Holocaust and Aviation - Part II, Chapter 9 - Oswald Spengler and his book "Decline of the West"

  

Oswald Spengler [1880-1936] was a German professor of classical languages, history and political science. His extensive and famous book is "Decline of the West", which was published in the years 1918-1921. He develops in the book the idea that every independent culture goes through cycles of growth and decline, similar to the cycle of human life. This is in contrast to the prevailing belief, according to which there is a constant positive development of civilizations, based on the conception of moral eternity.

Analysis of Western society occupy a central place in the book. This is the society where Spengler lived and the whole book is actually focused on it. Western society was born in the forests of Central Europe about a thousand years ago. It reached its peak between the 15th and 18th centuries, between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Now, at the beginning of the 20th century, it has degenerated and to the final stages of decline, awaiting rebirth.

The most significant sign of Western society is the energies, dynamism and activism of its people, which led to its extraordinary technological and cultural flourishing. It is a culture that strives both physically and spiritually, in devotion, out and up. An early physical and cultural sign of this aspiration is the many cathedrals built at the beginning of the "period".

Western European man has created a new religion, in which Mary mother of Jesus is the Queen of Heaven. She is superior to Jesus her son. Belief in Mary is a very important development, as Jesus represents the connection to the early severe Jewish morality, while Mary is much more forgiving and pagan. At the same time, a strong belief developed in the presence of Satan.

These two ideas have been adopted by Christian believers so seriously that it is impossible to exaggerate. As a result man is perceived as walking regularly along an abyss. Black Mary, Mary of the Fall from Heaven, is an integral part of this belief. Because of this belief, Spengler expressed "hope" that the "tragic perception" of life has not yet disappeared.

"Decline of the West" is written in a unique literary style. The central motif that Spengler repeats, as a composer of a musical symphony, is the life cycles of any familiar culture: birth, maturity, decline. They are parallel to takeoff, flight, landing. It describes the dialectic between the upper and lower classes, as it has occurred in history. Thus it has a hypnotic intellectual power, which dulls the criticism towards it.

The book became popular and influential. It was the main bestseller in the post-World War I era, particularly in Germany. Today it is still considered an important research and a significant contribution to the study of social theories.

Spengler was deeply influenced by Nietzsche. His work was intended to serve as a tool for adapting Nietzsche's  aerial ideals for the use of modern, technological and cynical society. He took Nietzsche's ideas about the "desire for power" to the climax: he thought that in history power is what wins and not morality and truth. Man is a beast of prey, and dictatorship is the best form of government. Democracy is nothing but a stop on the way.

Spengler wrote: ''The forces that will affect the future will not be different from the forces of the past. These are: the will of the strong, the healthy instincts, the race, the desire for property and power. On the other hand, justice, happiness and peace are nothing but dreams, and will remain so, floating ineffectively."

Spengler was the main intellectual opponent of the Weimar Republic. He was intensely involved in politics, with the aim of replacing democracy in Germany with a dictatorship of generals and industrialists.

He directly influenced the Nazis. Goebbels copied his radical anti-Jewish ideas from the epilogue of "Decline of the West'', the title of the decisive struggle between the power of wealth and the power of blood.

The citizens of Germany consistently supported Hitler and the Nazi Party, as they presented ideas that were close to those of Spengler, who was considered the prophet of the modern age, who praised the beauty of the chimneys of factories towering into the sky.

Spengler was constantly striving for World War II. He wrote in the 1930th: ''This age is great, but the people in it are very weak. They can no longer bear tragedies, on stage or in life itself. But the fate that brought them to this period will now grip them by their collars, and will do to them what should be done, whether they like it or not ... The tragic world view is not dead yet. It will bloom again in the future as it flourished in the First World War."

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 8 - The Nazi Aerial Consciousness

Of all the impressive inventions of the 20th century, none has had such a strong and lasting impact on the human imagination as the airplane. The aircraft has inspired the creative observation of many artists and intellectuals. It attracted a great deal of public attention by presenting a popular authentic image of the nation and at the same time challenging it to adapt to the modern world. The airplanes passed swiftly over the mountain tops and crossed the continents and in this way changed the traditional perceptions of time and space. 

Along with these physical changes, aviation created new symbols and images that glorified the experiences of speed and movement, created and transmitted new meanings of power, quality, authority and belonging and forever enriched the range of human expression. IT helped most of all the sobriety and development of nations. It created the modern sensitivity, the core of modern life. 

This is also because military intensification in the field of aviation is a multi-year and very complex process, which may stand the test against the enemy within a very short period of confrontation. For this reason air forces often fail. The general sense of failure has, as a result, became one of the salient features of postmodern society.

Of course the airplane is not the only cultural symbol of the period. It is in a list with other technologies such as the car, radio and cinema. But it serve as a representative of human control over the forces of nature and characterize progress unmatched compared to the other symbols of culture and technology that combine the medium and the message. 

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan and means that a physical means also imprints itself in consciousness as having meaningful content through its characteristics, while creating a value relationship with a person not through the purposes for which it was created.

The danger is that a medium that has become a medium will be distracting. The airplane has no content like a book has, but it has a social impact as it redefines space. As a result, the content itself is of secondary importance. A crime committed using an airplane gets less attention compared to the airplane. People tend to focus on content, but during the transfer of information to them a large part of the content is lost because of the complex physical means in which it is involved.

Once society's values ​​and ways of doing things change due to technology, we understand the social significance of the medium. These changes may seem indirect as a secondary derivative of the hustle and bustle of everyday life of which we are unaware, but in retrospect they are often direct and touch on the principles of culture, religion and historical precedents.

At the heart of the psyche is the experience of flying. Aviation was initially seen as a revolutionary symbol of personal renewal in the style of the French Revolution. Later it was adopted by modern countries as having unparalleled technological and economic leverage. It eventually became a means of expression for national heroism through fighter pilots. It is not surprising that about the plane there is an extensive work that explores and depicts the image from every possible angle.

Central to the approach that explores the aircraft as a comprehensive phenomenon is the practice of the terms "aerial awareness" and "aerial consciousness". The term "aerial awareness" was coined by American researchers to explain the American nation's initial enthusiasm for the flying machine. Following this, historians began to use the term to describe the interest of a nation, group or individual, in everything related to aviation. The term originally refers to enthusiasm for flying in flying machines, but its use also refers to all the traditions and symbols that make up the approach to the subject, as well as the diverse practical pursuits of it. The term "aerial consciousness" means the intelligent use of aerial awareness to create a complete worldview. Simply put, this is a unique culture based on the concepts of aviation.

A comprehensive study of aviation culture has been conducted regarding Russia. Numerous studies on Russian and Soviet aviation point to its great economic and technological importance. But in Russia the airplane played a much more important role, as part of the broadest conception of national development. The personal and public treatment of the aircraft, air and space crafts in this nation was as a whole culture. Generations of Russian and Soviet leaders understood it that way. They promoted images and symbols and in this way realized their political vision.

Russia is a touchstone on this issue, which is researched in depth in the book "The Dictatorship of Aviation". About Russia There are many studies that deal with aviation as a national economic, technological, and military product. They thus describe an extensive air awareness, which was a practical activity stemming from the needs of the hour. But from them one can also identify broader and more comprehensive cultural and political conditions that contributed to the creation of Russian air consciousness.

20th century Western culture, American and European alike, from the outset combined the practical with the symbolic in their reference to the world of aviation. Aviation researchers expressed their views from a combination of the technological and the mythological. The legend of Icarus and Daedalus served as a connecting thread in this context. The evolution of the aircraft symbolized the eternal and Sisyphean struggle against gravity.

It so happened that the Russians tried to rewrite history as if they were the first in the world to make proven attempts at aviation. These attempts are documented in Russian folklore, but their scope and significance are subjective. Every other nation, whether it be the French or the English, the Spanish or the Italian, the Americans or the Chinese, boasts a similar folklore.

Attempts in Russia to take advantage of the amateurish and one-time efforts of peasants and monks were intended to give Russia its priority in aviation affairs. They reveal the main motivation in the Russian aviation culture, which is the claim to differentiation and thus to the ability to compete against the West. This aspiration for differentiation and prominence was integrated with the Russians' broad aspirations for imperial expansion, Slavic theories and communist ideology.

Russian statesmen and citizens measured themselves according to advanced European standards, but they sought to bridge them with Russian national identity. This ambiguity promoted a unique vision of the nation and its future. As the central feature of the 20th century, the aircraft clarified more than anything else the connection between national aspirations and technological progress. Because it promised a military advantage along with control of gravity, the aircraft has become the clearest, best and most effective standard of all for personal, social and national success. As a result, the aircraft in Russia and other aviation dictatorships of the 20th century, Germany, Italy and Japan, became more than just a flying machine. Compared to statesmen from the Western powers, who saw the airplane as a key technological component and a measure of progress only, the Russians also attributed to it symbolic qualities as the forerunner of national pride.

In Russia, the plane became almost a religious icon of the Russian-Orthodox religion. It represented God and the salvation of man as incarnation of Jesus. The airplane was designed to free the Russian nation from the shackles of the past, where most Russians were poor and slaves of the emperor and nobility. The elite society used it to expect a rapid transition to the most advanced and powerful nation in the world.

The Russians were indeed very successful in their achievements in the field of aviation, but these were also characterized by the inefficiency and injustice of the Soviet authoritarian regime. Ironically, during the crushing industrialization of the 1930s that led to most of the technological achievements of the Soviet Union, an outdated culture was also established there, based on hostility and a struggle between the individual and the government where all means are kosher. The petty citizen who did not get enough of his needs did not in any way stopped trying to achieve his needs, while the state resorted to unprecedented punitive measures to achieve social order. The result was a continued Russian dependence on the more dynamic, creative and productive West, on advanced technology issues. The dictatorship of aviation that Soviet leaders sought to create collapsed and became a monumental human tragedy.

Peter Fritsche [1955-] is a professor of modern history, specializing in the history of Germany in the 20th century in general and during the Third Reich in particular. He has written several books on these subjects, focusing mainly on the analysis of the social forces operating in Germany. In addition, Fritsche wrote a book about the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and other books dealing with social processes in modern history.

The first of his books on Germany deals with the social processes in the Weimar Republic that contributed to the phenomenon of Nazism. The second is called: "Germany - a nation of pilots". This book describes the Germans' obsessive preoccupation with aviation, from the beginning of the 20th century with the Zeppelin to the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, which was an aviation dictatorship in which aviation became a major tool in mobilizing the masses for the regime's needs. Fritsche did not continue his research into the years after the Nazis came to power. The book "Holocaust and Aviation" was created to fill in the gaps.

 

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 7 - Nazi Mysticism

The spread of romantic ideas contributed to a new political worldview among the Germans, who lived until the beginning of the 19th century in small principalities ruled by towering castles on top of hills and fought each other. The natural desire was to unite under a broader roof.

The Second German Reich, 1918-1871, was created by Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, who began to unite the German principalities gradually under Prussia, the largest and most powerful principality of all from the northern plains, in a process that came to an end only by dictatorial means after Hitler came to power.

As part of the process, Germany became a constitutional monarchy. The emperor was an influential symbol, uniting all the ends of the nation.

The actual control was in the hands of Bismarck. But after the demise of Bismarck, no political leader was found with a stature that would constitute a counterweight to the emperor. As a result, Germany was ruled in the early twentieth century by a powerful but capricious emperor with few skills to run a modern giant state.

The fall of the great European monarchies in Europe after the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the German Empire, created a huge political vacuum in Europe. It was a continuation of the political crisis following the French Revolution.

Monarchy is the practical embodiment of the dream of flight. It is the head of the vertical axis. For many generations the people looked up and saw their kings there in their glory, symbolizing all the sublime, dynamic qualities, as a symbol of heroism, wealth and splendor. This hierarchy was a form of social and mental order.

The Christian Church has completed the work of creating this order. The collapse of the monarchies accelerated the disengagement of religion from everyday life, a process that took place during the Enlightenment period. Thus the gap that was opened was even larger.

This was the culture in which the Jews played a role, sometimes symbolic and sometimes practical, as mediators between the people and the emperor and as religious symbols. In the new social order they did not find themselves. They were seemingly redundant. They were identified with the old regime, the reaction.

The natural fillers of space were the independent European states, which set themselves the goal of replacing the monarchies with the rule of the people, that is, democracy. But democracy, in which everyone is equal, produce horizontal dialectic. The tangible vertical dimension disappears in it.

In the embarrassment, which was great anyway from the very change of regimes, there was an urgent need also for substitutes for the vertical aspect of society.

The bourgeois society, which was the main factor behind the change of regimes, could not be content with domestic values ​​while it had to run a state composed of different interests. There was a need for unifying factors, which would generalize the disagreements and elevate them to higher levels. In addition, the new democracies found themselves in a confrontation with each other and had to train strong armies. Companies became conscripted and military development became a central value.

Aviation was the ultimate solution. The solution was created by public opinion and in the media. It was a mesmerizing combination of will and necessity. It was the fulfillment of the human dream. But it was necessary to turn aviation into a comprehensive social and military system. The practice of mysticism and the connection to pagan, popular and national foundations on the one hand, together with extremist nationalism and anti-Semitism on the other, provided the basis for the vital totality. They provided a new, extreme definition of the self, more suited to survival in the new age.

It is the diversity and the unique scope of the origins of Nazi ideology that indicate above all that the reasons for its popularity are extraordinary. Philosophically it is a reinvention of the wheel. Creating out of nothing. This diabolical ideology was used to hastily meet needs previously unknown to the human race. This is because the reality of life has added a significant new component, which required human adaptation to it.

The political inspiration for the Nazis was provided by a number of thinkers, who linked the material need to the spiritual need. They processed the movement towards the skies into a method of action for modern Germany. They developed the German Superman theory, who controls the world from the air by force using the airplane and develops living space. But the spiritual flight and aviation organically identified with it are at the center of human interest and action, as a central symbol of human freedom wherever it is. The Nazi attempt to expropriate them for control and occupation acted like a boomerang.

During the Second Reich, a broad popular romantic-nationalist movement developed in Germany, the pan-German movement, which identified with the irrational belief in everything that was "German". The pan-German organizations were a vocal and influential political pressure group, proliferating with declarations of intent and mobilizing public support. They advocated modern paganism, which offered an alternative to institutionalized religion through appropriate rituals and texts.

Hitler and the rest of the leaders of the Nazi movement began their careers in the "Tula" and "Vril" associations. These were tiny cults for the development of consciousness, which drew their inspiration from famous spiritualist figures in the 19th century, among them the Englishman with the ability to hover Douglas Hume and his mystical disciple Madame Belvatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society.

Hitler certainly did not acquire his speech and writing skills before the war and certainly not during its time. He had to make the leap between 1919-1924. Between these years, after he ''Tula'' Association, he joined the German Workers Party and then was his imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, where he wrote ''Mein Kampf''.

The Nazi mysticism described in ''Mein Kampf'' became a kind of religion for the German people. It included a combination of Nazism with occultism, manipulation of history for political purposes, neo-paganism and of course racism. It attributed religious significance to the character of Adolf Hitler.

When the Nazis came to power they sought to change the cultural and religious base of Germany. Heinrich Himmler was the one who enthusiastically embraced the new direction, nurturing it until it became the destiny of the SS, Nazi party and Germany.

Heinrich Himmler rose up in the Nazi party from a pale and ridiculous figure to the head of the huge SS empire thanks to his organizational skills. He had a diploma in agriculture and was interested in animal hybridization and fertilizers, which brought him closer to racial theory. He was drawn to the theory of raising an Aryan race of tall and blond people and selected the SS recruits by appearance. He required them to marry girls with Aryan credentials.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 6 - Fascist Italy the Homeland of Nazism

German Nazism was inspired and was a follower of the Italian fascism that preceded it. This was the case in ideology, politic, personality and military.

Ideologically, the poet and philosopher Gabriel D'Ancio wrote the constitutional platform adopted by Benito Mussolini. Thomaso Marinetti and the Futurism movement he founded created the fascist subculture that advocated youth, violence, speed, and aviation, whose Nazi counterpart was similar. Giulio Douhet wrote the military theory that advocated relentless bombing of population centers in order to reach a quick decision in the war, which the Nazis adopted.

Politically the Nazi regime was an almost reflection of the Italian fascist regime because of its centralization, reliance on conservative capitalists, recruitment of the population to the needs of the state, aggressive colonialist policies and more. Hitler resembled Mussolini in personality and behavioral characteristics. Both were glorified by their propaganda mechanisms to the rank of almighty leader. Italy also had Italo Balbo, a colorful and enthusiastic air marshal who, like Herman Goering, developed the Air Force into a leading international force.

Like Germany, Italy also used the airplanes it developed and manufactured to create air control that would decide the battle quickly and with relentless force, initially in the colonies it had occupied in Africa and later as a key component in its military might. As in Germany, there was a very considerable gap between planning and reality, which led to the defeat in World War II.

The famous playwright Gabriel D'Ancio, the father of modern Italian plays writing and the father of fascism too, was an avid aviation enthusiast. In World War I he volunteered to be a fighter pilot, a move that made him even more famous. The war strengthened his extremist nationalist views and he publicly demanded Italy's return to a first-class status. In September 1919, because he was furious about the agreement at the Paris Conference to return the port city of Fioma to Serbia, he entered it as the head of two thousand armed militia volunteers and expelled the multinational force stationed there.

The complex ritual system of fascism was formulated by D'Anoncio in Fioma, in which he declared himself a dictator bearing the title of "Duche". It included the balcony speeches of the ruler, who conducted a dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the disciplined crowd, who responded to him with a fascist salute and organized cheers, combined with street parades and mass demonstrations, using religious symbols in a new secular setting.

On a more practical level, D'Anonzio's "gospel" included the dictatorship government, centralized economy, violent militia, strong hand international policy and immediate response, assassination of political opponents and widespread use of propaganda and political deception. D'Anonzio was a source of inspiration to Mussolini and is known as "the father of Italian fascism" both ideologically and practically.

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that arose in Italy in the early 20th century. It was predominantly Italian, but there were parallel movements in Russia, England and many other countries. D'Anoncio's character inspired it in the beginning. Futurism appealed to the emotions of modern man and his experience in the advanced and rapid means of production, communication and transportation, from the airplane to the telephone, from cinema to fast food. These are expressions of progress that change everyday life and in this way change the artist's mode of expression.

The founder of Futurism and the most prominent figure in it was the Italian writer Filippo Thomaso Marinetti. Marinetti founded the movement with the writing of the "Futurist Manifesto" in 1905. He was soon joined by young Italian artists. Marinetti expressed intense disgust for everything that was old and especially for the political and artistic tradition. Futurists adored speed, technology, youth, and violence. They loved the car, the airplane and the industrial city. All of these represented for them the victory of human technology over nature. They were equally ardent nationalists. They denied the culture of the past and any culture of imitation and praised originality for its sake, even if it was bold and violent.

Marinetti founded, as early as 1918, a Futurist party which only one year later merged with Benito Mussolini's party, making Marinetti one of its first supporters and members. In 1919 he participated in the essay "The Fascist Manifesto", which was the original manifesto of the Italian fascist movement.

Futurists have created in many fields of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theater, cinema, fashion, literature, music, architecture and gastronomy. Futurists distinguished themselves from the rest of modern art styles by virtue of the desire that influenced their works. They argued that art needs drama, movement and the clash of psychic forces, similar to what happens in nature.

There were many parallel lines between Nazism and Futurism: love of the future and youth, love of modernization, technology, violence, nationalism, war and more. Like the Nazis, Futurists often engaged in technology in general and military technology in particular.

Therefore the practice of aviation gradually became central to the movement, as flight became accessible to more people. The airplane became a major actor in the futuristic drama. Aerial painting is considered the pinnacle of futurism and is typical of the last stage of the movement's development, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Giulio Douhet [1865-1930] was an Italian general and theorist of air power. He was a key supporter of the bombing strategy from the air as a crucial factor in the war. In 1911, Italy went to war against the Ottoman Empire for control of Libya. In this war the first aerial bombardment in history was carried out on November 1, 1911 by an Italian pilot. Although it was a seemingly marginal war, it was a significant factor in the outbreak of World War I, as the Balkan peoples saw how the Ottoman Empire, which was Italy's enemy in this war, could be easily defeated. Douhet wrote a report on the aviation lessons learned from this war. He recommended high-altitude bombing as the main function of the miliary airplane.

With the outbreak of World War I, Douhet called on the Italian government to begin building significant military air power. He said that: "Air control means making the enemy helpless''. He proposed building a force of 600 bombers that would be capable of dropping 125 tons of bombs every day, but the decision-makers in Italy ignored him. Douhet continued to write about air power, finished novel on the subject and sent memos to government ministers about a huge fleet of airplanes. In 1921 he completed a research paper called "Air Control", which had a huge impact on aerial bombardment theory.

Douhet stated in this essay that aerial power is a revolution, since it operates in the third dimension. Aircraft are capable of flying above the surface, thereby lowering the importance of ground forces to a secondary degree. The vast sky make protection from airplanes almost impossible. For this reason the attack is the epitome of air power. The only good defense is the offense. An air force capable of gaining control of the air through a preemptive strike by the enemy's air force and destroying it, will then decide the entire fate of the enemy state through constant bombardment.

Douhet believed in the moral effects of the aerial bombardment. Air power is capable of breaking the will power of the citizens, through the destruction of the vital centers of the country. Land and sea armies become redundant as the airplane can fly over them and attack vital government, military and industrial centers without being hit.

In 1920 Benito Mussolini took flight lessons. He survived a crash after 18 hours of solo flights. In 1922 he came to power in Italy, after his loyalists marched to Rome. Mussolini soon placed aviation at the top of his regime's priorities. He preached for the construction of a modern air force, hosted air demonstrations and record-breaking flights and promoted the production of advanced airplanes. His aviation minister Italo Balbo, led Italian aviation to international status after leading, in early 1933, a squadron of 25 naval airplanes on a transatlantic flight from Italy to the United States. Mussolini's two sons were bombers pilots, who took part in operational activities throughout the wars of fascist Italy.

Holocaust and Aviation - Part I, Chapter 5 - Friedrich Nietzsche The Philosopher of Flight

After World War I, defeated Germany experienced a sense of falling from the summit into the abyss. The fear of falling has become attribute of the masses. The fear of falling is one of the strongest and earliest in man since the dawn of humanity. The fear of falling is fixed in mankind through an undeniable psychological reality and create a mental impression that leaves indelible traces. But metaphors concerning fall are far fewer than the metaphors of ascent. The fall is a limited subject. The imaginary fall very quickly becomes nausea, weakness and sickness.

The official philosopher of the Nazi movement was Friedrich Nietzsche. In Nietzsche the poet explains the thinker. He is the prototype of the vertical poet, the poet ascending to the peaks. Nietzsche clearly represents the complex of heights. Everything that moves in the air is expected to make its mark. It's an ongoing preference for anything that comes up. He invested all his energy in making the earthly universe aerial. Prominent in his work and in particular in "Thus Said Zarathustra", the following themes: the air as freedom, the psychological imaginary fall, the dialectical play between vertigo and victory, the courage to live at heights, verticality versus gravity, cold fire and the healing value of rising and growth.

At the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy is the idea of ​​the dialectic between the high and the low. The vertical movement tear man from inside and in this way place both the upper and the lower within him. Superman must experience this inner tension. This is the source of the feeling of supremacy that Nietzsche encourages. Superman finds his way to greatness by uniting the peaks and abysses.

Nietzsche's main conclusion is: to will and to fly are the same. The end result of this longing is moral ambiguity. The sentence that sums up Nietzsche's ideas is: "The upper is the winner''.

Every philosophical doctrine is an attempt to understand and solve the problems of the hour. During the period in which Nietzsche wrote, the hot air balloons carved new paths in the skies of Europe, redefined the limitations of man and created a revolution in his worldview. An in-depth reading of Nietzsche's descriptions of "God's death" clearly reveals the reason for his original approach: Man killed God because he soared to his realms in the skies and took his place. Land's cables were unchained.

Nietzsche gave his ideas a poetic and eloquent attire. His recommendations are given different interpretations and thus found an echo in the hearts of the Nazis. The denial of existing morality, the desire for power, the "supreme man", the sanctification of war and the contempt for peace, all of these were expressed in their teachings while distorting his original ideas about human freedom. His writings about the aerial psyche gave a cohesive character to their worldview.