Holocaust

Genocide is made possible by the collectivist-altruist philosophy. Collectivism lumps people of a particular race, ethnicity, or religion into groups, pitting one group against another. Altruism is the code of self-sacrifice. Individuals sacrifice their own thinking to the collective. Their submission creates the un-thinking monolith easily moved by a passionate leader who secures his power by declaring a common enemy, propagating irrational fear of the enemy, justifying any atrocity committed against the enemy. Any imagined self-esteem one may experience is the product of their membership in the group. If the group is powerful, the individuals who have given themselves over to the collective feel that they are powerful.

Often, the leaders of these groups are erroneously classified “egoists.” They are greedy, ruthless, megalomaniacs to be sure. But an egoist is none of those things. Egoists do not lust for the unearned. Egoists recognize the right of each individual to think for themselves. Force is banned from all human relationships. Egoists do not make sacrifices for others nor do they demand others make sacrifices to them. The leader of any collective, on the other hand, is a collector of sacrifices: He collects the brain matter of his followers, the blood of his enemies. He is made possible by the blind, wide-spread acceptance of the altruist moral code.

The Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews and other minorities living outside the circle of the Nazi collective during World War II, is the result of the collectivist-altruist philosophy and moral code, the very same code revered by Christians and Muslim alike. Nazi Germany was a Christian nation. Darfur’s Janjaweed is a force of the Muslim variety. Genocide may be the result of the other side of the collectivist-altruist coin…but it is the same coin that propagates unconditional love and prayer five times a day. Members of a collective are denied the freedom to exercise their own judgment. Members do their duty, follow orders…they don’t make choices.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, and all of the other Holocaust survivors who got on with their lives after the war, remained sane in the face of the pure evil done to him because he never failed to imagine tomorrow. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes the physical and psychological torture he endured as an inmate in World War II, Nazi concentration camps and, in conclusion, attributes his survival to luck [and more importantly] the fact that he wasn’t finished living. He knew that regardless of how hopeless he was made to feel, that his life was waiting for him on the other side. He had books to write, books that only he could write. He knew that if he allowed himself to die the books in his head would never be written. The ability to imagine a future, one driven by personal ambition, individualism, meaning, enabled Frankl to endure unspeakable agony over a prolonged period of time.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist with degrees in neurology and psychology, used his textbooks and his experience to develop therapies for individuals suffering from despair [and countless other psychoses and neuroses]. He calls the treatment logotherapy. It’s all actually very easy to understand. It is what the “declaration of independence” would be had it been written by a scientist for an individual, rather than by a politician for a nation. A logotherapist is not a passive listener who after years of psychoanalysis and thousands of your dollars concludes that all of your problems are the result of your subconscious loathing of your father. A logotherapist would be more inclined to grab you by the shoulders, shake you, and whisper “get a life you miserable whiner!” I exaggerate [for laughs], but there is some truth here. Frankl insists man is not made by his environment, the conditions in which he lives or the cruelties he is subject to; but rather, man is made by the choices he makes. For example, the fact that a child molester was molested as a child does not excuse the abomination he has become. He could have chosen to live a moral life.

While Frankl does not use Objectivist terms like, “collectivism, altruism, egoism,” his meaning is clear to me. Through his experience, Frankl discovered that the cure for the victims of the collectivist-altruist world order is individualism. There is nothing greater than your life: the purpose of your life is to live it.

“Happiness is a man’s right to set his own goals, choose his values, and to achieve them…” AR

There is no greater good.