Germans learn about the history of the Third Reich in detail and I always asked myself: how could this happen? Smart, hard-working, intelligent, compassionate, literate people start to plan industrial murder of millions of people on the basis of what exactly?
Now, here's the thing. Progress is not that shiny guiding light. It is an extreme force, especially a force to control things, especially nature. The Third Reich planned mass murder, as it were a railroad track or lunar landing - the form was exactly the same and they did not understood: that this similarity in form revealed and forever merged the idea of progress to the most inhumane behavior and destruction.
If that does not make sense, I encourage you to just read a bit about the concentration camps or the Third Reich in general. Good timing, too - we have 75th anniversary of V-E Day coming up.
Two sides of the same coin generally means complementary items that may seem unrelated, not opposites. An English teacher I had banged on about theme and style being two sides of the same coin when writing.
The example here would be that mass murder is not really as effective without technology, whereas technology enables us to flip to mass murder quickly even if we previously didn't consider it. They are complements.
