Ranting

I was initially planning to write a lovely, interesting post about philosophies of the nature of time, but no, this "wonderful" man/woman who graded my practice SAT essay I wrote last week at my summer school had to ruin my plans.

(I'm just going to assume the grader is a man for convenience.)

I have a feeling that my paper was probably at the bottom of the pile, so by the time he got to my essay he was getting a little cranky. All the marks he made on my paper were not essay structural criticisms, but rather criticisms resulting from misunderstanding, and ultimately at the end, a blunt accusation. I usually let these things go, only because I know my brain is an empty shell whenever I do these timed essays so I almost always make no sense, but this time, I friggin' knew what I was talking about, which is why I feel so bothered about his comments.

The topic was about the value of contrast and opposites. Is contrast valuable to society/humanity? I said yes, and used two examples: the Holocaust and the LGBT rights movement. I was most bothered by his criticism for my Holocaust example, so I'll only be talking about that one here.

Before I get to the example though, I want to talk a little bit about a comment the grader made on my thesis. My thesis was about how good and bad must coexist in the world in order to create a realistic and balanced society.


He wrote, "So... people shouldn't fight the bad, just let it exist?" Okay, that comment was just really shallow... I'm not sure if he meant that in a contemplating manner or an accusing manner, but whatever he means, no, Mr. Grader sir, that is not what I meant. Good and bad are antonyms, if you didn't know that. Likewise, good and bad are natural adversaries. Even little children know that, since society advocates it in almost every stinkin' Hollywood film. The good and bad exist to counter each other. HOW else would these two exist? These two exist because they want to prove to people that the other is wrong.

Now, this is the comment he made on my Holocaust example. "To say the world needed the horror of Hitler and the Holocaust in order to understand anti-Semitism is a misguided argument."

Woah. Woah woah woah woah. Hold on there. This man, COMPLETELY, misunderstood the reason why I used the Holocaust as an example. When the FUCK did I say the world needed it?

I never said the world needed the Holocaust.

Let me put my argument simply. We all know that anti-Semitism has been around for a very long time. Ancient times, even. However, the Holocaust of the 1940's served as a REMINDER to everyone that extreme anti-Semitism still exists in the modern world. How the fuck did a dude like Adolf Hitler, a mere man who got rejected from an ART SCHOOL, manage to kill 6 million Jews in less than half a decade? More importantly, people were thinking, how the fuck was it even POSSIBLE in the first place for something like this genocide to happen in the twentieth century? We're supposed to be modern, perfect human beings! These things were supposed to be diminished a long time ago! Well, no, my dears. Adolf Hitler proved that to be very wrong.

Everyone understood anti-Semitism, Mr. Grader. Most of anyone who is a Christian knows about that stuff. I'm not even Christian, and even I know that. But, face it, my good sir, if the Holocaust never happened, anti-Semitism would have been a topic that would be pushed aside. If the Holocaust never happened, would there have ever been any boundaries or prevention of any anti-Semitic act? No. So, even if the Holocaust never happened in 1941-1945, a Holocaust would have probably happened in the future anyway, because of demented people like Adolf Hitler still existing. AND, let me point out, why did Hitler do such a thing? Along with power hungriness, it was ACCUMULATION. An accumulation of hatred (of the world and the Jews) and extreme ideals. If that accumulation kept accumulating, it would ultimately still result in a Holocaust-like situation. An already shaken soda can will explode eventually, no matter how much it is suppressed.

Because of the Holocaust, because of this devastation that made a permanent mark on history, we ALL will remember about anti-Semitism. Not understand; we've understood long ago. But we REMEMBER. It's in our history books forever. It's an everlasting slap on the face of humanity.

I'm not saying that the Holocaust was a good thing. I'm not being an optimist by saying that the Holocaust "happened for a reason." Hell to the fucking no. However, I'm not denying the fact that the Holocaust HAPPENED. It did happen. Six million Jews suffered and were killed under terrifying, gruesome conditions. It was a horrible period in history, and it happened. But did it do good things to the world? In a way, yes. It did not do good in terms of statistics. It did not do good in terms of human morale. However, it did do good in terms of people learning from these acts. We've become aware of the extremes of the extremists, and essentially, we've learned to prevent another Holocaust.

Hell, if you don't think that's a good thing, I don't know what to say to you.

(Even Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust known for his autobiography Night, even HE said in that interview with Oprah Winfrey that the Holocaust serves as a reminder to the world of what happened, and as a lesson to be learned from.)

I didn't say we needed the Holocaust, Mr. Grader. It was given to us. A "lovely" gift from Adolf Hitler. I'm only taking the Holocaust as something that has concretely happened to make a point about how it changed the world for the better. For fixing and preventing future mistakes. A wake up call. And this is why bad needs to coexist with good. Without the bad, we can never screw up, we can never improve, and we can never progress.

This grader totally took my example to a more complex level than I had intended to take it. I made it clear in my paragraph that I was using the Holocaust as if it were a concrete object that HAPPENED in history. I made NO hypothetical statements, and I never used nor implied the word NEED. Yet he still completely misunderstood, pushed his way through all my words, and made his own accusations about my writing, about something that wasn't even there in the paragraph.

I'm sorry for ranting, and I apologize to the guy/girl who graded my paper. I'm probably a little harsh, considering how he/she only had 3 minutes or so with this. But, I'm just gonna say this bluntly: I felt reaaally offended. For that grader to say that my argument is misguided... I'm afraid the grader misguided himself with my words.

(But no, I really did want to wring this person's neck, no joke.)