The Banality of Evil

“Wrong answer”

The comment from the observer was followed by a mild electric shock.

“Ouch!!” the sound from the next room left no doubt how the person answering the question felt.

“Carry on, ask the next question,” said the observer to the volunteer asking questions.

Another wrong answer and another electric shock, however, this time it was not so mild.

“Maybe we should stop?” suggested the volunteer

“No, it is important that we complete it.”

The intensity of the shock kept increasing with each wrong question and the initial “ouch” was turned to a desperate plea to stop the electric shock

“Please stop! This is killing me.”

Next question…

This is not a horror show, this is the Milgram Experiment. The point of the test was to demonstrate the ease with which we can inflict harm upon fellow humans when asked by authority. It was estimated that less than two people will give the maximum shock of 450 volts, however, a astounding 65% of the people did that in the actual tests. Most of them didn’t do it willingly, but did it anyhow when they were instructed to keep going. This shows how easily we can harm people if an authority figure asks us to.

Hannah Arendt called it Banality of Evil when she wrote about the trial of Adolf Eichmann for the holocaust when described him as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply “doing his job” “He did his ‘duty’…; he not only obeyed ‘orders’, he also obeyed the ‘law’. Eichmann had killed hundreds of thousands of people and had no remorse as he felt he was doing what he was asked to do by his superiors.

This is how Wikipedia describes Hannah Arendt’s concept of the Banality of Evil.

“Her thesis is that Eichmann was actually not a fanatic or a sociopath, but instead an extremely average and mundane person who relied on cliché defenses rather than thinking for himself, and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, does not mean that Eichmann’s actions were in any way ordinary, or even that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional.”

It is summarized as

“In part the phrase refers to Eichmann’s deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply “doing his job” (“He did his ‘duty’…; he not only obeyed ‘orders’, he also obeyed the ‘law’”

Understanding that helps you understand what the policemen beating up the protesters in the United States are thinking about, or at home when the police kill people in custody, or when they beat up innocent, poor people walking to their homes during lock-down, and when they spray the migrant labor with Sodium Hypochlorite before they are allowed to enter the state.

To think of something more personal and relatable, the HR folks who are asked by the management to fire people to reduce their cost. The folks in HR handing out pink slips to their friends of years are not inherently evil, they just don’t see anything wrong with it. If the management has asked them to do it, they don’t feel party to an inhuman behavior, they don’t even see them as instruments of injustice, they believe they are just doing their job.