EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT
What would you do if I told you, "You are a part of a race superior to every other." Then I told you "There is this other race of people inferior to us, they are the cause of all our problems." "Every single one of them." The solution? "Exterminate them, so we can have a Utopia." "Oh and we should also rule the entire world because we are better than everyone else by virtue of our genes" How much sense does that make? No rational, intelligent, empathetic human being could possibly fall for that, right? And yet....
Are all those people stupid? Are they all evil? Have they all lost every single cell of their humanity? Was most of Germany filled with sociopaths under Hitler? Make it make sense. I will, by an example.
If you were to list the biggest benefactors of the human race, it's a short list before you get to Fritz Haber. He was a genius. Responsible for the Haber Process. Said process, it has been argued, has saved more lives than any invention ever. And supports three billion humans.
The Haber Process in essence allows us to make fixed nitrogen, by taking all the nitrogen in the atmosphere (most of the air in the atmosphere is nitrogen) and turning it into ammonia. From which we can make fertilizer, because nitrogen is the single most important nutrient for plant growth. Ok, so?
So, without the Haber process, we couldn't possibly generate enough food to support our current world population. In fact, in the early nineteenth century people predicted a worldwide famine. If you've ever farmed you know the difference between using fertilizer and not using fertilizer. We couldn't have had anywhere near the population growth we did. Almost all of humanity, some 3 billion of us, owe our very existence to Fritz Haber's invention. As Thomas Hager put so clearly "It's an invention that turns air into bread." Billions of humans owe their existence to the Haber Process.
So Fritz, obviously a genius, obviously a great man, good person, obviously gave a lot back, is that him in the pic, not saluting? You don't know how much I want to tell you that was Fritz Haber, it wasn't, it was a normal guy named August Landmesser. In fact, Fritz Haber was an ardent Nazi he even helped work on the gas chambers. Oh he also is the inventor of the infamous mustard gas. August Landmesser was not Jewish, Fritz was Jewish.
Albert Einstein was close friends with Fritz and pleaded with him to not do something so stupid and vile. Besides, no matter what Fritz did they would still hate him. Fritz's eternal ambition in life was people to see him as a good German, a proper German, a proud German. He didn't want them to see the despised Jew, he didn't want to ever experience the sting of antisemitism again. And what did he get for it? Fritz barely escaped Germany with his life. And unlike Einstein, no one else wanted him. People tended to not like Nazis. He was despised at home, and despised everywhere else. He died a broken man.
The guy in the pic who isn't saluting isn't some grand enlightened being who is superior to everyone else as Haber seemed to be. He was a normal dude, a businessman. No one was persecuting him. He had nothing to gain from defying Hitler. But he had one thing, only one thing, Haber lacked. An ability to think for himself.
A genius of Haber's caliber. Someone in the league of Albert Einstein himself couldn't see through Nazi propaganda? Fritz was not stupid nor was he evil. He just based his entire worldview on what other people thought. If only he could be seen as complete. If only they could accept him. Einstein on the other hand, that eternal rebel, knew they would never forgive him for being a Jew, even if he was Einstein, he saw straight through Hitler's insanity, he left very early.
Most of the people who followed Hitler were not evil nor were they stupid. They just labored under the delusion that the masses are always right. They turned off their thinking caps and followed with the herd. Everyone else seems to believe this, why shouldn't they? Everyone couldn't possibly be wrong now could they? And that my friends, is how, the lemmings fall off cliffs
For most of human history, the crowd has been the safe place. But the crowd can't think, because, in a group humans become sheep. Almost invariably, as they should because most of what the crowd says is right. But sometimes, in the darkest days of humanity's history, the crowd is led by an absolute psychopath. And when that happens, everyone else will follow that person unquestionably. And that is how smart people, competent people, good people like Fritz Haber do vile things.
Never, in your entire life, do something just because everyone else is doing it. Never, never, never, never! And I can't emphasize this enough. Though we pray we don't have to live through something as vile as the Holocaust, there are many smaller ways we get sucked up into herd mentality. And that's how financial panics happen (the great depression), people join suicide cults, or, most conventionally, give up their own thinking for someone else's. The problem with that, the person you're letting do your thinking for you is no smarter than you. And doesn't have to live with the consequences.
But don't also just blindly do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Most of conventional wisdom is time tested truth. The operative word being most. Times like Nazi Germany are the exception, rather than the rule in human history. But in the extreme! So, what to do?
The most important skill in this life is to learn to think for yourself. Trust your own judgment. Critical thinking, deep thinking, or any thinking actually, as long as it's thinking. That way, you can have such an edge over everyone else. Most people hate thinking.
Once you realize that a lot of what you're told about life, was just some guy's best guess. You'll have the confidence to question conventional wisdom. Again conventional wisdom is mostly right. So you need to think. Is this right? Why is this the way it is? And so on and so forth. It's a skill you learn and sharpen, and it's a very valuable skill, because to be great at what you do, you need to contribute something no one's ever done before. And that requires doing new things which are also good. That's the hardest thing to do really.
But, most importantly, if you think for yourself, you can live your own life. Fritz Haber's life was miserable trying to please everyone and doing as they did. And they still never liked him, everything he did, they must have looked at him and thought "Jewish Pig". No matter how hard he tried to please them, they wouldn't even shake his hand. They hated him for being alive because they were told they should. And he hated himself for being alive because they thought he shouldn't be. Really? Is that a life worth living. You betray everything you believe in, and sacrifice everything to be one of them. And still, it might not be enough?
Haber lost his wife because she was so guilty of being married to a Nazi she killed herself, he lost his friends, tarnished his legacy as a great scientist and inventor. For what? So, don't you ever do something just because of what others think. Because, you could lose everything you hold dear, and they will still see you for what you are. So, why not be who you are?