The Pattern of Evil: Myth, Social Perception and the Holocaust

If we wish to learn from the Holocaust how to act against a recurrence, we must ask what the SS thought they were doing as they organized and ran the horrific camps. Then we can know how to watch for early signs of the emergence of this type of thinking and move against it. This book addresses itself to this problem and arrives at new answers. Modern science and philosophy have gradually become aware of the degree to which human beings use different sets of assumptions about the nature of reality (how things are and work) in different situations. As this book demonstrates, when the “Mythic” world picture is used to solve political problems (instead of the appropriate “Sensory” world view) the concentration camp becomes a possibility. The process, however, is not inexorable, but can be aborted if understood.