This month as we observe the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is fitting to explore the purpose of memory and of memory in combination with history, in particular societal memory of history. And, given that the FASPE cases begin with the actions and motivations of particular individuals who designed, enabled, and executed the policies of National Socialism, it is fitting to explore the purpose of remembering a period of such horror, the purpose of remembering the individuals who accompanied such a corruption of humanity.
We all know Santayana’s admonition (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”). Fine; yes. Of course.
How do we remember history? Each generation, each of us, begins with some level of genetic memory, i.e., our genetic makeup is the product of our genetic ancestors; but, sadly, apart from inter-generational traits, we must go through the process of relearning what took our parents their whole lives to understand. We hear stories, but we do not, so to speak, feel them in our bones. So, is learning from the past (what I am here calling “memory”) solely to speed up that process of learning? Can we not do better? Can we not convert memory into behavior? Can we combine memory (which is by definition not accurate, but impacted by bias and emotion) with history?
We often talk about 1930s Germany as a period in which we can see the rapid, though procedural, normalization of “bad” behavior. I suggest that the remembering associated with January 27 is a requirement in order to seek to understand and learn from the underlying behaviors that caused the historic deviation from the norm of “good” behavior. In other words January 27 requires us to combine the emotions and personal biases with the real history.
There are two things at play, two matters to be studied, here: (i) what leads to the bad behavior, and (ii) how is that behavior converted over time into the norm? Through fresh examination, each generation must relearn the answers to these questions. And, that learning and examination is facilitated through the examples from the past– memory combined with history.
The FASPE proposition is that what I am calling bad behavior is not derived from inherent evil or genetic badness; instead it begins with common motivations that we all share. And, what begins as normative deviance becomes acceptable (i.e., normal), through a process of repetition and misinformation (lies) that serve to legitimize these “new norms.”
There are historical throughlines, trajectories that seem to be normalized from generation to generation—even as we are willing to condemn the historic precedents whose first and second cousins we are repeating.
A couple simple examples:
- American medical and judicial policies in the early 1900s sought the seemingly laudable goal of reducing what was viewed as deviant behavior through less laudable means–eugenics (for them, sterilization). Hence, Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous quote within the leading Supreme Court decision: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” Under the policies of Nazi Germany, the American euphemistic eugenics was expanded into the euphemism, “euthanasia” (or even more cynically, “racial hygiene”). This, of course, meant the murder of those with defined heritable deviances. Yet, today, in our own professed laudable effort to eliminate heritable deviance (and promote heritable superiority), we undertake unregulated genetic manipulation. Thus, like with the US Supreme Court opinion in the Buck case (from which the Holmes quote comes), today we are normalizing a new form of eugenics. What will we learn from the American and German past, from the results of the claimed laudable goals of those medical and legal professionals?
- American statutory immigration policies in the early 1900s were a reaction to the fear that immigrants would damage the fabric of American society—thus, the policies that ultimately contributed to strict and limited immigration quotas applicable to specific countries of emigrants. A country of immigrants feared new immigrants, thus legitimizing a form of ethnic and cultural prejudice in the name of economic protection and cultural purity. Of course, the Germans in the 1930s took this fear of outsiders from their ideal national identity to an extreme: first through deportation and then murder. And now? As the world is convulsing in fear of so-called “intruders” (exacerbated by the dual forces of climate change-induced movement of people across borders and war), America (and much of Western Europe) responds with similar extreme calls for closed borders and other harsh policies, such as confinement and forced deportation. Sound familiar?
Memory is not good enough. Sterile book learning of history is not good enough. Nor is hyperbolic analogizing productive.
As we commemorate January 27, we require those of us, in those same professions, to refresh our “historic memory” of those in the past who designed, enabled, and executed what was in retrospect clearly “bad behavior,” even if not out of malice but rather out of even would-be laudable or quotidian motivations. Not just learning but ethical leadership. Professionals, we can do better: think, learn, lead. Must we have more generations who stare starry eyed at the Santayana quote with nothing but knowing hubris?
"Considering Professional Ethics" is a monthly essay shared in the FASPE e-newsletter.
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