Using the Nazi's Strategy to Empower Us!

I just finished reading Victor Frankl’s mind-blowing book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. As I am sitting their next to my Israeli wife of whom we have a grandmother whom is a Holoucaust Survivor, it wells up in me to start asking some questions about the overall scope of this whole thing and this is what I learned and how it is related to my work in Empowerment through Music and so on…

The first question I remember asking is how long our beloved grandmother was in a camp,. and that led to an array of questions that took us down the rabbit whole of the whole entire era. It was a fascinating road to take last night.  

I became very very interested in WHY.  The first thing I learned was that Hitler’s strategy is one that all of us can learn from.  Basically, he found a common denominator for a struggling class of people, created a common enemy and began his work in destroying their every will to live through a very slow and steady process.  For some reason I thought it all happened very very quickly.  But no no, it simply started with Jews not being able to enter certain coffee shops, then universities, then they were sectioned off, closed in and slowly deported to the “work camps.”  I truly wonder if the original intention was to kill anyone at all or did that come with the critical masses anger and frustration.

One thing that came up in our conversation was man’s ability to adapt to his circumstances.  And this is a very positive thing. So what happened is one right was taken away, and the culture adjusted, finding the greater things in life, then another right was taken, and they adapted, saying it couldn't be worse, then another right is taken away, and humans say, well it cannot get any worse, all the way down until the work camp, sickness, humiliation, starvation,torture and ultimately death.  We want to see the light in every situation.  Like a flower we are always reaching for the sun.  Where my mind was blows was at the point that I realized that this was a class of people that was highly educated, a class of people that had it all so to speak, a class of people that knew the great value of trade and relationship building, and, at the end, that is was still stands so strongly in the Jewish communities.  

So how does this all tie into life right now, well, the clarity I receive is that EVERYTHING takes time. When I am working with clients or thinking about my projects I always get stuck in the notion that this needs to happen NOW, yet there is such great power in "slow and steady.”  The reason the impact was so profound and why so many people lost their lives was because it happened slowly, one step after another.  If the Germans would have woke up one day and just decided to start killing, the Jews would have out strategized them, but by making it one gesture after another that slowly stripped away their dignity and values, they turned a class of brilliant thinkers into people that lived only to dig their own graves. I know this is a very dark reflection, but there is something so profound in the learning of all of this when you think about doing the same thing to empower people. We are living in a time when it seems like a majority of people are digging their own grave with how they behave.  But, on the flip side, when you take a Step by step approach, it IS possible to build an new foundation of self respect and trust so that one can live a completely happy and free life.  You have to let go of the notion of overnight success, nothing was built in a day.  Everything worth any value in this world, whether negative or positive, has been built off of a step by step approach and takes time. When you show people one thing after another that can empower them to live more fully, their will to live will be stronger then any other force.  Take one step, adapt to the power of change, take another and so on until the foundation is so strong that nothing will ever be able to take it away. THE TIME IS NOW!

Maybe you would like to start building your foundation here

Also, Check out Victor Frankl's revolutionary Logotherapy here