Earlier this week while scouring the Netflix library, i came across a documentary about the movie industry in Romania during the 80s. .The documentary, “Chuck Norris vs Comunism”, describes how the communist government had total control over all movie distribution in the country and all non government approved movies were prohibited. Even with jurisdictional punishment for watching movies from the west, a large underground network distributed the movies.

Once scene in the documentary shows how government officials watches outside movies and cuts or bans certain scenes from the films. For example there was one western movie that showed too much food, so it was banned as to not cause envy of the west. The officials controlling the movies however justifies this easily, as to do it for a good cause. “Oh, this can’t be shown, imagine what messages it would send to our children” was the justification to cutting out a rabbit with three balloons on the color of the Romanian flag in a Soviet cartoon. It would send a message that the Soviets controlled Romania, and so it was cut. They did it because they thought it was the right thing to do, censored and manipulated the public, for they believed themselves to be right.

” I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all i get is abuse, the existence of a haunted man”. That is no ordinary man speaking, that was the words of Al Capone, Americas most notorious Public Enemy  and one of the most brutal mobster to ever roam the streets of Chicago. Yet he believed that he was a champion of the people, “helping them have a good time”. If such a successful person yet brutal murderer does not see when has done something wrong, how do the rest of us know when we have used bad judgment?

Last week i wrote about the lessons we can learn from the holocaust, and how it was committed by ordinary men, they most likely justified their cruelty in the same way as Al Capone or the Romanian government officials, it was for the good of all. Yet we can now with the luxury of the future, see that they were wrong, more than wrong, they were immense abusers of other people. We have to be careful with what we do when we believe ourself to be right, for that might not be the case, it has not been the case, historically at leas.

Dale Carnegie writes in his book ” How to win friends” that if you are right 55 times out of a hundred, all you have to do is to go to the stock exchange, and you will become a millionaire over day. Yet most of us will not become millionaires over day, for we know that we wont be right all the time. So why then should we believe that in the other parts of our life. And as he advises in his book, ” Do not condemn those you believe to be wrong, for you might be the one that does not see the truth. Admit that you may be wrong, and try to find the truth”