THE BANALITY OF OUR EVIL

In a recent Op-Ed article, J. P. Linstroth, discusses how late philosopher, Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil" may be applied to society today. He argues the banality of evil is not inevitable. In fact, group conforming violence may be avoided. We do not have to succumb to the mob but we know group violence exists on many levels and for many reasons. The My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, was halted for example by an American helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr. and his two-crewmen, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn. “Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between the villagers and the soldiers, and with his machine guns oriented toward his fellow Americans, ordered his crew to mow them down if they attempted to further harm the villagers” (from Robert Sapolsky, 2017 book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worse, p. 658). Many Vietnamese villagers at My Lai were subsequently airlifted to American field hospitals and further search and destroy missions by the U.S. military were halted as a result. So, in sum, we need to understand for example how someone like Tyre Nichols may be beaten to death by some policemen in Memphis, or how someone like George Floyd may have their life taken away by some policemen in Minneapolis. As I have tried to do here, by asking what questions may we raise from these murders beyond the norm—in other words, what does science say? How may violence become banal? So too, we need to understand how “social conformity” allows for such violence. After all, some social conformity may lead to genocide. Some social conformity may lead to a Reign of Terror (La Terreur, 1793-1794) as happened during the French Revolution. Some social conformity allowed for the Nazis to rise to power and the Holocaust. If we understand the institutionalization of violence or how it is brought about, perhaps we may overcome the banality of our evil.