Post by graciefettig on Oct 24, 2014 1:11:16 GMT
We are 100% products of our environment because of the daily surroundings we encounter. If we happen to grow up in a small town such as Holcomb, Kansas, or Fort Thomas, Kentucky, where everyone is close, our environment immediately becomes a much more welcoming place. Such daily surroundings being the people we encounter, and the public places we are in. I think it is pretty standard to say that generally if people have respect toward us, we should return the favor and shed some respect on them. Even though we should always respect others, we all know we show disrespect, more often than not, both directly and indirectly, to those who disrespect us. The story of a Jewish man by the name of Viktor Frankl sheds light on this topic in a very clear way. Long story short, Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was placed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. In the concentration camp, Frankl was able to use his prior knowledge to observe that being in such as environment, people were transforming in a way where they became raw, or real. People were able to identify others as decent and indecent very easily in this evidently horrid environment where you knew, or could assume, you were going to die. The change of the Jews environment in this situation shows that in their hometowns, they could have masked their true identity, where as in this unclean and plainly atrocious atmosphere, you were forced to shed light on your true identity. The environment held the power not to transform, but unveil peoples souls.