As Megan touched on, Herder was progressive for the 18th
century; his intentions were good as he hoped for unity and brotherhood among
humans. I believe Herder would roll over
in his grave because his work was used as racist ideology for the Nazi party. They focused on his mention of each people
having a certain language, region, and identity; they ignored his message that
“One and the same species is humankind on earth” (25). Taking a passage out of context skews the
message, and in this case, hinders a legacy. It is important to focus on the
“big picture” and the author’s purpose rather than fragment a work and decide
what one sentence means.
In the movie Dinner
for Schmucks, Barry says, “In the words of John Lennon, “You may say I’m a
dreamer, but I’m not.” Tim, his friend,
finishes his lyric by saying, “…the only one.”
Barry is confused: “The only what?” he says. “No, that’s the lyric: ‘You may say I’m a
dreamer, but I’m not the only one.’”
Barry took the lyric out of context and misinterpreted the meaning. John Lennon’s “Imagine” uplifts and
encourages peace but Barry’s interpretation was negative because he missed the
conclusion.
Unfortunately, after the demise of the Nazi regime, we still
habitually take phrases out of context and misunderstand their meanings.
Personally, I have found that many religions pick and choose passages to
support, while completely ignoring others.
Granted, it would be hard to master every passage in the Bible per say,
but some are seen as law while others are overlooked. It’s discouraging to see people condemned
while many participate in activities that are equally as forbidden without
condemnation. Though this might be a
controversial view, I believe we should look at the “big picture” given to us
by our religious texts rather than nitpick and attack individuals for their
specific “wrongs.”
I may be an idealist like Herder, but sometimes we need to
focus on the overall message rather than allowing ourselves to be confused by
individual phrases or paragraphs. We
should be ashamed that a line or two can spawn a genocide like the Holocaust;
we should be ashamed that a line or two, to this day, can cause hatred for our
brothers and sisters. It’s important to
keep our eyes open and acknowledge what the author means; they would not write the entire piece of work if they only wanted us to interpret one sentence.
I still kind of can't even wrap my head around how they could throw out all of his philosophy and just focus on that one bit. It's a bit mind blowing, but as the examples you provided show, it's something we do often enough. We love to distort the truth to make it fit our worldview. If one line out of a thousand can be used to back up our ideas we usually just run with it.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of makes me think of those people that are anti-vaccines. They have nothing but crappy sources and the words of a doctor that had his licence taken away for the damage he caused--yet there are still people out there that just will not vaccinate their kids because of this one thing they read somewhere. So not only must we try and see the author's meaning, we must also make sure that the author is a reliable. Anyone can say anything. If we can't sort crap from actual meaningful advice/ideas, we'll continue to make the same mistakes we always do
Sadly to say, I'm not surprised and it's not the first time it's happened in history where things were taken outta context and made into something completely different from where the author/creator intended. I will agree to say that it is illogical and pointless to focus on a part of something and miss the whole big picture..... And still apply that one part wrongly.... I too can see myself as an idealist like Herder and I really like his views in the reading however, it is sad to say, we can only stop people from misinterpreting texts, writings, and articles by being the intellectuals of the time to question them to filter out the bull and shed light onto those carnal troubled minds.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Derrick 100%, and as I was reading I was thinking about what Dr. J was saying in an earlier class. I feel like the only thing that can combat people misinterpreting anything is to use education. "Knowledge is power" is a phrase that's used pretty often, but I truly believe that correct knowledge can sometimes help others get the right idea of things.
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