janc is rather human for a Kraut, don't you think?59 responses total.
I guess that proves nurture not nature, huh. Oh, and by the way, the current queen of england (no, not boy george) is a kraut. As was the supreme commander of all forces in opposition to the Nazis. Something in the 90% of all SS were "good Catholic boys" although I seems to recall the majority of nazis were lutheran. THe most highly decorated USARMY unit during WW-II was japanese (442nd). The Revolution in 1776 was financed by jews (wasn't a very good investment and many ended up bankrupt). Lindberg was a supporter of american nazis. The head of the nazi party that marched on Skokie was a jewboy. I seem to recall that one of the primary nationalist leaders of the Argentine plot to overthrow the nazi symathetic regime during the 1940s was an irishman and I seem to recall he became president before Peron who was a NSDP sympathizer and former military attache to Berlin - and a member of the plot. Yep, janc is a sweet and kindly person which seems to be rather rare no matter how you try to correlate it with any particular orientation or genetics but is rather common thankfully in the population of humans at large.
Wow. I have never so completely agreed with beady in all my grexing years. Now all that's left is to forget this miserable attempt at trolling. Bye.
Well, both my parents were German immigrants, so in many ways my nuture was pretty German. German was my first language, although I've lost most of it. German ancestory isn't exactly a rarity in America. Here in Michigan probably a majority of people are of German extraction. My father's family was as strongly anti-Nazi as it was safe to be, which isn't very strongly. My father's brother served in the German army. My mother's parents were Nazi party members, but I think were less antisemitic than my father's family. They lived in Jewish neighborhoods, had many close Jewish friends, did business primarily with Jews. My grandfather apparantly was able to help save one Jewish friend from the camps. Many of my great uncles on that side of that family were German soldiers - nearly all died. One great uncle was in the SS. He's the official black sheep of the family. Whether because of the SS thing or some other reason I never heard, he was cut off from the family. I remember he sent a letter to my mom once - rather a nice letter. He was working as a janitor. He said that he'd happily clean toilets all day long so he'd have the money to buy food for his little dog. A lonely old man. He must have died by now, but I never heard about it. I really don't know that much about what life was like for these people. What stories I heard from my parents were far from complete. There's been a lot of nastiness in history, and all of us have had ancestors on the giving end and the receiving end. Saints don't have a terribly good track record as far as getting their children raise goes, so not many of us are decended from saints. I think you can find some bigotry in anyone's family tree. I have a lot of respect for my parents and grandparents. If any of them were still alive, they might have been a bit stunned by the fact that my children are Jewish. Or they might not have been. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews were pretty common in Germany before the war. But I think they'd have all set that aside easily enough. Even the SS guy. As far as I know, they were people of their place and time, with many of the prejudices that came from that, but they weren't hateful people. But while they weren't hateful people, they were all part of the society that perpetrated the Holocaust. I think the formula for a Holocaust includes (1) a society under severe stress where most people fear for their security, (2) a society that is divided in everyone's into a "them" and an "us" where the "them" are viewed with suspicion if not necessarily hatred, (3) a few people who actually hate "them", and (4) a shortage of people who are willing to risk their necks looking out for strangers. I don't think my ancestors participated in the Holocaust. But like all Germans, they knew that the Jews were being taken away, and they avoided thinking too hard about what might be happening to them. I think demonizing all Germans is a dangerous mistake. If you pretend it requires an nation of frothing maniacs to perpetrate a Holocaust, then it is easy to be falsely secure that it can't happen here. What should really frighten people about Nazism is not that such nasty people can exist in the world, but that people so little worse from us can commit such crimes against humanity.
I think you also need severe economic problems.
That was a wonderful post, Jan, especially the last paragraph.
There seem to be a lot of people here that like to label other people, as illustrated by #0, and some subsequent postings. I think that is one of human nature's lowest tendencies. It probably arose, however, as a survival adaptation: if you aren't one of "us", you are enemy. Of course, we can't avoid having ancestry, and stories of our ancestors are always interesting - things people do, and people at that that have some genetic of at least famililial connections with us. There is that tribal instinct again.
Jan, that was incredibly well written. I always love how you read that people said after the Holocaust, "Never again", yet we've watched it happen over and over again.
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re: "#3 (janc): ... Here in Michigan probably a majority of people are of German extraction." According to the 2k US Census, 9.9M MI residents reported about 11M ancestries. Of those, 2.04M reported German ancestry. This was the most for any single country and about double the # reported for the runner-up country (Ireland).
For the record, two of my best friends are from the same village as the leader of the "Real" IRA, which is against the Northern Ireland/Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and the ceasefire. And yes, the Queen is at least partly Kraut. Go figure, 'twerp.
So not nearly a majority, but lots. (I suppose one could quibble about the reliability of those statistics, but what would be the point?) Still, although America tends to emphasize it's English cultural heritage, other nations actually contribute much more to America's genetic heritage. I think the impulse to label people is human and unavoidable, but dangerous. That was one thing that always seemed kind of odd to me about my parents. They were always noticing Jews. If a person looked Jewish, or had a last name that sounded Jewish, this was an occasion for a comment among themselves. "Oh, he's Jewish." There was a certain stereotype assoicated with that - Jews were presumed to be smart and agressive. There wasn't any hatrid in this. My parents best and closest livelong friends, the people who served as defacto grandparents to me, were Jewish. But somehow it always seemed important to notice who is Jewish. (This one didn't really get passed on to me - generally the first time I notice that someone is Jewish is when I bump into them at the Jewish Community Center.) My impression is that this awareness of Jewishness is pretty common among people who, like my parents, grew up in Nazi Germany. When they were kids, the fact that a person was Jewish was a very significant fact, meaning, among other things, that the person was likely to disappear any minute now. But my guess is that this kind of thought was already common before the rise of Nazism. The early 20th century was actually a period when Jews were increasingly being accepted in German society. Restrictions on them were being relaxed, more Jews were entering positions of power, intermarriage with non-Jews was increasingly common. I think most Germans were more accepting of Jews than ever before (while the minority that clung to old prejudices were more rabid than ever at seeing the advance of Jews). But even if Jews were being accepted, they were still being noticed. I think this is the first ingrediate for a Holocaust. The second is that the people need to be seriously threatened. Germany had first the loss of the first world war, then the ruinous post-war economy where everything that people owned became worthless, and then a whole new war, in which Germany was once again squared off against the world. People had serious reason to wonder if they would be able to take care of themselves and their families. I see echos of this in my family. My dad built his house with a hook up for a wood stove, and there was a woodstove sitting in the basement all his life. If natural gas and electricity ever stopped flowing, my dad was ready to hook up the wood stove. My parents had an almost survivalist attitude. They were prepared for the day when our family would have to fend for itself, and take care of itself in a hostile world. That's the mind set they grew up with - families and close friends stuck together and took care of each other, but nobody was going far out on a limb for strangers. Combine these two ingrediants. We need to protect our loved ones in a world of dangers. There are some people who are (1) not like us, and (2) smart and aggressive. In a world of scarce resources, a smart and agressive stranger can easily be considered a enemy. They might get that last crust of bread before you do. I guess you need one more ingrediant - some politicians ready to exploit that fear - but it's hard to imagine a human society lacking that ingrediant. It's such an easy road to power. The people are afraid. Give them an unsympathetic enemy to focus their fear on. Recruit the tiny contingent of true haters to help stir things up. Define anyone who defends the enemy as an enemy. Use and encourage people's fears to stir up a band of loyal followers for yourself. One should not exaggerate. I think the great majority of Germans would never have raised a hand to harm a Jew. But neither did they raise a hand to defend a Jew. All Germans knew the Jews were being taken away. I don't know how many knew how much about what was happening to them, but they knew it wasn't anything good. You'd have had to be pretty heroic to try to do something about it - you'd certainly be risking your own life to challenge the Nazis. Virtually no heros appeared. Germany surrendered to fear and prejudice, and millions of innocents died. So, thinking about all this makes me suspicious of a few kinds of things. Politicians who fear-monger, trying to make dangers seem worse than they are instead of trying to calm fears (latest example, Bush Jr and gang). People who go out of their way to emphasize differences and promote stereotypes (latest example, hmmm, how about this item?). I don't think we are anywhere near the brink of a Holocaust, but I guess I inherited a bit of my parent's paranoia. Bad times can happen. Preparing for it by trying to defuse fear mongering and latent prejudice is more useful than preparing for it with a wood stove in the basement. This isn't really an answer to the question of the Holocaust. I can't even solve the puzzle of my grandparents, much less of all of Germany. For instance, my mother grew up certain that her parents were patriotic supporters of the Nazi party, and everything they did seemed to support that. But my grandmother told about how furious she was when she heard of the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler - she thought the assasins should have had the courage to stay with the bomb, to make sure it was next to Hitler when it went off, to make sure he died, instead of slinking away to try to save their own lives. Was this a world where people who passionately desired the death of their leaders nevertheless acted as loyal supporters? Why be so eager to condemn people who did not enough when so many did nothing? Or was that a modified memory revised afterwards? What was really going on in the heads of Germans? I have only guesses. I'll probably never know more.
I don't know why other thinks this is a troll. I can assure him it ISN"T.
I rented The Pianist recently. It really depicted the Nazis as incredible sadists. The attitude of the new-Jewish German population didn't come through as well, except that they ingratiated themselves to the Nazis when they could. Perhaps they were frightened too. The thought that kept occurring to me was the old saw about "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". How could they not know what they were doing was so terribly wrong? And that there would be eventual retribution? I see shadows of this in what the US has been doing with some persons those in *power* perceive as possible threats, no matter how remote. I could see it getting much worse, and am hoping that the separations of power we have institutionalized will avert worse.
I WOULD LIKE TO AFFIRM: I DO NOT IN ANY WAY BELIEVE JANC IS A NAZI. This was a show OF RESPECT , ,, , perhaps, ? wtihouth looking like a sissy!
STFU polytarp...you faggot bitch. YOU ARE A SISSY! So get the shit off your nose and quit kissing ass.
Curious fact: German recently surpassed Israel as the most common destination for Jews emigrating from the former Soviet Union. Twice as many go to Germany as to the US. The Jewish population of Germany is still far smaller than it was before the war, but it is growing fast. The world is strange.
I may be a sissy, but at least I don't have womanish prose.
The womanish prose that you detect is only a paradigm of your jungian anima. Because you are so feminine..you see others that way. I believe that your real problem lies with the size of your member. It's not much bigger that a woman's clit therefor you think it should have been a vagina. Give it up. Your too fucking ugly to be a woman.
NO way. I see lots of disTINCLY male prose. But yours, I'm afraid, A GIRL"S.
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I noticed that the numbers of emigrees to Israel and Germany were odd numbers like 18,762 while the number of emigrees to the US was quoted as 10,000. I suspect a quota is at work here. Germany, like Israel, is willing to take as many Jews as would like to come. Most other countries are not. Some of these Russian Jews are not really all that Jewish either - because of the bans on religion under Soviet rule, many have never learned Hebrew or Yiddish and are pretty ignorant of the Jewish faith. There is even some question about whether some of them are Jewish at all - Russian law says you are Jewish if your father was Jewish. Hebrew law requires that the mother be Jewish. (Some Jewish organization actually asked the German government to refuse entry to people who only had a Jewish father, not a Jewish mother. The German government politely declined to ever again get involved in determining who is Jewish.) Anyway, for many Russians who have Jewish heredity, but not an overly strong sense of Jewish identity, Germany may look much more appealing than Israel. Safer at least. Meanwhile, of course, there are lots of Arab immigrants in Germany too, making the situation even a bit more interesting.
Naw, the real answer is they were germans in the first place and are just going home.
No - most of the emigrees have no connection to Germany. No ancestors there, don't speak the language, nothing.
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In my view, you are what you and your genes make of you. Ancestry is otherwise irrelevent.
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So are you Yon or Jan?
If you are what your genes make you, then how is ancestry irrelevant?
Genes are biology, not social ancestry. People from any genetic background can aculture to any cultural norms. There are no genes for any of our mental constructs, cultures, religions, ethnicities....just for biological structures.
Re 27: In English, my name is usually pronounced "Yon Walter". This is the pronounciation assigned by the other kids in my elementary school. I use it, and I like it, but I don't insist on it. In German, my name is pronounced, approximately "Yun Voilta". I like that too, but only use it when speaking German. The name "Jan" is a contraction of "Johannes" (as are "Johan", "John", "Han" "Hans", and possibly "Ian"). It is unrelated to "Jon" (which comes from "Jonathan").
Add "Ivan" to that list -- another form of "John".
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Beats me. I suppose I could do a web search for the answer, but so could you. I think "Johannes" comes from some Latin/Hebrew things vaguely like "Ioannes" which is where things like "Ian" and "Ivan" come from. Probably "Joan" too.
Re: #30: OK. I was seeing if you were called using the "German J" (as in ja (yes) = ya) or the "English J" (as in Jan short for Janet).
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Jan can cook.
I don't care what your name is janc. You still look like a goober.
WHAT? !?! goober'sZZ? the word I use, sabre.
Re 29: Are you sure about that? Culture could possbily be genetically encoded, although probably not in 100% detail.
If you can give an example of such, we could discuss it. Humans have evolved to have a variety of sensory and communication structures and the mental apparatus to use them, but I have never heard of any genetic cultural traits. For example, if humans are not exposed to language, they fail to develop any language ability, so the most basic of cultural features, language, is not "encoded", despite the fact that genetics rule possible language structures.
language would change to much in time to be effected. But perhaps gestures? Nod the head, shake the fist, toss of the head...
I do know that in Bulgaria that the nod and shake of the head have the opposite meaning of ours. I'm not sure what "shake the fist" or "toss the head" mean even in our society. I don't think I *can* even "toss" my head. I expect that all gestures are cultural. After all, they convey a meaning and all meanings have to be learned. Darwin did a pretty thorough analysis of this in his "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)". It's on my pile of books to read. There is a partial list of meanings of gestures at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3544/gestures.htm. Even smiling has different meanings in different cultures. I don't know of any gesture with universal meaning - do you? (If there was one, I wouldn't be surprised if it were universal because those using it for something else were in a vanished culture - like the ancient Egyptians.)
Re #39: If that were true, Brits would have trouble getting to like African rhythms, people of African descent would have had a difficult time growing up with the French language, and the oriental love affair with American culture and the American love affair with oriental food would have broken up acrimoniously a long time ago. It is unethical to perform controlled experiments of the type which could conclusively settle the question. This is probably a good thing.
Re 41. Well, that's kind of what I was talking about . . . I didn't mean that any one culture was totally encoded in one's brain, but that the structures that make one susceptible to human culture as we know it might be . . . language may not be totally natural in that someone raised by wolves probably wouldn't learn human languages very well, but unlike chimps or cats, humans did somehow manage to create their own language (by language I mean spokem language). Can't give any concrete examples of this since I don't know much abotu the subject, but I don't think that its that improbable. Have heard that some social deviants may have had bad genes . . . that is social behaviour of a sort, right? Again, don't know how much research has been done into the subject but was just speculating.
The Greeks also turn their head from side to side to mean 'yes.' The ancient Greeks used to sprinkle their sacrificial cows with holy water and if the cows shook their heads from side to side they interpreted this as the cows agreeing to be sacrificed to the gods (yes). I have not seen a cow shake off water by nodding up and down.
re: "#42 (rcurl): ... Even smiling has different meanings in ifferent cultures...." For example??
Re #44: certainly the "structures that make one susceptible to human culture" are genetic, or there would be no human cultures. Lots of research has gone into the subject. Mental abberations, both genetic or congenital, do influence human behavior. But it is very difficult to identify a specific *cultural* trait that is universal. Laughter and crying are of this nature. I think people of all cultures have responses to amusement that consists of exposing one's teeth and gasping for breath (laughter), and lacrimating is common for despair (weeping), and there are similar behavior in animals. Darwin (1872) has extensive citations for these in his index. Darwin, by the way, had a special motivation for exploring this subject in depth. By recognizing similar "cultural" traits of expression in humans and animals the case for a common origin for both is supported.
Re #46: the fact is cited in the url I gave, although specific nationalities are not mentioned. There are more specific examples at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/8229/icihcc.html Say, I'm sure you know how to use Google. Why don't you look these things up - you might find a counterargument.
We attempted a Google search for Smile and Anger; however, did not have time to explore all but the initial references - which did not support your assertion.
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Re 49: couldn't find it on the first page, so you gave up? No wonder your side hasn't found those WMDs yet.
RE 50> ""India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Thailand hands in prayerlike position in front of chins and nod their heads." Half true. Depending on whether you're greeting an elder, or female to male, you may find the prayerlike position of hands on the forehead rather than chin." Uhm, no. The hands on the forehead is used only in families towards elders and in religious situations, sometimes political situations too. In all occasions it hands to chin... well not really, it just hands together in front of you
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Hi
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You lied.
I did not!
Not you, Tod!
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