vegetarian – Observations and Misunderstandings

Hitler was an interesting character. Strange opening statement I admit but I got your attention. I imagine he was quite the complex chap. I was thinking about him today, not nostalgically just thinking. We learn about Hitler in school and then in regular programmes or cultural references. Ultimately we alway learn about him as being evil personified. This isn’t me about to defend the man, he was responsible for the suffering of millions, but beyond him being a vegetarian and nature lover we never hear much else about his character than he was evil. We’ve created this monster who we hear had no redeemable qualities, even the vegetarian nature lover doesn’t get talked about because it would conflict with the desired narrative.

It’s strange, I feel that I can’t say anything except for bad things about him otherwise I must be an apologist for all his atrocities. And why would I feel the need to defend such a man. I’m not though because to do such a thing would be an attempt to humanise him and this is exactly what people aim not to do. I don’t know what good things he did in his life or what kind of person he was before whatever series of traumatic events happened that led him on this path, but i doubt he wasn’t born evil. We have dehumanised him to such an extent that he is seen as offering nothing positive but he was followed and loved by a nation, they weren’t all just scared of him or manipulated. People wanted to follow him and did. There is a very powerful narrative we follow surrounding him.

This could go for countless despots, I’m sure Stalin loved and cared for his grandchildren. I’m sure Pol Pot once held a woman in his arms that he loved and who loved him back. I’m sure even Pinochet laughed at a joke once. And let’s not forget Hitler taking a walk in a meadow, picking flowers, watching deer romp and coming home to a tofu steak. The point is not one of defence because these were abhorrent men but more of the complex nature of narratives and the human condition. It’s strange to think of people who have committed such crimes as having humanity but they weren’t total evil one hundred percent of the time. These are extremes but it’s always interesting to step back from an idea and see the long formation of a particular narrative surrounding it.

A quick look back through the decades will bring up the most fascinating future predictions about the present. A quick look online gives a scary amount of reasonably accurate predictions. These predictions are never exactly spot on of course but the ideas are usually in the right area. The man flying with use of mechanic wings is the jetpack, bubble cars that we don’t need to manually operate are self-drive cars and the ‘correspondence cinema‘ is like a clunky version of Skype. We seem a long way from having our own helicopters, we haven’t mastered telepathy or transportation, machines have still not liberated the workforce, we haven’t made it to Mars in person, not everyone is vegetarian and we’ve certainly not invented time travel. Curiously Nikola Tesla predicted that by now we would have given up stimulants such as tea, coffee and tobacco because of their harmful affects on the human body. You try telling that to the advertising executives and watch them laugh in your face. 2020 is quite often the year many of these predictions were made for, just realise you’re right now living in someone else’s future that they could never possibly have imagined.

Predicting must be fun though. It’s a job which you can’t fail at as long as you make predictions far enough beyond what you imagine will be your lifetime. These end-of-the-world cult leaders could probably learn something from that as their predicted date comes and goes. It is not just the crazy fanatics and the futurists of the past that make predictions though, it is you, me and everyone else on a daily basis. It never seems quite clear why we seem so determined to prophesise prospective future events but we seem to have made such a past time of it that it can often take up a fairly unequal proportion of out time. It is possible that we are living such miserable lives that it is this looking ahead that gives us hope of a brighter future, or we live with our heads in the clouds to the point that we forget that we are unable to actually live in these fantasy worlds we create.

The reality from these past predictions is clearly that while you may be able to imagine something similar to what may happen, at no point will it be possible to accurately predict events to come. Nothing ever works out as you imagine. We forget to live in the actual moment to the point that were the future to happen exactly as we predicted we probably wouldn’t even notice anyway as we would already have moved on to the another future. Failing that we get so obsessed with how we want the future to unfold and become so attached to the image in our heads that we are inevitably disappointed with whatever outcome actually happens. We waste so much time, life passes us by with all this predicting. Then one day you’re old but you never noticed as you were never really there to see it happen.

Tag: vegetarian

Hitler The Humane

An Obsessive Future Fly-By