(The title is probably an incisive summary of a film review by Lian Yue, but unfortunately the original text cannot be found.)
Movie: Die Welle
Country/region of production: Germany?
Release date: 2008-03-13 (Germany)
The film restores such a real event in a more dramatic way:
p>One day in April 1967, in a history class at a high school in California, the course was studying Nazi Germany. Teacher Ron Jones's lecture was interrupted by a student's question: "Why do the Germans claim that they do not know anything about the massacre of Jews? Why do citizens, railway conductors, teachers, and doctors all claim that they do not know anything about concentration camps and people?" "The fact of the genocide? Why do some people who are neighbors or even friends of the Jews say they were not present when these things happened?" Ron Jones didn't know how to answer.
He was thoughtful and suddenly made a decision to conduct a bold experiment with his classmates. It was not the Milgram experiment mentioned at the beginning of the article, but: rebuilding micro-Nazis!
In the following time, Ron Jones mingled with the students, but as a "leader", he set strict rules - such as doing fixed things at fixed times, fixed seats and sitting postures, etc. . and constantly instilled discipline and team spirit in his class. Develop a unified hand gesture with the name of the organization "Third Wave" to distinguish it from those who are not members of the organization. Repeating the slogan "Unity creates strength", we constantly "walk" for students and emphasize the importance of "action".
In just three days, the number of members began to increase. And students really started to "act" - more and more people began to "report" their friends or relatives just because the latter questioned the "third wave." A classmate named Robert even began to volunteer to accompany Jones as his personal bodyguard.
"Things quickly got out of control," a student at the time recalled years later.
Every participant, including Jones himself, oscillates between role-playing and controlled behavior, gradually becoming unbalanced. On the fifth day, Jones decided to terminate the experiment. Fortunately, the ending in the real story is not as funny and bloody as in the movie.
After the incident, everyone involved was unwilling to admit that they had been manipulated so easily and never mentioned the entire incident. Just like the Germans after World War II, no one wanted to look back, so that this profound tragedy was gradually forgotten as if it had nothing to do with others.
When a person is not very clear about what he wants, where his goal is, and his self-awareness is weak, he is easily taken advantage of by people like Jones. He secretly exchanges his personal intentions for collective interests; takes advantage of people's laziness to make everyone give up thinking; uses uniformity to erase personal characteristics... and then uses exclusion to consolidate power - if you are different from the collective, then You are selfish - and a new Nazi is born.
In the video, student Marco said: "The Wave means a lot to me. Because of the sense of belonging. ... You also know that you have a complete family. But I don't." ("The Wave" is the name in the movie Organization name)
People want to be unique, but they also crave homogeneity and belonging (so being unique has become the most popular homogeneity), because being different from others always requires something. Bitter.
What is a sense of belonging? It can look like a home, an organization, a goal, a word, or even a person. Because belonging can be anything when you're looking for it.
As for the end point of belonging, I think it is self-awareness with a stable core.
As we grow and find our true selves, please protect yourself vigilantly.
Because the "wave" will come back at any time.