The best and the worst of people

[bodie]

Sometimes i watch telly.  I like documentary's.  I saw two programs this morning.  The first one was about the heroic actions of those in the London 7/7 tube bombings.  Quite humbling really,  one girl (a teenager) who was a walking wounded decided not to run and escape but stopped to help someone who would have bled to death if she had not made a tourniquet for his leg.  She was 

Then,  i saw something about this:
 
It is a lampshade made by Nazi's out of human skin.

How fucked up is that?  Why are people so ... erm different.  Some capable of such good,  and others....

am about to chuck out telly again.

[midlifeaspie]

Ick

["couldbecousin"]

  Don't blame the telly. 


  Who knows why we vary so much, but thank you for sharing the story of that 
  BRAVE  girl.  I love hearing about everyday heroes! 

[bodie]

  Don't blame the telly. 


  Who knows why we vary so much, but thank you for sharing the story of that 
  BRAVE  girl.  I love hearing about everyday heroes! 

Yes so do I,  and i often wonder if i were in a situation like that if i could be brave.

["couldbecousin"]

  Don't blame the telly. 


  Who knows why we vary so much, but thank you for sharing the story of that 
  BRAVE  girl.  I love hearing about everyday heroes! 

Yes so do I,  and i often wonder if i were in a situation like that if i could be brave.

  I wonder that too.  I hope I could be, but panic might override my good intentions. 

[bodie]

I reckon if i could focus my brain before the shock come on, i would be ok.

I have always been inclined to cope with major calamities quite well,  but then get tearful over a broken nail.

[Parts]

I have found when under a lot of stress in an emergency situation you just do and not think it's later when you do think about it things make you nervous.

[bodie]

In the past i have been able to wait until it becomes safe to break down and cry.  Not sure if i could put that emotion on hold in a bomb situation.

["couldbecousin"]

I reckon if i could focus my brain before the shock come on, i would be ok.

I have always been inclined to cope with major calamities quite well,  but then get tearful over a broken nail.

     Some people are like that, flustered in everyday life but magnificent in a crisis.

["couldbecousin"]

I have found when under a lot of stress in an emergency situation you just do and not think it's later when you do think about it things make you nervous.

  If I had some prior training and knew *what* to do, I think I'd hold up OK. 

[Parts]

I have found when under a lot of stress in an emergency situation you just do and not think it's later when you do think about it things make you nervous.

  If I had some prior training and knew *what* to do, I think I'd hold up OK. 

One thing I always thought they should teach in school was first aid and it should be mandatory.  I spent grades 6-12 in Florida and 7-10 grade we had it every year in PE class for about a week.  I also had to take it in collage as a health class.  Where I live now they don't teach it at all

[bodie]

Yes i agree.  I would not have had the idea to use a tourniquet in order to save someone's life.  (the  man lost his leg but would have also bled to death without her help)

[Icequeen]

I don't understand it but I've come to terms with it.

Some people are good and some are just evil.

Whether the events in their life helped "make" them that way or they were just always that way I don't know.

[Adam]

What's scary is that the same people can be guilty of both

Nazis who could be incredibly sadistic or overlook the most awful crimes against humanity, can at the same time be kind, generous and sensitive people in another situation. Usually depending on the person involved. A lot of Nazis involved in the holocaust or related violence would have been good, decent family men who were liked by their community and would have done just what that teenage girl did on 7/7 - but then in a different environment, and more importantly when faced with a different type of person, they're capable of either taking part in or overlooking the second kind of behaviour.

It's mostly down to dehumanising people. The Nazis didn't view the Jews/Slavs as people like themselves. They were Untermenschen. Subhuman. Lower than dogs. So to them, how is making a lampshade out of human skin any different to a woman who wears a fur coat? That;s how it would be seemed to them.

A good example of this is stories of German soldiers in the East being completely oblivious to Russian peasants seeing them naked or even taking a shit in view of them. Obviously that's an extreme example, but it happened because they didn;t see them as people. In the same way that most of us wouldn't be embarrassed by a pet walking in on us in the same way we would another person

That's what's fucked up about thiese things. We're all capable of good and bad, and no matter what views/beliefs you have, no matter what type of person you are in this life, you can never truly now how you would have acted in a different environment. I often think about that. Who in my neighourhood would be the ones spitting on the [Jews] in the street, and who would be the one to risk their lives hiding someone in their loft? There's no way of knowing. We all like to think we'd at the very least not ACTIVELY take part in the persecution of the [Jews] if we'd been there. But the fact is that the percentage of people who wouldn't is much lower than the % of people who like to THINK they wouldn't.

Think of all the 18-40 "Aryan" men you know. Most of them would have been in uniform in some way. Some would have been in the police or the SS. There's no way for us to know how we would have behaved

[RageBeoulve]

I have to be honest. I can think of a lot of people i'd brutally torture to death and craft into objects if I could get away with it. And I don't really consider myself to be evil. We all have equal parts good and bad.