Oblivious

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I feel as if I grew up painfully oblivious of important cultural information.

See, I grew up in Germany. And until I was in eight grade, 14 years old, I had never heard of the words KZ, Hitler or WWII before. I was just... I should have picked them up in elementary school already, in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade - but I just never did. I can remember now, all that talk about war, but at the time I just didn't 'get it', not a word.

But I did knew about sex and death when I was about 3 or 4 already and no, nobody has ever told me, I just figured it out. When my mother wanted to be alone with her friend - oh, I knew that as a kindergartener already - and when my grandpa died when I just turned 7, I wasn't allowed to go to class because I'd describe to about anybody how my grandpa's body would get eaten by worms far underneath the earth soon, how I wondered whether a coffin should be good-looking... but I wasn't allowed to go to his funeral. Family said I'd probably get even more disturbed.

(I could tell of many examples, but none as shocking and important to adult life.)

I'm 19 now, I picked up many cultural meaning of everyday words, I learn quickly, but I still get into trouble for being a complete oblivious dork sometimes who seems to have spent the first ten years somewhere off earth.

Well. I do get asked what country I am from a lot, people ask if I grew up somewhere isolated.
I usually just nod and say, well, I didn't have any real contact like talking to children until I was a teen, which is thankfully not at all a lie.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who grew up like that and who still fights with the after effects of missing cultural education!

parents of any culture spend a lot of time 'protecting' their children from 'bad things'. I'm surprised about the history bit , but it would be hard to explain some of these things to someone of tender age. I don't think it's isolated, so don't be too upset, but it does seem a little more of an effort than most.

your not the only one. cultural things are a by product of MASS amounts of people comming together. as time goes on this is a big problem, and its only going to get worse, might i sugjest removing your holy self away from culture? do your own thing

Sora,

I STILL remember when I was 7 or 9 and I got yelled at for drawing swastikas on a paper glider. I don't even know why I did, but I didn't know why she would be so upset.

I knew about sex, but didn't even think about homosexuals being a possibility.

You know, the idea of germans probably bring three types of memories:

1. The idea of prompt, strict, clean, reserved. That has been a stereotype for a VERY long time.
2. The idea of fun loving, lederhosen clad dancers, like oktoberfest and baveria(bayern).
3. Evil, dictatorship enemy, NAZIs and hitler. Did you know MOST think NAZIs were JUST to be against the jews, and SOME even think NAZI has to do with Christianity!?

After WWII though, the germans agreed to keep the military small, and provide for LOCAL defense.

Frankly, it is NICE you can forget about that 3rd part. I imagine that, like the KKK here, the NAZIs originally were mostly those that were fairly lowly skilled. It is nfortunate that people can't be altruistic overall. If they WERE, communism and NAZIsm would have been able to live up to the original press and would have been spared all the other garbage. I think the KKK STARTED as a way to attack non whites, but THAT often happened for the same reason that NAZIsm originally attacked the jews.

BTW, to those that don't know, NAZI=NAtional soZIalismus or National Socialism.

Yes, I too was/am a complete cultural idiot. I am 26 now and like to think that I have mostly caught up with the world around me but every once in a while I discover a major fact or concept that I had no idea existed but everyone else seems to know about. Of course it didn't help that I grew up without a television.

Germany seems to have spent a lot of effort trying to run away from its past.

I've come to realize that the whole Hitler thing was going to happen, it was just a matter of time and the world was going that way anyway. It's unfortunate that it happened in Germany, but it would have happened somewhere else otherwise.

I'd like to think that we've all learned, but although we've improved, humanity seems to be making the same mistakes over and over again.

You needn't feel bad about your lack of knowledge - particularly since your whole country was trying to forget.

Also: As an aspie, if it's not your special interest, then you may not have taken much notice of things. We're very focussed.. That's probably why we seem ignorant of a lot of current affairs things.

There is alot of cultural stuff that passed me by, even though my parents are pretty cultured and liberal and like alot the same kind of stuff I like.

most examples I can point to have to do with pop culture...I have had to scramble to catch up to my peers or else just try and fake my knowledge....it was more obvious how far behind I was when I was younger....when I though Pink Floyd was a person....

I absorbed enough public television documentaries to understand the various key points in history....but having few peers and limited exposure...yeah...the pop culture thing...I am still way behind in many aspects...

@Sora, *raises hand* same here, Even though I learned about the holocaust at an appropriate time, I fell into other traps, especially since I thought metaphorical terms, which I didn't understand were meaningless. I learned what 'zu kurz kommen' means at the age of 14 and my parents constantly used it.

I have the same problem but not with information, I have this problem with rules of so-called "appropriate" social interaction. It's as if I'd been raised in isolation, which is not the case. While others learnt the rules as babies I am discovering them in my forties. I spent a life of obliviousness, never had any clue that there are ways you're supposed to behave with people, rather than spontaneous, honest (nice) relating being ok. Now that I know better, I look back at the millions of social blunders I made without noticing during my life, and cringe.

I have noticed that, but what to do? In my pre teen years, not much existed outside. Complaints, people showing anger, I hung out with the dogs.

They all spoke in code, still do, and I was supposed to guess the secret meaning.

Sorry if I am still shocking, but most of European history has been about trade, colonies, raw materials, slavery, genocide, for hundreds of years, and the good of WWII is it broke the system of looting the rest of the planet, for superior Europeans, or State Pirates, as the rest of the world sees them.

Hanging all that on Hitler as an excuse is laughable.

I feel no shame in not buying into the lie. Europeans murdered almost everyone in North America, because they wanted to steal the land, so they could kidnap Africans and put them in a life of endless slavery.

It always is expressed as religion, God's Pirates, and the rights of pale skin. Recent events are but a drop in the bucket.

Blaming the last generation does not address the rest of the world, who has thrown you out of the Far East, India, Africa, recently, after hundreds of years of being made slaves in their own lands. It does not deal with the few survivors in North America who were held as hostiles without rights till 1974.

Millions of Africans are still being held in North America, marginlized, exploited, and without legal rights in White Courts, no matter what the law says. One out of ten Black males is behind bars, a European tradition.

What you are running into is Cultural Guilt. The guilty make up stories, they all agree, it was someone else's fault, God has forgiven you. The rest of the world, and History, will not.

Where are the villages of my people? Why does the laughter of the children not fill the air? Why are they dead, and another people from afar robbing their graves?

Europeans.

Well, I still don't know what "KZ" is, at first I thought you meant the lubricant, but that is KY.

This happens to me all the time, someone will allude to a certain thing and I will ask what they mean, and everyone is shocked that I don't know about it already. Then everyone starts saying the whole "You're so smart, but you're so stupid sometimes" thing, which annoys me.

The yugoslavians put germans in concentration camps during WWII. Their criteria of "german" was anyone who said they were german or said they spoke german on the last census. That included many people whose families had been living outside of germany for over 200 years

Prior to the germans being placed in concentration camps, the german ethnicity made up less than 4% of the population, but produced enough food to feed the entire Yugoslavian nation. Yugoslavia repaid them for their prosperity by starving them to death

But Inventor, do you really believe the western world has stopped looting the rest of the planet? What proportion of goods are made in China, how much of our food comes from abroad? We even pay people in India to annoy us. The reason slavery ended is not moral outrage but simply that slavery is an inefficient method of abuse. Workers receive less than slaves and have the advantage of being entirely disposable.

Inventor and rack have VERY good points. Hitler did NOT start WWII! It was not REALLY about the jews! It isn't even REALLY over.

Heck, look at the history/purpose/sayings about Krystalnacht, look at early talks about the Jews in NAZI germany, certain battle cries like "Germany for Germans", or even the name NAZI! The Jewish people tended to have shops, be doctors, lawyers, bankers, etc... they tended to not be poor.

Prior to WWII there was a massive world wide economy, and DEPRESSION! The jews were originally looked at simply as foreigners taking German jobs. All the evidence is there if people open their eyes. Heck, if it was about simply attacking the Jews, Krystalnacht would have been more direct.

TODAY, inflation is STILL raising its ugly head. In fact, in revelation 6, it says the a voice after the third seal says "A quart[a] of wheat for a day's wages,[b] and three quarts of barley for a day's wages,[c] and do not damage the oil and the wine!" In other words, INFLATION!

WOW. The things I take for granted. I was fortunate enough be raised in a very culturally diverse area. My parents also educated me on many things. We also went on may vacations when I was a child.

I was born in the Philippines, then we moved to Australia, California, NYC, and eventually to Maryland. I also lived in Washington D.C. several times, but still go to hit the museums about every weekend.

The museums have always been such a great experience for me. Everything from Natural History, to African Art, to the Holocaust Museum (I left in tears).

I remember when I went to visit Colorado. It was beautiful, but there was no ethnic diversity (as compared with D.C.). Just be happy you have the choice to educate yourself as much as possible regarding the vast amount of culture that is available to you. Libraries and travel are 2 very wonderful things.