#anyway i'm mad about that teacher's reaction because as a teacher you should be GLEEFUL about a student doing that
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“It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo
i wish ppl on this website, and within leftist circles in general, were a little less gung ho about making jokes or statements like "billionaires arent people" "nazis arent people" "police arent people"
there is no level of evil where a human stops being a human. if you decide to kill them for their crimes, then you are killing a human. and sometimes that is justified! oil execs and war profiteers have destroyed countless lives in service of their own sick greed, and given the chance to enact that same violence on them, id probably pop their heads like a pimple.
but it is important that we do not shy away from the reality of that choice. it is a human life that is being ended. a person with interiority, feelings, family.
if we stop considering any group as people, even a group defined by their own evil actions, then we are drawing a line to divide society into persons and non-persons, and stating that those non-persons do not deserve to live.
i hope i dont need to explain why that is a dangerous position to take.
these people and all of their evil, their greed, their hatred, are just as much a part of humanity as art, culture, language, food. they are a part of us that has grown malignant and cancerous, and like a cancer, they must be excised for the sake of the whole--but they are still a part of us, made of the same stuff as us, down to their cores.
evil humans are still humans.
#evergreen quote tbh. gnu pterry.#nobody on earth has ever truly considered themselves Evil for their actions#the worst people in history believed themselves justified in their actions#even if eventually those justifications were simply that the people who were getting hurt weren't really people#so it didn't count#and it's a comforting thought that you would NEVER be able to do such horrible things#not even in the most imagined dire circumstances#you'd NEVER fall prey to cult thinking or a charismatic leader or woo woo science#but realistically? you could. we all could. we're all capable of it. you have to be aware of that or it makes you more vulnerable to it#if you want something it's all too easy to start convincing yourself there's perfectly good reasons why you deserve it#if you're desperate it's all too easy to start justifying anything that offers you some kind of hope#plus justifications like that rarely if ever START at the most extreme. they start small.#and with each successive action justified it becomes easier to justify worse to yourself#and harder to justify going back - because the human brain HATES to admit it's wrong at the best of times#Evil is not a personality trait. Evil is actions you take - and the worst evil always convinces you it's Good.#anyway i'm mad about that teacher's reaction because as a teacher you should be GLEEFUL about a student doing that#what a fantastic opportunity to discuss this exact thing#and - given a drama context - how to make a believable villain character and get into their head#i mean i might check in privately with the student first about why they'd chosen to do that#just to be y'know sure#but other than that and once assured that there wasn't actually a budding neonazi in the class WHAT A GIFT
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