Occasionally when I am discussing views on race, war, and the value of human life, I mention the television series Roots and Holocaust. Roots was aired in 1977 and Holocaust was aired in 1978. I was 22/23 and in college after getting out of the U.S. Navy. My formative years were in the 60's and early 70's with the black civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, Wounded Knee, Kent State, Hippies, and drugs and rock and roll. While in the Navy I met people from all over the country from all different races and cultures. Not only my fellow sailors, but people in Guam, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Phillipines.
After the Navy, I went to college and that was when the two miniseries were broadcast. Before the Navy, I was a white guy from Washington State, small town, totally white elementary, middle, and high schools except for one black. I had never had a non white or Jewish friend. I don't recall ever meeting a Jew, and certainly didn't know much about blacks except what I'd seen as a kid on TV when firehoses and dogs were trained on them.
My time in the Navy gave me a great education about people who were different from me. I learned they weren't different after all. I learned they were human beings just like me with the same kind of emotions and feelings and needs. You can't buy an education like that.
So here I am in college, one year out of the Navy, and along comes Roots. A fantastic TV miniseries based on Alex Haley's novel, Roots, it was a sobering look at one family's struggle as slaves. I learned things that weren't taught in school. I saw human beings, just like myself only a different color, being treated like they were sub-human. I saw white people, just like myself, justify that treatment by thinking they were better than them.
The next year, 1978, came the miniseries Holocaust. Another excellent miniseries, starring Meryl Streep, that also used a familial approach to documenting the horrors of the nation of Germany's attempt to kill all Jews. I knew even less about the Holocaust than I did slavery, and what I saw just completely astounded me. That other human beings could actually mass murder men, women, and children like that was something my brain still can't completely reconcile.
I believe people have different inherent levels of "caring" genes. That would help explain why some people are bleeding heart liberals, while some are narcissistic and uncaring. How we are raised, what we are taught, who we associate with are also factors, but I believe our brains function in different manners relative to caring about other humans. But I also believe it is in most humans capacity to learn and work toward better caring of humans.
Many people "think" they are caring about all people, but their actions are contradictory. An example comes from DKos diaries. Today there was a diary about a white couple who named one of their children, Adolf Hitler. There was much outrage over this and sympathy for the child. Sympathy for the child because of how he was named. I agree with that, naming a child after a murderous dictator is cruel and I can't condone it. But I noticed some of the same posters who were outraged at the cruelty to this child, continue to try and justify Israels actions in Gaza. The killing of children. I think it is contradictory thinking to be outraged about a child's name, but not be outraged at one child's death in Gaza. That said, being a non-contradictory human may be the most difficult thing we can be, something I constantly struggle with.
What Roots and the Holocaust taught me was that all people, no matter who they are, deserve to live their lives without violence created by those in charge, our governments. I've been called an anti-semite because I disagree with Israels actions, yet I truly became a liberal after seeing the Holocaust. I always distinguish between governments and innocent civilians. Not supporting Israel, or not supporting the United States in war is not anti-anything, it is pro-human. "Never again" was something I took to my heart.
I don't care which government started what. What Israel is doing is not the answer. What Hamas is doing is not the answer. What the U.S. is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not the answer. There is always a different option to war. Innocent women and children are being killed, there is no justification for that in my book. The answer comes from someone who was one of the most intelligent men who ever lived;
Albert Einstein - "Peace cannot be achieved through force, it can only be achieved by understanding."