We all aren't even a little bit like a NAZI extermination camp commandant. Saying so isn't a Deep Thought, it's pseudo-Freudian sophism at best and dangerous way to view humanity as a whole. Jaded and cynical stuff for a young person. Claude Eatherly is a strange case. I've not heard of him before and I only skimmed the stuff you linked to. I'll read it tonight. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the team leader that led us into the Atomic Age. After completing his project he famously said 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,' But even he didn't engage in the quasi-illegal anti-social things Eartherly got enmeshed in. Eartherly also got busted for cheating on an exam, long before he engaged in his 'escapades for pacifism,' which kinda makes him out as a bullshit artiste. And right now? We are confronted with a Chinese scientist editing human genes... 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of humanity? Yes, I think so.
Eastwood trilogy. In effect, the townspeople needed him to perform a feat no one else was
morally equipped to do. The perverse thing being he became an unwelcome figure in a town reborn. There's no great mystery in it. The Coen brothers? They just wanted to show a man being shot in the head with a pneumatic cattle bolt or fed into a wood chipper. The rest is just wrapper for that bit of gore. Seriously.
My Xmas gift to everyone here:
Nien Cheng died of old age in 2009. Her husband and brother are long gone. Her daughter was murdered by Maoist Red Guards. No one in her extended family survives her. Her autobiography is stunning.
Life and Death in Shanghai:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yqj9n0rgx7smb ... .epub?dl=0Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yqj9n0rgx7smb ... .epub?dl=0