Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society- Part 6

How one man could authorize genocide

When people ask, “How could Adolf Hitler do this?” the uncomfortable truth is: he didn’t do it alone, and he didn’t do it all at once.

The genocide of Jewish people during the Holocaust emerged through a system, not a single order shouted one day.

Key psychological mechanisms at play

1. Authoritarianism
Authoritarian systems condition people to:

• Obey authority as a moral duty

• Stop questioning once obedience becomes normalized

• Transfer responsibility upward (“I was just following orders”)

This is well-documented in psychology (e.g., Milgram’s obedience studies).

Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society- Pat 5

Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society- Part 4

Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society- Part 3

Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society - Part 2

Cause, Effect, and the Future of Society - Part 1

This is part of a series of reflections on how individual behavior, collective response, and governing systems influence one another—and how these relationships quietly shape the direction of society over time.

Some moments do not move through society and disappear. They settle. They alter how people feel inside their bodies and how they relate to the systems around them.

The killing of Renee Nicole Good is one of those moments—not because it was shocking, but because it was recognizable. When people see themselves in a loss, trust shifts in ways that are difficult to measure but impossible to ignore.

History shows that when recognition replaces distance, societies begin to reorganize quietly—not through revolt, but through withdrawal, re-evaluation, and a return to smaller, more human sources of meaning.

This reflection looks at that pattern, and what it tells us about how people reorganize when systems no longer feel human.