Is it Ever Possible to Identify the Sole Cause of an Avalanche?

Who is responsible for the great mistakes of the past, and who should compensate for them?
For example, in the Holocaust, who was responsible for the mass genocides? Was it Hitler or his loyal Nazis? Or was it those who simply stood by and did nothing? Hitler himself didn't kill the Jews, he simply placed the order for the deed to be done. The Nazis followed the orders they were given and the civilians watched on. So who is truly responsible for what happened? And how do we prevent this from happening again?

Think of it this way, there are campers camping out in the snowy mountains, minding their own business. Hitler is a mountain climber that serves as a tour guide on the mountains. He doesn't like the Jews on the mountainside for whatever reason and tells the tourists that there's a game that the natives play on the mountain, one where the people at the top create avalanches on the mountains to see if the campers can get out of the way fast enough. The tourists play the game without thinking of the consequences of the avalanches to the campers and continue to play the "game" because Hitler assures them that it's okay.

Soon, Hitler runs out of his first set of campers for his games so he turns to the surrounding area of the mountains and lures in more campers to camp on his mountains. And starts his games again. The people that don't camp are safe from Hitler for the most part, so they don't bother trying to help the campers even when they hear the stories of the "games." Many campers try to avoid the "game" by posing as non-campers by burning their camping equipment and any other evidence of their camping, but often are caught and brought to the "game" anyway.

The tourists don't see any real consequences of their "game" and the non-campers lie low to avoid the "game" themselves. So who is responsible for the consequences of the games, Hitler, the tourists, the non-campers, or the campers themselves? How do we "say the unsayable" without forgetting the effect of the "game" on all campers till the end of time?

The Gray Mist of Self-Centralization

High school has become a daily routine, not just for me, but for most students at school. It’s always the same hassle to wake up the morning after staying up to to study for a test or doing mechanical homework. Then comes our daily morning routine. And close to follow it is commute. And when we finally get to school, the spare minutes are more studying or comparing answers for a worksheet we all guessed miserably on. When the first bell sounds, we move like zombies to our first hours, trying to wake our miserable brains up so that we can somehow make it through the day. The bell dismi- the teacher dismisses us every hour, saved by the bell is no longer an excuse. That passing time is spent asking first hour AP Chem students or AP English students how the test or essay was, and how much studying was required to pass it. By the time the third hour dismissal bell rings, our stomachs are growling, angry at us for keeping them empty for so long. And as the A Lunch stomachs march off habitually, the C Lunch stomachs are left to glare in jealousy.
Fourth and fifth hour usually pass without unusual occurrences besides the usual tests or quizzes, and sixth hour grudgingly approaches. As we walk into class that hour, the school seems to mock us, smirking at our mildly optimistic faces as the end of the school day approaches. But it does so with good reason, for it knows of our after-school clubs, or our sports practices, or extracurriculars outside of school. It knows that we won’t rest for a while. 
When we finally get home at five or six, sometimes seven or eight PM, our couches and beds beckon us, whispering, “A little nap won’t hurt.” Then we see our desks, still piled from the homework we pushed back the day earlier, and we elapse into our mechanical zombie modes again, to attempt to finish our duties as students, and push any hopes of getting the recommended amount of sleep out of our heads. 

A few days ago, when I read the speech “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, I was somewhat taken back when I read that “[the] graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what ‘day in, day out’ really means.” However, this speech was given in 2005, and I think we can all agree that much has changed since then. So much, that the “day in, day out” that once belonged solely to adults has become the students’ as well. In today’s day and time, it has become much more important for us to keep in mind that we have to stay “conscious” of the fact that we aren’t the only zombie-brains, that our unfortunate peers and teachers often share the same fate. 

Is Hiding the Truth a Black Lie or a White Lie?

The innocence of every little one, of every child, how important is it? Should we tell them that Santa is fictional? Should we even create Santa for children? What about the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny? Are they black lies, even if they're meant well? Do our intents outweigh our actions? And up to what extent? In the case of Santa, many would argue that our intents indeed outweigh our white lies because of the great joy that comes to kids in the form of Santa. But how do know when we go too far? In "The History Teacher" by Billy Collins, the teacher in the poem "teaches" the students about the world's history. "Trying to protect his students' innocence," he turns the Spanish Inquisition into a mere series of questions, changes the location of the War of Roses to a garden, and converts the Enola Gay into "one tiny atom" that was dropped on Japan. After his lesson, the students leave the classroom to "torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses." As this happens, the teacher walks home "past flower beds and white picket fences" thinking up new stories for the next day.

The teacher believes that he's doing the right thing to keep the children "protected" by tweaking history. He wants the students to see the world as perfect, where everyone lives in harmony. However, the children themselves don't live in harmony with each other and harass each other on the playground. The children themselves are not as innocent as the teacher believes them to be. When the author writes about the kids tormenting each other, he implies that the the tormenting occurs every day, indicating that the teacher either knows this is happening and ignores it or lives so deeply in his own perception of the world that he doesn't see the tormenting at all. Therefore, while the teacher's intent is seems to be appropriate, the sheltering provides no benefits, and actually harms the children, since the students are led to think that fighting with each other has no real consequences.

The Black and White of Slavery

Many issues in the world today can't be looked at from a black and white standard. Hardly anything we see now is either clearly wrong or clearly right. Yet, when we look back in the past, we see things that may have looked gray to people in their time, but are undoubtedly black and white now. One such example is slavery. Before the Civil War, slavery was legal and commonly used. The people that found slavery innocent were often people who'd always seen slavery as a part of their daily lives and had never come to questioning its morality. They'd always been taught that the right way to treat slaves was to physically hurt them in order to keep them in line. They were never taught any other way and believed that this was right. This often caused the slaves to lose their status as human over generations and gained the "status" of slaves.

For Frederick Douglass in 1852, slavery was a black and white issue. There was no arguing that slavery was acceptable. In his speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Douglass addresses a white crowd and asks, "Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong." He describes to the crowd the beating, hunting, and flaying of flesh that the slaves have to endure. His speech clarifies and removes any grayness that there may have been on the subject for his audience and leaves no room for uncertainties. Throughout his speech, he refers to the slaves as human, and says that they cannot be viewed as anything else for they are capable human beings in every way possible.