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1) Last night, in a dream, I visited an island on which physical extermination of poisonous snakes was going on. We were shown brave and highly skillful people able to catch large snakes and strangle them to death, one after another. The goal was to kill them all. This reminded me of genocides. A genocide is an attempt to exterminate one group of people by another. I already wrote about genocides in general (1). Here are some specific examples:a) Hitler declares that a group of people, such as mentally sick people, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Gypsies, Blacks, etc. are dangerous and should be eliminated, sooner or later.
b) Stalin decides that kulaks (productive peasants) are dangerous and should be eliminated “as a class” (group of people). Many were killed; even more died as slaves in Gulag camps.
c) During a war enemies are often dehumanized and killed. I am thinking about the W.W.II slogan, in the Soviet Union, “smiert [death to] niemeckim zakhwatchikam.” A distinction between German exploiters and exploited was de-emphasized, to promote hate of all Germans. In 1941, the communist party newspaper, Pravda, dropped its peacetime masthead, "--Proletarians of all lands, unite!” The slogan that replaced it was "Death to the German invaders!"- (2).
d) Similar examples can probably be found in histories of other nations. The “do not kill” commandment does not apply on a battlefield; soldiers are put in situations in which “kill or be killed” becomes the rule. A distinction between “just wars” and “unjust wars” serves the same purpose. Japanese and Americans were probably also given pejorative names during W.W.II.
2) During the dream I was debating the popular idea of preservation of all species in our natural environment. It is interesting that those who support this idea are often willing to fight for elimination of extreme poverty. Is this because plants and animals are different from man-made things, such as wars and poverty?
3) Why did I wake up and compose the above, before breakfast? Because I know, from experience, that ideas visiting us during dreams tend to evaporate during the day. Unfortunately, I do not remember how the above question was answered. Perhaps it was not answered at all? How should it be answered?
References:
1) L. Kowalski’short articles at OpEdNews ; Click on links #4, #8 and #9 at:
