"From Cruelty to Goodness" Summary and Reflection

   Philip Hallie's article From Cruelty to Goodness explains his studies when it comes to the ethical differences in society. He defines cruelty as the opposing force while goodness is the rescue in which society is looking for. Hallie gives an historical example of each, and also gives a demonstration of how they contribute to society. He explains how he doesn't affiliate with the terms "good and evil", and instead prefers cruelty and goodness. He also goes into detail on how the Ten Commandments, one of civilizations most well known rules, is mainly concerned with stopping the cruelty of the world. When discussing cruelty, Hallie states that he believes cruelty is more likely to be an emotional attack more than a physical one. An example of how this is true in history is how the Nazi's would make the Jews feel inferior with their words and their actions so that when they finally began their extermination, the Jews would believe that this is justified. The main point of the article seems to be that although cruelty exists in many forms and it exists in history and the present, the only way for us as a society to move forward is to fight off cruelty with Goodness and kindness towards each other and to the people involved in situations of cruelty.
   I agree with Hallie in the fact that Cruelty can be defeated with Goodness and by being kind to each other, but I also believe there is a lot more to the situation than what Hallie explains. Society and history cannot be split in half by the words cruelty and goodness because there is so much more to us. Sadness is also a very important emotion, feeling, and can be very important to the history of society, especially with something such as the Holocaust. In my opinion, the Holocaust is usually studied through the sadness lens of learning rather than the Cruelty side. In this class, I understand that we will see the Holocaust as a viewpoint of cruelty and that should be very interesting to study.