Joni Mitchell’s “California” (1971) starts,
“Sitting in a park in Paris France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won’t give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had”
Social strife continues, over one-half century later. Newspapers highlight war in Ukraine and Middle Eastern atrocity. Peace on earth, good will toward men, is elusive.
Political polarization increases domestically. Elected officials succeed by appealing to ends of spectrums rather than building consensus. Concerning trends indicate that candidates lose pursuing President Richard Nixon’s 1968 victory speech slogan “Bring Us Together”.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt famously fashioned the term “the banality of evil” in her landmark work “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, examining Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial for Holocaust crimes.
Wikipedia states that, “[Chief] Inspector [Avner] Less [of the Israeli Police] noted that Eichmann did not seem to realise [sic] the enormity of his crimes and showed no remorse. His pardon plea, released in 2016, did not contradict this: ‘There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders’…. I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.’”
Defending villainy, claiming circumstances justify immorality, is heinous:
“Arendt’s book introduced the expression and concept of the banality of evil. Her thesis is that Eichmann was actually not a fanatic or a sociopath, but instead an average and mundane person who relied on clichéd defenses rather than thinking for himself, 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.
“Many mid-20th century pundits were favorable to the concept, which has been called ‘one of the most memorable phrases of 20th-century intellectual life,’ and it features in many contemporary debates about morality and justice, as well as in the workings of truth and reconciliation commissions. Others see the popularization of the concept as a valuable warrant against walking negligently into horror, as the evil of banality, in which failure to interrogate received wisdom results in individual and systemic weakness and decline.”
Mario Savio championed the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley after volunteering for the Freedom Summer in McComb. Savio’s December 2, 1964 Sproul Hall address observed, in pertinent part,
“… There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop!” Savio’s point was that vexing trends persist unless people dissent from the quotidian.
As holiday messages turn minds towards the Nativity and New Year’s resolutions are pondered, please recognize that comity is individual. People must respect, cooperate and communicate with colleagues and neighbors. Family members should be valued for who they are, as they are.
Kindness is a subversive act in the contemporary world: Ameliorate degradation by demonstrating better.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
