Visiting the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp outside Berlin was eye opening for me, perhaps not for the obvious reasons. It was not — like camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek — so much focused on immediate extermination as it was on a death that came more slowly — through starvation, lack of proper medical care, torture, and overwork. The distinction might seem like hair-splitting, but I would propose that what happened in Sachsenhausen exemplified the Nazi philosophy. ‘Those who deserved to live’ had to be separated from ‘life unworthy of life.’ It is true that at Sachsenhausen some were murdered quickly and in cold blood (Soviets, for instance, where killed here immediately, much the way Jews were in other camps). But many prisoners at Sachsenhausen were not immediately killed, and the ones who survived did so because they had the fortitude to live through the often meaningless and torturous jobs that were assigned them. In this way the propaganda on the entrance gate ‘arbeit macht frei’ (work will make you free) became a nightmarish truism.
Nazis were obsessed with those that they felt did not ‘contribute’ to society. This should remind us that what makes humans humane is taking care of those who may seem to ‘contribute’ less — for instance, those who cannot, for whatever reason, take care of themselves. It should make us think of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty — ‘bring me your tired, you poor, your huddled masses.’ But it should also make us think about the distinctions that we make today — especially in the digital capitalism — between who is ‘productive’ and who is not.
The mega-corporations that dominate global capitalism consistently hire only those who will produce the most goods for the cheapest pay; and humans are gradually being replaced by machines, because machines are cheaper, faster and ultimately, more productive.
In reality, all that makes us human also makes us useless in terms of productive work — our capacity to love, to experience fear, to be inspired, and to have pity for others. Big capitalism would have us believe that modern mega-corporations like Apple and Google are interested in hiring radical thinkers and generous souls; in truth they are interested in people who ‘radically’ and ‘generously’ serve the company’s profit margin.
To think otherwise is to believe propaganda on the level of ‘arbeit macht frei.’
Oscar Wilde made much of the notion that all great art is useless. And though I do not mean to suggest that we do not need science or technology, our ability to achieve in those realms is not what separates us from what is not human. No, it is those things that cannot be quantified or qualified, it is all that can be felt, imagined and dreamed; our sensitivity, our creativity and our imagination that makes us unique and ‘worthy of life.’
As humans, we must value what is ‘useless’ about us, for it is the essence of what makes us good and beautiful.
The lesson of history lies before us.
Please believe me.
We value ‘use,’ over all else, at our peril.