Sep 22 2007
The banality of evil..
Marko has an interesting post up, a small sample of which is below;
..Evil is rampant in the world, but it’s not tied to a nationality, religion, skin color, or other factor…and when you propose to fight it by wiping out a group that shares any of those identifiers, you are already well on the path of evil yourself. When you accept that premise, the most important groundwork is already laid–the tilling of your mind–and then putting on the uniform and herding the Others to the gas chamber at gunpoint is a comparatively easy step…
I’m in complete agreement with him, go give the rest a read.
Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem is a must read … it’s still in print.
Marko makes a series of good points, but the larger issue is that all too many of us are too easily led. The banality is not just found in the staff at extermination camps, it also applies to the employees of government departments and corporations - evil can be found everywhere.
“I thought I was doing the right thing.” … “I was just following orders.”
Matti, you make a good point. I’m going to expand on it a bit further, however. Humans are easily led because of our base fears. We are conditioned to fear the “other”. If no “other” exists, we invent it. This was seen in Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution”, the Soviet witchhunts for the dreaded “Kulaks” and countless other examples in countless other places. As you rightly noted, it is not merely the vehicle of madmen, but for much more out there in terms of how government and others rule us with our fear. How much of the political rhetoric we hear is driven by the fear of the other? Pretty much all of it. It generally comes down to “You should fear this, but if you throw in with us, we’ll all protect each other and then we won’t have to be afraid of it anymore.”. Look at the average election in Canada: Fear this, fear the other party, they have a hidden, scary agenda. Fear.
This fear is the most basic drive of human civilization. We are conditioned to join the tribe, collective, state, country, religion or whatever construct is called to protect us from other collectives. No matter what else has changed over 3,000 years of human history, the simple fact of two humans pledging common alleigence against a third remains the constant.
This isn’t a phenomenon limited to merely the west either: From the most primitive tribes in the untouched parts of the world to the most complex civilizations. We fear others. We seek to limit this fear as much as possible by building social alliances to protect ourselves.
Even in our most basic collective relationship, that of the family, we seek protection from the other. While I’m conditioned to profess an undying relationship with my family, really, why? The sentimentality aside, my loyalty to a person shared solely on our shared genetic heritage is somewhat limited in practicality. We are conditioned to be part of the family for the collective security it represents. This is why we look down upon orphans and those who are not part of a collective family. It’s not because we think that they’re missing out on the joy of hearing Uncle Lester’s tales every Christmas, but because of the isolation it represents.
The simple fact is that because far too many people are wrapped up in their own fear, this will continue to be the way that society orders itself.
Greg … I concur. It’s those primitive fears that enable manipulation of the population through absurdities like The War On Terror. If diverting billions from taxpayers into the pockets of political cronies is not evil, I don’t know what is. But, then, graft and corruption are so banal