Been thinking a lot about my 6th grade teacher who, when we were learning about the Holocaust and I was all,"RIP to the Germans. I would simply not be evil," looked me dead in the eye and said, "you don't know that. No one doing these things thought of themselves as bad people. They thought they were being right and just. They weren't inherently evil people. They were just people. " And the idea that I could unknowingly cause such a great amount of harm while being none the wiser scared me so bad it fundamentally rewired my brain, and made me a more thoughtful, empathetic person.
Because I never again thought of myself as an inherently good person. But as an average person susceptible to the banality of evil. And the only antidote was rigoursly inspecting my own assumptions and beliefs and learning about other people's.
Just wishing more people had that experience and also very very grateful.
