agenda. Singers, poets, novelists, journalists, common everyday people disappeared into these camps ... some never to return to their families. He recently died (which earned little press time here in the States) and up until then, there were still people who lived in fear of him and his power and people who revered and respected him. Eerily the same, but on a smaller scale, as the happenings in Europe during WWII.

Have you seen Blood Diamond or Tsotsi? Or read Kaffir Boy? I don't know the details quite like I do for Chile, but countries all over Africa, people have been taught to think that there are lines of superiority. People are made slaves, gangsters and murderers in the name of white supremacy, diamonds and money. Don't give me a diamond, future husband. I want nothing to do with it please.

So many things bother me about this. Why do we only learn about the European Holocaust in school ... what about Chile and Africa and the likely many other places where tthe same has taken place? And what is it about us that makes us so susceptible to believing that not all humans are essentially the same? How are we so easily tricked into thinking that we could be so much better than someone else that we need to "exterminate" them?

But the scariest questions for me by far are: Will I live to see this happen in the US? Or has it already and somehow I missed it? And will I be blind enough to fall into line with the nazis or white supremists or pinochets who tell me that I am better or worse than someone else? I'd like to say no, but then I think of all the people who fell in line. I bet they would've said no too if they were asked.

DESSERT:

I apologize for such a ... heavy... meal. So we'll have something light for dessert. Geography.

Pangaea. Ok people. I've had this discussion before, but it must be addressed here on the blog. First of all, a little of the pangaea topic, but it must be noted ... Alaska and Russia are SOOOO close to teach other!!! I mean Alaskans are practically Russians! Which technically means we're practically Russian, both (us and alaskans) being americans.

You can thank Megyn Burleson for my interest in all this. She had this big world map hanging in our dorm right across from my bed last year and I would just lay there sometimes and examine it and come to some crazy realizations and conclusions.

Back to Pangaea. I could have been the "discoverer/inventor/whatever-er" of Pangaea. I was just born too late. Seriously. I mean if you look at a map for even the shortest length of time, you too will realize how deathly obvious Pangaea is. I mean the continents fit together like puzzle pieces. I can just imagine the day Alfred Wegener made the announcement about the theory of Pangaea. It was 1920 and he was sitting around at work, avoiding doing anything real, looking at a map on his office wall, daydreaming of what it would be like to travel when BAM it hit him. Hey those continents would fit together. If you stick the islands in the empty spot where they don't quite meet .... well, hell, I think it would make one giant continent!" He instantly realizes that he can convince the laypeople to think this is a big discovery, recalls a little Greek from high school and there is it is: the theory of Pangaea is born and old Alfie looks like a scientific genius!

I've got to start paying more attention to the obvious. You should too ... we could be famous one day for something right in front of our noses. My advice: keep daydreaming.