Genocide’s victims die for what the perfect order ought to be

Evidence

This is a gardener’s vision, projected upon a world-size screen. The thoughts, feelings, dreams and drives of the designers of the perfect world are familiar to every gardener worth his name, though perhaps on a somewhat smaller scale. Some gardeners hate the weeds that spoil their design – that ugliness in the midst of beauty, litter in the midst of serene order. Some others are quite unemotional about them: just a problem to be solved, an extra job to be done. Not that it makes a difference to the weeds; both gardeners exterminate them. If asked or given a chance to pause and ponder, both would agree; weeds must die not so much because of what they are, as because of what the beautiful, orderly garden ought to be. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 266

Categorization

• DEFINE: The gardener metaphor is foundational for understanding ‘society-as-garden’ visions, a key concept in the critical-theory toolkit.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the concept of sacrifice as stabilizing perfect orders — the victims die not for what they are but for what the ideal world should be.
• XREF: connects to: Genocide targets a category, so victims must first be abstracted. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 646; Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 269; Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264 (+1 more)

Related

• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme (similarity 0.86)
• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred (similarity 0.86)
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.81)
• Genocide targets a category, so victims must first be abstracted. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Genocide kills for non-fit with the perfect society’s scheme #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 269
• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 268
• Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264