duminică, 19 februarie 2023

The Survivor, based on the book Harry Haft – Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano by Alan Scott Haft - 10 out of 10

 

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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