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NAZI HOLOCAUST AND NUCLEAR THREAT
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- DEBATE APPLICATION OF THESE THEORIES
NAZI HOLOCAUST AND NUCLEAR THREATSome of you may be confused as to why I started this piece with an anecdote about my own reaction to the presence of nuclear weapons in my community. Well, it's because Lifton started noticing serious similarities between the psychology of Nazi doctors, German citizens and others of that era and the psychology of people who work on nuclear weapons and people who live in the shadow of them. People who work on these weapons exhibit the same sort of splitting that Nazi doctors did, Lifton posits. They even use some of the same psychological tools - naming the bombs things like "boomers," to sort of disguise what they do. According to Lifton, the similarities are quite striking. That's true not just of the people working on military bases or working on the bombs, but of the average person growing up in the nuclear age. Lifton says that it is almost impossible for anyone to grow up truly unaware of the danger - which seems true, particularly of his generation, which grew up during the height of the Cold War tensions. Events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, and countless near nuclear accidents made it fairly impossible to forget the presence of the bombs - not to mention the Mutually Assured Destruction deterrence strategy that the Pentagon assumed would make us safe. It will be interesting to see how his psychological theories and observations change as the current generation grows up. Some wonder whether it will make a difference to have no superpower rival like the former Soviet Union. Others think that it might be a worse type of nuclear fear, given the risk of backpack bombs and nuclear terrorism against American cities. Again, though, there is the question: why don't people feel this overwhelming danger that Lifton says they do? His answer is that it would be mentally shattering for us to do so, and we must accept some level of nuclear numbing just in order to get through the day. He emphasizes that this nuclear numbing comes with psychological consequences - but is, on some level, inevitable. That is not to say that there is nothing to be done. We'll discuss his notion of "species consciousness" in a moment. DEBATE APPLICATION OF THESE THEORIESFor now, though, let's turn to the practical debate application of these arguments. Undoubtedly, the best way to present these theories for policy debaters is in the form of a critique. Value debaters can also use the arguments in that manner - let's see how. One of the links to the argument is nuclear rhetoric. Words such as "nuclear exchange," which sounds more like friendly gift-giving, tend to numb use to the danger of nuclear weapons. The ultimate outcome of that, Lifton says, is that we are resigned to the inevitability of a nuclear conflict - which stops us from working to counteract it. Now that's an in-round impact for policy debaters. LD debaters can use the same principles to argue that the bad values associated with the nuclearist position should be rejected. These types of words are often called "nukespeak," also the title of a book which argues similarly. There's another nice link to the argument which applies equally well to policy and Lincoln-Douglas. Extinction imagery - such as talking about end-of-the-world disadvantages in policy debate, or presenting the possibility of extinction in LD debate presents a "controlling image" that is not only not positive, but as horrific as anything around. Our "larger psychic ecology," according to Lifton, is at risk when we are continually exposed to "images of extinction." Especially you policy debaters out there, give this some thought. How many end-of-the-world disadvantages have you run now? Nuclear war disadvantages? Do you even blink an eye anymore when your opponent claims that your case will result in a disadvantage that causes a nuclear war? Now, nuclear war is a huge thing - look at the effect it had on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those bombs were nothing compared to the bombs we have today in terms of nuclear payload. What does hearing someone say "nuclear war is about to happen" six or eight or ten times every tournament do to you mentally? Well, Lifton would say - and I say, given my personal experience- that it makes you think it's not such a big deal. You become numb to the notion of it, and sweep it under the mental rug we all have. That's not good for people mentally, and Lifton even claims it can lead to a "self-fulfilling prophecy of doom." This affords you an opportunity to debate not just about policy and value issues, but about how the process of debating itself affects you, your opponent and the audience psychologically. I think that's very intellectually exciting, not to mention a good way to catch an opponent off-guard, eh? "(T)here is every reason to believe that we are affected by this imagery in ways that are both ambiguous and profound," Lifton writes. Certainly, that is a topic for debate that should be pursued by both LD and cross-examination competitors. Specifically for policy debaters, another link level presents itself: scenario debates. Lifton is very critical of nuclear planners, who discuss the prospects of nuclear annihilation as casually as if they were discussing, say a basketball pick-and-roll play. "Stoudamire comes off a screen from Wallace, then receives the pass for the jumper." "Russia is distressed by troop movement into Serbia, then delivers its payload upon the United States." See the similarity? Now, think about a disadvantage impact story. Subpoint C: Impacts. 1. United States intervention in Serbia causes Russian retaliation. 2. Russian retaliation would be nuclear." How is this any different from a Pentagon military planner, other than the fact that the Pentagon planner is dealing in real nuclear weapons? Some would say that the difference is substantial, but from a psychological perspective it probably isn't. It still forces people to deal with nuclear explosions in a clinical, precise way that allows numbing to remain intact and the work to still get done. This also feeds the genocidal mentality, Lifton argues. When we see nuclearism in a clinical, numb way, it blinds us to the human consequences of nuclear war. The burned bodies. The radiation sickness. The Cubs finally winning the pennant. Okay, I made up that last part, but this essay was just getting too heavy for me. Humor isn't going to break anybody out of the mentality, though, says Lifton. In order to do that - and in order to finish off the discussion of the debate application this argument has - we have to look at another element of psychology. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
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