> Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case. Instead, he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit[ted] crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’.

> Arendt dubbed these collective characteristics of Eichmann ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: he was a man who drifted, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/story/what-did-hannah-arendt-real...

Our intellect as a species is a blessing and a curse. We are self aware, but only to a certain extent. The blanks are filled in by wishful thinking and hopelessly logical rationalizations.

It's fine and serves its purpose well as something to strive for. But it significantly hampers our ability to understand and empathize toward those that for whatever reason goes against the ideal.

So i'm not sure how much of it is "natural" or "cultural", but as others have pointed out the vast majority of people are happy to cooperate and help one another... it's not an abstract ideal.

On the other hand, since we were kids starting at school, and across the media spectrum, we've been taught to crush others to move forward. That part is definitely not natural but cultural. If that's the "reality" you're talking about, we can do a great deal about it!

A good example is malicious actions by companies. You could probably follow the entire decision tree in a lot of cases and not find a single individual that was acting differently than the average person would in those same circumstances.

Systemic issues are becoming obfuscated because human nature is disregarded in favor of ideals. It's much easier to just nail someone to a cross than to empathize and find real solutions.

I'd have to read her responses to the criticism she got again, I believe she did walk back the extent of her claims, but could be wrong (and in saying this, I'm sure someone will correct me if I am misremembering ;))

You can probably see how option A is a propaganda win for Nazism (and fascism in general). 'See, you're not so different to us!'. Was it the German people who became Nazis overnight, or did the Nazi elites (such as Eichmann) instigate what amounted to major social engineering campaigns?

That's why seemingly democratic societies can turn into regimes almost overnight.

Well, yes it was, because it was engineered. The Nazis never won a majority in any election, but once they were in power they were famous for their social engineering and propaganda. They're a classic example of how a minority of people in a population can absolutely gain control over everyone else and bend the majority to their will using highly cynical but intelligent tactics.

That's a personal interpretation. In fact, in many ways it doesn't discount it but actually inspires them, asserting that without such efforts society is likely to backslide into fascism fairly easily. Which tbh, if you've lived in the US from 2001 to 2005, or today in Russia or Hungary, you've basically experienced already.

That does not mean that society carries all responsibility for the actions of this or that person, of course, that's never the case. What the banality of evil tells us is that society contains the conceptual germs for behaviour that can turn atrocious, when brought to extreme lengths by this or that individual.

Or consider your own personal experience with people you have worked with. You may have had colleagues who were incompetent, unintelligent or annoying, but how many of them would you describe as evil? Over twenty years of working in the industry I have only ever encountered one person who I would genuinely describe, not as “evil” per se, but as lacking in certain moral qualities that we tend to take for granted among the people we know (and we take them for granted because most people are good). And he wasn’t a developer!

I believe it is much more likely that people work for Amazon because they either genuinely believe it is a good company (after all, it is lauded by many) and/or because they are ignorant of the nature of what people in socioeconomic classes far below their own are experiencing in Amazon facilities. Just how aware are each of us of the reality on the ground at companies we support? Do you know what it is like to be a worker at every company whose stock you own? What about the companies who make the clothing you wear or the device you’re using to read this?

If not, does that you make evil? Or are you a participant in a system that hides this reality from you?

I’m not saying that owning stock or wearing apparel is the same thing as joining a company, by the way. People should be very discerning about who they work for. But I think there are more plausible and positive reasons for human behaviour than Machiavelli proposed.

Let’s not view each other as evil and thus write off each other and in doing so, our future. Let’s work to change the system instead.

Does the sin of making money wash away the virtue of creating a COVID-19 vaccine?

My observation is that why should we expect highly paid tech workers to conform to some higher ideal. They have more to lose.

Other than that, full agreement.

> You really think people are willing to risk their 6 figure salaries for some anonymous warehouse workers...

Also known as the doctrine of "the original sin".

As opposed to Rousseau's "noble savage".