In her subsequent 1963 report, based on her observations and transcripts, and which evolved into the book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the Eichmann phenomenon.
She, like others, was struck by his very ordinariness and the demeanour he exhibited of a small, slightly balding, bland bureaucrat, in contrast to the horrific crimes he stood accused of. He was, she wrote, "terribly and terrifyingly normal.” She examined the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions.
Her thesis is that Eichmann was actually not a fanatic or a sociopath, but instead an average and mundane person who relied on clichéd defences rather than thinking for himself.
He was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology, and believed in success, which he considered the chief standard of "good society". Banality, in this sense, does not mean that Eichmann's actions were in any way ordinary, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of complacency which was wholly unexceptional.
This tendency of we 'ordinary' people to actively accept the status quo; to keep our head down whilst pursuing our social objectives sears our capacity to empathy.
Is apathy the opposite of empathy or is it actually collective sociopathy? One definition of a sociopath is: "... a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others."
Maybe collectively we could define it as: "... a social health condition in which a community consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others."
In 1925 T.S.Elliott wrote the poem The Hollow Men.
The poem is about alienation (individual from the self, individual from other individuals, individual from society, etc.). It's about trying to reconstruct some sense of a whole or complete person, culture, or tradition in a fragmentary, dehumanised, world.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men. ...
For the whole poem: The Hollow Men: Here
The video-clip is from the film Hannah Arendt (2012)
For more on Hannah Arendt: Here
