[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Wait a moment there. It is a great myth that the Nazis "invented " the Autobahn, or that the Autobahn program helped to massively battle mass unemployment. The idea for building specialized high-speed streets reserved for car traffic exclusively was introduced already in 1924 or 25 in Frankfurt, an organisation was founded to boost that idea and get that project started. And the building of just more of the same had a minor impact on the unemployment only. Ober 6 million workers had no jobs, but the autobahn projects of the Nazis bound only around 125 thousand workers, and maybe another 125 thousand at max in attached business companies who delivered the material. It was a propaganda coup in the main, because to the wide public the Autobahnen were sold as "the Führer's roads". At the same time the working conditions were extremely primitive even for the conditions of that time, machinery was rarely used, for the most it was all done by worker's hand, with shovels.

The Autobahnen and the Führer, that is a long-living story of myth and misperception.

Well, you learn something new every day, it just goes to show how pervasive the propaganda machine of the Reich was to have such myths continue to this day.

I think you mix up the moral guilt aspect and the aspect of technical responsibility, in a causal understanding, too easily. Keep both more separate, but linked. Decisions you form on the basis of knowledge that you have and deal with, or that you ignore. Basing on indeed misinformation or wrong data, is something different. However, one then must ask whether or not you share responsibility for not having better information, or having helped in establishing a mechanism that feeds you false information. And so on and on. If you get lied to by a person who before always spoke the truth, that is one thing. If you believe a person whom is known to be a notorious liar, that is something different.

Question, Question, always question, I think is the lesson to be learnt in many things, life in general. Sometimes though, human laziness strikes and we find it easier not to question in order to live a simple life. You see it a lot in people who couldn't tell you where Iran is on a map but won't miss an episode of the latest reality television show, ignorance is bliss as the old saying goes, but ignorance is also a trap, since eventually life has a funny habit of putting you in situations where your ignorance leads to a downfall.
Besides, as another saying goes, "If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?"
Sometimes though, even when given the truth, people chose to believe a lie because it either sounds better, or the truth itself is too terrible for them to behold. Be it conspiracy theorists who think that 9/11 was an inside job, or those who believed the propaganda machine of the Reich even as the Soviets marched on Berlin. The human mind sometimes just simply cannot input the information presented to it, sometimes that leads to death like rabbits trapped in headlights, or a complete psychological breakdown, or strict denial that it happened.
But that is straying a tad off course from our subject at hand, but I will refer back to a quote that someone had as their sig for a while, and I think (but I am not 100% sure) that you said it:

"We all, in life, sometimes ignore a truth in favour of a lie that sounds better."

The quesiton you seem to ask is whether the victim is morally guilty of havign walked down a lon ely street at night!?

I guess there is the fine line between what is morally responsible and what is common sense.

However. I see that we get distracted here. The issue is "responsibility for your obedience". I remind of the other Hannah Arendt quote I gave: "In politics, loyalty is active support." Obedience implies you stay loyal to an authority you accept to rate above yourself in the power hierarchy. That it is more powerful in said hierarchy, must not necessarily mean it is right. You make a decision to comply with its claims for power, or not. You are obedient, or not. You either support it in its intentions, or you don't. You obey your general's order, or you don't. Both has consequences. Your choice on whether or not to comply, and the consequences that you knowingly accept by that, tell something about you. And here is where you can stay conform with to the authority's demand, you comply - and by that become morally guilty, not just responsible in a causal-technical manner. Obviously, conscience has a lot to do with it. And to me, my conscience is the highest authority to which I indeed owe justification for my decisions and actions. Not a deity. Not a general or president. Not a people electing me. Not my family and not my friends. But my conscience. If I am not in congruence with my conscience, then I'm in trouble. Do I allow to get bought? Do I comply with something my conscience protests over, because else my life is in danger? And how relates a decision for or against compliance with an external authority, to the thread that if I do not violate my conscience, other people, innocents, will suffer or die?
Tricky. And I am responsible for how I navigate through this labyrinth. Me. Nobody else. The external authority manipulating me and blackmailing me, just is what it is and does what it does,. How I face that challenge - that si what it is about.

It is tricky indeed, and I think that it's something that's run down through society, and religion (sometimes) in history. Do you make the just decision, or the easy one? Often the answers are so vague that it's hard to know if you've made the right decision, rarely is it so simple that the consequences of your actions in either direction are spelled out to you beforehand since you cannot predict the future. Which leads you into the quandry of making the right choice.
I certainly don't disagree with you, when I say that it is your responsibility for navigating this labyrinth, just as it is mine to navigate my own, but sometimes, as they say, a burden shared is a burden halved, and sometimes you can seek advice as to what direction to take, but ultimately, you and only you can walk that path.

Technically, yes, but the moral guilt is reduced when you had no reason to not trust the other whose lies you believed. But in case of politicians I do argue - as you have noticed in other threads, I'm sure - that lies are part of their daily business ands manipulation of opinion is their profession. You are responsible for having believed somebody I would label as a known liar. And that is a moral guilt as well.

Lies certainly are part of the daily business of politicians, although I do ponder, as commented in another thread myself, in a quotation of a comment written by Neil deGrass Tyson on twitter, who has more of the responsibility. A politician will say what they think you want them to say. Are we the ones at fault for just wanting to hear what we want to hear from them? Certainly no politician has ever been praised for bad news, so again we come back to that decision, to take the difficult path and be honest (and probably never be re-elected) or to take the easiest path and lie, and as we both know, humanity is like water and electricity, it tends to take the path of least resistance.
However, I would argue a third factor in our viewpoint of politicians, and that's education. Does a person who is unaware of their ignorance bear the same moral guilt as someone who is aware of it? Personally, I would argue that they do not, as no one person can know all things in the universe, but the person who does know of their ignorance and yet chooses to remain so is counter to all of humanity which has constantly sought for answers.
If I really wanted to derail this thread, I could bring modern religion in at this point, but I think both of us have talked about that for long enough in this forum and I don't know if Neals bandwidth would like it if we started again.

It's not just nationalism and extremism. Take the Western idealists in uniform who seriously believed their leaders who send them to Afghanistan or Iraq. Two weeks ago, I touched upon the naivety of German soldiers depicted in a German TV film I had a thread about. There is a certain kind of opportunistic gullibility amongst professional soldiers, especially those without too much experience. They indeed believe they go to Afghanistan to help build democracy. They indeed believed the lies told by Bush. You see, while seeing the good will of theirs, I also hold them responsible for their naivety - a naivety that maybe already starts with the decision to voluntarily join the army. To what degree a moral guilt results from that, again is a follow-on question depending on many variables.

You will always get the rosy cheeked recruit who believes the poster and walks out to the battlefield ignorant of the nature of war. From the young teens of Flanders fields, to the lads who go to Afghanistan today. However, they soon learn different.
Joining the army, it's a difficult decision to morally make. Once upon a time it was a religious duty, then a national one, now with so many questions asked over the point of conflict, well, you can see the difference in the size of volunteer armies over the years in western nations.
Often these days it is a family matter, the father educates the son about his military experience and instills a desire in the son to emulate his father, be it for many reasons, for recognition, for self-pride, or for a sense of community. I am the first generation for about four or five generations in my family not to have been involved in any branch of the armed forces for any amount of time. However my upbringing instilled no desire in me to emulate my grandfather, but society and my sometimes 19th century way of thinking does put a small twinge of guilt in the back of my mind from time to time.
In regards to the soldiers who think that they are building 'democracy' in Afghanistan, I think that again boils back down to believing a less painful lie rather than the truth, it makes it easier for them to go back out there and come back again. A coping mechanism perhaps. However, I cannot ultimately decide or judge their mindset since I lack the necessary first hand experience to do so. Until I have walked in their shoes and experienced their upbringing, training and warzone tours, I do not aspire to judge them or their beliefs. Do I hold them responsible for their beliefs? In a non-accusationary manner, perhaps, only in so much as I hold you responsible for yours and myself for my own. When it comes to moral guilt, the emphasis placed upon it varies from man to man, some will live their lives as morally sound as possible, others will pay little heed to it.

Accepting responsibility for your decision and actions, can plot you a course into troubled seas, that is for certain. And before we have never faced existential challenges, we cannot claim with certainty what we would do in an extreme situation. We only can say what we hope we would be courageous and honest - may I say: noble? - enough to do or to decide. As long as we have not been in such a situation, we do not know for sure.

I cannot disagree at all, and these are wise words. Our hopes and our realities often have vast gulfs between them, but sometimes, just sometimes, we can excel ourselves and create such virtues of note, such great moral deeds, and at the same time such despicable acts.

Of course, what is morally right is another big question. What judges our ethics? Society? Religion? Our own personal decisions? What is right for me may be wrong for you...so who is right and who is wrong?