{"id":3940,"date":"2010-01-22T18:19:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T16:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/?p=3940"},"modified":"2013-11-19T14:52:11","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T12:52:11","slug":"there-is-something-wrong-in-this-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2010\/01\/there-is-something-wrong-in-this-world\/","title":{"rendered":"There is something wrong in this world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>or should I write &#8220;there is no absolute barrier between good and evil&#8221;?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nOne has to realize that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no absolute barrier between good and evil. There&#8217;s no absolute polarization between the wonderfully good and the horribly evil, and that people who see themselves as trying to do good can inadvertently enter into evil.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I had the opportunity yesterday to watch a documentation about the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Jay_Lifton\">Lifton<\/a> interviews<\/a> of the Nazi doctors by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.docfilm.de\/\">Wolfgang Richter<\/a> &#8220;Wenn \u00c4rzte t\u00f6ten<\/a>&#8221; (<a href=\"<a href=\"http:\/\/jetzt.sueddeutsche.de\/texte\/anzeigen\/495967\">SZ <\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wenn-aerzte-toeten.de\/\">trailer<\/a>). Richter was accompanied by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anglistik.uni-muenchen.de\/personen\/wiss_ma\/clemm\/index.html\">Christiane Clemm<\/a> who did all the translations more than 30 years ago. There were moving moments both during the calm narration of the documentation but also afterwards when we could ask Richter and Clemm for more details.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I always wondered how an American psychiatrist could have done these interviews <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.de\/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide\/dp\/0465049052\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books-intl-de&#038;qid=1264150261&#038;sr=8-1\">in German<\/a> but had the impression that Clemm was an congenial translator for him.<\/p>\n<p>The remark that impressed me most was about  the many Nazi doctors who had  books of Konrad Lorenz on their shelves in the postwar period. They were admiring a man who clearly supported the Nazi ideas of &#8220;racial hygiene&#8221; (Lifton cites Lorenz  in his book) but made a postwar career eventually sharing the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine &#8220;for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns&#8221;. As Clemm confirmed, none of the Nazi doctors showed any sign of sorrow.<\/p>\n<p>While doing quite a lot of research into evolutionary medicine, I feel that some present day ideas of evolutionary biology are close to Lorenz strange view of the world.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u017eEs ging mir darum zu zeigen, da\u00df die zunehmende Domestikation des Menschen seine Menschlichkeit bedroht.\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/spiegel\/print\/d-41843103.html\"><i>Durch Domestikation verursachte St\u00f6rungen arteigenen Verhaltens. in: Zeitschrift f&uuml;r angewandte Psychologie und Charakterkunde 59 (1, 2), S. 2 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c S. 81<\/i><\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is something wrong in this world when biologistic ideas are beginning to dominate.<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"bottom-note\">\n  <span class=\"mod1\">CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 06.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>or should I write &#8220;there is no absolute barrier between good and evil&#8221;? One has to realize that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no absolute barrier between good and evil. There&#8217;s no absolute polarization between the wonderfully good and the horribly evil, and that people who see themselves as trying to do good can inadvertently enter into evil. I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2010\/01\/there-is-something-wrong-in-this-world\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">There is something wrong in this world<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2602,2601,720],"class_list":["post-3940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics-biology","tag-camp","tag-holocaust","tag-physicians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3940"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6450,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions\/6450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}