Modernity and the Holocaust
by Zygmunt Bauman · first published 1989
6mentions
2recommended by
4HN commenters
2020–2026first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
A new afterword to this edition, "The duty to remember, but What?," tackles difficult issues of guilt and innocence on the individual and societal levels. Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the same of safety; the insidious efects of tragic memory, and efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
>Consider what happens if everyone who has a moral complaint about their employer immediately quits Holocaust would not happen. Modernity and the Holocaust by Z. Bauman should be obligatory read for corporate workers.
on “On Resigning from Google” ↗The book Modernity and the Holocaust is a very approachable book summarizing how the action of the holocaust was organized under similar assumptions and makes the argument that we’ve since organized most of our society around this principle…
on “Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign” ↗I’d also recommend reading Modernity and the Holocaust as a good intro to studies of the Holocaust through a similar lens. None of this is new
on “Actually, Democracy Dies in H.R.” ↗…with for cheap data labelling. Yes, there definitely was some organizational shuffling to make it hard for us to see. We all knew, we weren’t idiots. My personal favorite book on similar concepts is “Modernity and the Holocaust”. I would argue the organizational tricks exist more for the benefit of the worker than the org itself. The “powerless software engineers” there wanted the excuse to accept the huge salary for very easy…
on “Irony as Meta staff unhappy about running surveillance software on work PCs” ↗In Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust[1] it is argued that the Holocaust was not merely a tragic aberration of the ideals of modern Western civilisation but rather a logical realisation of it. Hitler himself, in both Mein Kampf, and Zweites…
on “Steam has been banned in China” ↗…anyone possibly end up doing that?" It was really clear how easily unremarkable people just go with the flow until they find themselves doing horrific things without batting an eyelid. Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust is really interesting (although pretty heavy going - I didn't finish it) on how bureacracy enabled the Holocaust by reducing it to a long line of people taking orders from their superiors and giving orders…
on “Bunkers in Albania” ↗