While there is "them", there is also "we" who tirelessly manifest our togetherness by word and deed, show it, confirm and prove it to everyone around us. In practical terms, the idea of "us" would be meaningless if it were not connected to the idea of "them". I'm afraid that rule does not promise the realization of the dream of a world without violence. Evil is trivialized, and the most important consequence of this is that we become more and more insensitive to its presence and manifestations. Crimes no longer require motivation. They have moved from the class of purposeful (actually meaningful) acts into a space that is a pleasant pastime and entertainment for an increasing number of indifferent observers.
This is what Zygmunt Bauman, the number one sociologist in the world, said before his death, which befell him three years ago, on January 9, 2017, in Leeds, England.
Zygmunt Bauman was born in 1925 in Poznań, Poland and was, and remains, one of the most important and influential sociologists and philosophers. In his works, he especially dealt with the problems of globalization, modernism, postmodernism, consumerism and ethics. He published more than sixty books, most of which are considered classic works of sociological literature.
In the opinion of many, his most famous book is "Modernity and The Holocaust" (Modernity and the Holocaust), for which he received the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology in 1989.
In this work, Bauman analyzes the darkest part of the 20th century – the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Bauman examines the Holocaust in relation to modern society and the development of technology and bureaucracy. Mass murders are not a modern invention, says Bauman and continues: History is full of hostilities between communities and sects, always mutually harmful and potentially destructive, which often erupt as open violence, sometimes lead to slaughter, and in some cases result in the annihilation of entire populations and cultures. On the appearance level, this fact denies the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Modernity has not fulfilled its promise. Modernity has failed. But modernity is not responsible for the Holocaust episode - because genocide has accompanied human history from the beginning.
In order to fully understand the crimes of the Holocaust, Bauman says, it is necessary to look at the Nazi disregard for human rights and values. There is only a negative relationship between human rights and values and Nazism. This negative relationship is mutual.
The essence of Nazism is that it does not recognize recognizable human values and does not recognize people. When this is known, then it can be argued that Nazism, with its collective ideology, transfers the concept of value from the individual to the collective level, which means: from the human person to the race.
The denial of the human in the victim meant that the victim in the encounter with physical death has no moral status or any, including, human value. This planned humiliation, or rather the renunciation of value, erases every trace of the victim's worth. Renunciation of personal values precedes human physical death. Death is near the life that needs death, and that is why there is no struggle to keep life, but there is a desire to end it. By renouncing all values, the victim takes on himself a part of the death sentence and becomes its executor. Depriving people of their sense of humanity means depriving them of the ability to reason, and that is the first step in burying human capacities for carrying out moral relations towards other people.
"Us" and "Them"
When it comes to the evil that the Holocaust produces, Bauman argues, it is not just evil that comes from disciplined men in uniforms who follow and enforce strict rules from point to point. Before they put on uniforms, they were good fathers to their children, pleasant husbands to their wives, helping their neighbors and friends in need and the like. It seems almost impossible that these same people could kill defenseless children, rape minors and take men to camps and torture and kill them there. However, there is no room for moral dilemmas in the bureaucratic consciousness. This is about the technological process: whether it is suitable or not. The process of committing a crime is defined as a technical task. In such a system, the participants of the bureaucratic process feel satisfaction after completing the action that the authoritarian system ordered.
What about morality when committing mass crimes like the holocaust?
Bauman writes that as a result of the meeting of ego and alter ego we have a situation where I am not the master of the situation or the situation has acquired such a dimension where I cannot control myself. In these situations, the other person is a plague, a sea, or at best a challenge. There are no moral or any other norms here. "They" - the other - are enemies and a limitation for my - our - freedom. The neutralization of the moral action of basic moral impulses occurs when they become irrelevant.
Nazism enjoyed neutralizing, isolating and marginalizing those others using all the possibilities of modern industrial society, transport, science, bureaucracy, technology and especially the mass media. Without this, the Holocaust is unthinkable and impossible. The Holocaust was, therefore, a routine bureaucratic-technical task that could be prepared and carried out by a specialized group of experts and specialists in various fields. But all this could not be prepared and realized before the object of the future bureaucratic operation - in this case the Jews - was erased from the everyday Nazi horizon. That human, everyday relationship was replaced by the "abstract concept - the metaphysical Jew". Jews now became "them", "alter ego", "plague", "monster", "weed" that needed to be exterminated, cleaned, destroyed.
According to Zygmunt Bauman, there are two main reasons that the Holocaust, in contrast to other academic studies, cannot be considered as a matter of purely academic interest and that the Holocaust cannot be reduced only to historical research and philosophical reflection.
The first reason is theoretical: the Holocaust, although, as a central historical event, it changed the course of history, it did not change much of our understanding of that history. The Holocaust did not visibly affect our idea of contemporary historical tendencies and their meaning.
The social sciences, including sociology, are largely untouchable and innocent and are occupied by permanent marginal research fields. There is also the illusion of the hidden possibilities of modern society. Because of this, our understanding of the factors and mechanisms that produced the Holocaust is not developing further. And because of this we are beyond the ability to understand the warning signals that then appeared in the open light and in full form.
The second reason is practical: Regardless of what happens to historical progress, nothing particularly happens to historical products that very obviously contain the conditions for the Holocaust. Or in any case, we cannot be sure that something significant is happening.
We cannot claim that the factors that led to the Holocaust in 1941 have been changed (eliminated) today. That ideology and that system that were behind Auschwitz are still present.
To put it brutally and to be concerned about what we know now, and we know that we live in a society that made the Holocaust possible, we have to do research on the Holocaust because we don't know where the possibility of this happening again, where the possibilities for new genocides and new stiff and dumb victims waiting for their executioners. We must remember that this society contains nothing that can prevent the Holocaust from happening again.
Eternal war for eternal peace
This is not the end of a short reminder of Bauman's wide scientific oeuvre. Here, on the anniversary of Bauman's death, are his basic reflections for those who say: "We have had enough of the past." Give us the present and the future". In the book, which was translated into Norwegian by Mette Nygård and published by Vidarforlagets Kulturbibliotek from Oslo, in 1998, under the title "Globalizering og den human consequences" (Globalization and human consequences), Bauman writes that for some globalization means something that he must realize in order for people to be happy, for others it is the reason for unhappiness. But for both, globalization is a process like an inevitable destiny. Those invisible forces are transnational, although nation-states are the framework for calculating income, expenditure and profit, of course, but everything else is hidden in a mysterious fog. This mysterious fog surrounds nation-states and prepares them for an easy death.
The reasons why this death occurs are not completely known, the feeling that develops because of it is insecurity, and most long for the times or the state in which they had "full control". The thought of global disorder is real. The situation is such that no one seems to have control, or even worse - the impression is that one does not know what it actually means to be in control? Globalization is a new world order where things are out of control. Globalization is not about what we all want and want, but globalization is about what is happening to us all. And something is happening that anonymous forces are doing in that fog, behind which appears a factory-produced jungle that has appeared as a sign of a harsh reality.
Bauman continues, explaining globalization as nothing more than the expansion of the market and its logic in all spheres of life. The European nation-states do not have the strength or the room for maneuver to press a button that can prevent them and their companies from collapsing like a house of cards in just a few minutes. In such a situation, nation-states contain only the mandatory - an apparatus for violence, that is, the humiliation of others, mainly minorities as scapegoats.
When their material basis is destroyed, sovereignty and independence invalid, then only the security service of nation states is ready for great follies. The global world of finance and the information industry have interests in such weak states. Weak states are exactly what the new world order wants for its own reproduction. As such, these states can simply be reduced to local police stations that can run "local firms" without endangering the global freedom of the boss. Then it is not difficult to replace weak states with a global controlling power. Economic globalization and political fragmentation (localization), although they are in alliance and two sides of the same process, they are at war with each other.
Globalization provides an opportunity for the extremely rich to make money fast. With the use of new technology, the rich enter different parts of the world very quickly, but only where they will surely make money. Thus, globalization contains a paradox, which is that it makes one third of the world rich and throws two thirds of the world into total poverty. The rich used to need the poor to keep themselves rich. The nouveau riche need the poor to get rich and stay rich themselves. The social whole is made up of a hierarchical division of local authorities at the top of which is a superlocal authority that supervises and controls those below it.
According to Bauman, one of the consequences of globalization will be a constant reorganization of the world and a long-term war for the control of space. It will be eternal war for eternal peace. One of the goals of that war will be: to place the world on an officially recognized and state-stimulated map, which means simultaneously disqualifying all other explanations of the world and producers of geographic maps. All existing geographic maps that existed before globalization will be replaced by one "objective" map that will be created based on practical superiority, which will be a continuation of the ideally imagined state of affairs in the world. However, the second phase of that process will be much more difficult, and it will concern the "situation on the ground" based on drawn maps and the cartographer's ideas, plans and wishes.
In today's world, mobility is something that is in high demand. At the same time, freeing oneself from responsibility for the consequences of one's actions is also something that is much sought after. Consequence costs are not included in the total investment account. Just as profit was the main goal of action once, now irresponsibility for the consequences of action is the main goal of activity. The gap created by the division of the world into continents proved to be overcome. National states are sacrificed for globalization, and national identity for collective, cultural, civilizational...
Despite such gloomy events and predictions, one should be optimistic in order to live to be 91 years old, which, despite everything, Zygmunt Bauman lived to be. Zygmunt Bauman, partisan, communist, security officer, anti-Zionist, humanist and university professor. Zygmunt Bauman citizen of Poland, USA, Canada, Australia, Israel, England. Zygmunt Bauman, Citizen of the World.
(The author is the director of the Institute for Researching Crimes Against Humanity and International Law at the University of Sarajevo)
The test was originally published in Oslobođenje, January 9 and 10, as well as at Oslobodjenje.ba.