The
Survivor, based on the book Harry Haft – Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of
Rocky Marciano by Alan Scott Haft
10 out of
10
Two of the
most important Character Strengths identified in studies by positive
psychology, in particular, the co-founder, Martin Seligman, would be resilience
and vitality http://charlusguermantes.blogspot.com/ and they are in full display in the
movie based on this important book.
This note
is not about the original work, it is on the motion picture inspired by it,
this is the third time that this is mentioned, to avoid any misunderstanding, I
used to introduce the new entry for the script or film, when there was no such
preexisting item, but Goodreads limits this to librarians now, and since you
have so many scripts you can comment on this site, why not on this remarkable
feature?
The
Survivor is a lesson on ‘Happiness
Activity No 6: Developing Strategies for Coping-practicing ways to endure or
surmount hardship or trauma’ as described by magician and professor Sonja
Lyubomirsky in her majestic The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html a book that can be life changing,
because it tells you what it says, how to be Happy…
Survivor
Harry Haft emerges from the Auschwitz labor camp, just as the title makes
clear, due to his incredible Character Strengths, on top of the aforementioned
vitality and persistence, the Super Hero (only a real, not an invented one,
escaped from comic books, the Marvel or another imaginary universe) is brave,
kind – if it is not always possible, he has to be cruel to be munificent…he has
a friend with whom he had shared all he had had, just as the friend would split
a crust of bread or any other thing with Harry, and when they meet in the ring,
forced by monstrous Schneider, Harry has to take his friend down
The latter
insists that he does not want the Nazis to kill him, he would rather see Harry
do it, he wants to end ‘like a man’, which in this case would be fighting in a
boxing match, kicked by the one he feels for, rather than give satisfaction to
the inhumane brutes – by the way, you could consult the absolute classic Influence
by Robert Cialdini http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-absolute-psychology-classic.html and find The Principle of Respect
for Authority, which we all (or almost all) obey…
In a
famous, or infamous, Milgram Experiment, participants in the research have been
told to apply electric shocks to people who had agreed to be punished for
giving the wrong answers, and astonishingly, they would go as high as deadly voltages,
of 220 or more, the majority of individuals would not stop, even when the
humans in the chair would scream and show signs of intense pain, because they
Respected the Authority
This was
used to explain at least in part the obedience showed by most Germans during
the World War II, when atrocities were committed – something many claimed they
had been unaware of, exterminating camps and horrors – and when they cooperated,
it was due to the Respect we show for authority, even when asked to do the most
abominable acts – one other example, you find in Influence is about the sect (I
think the name of the leader was Moon) that went to Guyana and the members committed
mass suicide, in their hundreds, when their atrocious authoritarian asked them
to do it…
Another
quintessential magnum opus is Man’s Search for Meaning http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html by Victor Frankl, a wondrous
psychologist, who had had the chance to escape the Holocaust and refused it
when he was the only one in his family who could avoid the disaster, went into
the camps, later wrote this fabulous work, in which he states “Meaning „is the key: in the camp, those
who lost the meaning capitulated and died…Frankl quotes Nietzsche: the one who
has the WHY can cope with almost any how”.
As opposed
to Freud, doctor Frankl believes people are not mainly driven by sexual urges,
but by a “superior” motive: meaning…Harry Haft is forced to fight other
prisoners by the Nazis, in particular the SS officer Schneider, a devious,
diabolical fellow, who claims to feel nothing against the Jews, he is not
anti-Semitic in statements, but he maintains that everything is a question of
hammer and anvil, there are only two alternatives
You could
be the hammer or the anvil, I a zero-sum game, there is power and weakness, and
for this Nazi, he had hoped that they will win, and then it will be civilized,
he regrets it is not the outcome he had hoped for, and in the meantime, he acts
like a vile little fuhrer, a Putin avant la lettre and at a smaller scale,
making money off his prize fighter, making bets and organizing panem et
circenses for fellow brutes.
I was made
to think of the present, I have read an article in The Economist, or it was in
one of their podcasts, describing a visit at the Chinese –Russian border, where
the journalist tried to see what the Chinese feel about the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, and the result is that the propaganda works, the brain washed
respondents admire Putin, no less, say that a big power must be respected, and
this will also be the sentiment on China attacking Taiwan, sometimes in the
(alas) near future, we must submit to power.
However
tragic and somewhat improbable it sounds, this Kremlin and Beijing version of
events is embraced and shared even in places which have access to genuine news
and information, at the Downtown Club where I go, ‘educated’ eejits, a doctor,
other folks, say it is the fault of the Americans, not the bloody Russians, and
they impart with all manner of conspiracy theories, act as traitors and they
spit on the victims of the war, telling them ‘goddamn fools, you are paid by
the capitalists’ or something of that manner, in my view…The Survivor should be
a lesson to these creeps, on what happens when you surrender your mind and body
to tyranny, the rule is all too clear in this narrative… http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
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