After having read the Schwalbe article on opening up our minds sociologically I realized that even though I thought I had done so before, there are so many things that I still have to work on. I thought it was perfect timing to read the article because when checking my e-mail today, Yahoo news proved to me that not everybody is ready to be open about things. In fact, I was appalled when I saw that British Bishop Richard Williamson denied that the Holocaust had ever happened. Before being admitted into the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope had made sure he changed this view but it was still ridiculous to me to think that him and countless others are so unwilling to believe the horrific truth.
I think that in society as a whole, we fail to account for our mistakes. We fight war after war but never learn from any of them because we make one mistake after another. We try to "forget" or "deny" something that has happened because it is too horrible for us to actually believe that we as humans are capable of doing such miserable things.
The U.S. has done this too, I can't just blame Bishop Richard Williamson for his denial. The U.S. has denied for years that we sent away the Japanese into camps similar to Hitler's. Athough we didn't kill these people, we made sure that society knew how unwelcome they were.
This article opened up my eyes to see that the world really isn't ready to be sociologically open and it's terrifying. By denying our faults, we will never perfect our ways. Instead, we'll be walking in circles forever.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_jews;_ylt=Ajd02.7ZkrmcSTIl_I7QLoR0bBAF
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Michelle. I completely agree with what you said about denying the truth. When something horrible happens, people do tend to cover it up and not take responsibility for what was done. I also agree that while we may think that we are open minded about what is going on, there are always ways for us to improve. Good blog =)
ReplyDelete