I sometimes *can* place myself in the mindset of past time people... better than I would like to. Probably means no more and no less than a) in one of my past lives I have lived in the same era and country or in a time and place with a similar common (non)sense and b) in one of my past lives I have encountered similar patterns.
I think in general, it's very hard to relate to someone in a sort of meta way and take into account their personality, the times they lived in and what circumstances that would bring as well. I agree too that having many past lives probably does help with the ability to put yourself in other's shoes!
Getting at the truth can be a difficult thing indeed. To give an example, I've always been fascinated with the story (real life existence) of Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'Arc). In her case there is specific information in the form of written transcripts of her trial. But how they are understood varies enormously, they keep being interpreted and re-interpreted in terms of the fashionable beliefs of the day. I saw one tv programme recently on her life, which was quite thorough, and the angle, a legitimate one, was to present her as a woman of significance, in a series about various other historical females. But what was missing was any attempt to understand the spirituality, the powerful internal experiences were neglected. The reason in my opinion was that the narrator simply had no concept of those ideas, spiritual experience meant nothing and hence could not be considered as part of the story.
This is an ever-present problem. Attempting to understand others, whether in the present day or in the past often falls short simply because we find it difficult or impossible to place ourselves in the mindset of the other person, to see and experience the world through their eyes. Instead we get spin and attempts to contort and squeeze things until they fit within a particular keyhole.
I think quite easily it's a form of confirmation bias, in that people let the facts support the version of the person in question they agree with, either personally, historically or culturally or some combination of all.
In my past two lives, I know from the body of evidence, when compared to mine now, I'm the same person. I have very intense eyes and my female, Chinese life, was described as being mean or bitchy looking and that's the way she was portrayed in movies and TV shows and there's plenty of contradictory evidence from those worked for her. You can buy their autobiographies on Amazon.
However, in contrast, my male past life was describe as having a gaze that shone that with the power of a 1,000 suns and the foreigners that met him, averted their eyes and dared not look directly at him. Because it fit people's perception of him being a powerful ruler. In both cases they were anything but authoritative, autocratic, intense and or mean. I think the issue here is clearly just a sexist view point.
The issue is, like you were saying, people just leave out things that that don't support their point of view or that they don't understand. Or they may go the other way and misinterpret them completely and use it to distort their understanding.
Absolutely, Speedwell. We look back only with a modern perspective and get all sorts of things wrong. We who have lived through those past times simply can't explain to people 'It wasn't like that!' This is my point about trashing all 'Nazis'. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, maybe, but it's a dangerous thing too.
I had been reading through some of the discussion threads around the Nazis as well. I grew up in post war America and for the most part, there was a collective fear about autocratic governments that was oversimplified to "Nazis". A large majority of Americans were from immigrant families who had escaped Russia, Italy and Germany. Knee deep in the cold war, the horrors of Stalin's Russia, the holocaust and the Khmer Rouge were still very fresh in people's minds and as I said, sadly, Nazis became the mascot for such atrocities. Just a side note, I find it interesting here that the Japanese occupation and quite equal torture and murder of the Chinese is never recognized in any of these contexts.
Long story short, my childhood was filled with movies and TV shows where swastikas were simply used as a metaphor for evil. I would never dream of using the word Nazi to describe anyone. I would maybe reserve that for some of the higher leaders and hard line party members, but never to describe a German citizen, member of the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine or anything else. We have no way of knowing what their feelings and thoughts were towards the party ideals and it goes without saying, for any rational adult, that most, if not all, the people of Germany were simply not aligned with the eugenics and racial purity ideals. They were simply victims of the Gesellschaft and Zeitgeist and were afraid of being singled out. We can take pity on the common Russians who feared for their lives from the KGB, but we just assume that the Gestapo was only for the Jewish? This is simply not true, a fallacy and an glaring oversight.
I don't wish to offend anyone by saying this, but I went to a Holocaust museum here and I'll never return. Yes, what happened to the Jews was horrible and we need to be vigil that something that like never happens again, but at most of the museums I've been to, all of the millions of other "undesirables" are simply not mentioned in any of these places. The gypsies, Jehovah witnesses, homosexuals, artists, musicians, authors, photographers and many other peoples that simple "went away" because someone decided they simply didn't like them, were swept under the rug and forgotten and I don't agree with this. You can't just tell one side of history because it agrees with a popular narrative.
Many years ago, I walked out of the movie enemy at the gates. Mainly because it wasn't very good, but also because the Germans soldiers in it were depicted as if they came to life and walked out of US anti German propaganda posters. The movie was full of sneering, soured faces sitting behind machine guns and atop half tracks. The director made a point to frame them like the posters and I didn't agree with that either, so I left.
Although I have no connections to Germany, I love it too and I know it wasn't like that either. As far as I'm concerned, everyone has the right to be proud of their heritage, past life and military service. I find it quite sad that we still have such a myopic view of things. No one's suffering is more valid than the other's, ever. Thinking that we've cornered the market on it, closes our hearts and minds to the greater spiritual reality that well all share.
