FIELD TRIP: MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE

Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 01:38:05

so i finally had the chance to visit the museum of tolerance today. the trip itself took about a little over an hour due to traffic, and the museum was farther than i thought it would be. got there and went through all kinds of security inspection, including the metal detector gate that wouldn't stop beeping even after i took off everything i had with me that was metal. the security guard looked at me suspiciously, but since i was wearing a hawaiian shirt, shorts, beach sandals, with backpack on, sunglasses, and a cap, he probably thought i was just a mere tourist. so in the end he decided to let me go even though the metal detector kept going off on me. i was tempted to say "sorry, i had a terrible accident a couple years back and had to have it replaced with a metal one," leaving the "it" part open to his interpretation, but he doesn't seem like a guy who would take a joke, so i kept that thought to myself since i didn't want any unpleasantness.

i purposely did not read anyone else's field trip report, since i thought that would have spoiled everything, so i went there not knowing what to expect. apparently we had to go through a little orientation before going on a self-guided tour, and a tall guy with a tie told me the next orientation will start in ten minutes and asked me to wait. as i have expected, it took them over ten minutes to get prepared; turns out the total time waiting was about twenty-five minutes, but we eventually got to go. went downstairs through a circular, downward-sloping walkway with a lady who then told us about how the museum is divided into two parts: the tolerance, and the holocaust. she said the tolerance section will probably take only 20 minutes, while the holocaust section, which she repeatedly said will be "guided by lights and sounds," will take about 65 minutes. there were approximately 20 people in the group that went downstairs with me, and most of them went straight to the holocaust section, while me and three other people went to the tolerance section, following the lady.

first we get to see a video on a bigscreen TV about how "words" can cause different things, varying from one extreme to the other. the video has a message from osama bin laden that says something like "calling all muslim to kill the american people and plunder their money," and a quote from someone i can't remember saying in sarcasm something along the lines of, "how can muslim not be the right religion? it's founded by mohammed, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives." these were supposed to be sad and whatnot, but i thought the quotes were pretty funny. it's funny how people can say many different things, sometimes even without proofs, and THERE ARE STILL people who would believe and hold it true deep inside their hearts. this first video reminded me of the doonesbury strip in LA times this morning:



i hope i don't offend anyone if i find this whole thing in the museum quite funny; it's not that i don't take these things seriously, i do. it's just my nature to look for the funny side in things, that way i get to take the depression away and make someone smile. however, when i go by myself, the only person around that i can amuse is myself.

then not far from the video about "words" that kept repeating itself over and over, there's a small auditorium, set up like cafetarias back in the 50s or 60s. people walked in there and watched this slideshow of people and text about hate crime. after the slideshow, people are given a chance to pick up a phone in front of them and ask questions. of course, there's no one on the other side of the line but machine recording, but people do it anyway. mine was broken so i don't get to hear what the answers to the questions were. what was interesting about this section was when everyone in the audience was asked to vote on some issues. 1 being totally agree and 5 being totally disagree. a question popped out that asked something like, "hate speech should be a part of the protected speech." now, i counted and there were 17 people in the audience, not including me because mine was broken and i couldn't vote. when the result of the instant voting came out, 13% of the people voted for 1, which means they AGREED that hate speech should be protected. 13%. that means either 2 or 3 people, given that all 17 people voted. i was quite surprised that there are still people who would allow hate speech. it's either that these people just don't get the whole point of simon wiesenthal building this museum, or they're just messing around. either way, i still think it was quite amusing to see 13% of the audience would OK hate speech. i bet everyone else in the audience was thinking of the same thing.

nothing else in the tolerance section seemed interesting to me. there was this big room that said something like "millenium machine" in the front, but i walked in there and nothing was working, so i left. there was a video, footage from a news channel about LA riot in 1992, but that was just that, nothing interesting. one thing i did find interesting though, was a quote from simon wiesenthal, printed in huge letters on the wall: "freedom is not a gift from heaven. one must fight for it everyday." true, but brought to my mind this: WHO do we fight in order to gain freedom? people who oppress? but why do they oppress us? can't be just because they feel like it. then this crossed my mind: these people, who oppressed us, they want freedom also, and for that, they oppress. oppression is THEIR way to fight for THEIR freedom. but ironically, WE ALSO GAIN OUR FREEDOM FROM OPPRESSING PEOPLE. don't believe me? let's see. we now think that america is a free country, a melting pot. sure. but how does america gets to be a free country? let's recap. columbus got lost looking for india and accidentally landed on this huge land with a bunch of natives living in it. columbus thought it was india, so he called the natives "indian" when they're actually native americans. these natives know nothing about the foreigners, and even if they had intention to harm the foreigners, it's because these foreigners tresspass their lands. wouldn't you start throwing sharp heavy objects and whatnot if a bunch of people you've never seen before jumped over your fence, carrying guns and swords? well, exactly how the natives felt. then the british troops came along and invaded the east coast. natives felt threatened, natives attacked. brits felt threatened, brits yelled "savages" and started shooting. then british started their colonization of this so-claimed NEW land after they successfully got rid of the natives. from here, you all know what happened. british government opressed the new colony, george got pissed, then mel gibson-like people, along with george, chased away the british troops and declared this to be america, a free country. sure, we are now free. the new colony got rid of an oppressing government (british) and freed themselves. but look back, how did we get this land in the first place? it's not god-given, although some people would like to claim it to be so. WE OPPRESSED THE NATIVES FIRST. oppression seems to always has been the initial movement that triggers something big. sure we fought for our freedom, but what were we fighting for? A LAND THAT WAS ONCE SOMEONE ELSE'S AND WE TOOK IT OVER BY FORCE. so i called this quote an overrated one and left. think about it.

then i went to the holocaust exhibit of the museum, which was not quite so amusing since it was not any different than those i've seen on TVs and movies. the best part of the exhibit was the free please-take-one card with the history of holocaust survivor. if the museum guards weren't already looking at me suspiciously i'd have taken a bunch, just for memento. the so called self-guided tour "by lights and sounds" weren't that interesting either; it's much more interesting to see the wooden and wax figures and the setups they have for display, since all the facts they mentioned was already mentioned to me back in history class in highschool. one interesting quote that i couldn't get off my mind was by a german (i think) on one of the videos whose name i couldn't remember either. he said something like this: "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it." sad, but it's true, and i speak of experience. maybe it's the nature of human, i have no idea; but if you speak of something even without a factual evidence, as long as you have the charisma and the convincing look, people WILL believe you. unless of course, they know the truth. if you get A's in your physics class, it is likely that people who get lower grade will come to you for help, and sometimes they can get really curious, up to the point where they start asking you questions which answers you don't have. i've experienced this, and it seems that these people would rather have me LIE to them than say "i don't know." see, i don't like lying, since everytime i lied to my dad for some reason he always found out, so i deemed myself horrible at lying; so everytime people ask me a question which answer i do not know, i told them the truth: "i have no idea." but for some reason i could never figure out, people always say, "oh come on, you should know. you're smart." since these people NEVER accept "i don't know" as an answer, no matter how many times i say it, i am always forced to make up answers. fortunately my answers are close enough to the real answer, but still, at the time i was forced to answer, i DID NOT KNOW the answer, and yet people would still rather have an answer than "i don't know." so after years of dealing with this, i came to a conclusion that what that german guy said is true. as long as people regard you highly, they will most likely believe whatever you say, regardless of whether you can supply them ample evidence or not. it's the charisma and the public speaking skills that count in this world. i guess that's what brought hitler to his position back then, clinton to almost 8 years in office, and JFK to assassination by some kook. i mean, seriously. look at JFK. "ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." if that line were said by GW instead, people will go "yeah, right. i've done enough for this country, time for some payback." so brush up on your public speaking skills. =)

i didn't get to see a holocaust survivor because my parents called and said that one of my relatives from michigan would be visiting this afternoon, so i had to rush home. they should have given me the heads up; that way i would have gone to the museum earlier. oh well, maybe some other time.