Holocaust
and Aviation
Aviation
in Nazi Germany as Major Cause for the Holocaust
Poetic
and Healing Research
Part I
– Chapter 1
Gaston
Bachelard and his book Air and Dreams
Author: Avinoam Amizan
Main
Like any previous transportation
revolution, from the wheel up to the steamer, Aviation gave its masters the
tools for world conquest. But unlike land and sea which are the cradles of
human activity, Air is a completely new field of activity. Humanity lacks the
cultural background to connect the imaginary vision of flight, central for
mental development, to practical aviation activity. The dialectic between
flight and airplane is vague and destructive. Problematic relationship between
aviation and flight were prominent in the case of Nazi efforts to become world
rulers while accelerating aviation development with Racialism.
Content
Famous French philosopher Gaston Bachelard
[1884-1962] specialized in the role of imagination. His concept of ‘Dynamic
Imagination’ is valuable to anyone interested in developing creative abilities.
According to Bachelard, Imagination
is created by any movement. Human will is to integrate with that movement.
Thought is the search for way how to do it in practice. Philosopher who wishes
to understand mankind must concentrate on learning the poets.
Bachelard described the benefits for
the imagination as a result of being united with a one of the four material
elements. These elements are good conductors of all that is real and provide
continuity to the imaginative mind. World of phenomena
present in these way primary examples of change and movement. ‘Poetic
End’ is a precursor to the practical end needed by the organism.
In his book "Air and Dreams",
published in 1942, Bachelard describes the psychological concepts of flying
experience.
Any element
which the imagination practice is capable of producing special sublimation,
purification and clarification. Aerial sublimation is of
the purest type. It is carried on with a light dialectical clarification.
It looks as the flying creature moves
beyond the actual atmosphere in which it is flying. There's always room to rise
further and the Absolute is the final stage of the consciousness of freedom
created in this way. The adjective linked most to the noun ‘Air’ is ‘Free’!
Natural air is free air.
The aerial phenomena are the most
obvious and regular. They give us guidelines to very important psychological
feelings: standing up, growth, climbing, flying and purification. These
feelings are the basic principles of Developmental Psychology that can be
called ‘Flight Psychology’.
In the heart of every psychological
phenomenon there is a real sense of verticality. This verticality is not empty
rhetoric. It is a principle of order, scale over which a person can experience
various degrees of emotions. Mental life, all delicate and subtle feelings,
hopes and fears, moral forces involved in our future, have vertical
differential, in the full geometrical meaning of the word. Especially notable
are the images and thoughts associated with the fundamental values of the soul:
freedom, joy, lightness, sublimation.
Elevation, depth, decline, fall,
etc., are axiomatic metaphors par excellence. Nothing explains them and they
explain everything. In simple language, if a person wishes to live them, feel
them, and above all combine them with real life, he realizes their primary
quality and naturalness. It is impossible to express moral values without
reference to the vertical axis. Every nerve in the body is a vertical
transmitter. The imaginary air is a mental growth hormone for mankind.
If we want to really know how things
evolve, the first thing to do is to determine the extent of which they make us
heavier or lighter. The positive or negative vertical differential indicates
well their impact and purpose for the mind.
First principle of the ‘Ascending
Imagination’ is: of all metaphors, the vertical metaphors, such as light,
height, elevation, depth, decline, fall, are consensus metaphors above all
else. Nothing explains them and they explain everything. More simply, if a
person wants to live, feel and above all compare them, he realizes that they
have primary quality and are more natural than all others. They are the best
expressions of almighty Gravity. Man has to learn to weight them in order to
know their value for him.
Although this intangible aerial metaphor
concerns us more than substantial metaphors, our language is not adapted to
them specifically. Language is conditioned by forms and cannot easily make the
picturesque images of dynamic height.
Nevertheless, these images have
extraordinary power. They control the dialectic of enthusiasm and despair.
Vertical boldness is so vital and clear. Its superiority can not be disputed.
The mind can not turn away from it after recognizing its immediate and direct
meaning. It is unable to express moral values without regard to
vertical axis. After studying the physics of poetry and physics of ethics we
believe that any courage is vertical.
Individual images are the effective
way to define vertical orientation. The focus on individual expressions allows
us to experience a unique tonal quality of the aerial hopes, hopes that are not
disappointing us because they are not heavy. These hopes are associated with
words of hope, words of the inner immediate future which let us discover new
ideas, exciting and fresh, original ideas that are our new treasure.
Aerial imagination imagery evaporates
or freezes quickly. We therefore always capture them between constantly active
two poles.
The words 'wing' and 'cloud' provide
evidence for the bi-polar quality within a single aerial image. They may be a
mirror or an illusion, a drawing or a dream. They carry the ambivalence of grim
reality or soft imaginary. They are metaphors before being analyzed as nouns
and adjectives. But only for a short moment we capture their exact meaning for
us. We trust these poetic images which are too non-physical, but do it
willingly.
Aerial imagery impact the entire
entity. After we got very high and far we certainly find ourselves in a state
of open imagination. Images of freedom present a problem if their various
stages are not tested one by one. Same difficulty exists with truths delivered
in open and liberating air. In the Infinite Air dimensions are deleted and we
come into contact with non-dimension material that gives us a sense of total
internal purification. We are in a state of repose and movement at the same
time.
After we arrived by air so far and
high the mind is carried away out of control as by drug. Eager to try the upper
air reality, the imagination will double any impression by adding any new
available image to it. In its new different form, the mind express a resemblance
between ambiguous contradictory images, which blur the colors of good and evil
and violate the most stable laws governing the values of
humanity. The end result of this yearning may be ambivalent moral significance.
There is, naturally, the journey
down. Fall, even before moral metaphors intervene, is constant psychic reality.
But the images of dynamic falling are few and poor, in contrast to the numerous
images of ascension. Psychological downfall is simple, negative, short, scary,
meaningless, isolated, nothing, emptiness. It has poetic and moral value only
when it is connected to the positive dynamic verticality which is clear and rich
in images and contributes to rising up.
Mental slope is constantly changing.
If the slope increases, the person straightens up. Paths to greatness are
created among us in this task. Everything in the mind is a path. Each path
encourages us to soar.
Indeed things are growing. The way of
energies, in imagination and reality, is to expand too much. Will is always a
wish for power that does not exist at the present. Superman, who arrived by air
so far and high, has no equal rivals. He is sentenced, without being able to go
back, to existence full of pride in the legendary pantheon of heroes, even
though he may never admit it, even to himself.
Folklore fits well with the images of
flight. Great images hidden inside legends suddenly get wings, blooming with new
meanings. Allegedly meaningless, they have psychological benefits after being analyzed.
The German tales became a catalyst in
the development of German nationalism in the 19th century. German soul absorbed
and implemented them as an ideology that attributes special qualities to this
nation at the expense of ethics.
Airplanes at the beginning of the
20th century, the early era of aviation, were too appealing to be simply
integrated into the hierarchy of human needs only.
In addition to the innovation of technological
power tool, the airplane is very similar to a man spanning his arms and
therefore it can be easily be personified. The plane is a ‘Medium Became
Message’, like all the basic, primordial, iconic aerial metaphors which Bachelard
described.
Aerial Consciousness is a term
meaning the use of the general public interest regarding aviation to the
purpose of creating a complete world view.
In the first half of the twentieth
century various thinkers and ideologies combined the airplane with the Ascent
Psychology, in several countries seeking a modern definition, leading to the
establishment of a Dictatorship of the Air.
Aerial Consciousness shaped the
political stage and life of Nazi dictatorship.
Holocaust and Aviation is personal and independent research
English version is summary of the full book which is available
in Hebrew online.
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