Bauman, Modernity, and Holocaust - Report Example

Bauman, modernity and holocaust An analysis of Bauman’s thesis that modernity has an inbuilt propensity to cause holocaust Bauman – his life and times Bauman, a Polish Jew has had a very colourful life that covered a wide assortment of jobs that included active military service in Soviet Army. He was a communist right through his youth and rose steadily through the ranks in military intelligence service till his father (he was also a non-practising Jew) approached Israeli embassy for emigration to Israel. Though Bauman never shared his father’s Zionist ideology he had to face the brunt of official apathy towards Jews and was all of a sudden dishonourably discharged from service. This quite obviously caused a severe strain in the relationship father and son. Out of job, Bauman had enough spare time in his hands and completed his masters in philosophy from Warsaw University where he remained as a lecturer till 1968. With the outbreak of public protests in Poland against the ruling communist government and subsequent fanning of anti-Semitic sentiments by the government to deflect public criticism, Bauman shifted to Leeds University after briefly teaching in Tel Aviv University. Bauman faced anti-Semitic sentiments twice in his life and both were from non-Nazi state machinery. This experience led him to form an opinion that modernity, bureaucracy and social exclusion creates a situation where an extreme phobia against those social groups that cannot be neatly categorised and slotted into predetermined and well established hierarchical superstructure prevalent in the society. This in essence is the beginning of a potential holocaust that will inevitably result if this xenophobic attitude towards those social sub-groups that cannot be effectively analysed according to existing social norms is not brought under control. Such social mores can be brought under control only if the authority is aware of the potential dangers and initiates strong measures to counter such a mass phobia against so-called outsiders. History, however, has witnessed several instances of cynical exploitation of the deep seated distrust among Europeans against so-called killers of Christ by governments of several European nations, Poland and Soviet Russia being the main culprits, to further their narrow and selfish class interests. Bauman has worked extensively on these issues where he has clearly laid bare the intrinsic interconnection between modern society where people wilfully forego several facets of personal freedom (both in the realm of actions and in thoughts) and the inherent distrust of the ‘outsider’ who does not conform to the established mores of the society. His contention is that mass extermination of ‘outsiders’ is an inbuilt mental precondition of modern man. Jews have always been the classic example of ‘outsiders’ in Europe and have been subjected to government sponsored persecution through ages with such mindless cruelty reaching a nadir with holocaust during Second World War. The connotations of the term Holocaust At this stage perhaps one needs to get a clear notion of what exactly a holocaust is. When in the later stage of Second World War it came to light that Nazi Germany has embarked on a systematic annihilation of Jews with a view to ethnically cleanse the society of Semitic population, the use of this biblical term was thought to be appropriate as there did not exist any term that would succinctly describe this mass murder of an entire tribe. It was no wonder that there did not exist any term as never before in the history of mankind was such a well planned genocide ever executed by any authority in any corner of the world. Nazi rulers contended that the lives of the Jews, much like lives of Gypsies, homosexuals and those who were mentally ill or retarded, were devoid of any positive value and were leading a life that was unwertes Leben (a life unworthy of living). All these categories did not qualify to be members of the Neue Ordnung and thus did not deserve to live. Bauman contends that holocaust and anti-Semitism has not died down with the fall of Nazi Germany. The phobia of interacting with anyone who cannot be categorised with consummate ease and the all consuming desire to instil an absolute and preordained sense of order and harmony in social structure is so overwhelming in modern societies that another holocaust can happen anytime in any part of the modern world. The world has indeed witnessed many well planned genocides after the one perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The Kurds in Iraq, southerners in the Sudan, Tutsi in Rwanda, Hutus in Burundi, Hindus and other Bengalis in East Pakistan, the Ache in Paraguay were victims of genocide during the second half of twentieth century. The overwhelming cruelty in genocide is reflected in classifying a group as evil and mere membership of that group becomes a sufficient cause for getting earmarked for capital punishment with neither any scope of putting forward arguments in self defence nor any chance of judging the merits and demerits of each case individually. The denial of the victim a right to respond or appeal against the punishment being meted out makes a genocide or holocaust so odious, reprehensible and utterly abominable. Modernity and Holocaust The difference between mass murders and holocaust is apparent to any student of holocaust. The sheer number of people that were exterminated by the Nazis implied a well planned state involvement. Nearly six million Jews were annihilated by the Nazis. If a hundred Jews were killed per day it would have taken at least 200 years to kill such a large number of people. But it took less than two years to conduct this pogrom of unimaginable proportions. This simply was not the result of mob fury or massive backlash but was the handiwork of modern technological inventions, meticulous division of work, subordination of individual ethics and morality to societal definition of moral and immoral (much akin to subordination of individual goals in favour of group goals that always happens in a corporate setting), strictly overlooked and managed by an efficient and goal driven ambitious bureaucracy. The holocaust was thus made possible by the efficiency of a modern state that had all the trappings of enormous regimented power and the focus to achieve a well defined target. (Goldhagen, 1996) There is popular notion among many historians that there was a complete breakdown of all norms of civilisation in Nazi Germany that allowed such a monstrosity as holocaust to happen. But Bauman analysed the whole scenario and concluded civilisation was never temporarily suspended in Germany through sustained anti-Semitic propaganda. Civilisation, according to Bauman does not necessarily impose the pacifying shackles of morality on us without which, many would love to believe, all humans would be raving ranting beasts ready to pounce one another and tear each other into shreds. Morality, according to Bauman, has a biological origin whereby we feel “animal pity” towards a fellow sufferer; civilisation actually tries to overcome this sense of morality instead of instilling it and lays down its own set of rules that suit the convenience of those in power and authority. These rules might be extensions of existing norms of “animal pity” but, more often than not, rules formulated by civilisation run at right angles to the biological manifestations of morality. If this was not the case, so many organised mass slaughters of human beings could never have taken place in an otherwise civilised world many years after the embers of Second World War had died down and remnants of Nazism buried deep down under a resurgent and unified modern Germany. (Bauman Z. , Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989) Actually ordinary Germans were kept in dark about both Kristallnacht and the infamous Final Solution. Himmler had reportedly complained that though more than eighty million Germans agreed on the basic premise of exterminating Jews for the overall benefit of German race, each one of them thought that the better elements among the otherwise damned clan of Jews should be saved and every German had a personal plan of saving those Jews that were supposedly better than the average Jews. (Bauman Z. , 2000) Civilisation attempts to do things on a grand scale and the bureaucracy involved in Final Solution successfully managed to distance the actual act of mass murder from those that perpetrated it by distributing the blame across so many persons that each one of them never felt the “animal pity” they should have felt had they personally slaughtered even a single Jew. The moral vacuum created beneath a verbose technical and bureaucratic vocabulary to enable normal human beings to murder fellow human beings was possible because of a civilisation that ensured each member did what the authority thought proper. (Bauman Z. , Modernity and Ambivalence, 1991) Bauman thus contends that holocaust can take place anywhere anytime as long as civilisation exists. Indeed Bauman and his fellow travellers believe that morality precedes civilisation and has an existence independent of all forms of civilisation and continues to survive in spite of best efforts of all forms of civilisation to completely crush it. (Bauman Z. , The Holocaust: Fifty Years Later, 1993) Reference Bauman, Z. (2000). Ethics of Individuals. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 25(1) , pp. 83-96. Bauman, Z. (1991). Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1993). The Holocaust: Fifty Years Later. In D. Grinberg (ed.), The Holocaust Fifty Years After. Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw. Goldhagen, D. (1996). Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Boston: Little Brown. Read More