....Hitler is quite explicitly an ecological thinker

The title of this essay is chosen as a grabber, to entice some readers who could become interested when they learn it is taken from this interview in Atlantic Magazine with Yale historian Timothy Snyder.  He uses the word "ecological" in an unusual way, but one that is precise, which provides an opening to this essay that I have been struggling with for a long time. 

By all means consider reading Professor Snyder’s new book—Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning—.  The interviewer explains the title as being,  "a reference to the fertile soil of Ukraine, where Adolf Hitler hoped to establish lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German race. And yet it could also be seen as an allusion to what Snyder argues is the underappreciated importance of ecology in Hitler’s worldview. "  Ecology is used in this sense to contrast with nationalism, including country identity.  Aryans gain their dominance from Darwinian survival of the fittest,  as such, Jews are an unnatural hindrance by imposing morality based legal norms that impede this process of sorting out "races of man."

This essay is not about the book at all, rather to first disturb the reader of my essay enough to join me in exploring how the casual response to a word, in this case "ecological" can mask its deeper meaning and deny an individual, many individuals, a population, a people -- of the tools to understand the world beyond a trivial level.  While I say my essay is not about Snyder's book, in some ways it is.  He writes about an event associated with a person who has become synonymous with pure evil to the degree that any explanation of it could be construed as attempted mitigation of guilt.  Professor Snyder, has the protection of academic credentials and perhaps being of the very group who was the victim of what he explores, but others do not, especially those in public life who dare not take such a risk.

We all know of the incomprehensible suffering caused by this one man, Adolf Hitler, yet there is another consequence of his life work that is rarely explored, which is how much of the world's culture has been shaped by avoiding the taint of what he created.  I'm suggesting that much of what is decried as a loss of intellectual rigor among those who are nominally highly educated can be seen as a de-nazification project that has taken on a life of its own.

It just so happens that only hours before reading the Atlantic article referenced here,  I read this one (link includes full comment) in the New York Times on the subject that is within the danger zone of racial thinking.  As I submitted my comment, which often gets dozens of approvals from readers, I was aware of the potential rejection because of this paragraph:

Not only are races more than a "social construct," a term used to mean having no objective reality, but every family or tribe has its own identifiable characteristics that in earlier times provided competitive advantage that shaped what we now call "species."

It's one thing to defend evolution against intelligent design, but quite another to describe it in all its amoral destruction, since this hearkens to "Social Darwinism" which could be seen as the intellectual underpinnings of the type of radical ecology that Professor Snyder argues motivated Hitler.  While the antipathy to my comment is meaningless in itself,  no junior professor in any university would risk broaching concepts such as I expressed; since before he or she could assemble a full argument,  the accusation of racism would have ended her academic career.  Of course since such material is never presented, the undergrad learns that positions rest not on a deep understanding, but on how it registers on the applause meter - or whether there is even a beep on the deviation monitor.

To review:  "Ecological thinking" is not necessarily a good thing, especially when it is the driving force behind the man who caused WWII.  My own conclusion from exploring this is that we humans never evolved to be philosopher kings, but to follow that person who best harnesses the violence needed for survival for our tribe. Hitler could have been right about Jews having a disproportionate impact on creating myths and ideologies that stiffed something very primitive and vital to our being.  He did overstate his capacity to change the world to combat such perceived evils.

Maybe the best we can do is muddle through.  Ultimate solutions seem to more often lead to ultimate horrors.  Just passing the baton of civilization to the next generation could be all the success that is possible.  We can't stop them from screwing everything up, or ensure that they will follow through on some pretty good ideas.  But the least we can do is try to defend the essential elements of civil society, words in all their complexity.  It's not that we praise ecological thinking in itself, nor banish it because an evil person used it, rather we understand that a word's definition is only the beginning of mastering what it represents.    

Passing that baton forward only works when the new generation knows how to use it.