Thread by @blackrepublican

Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil

“People who do evil are not necessarily monsters; sometimes they’re just bureaucrats. The Eichmann she observed on trial was neither brilliant nor a sociopath”

radioopensource.org/hannah-arendt-…

“He was described by the attending court psychiatrist as a “completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him.” Evil, Arendt suggests, can be extraordinary acts committed by otherwise unremarkable people.”

radioopensource.org/hannah-arendt-…

My view: Sometimes in history there are outliers, dissimilar behaviors , so evil, that words just fail to fully describe how evil they truly are.

Your leader hates Jews, and wants you to kill six-million of them for him? And you do it?

If he said a billion?
If he said kill yourself?

It suggest something else.
It’s why I’m a religious person: I believe St. Augustine (The AFRICAN father of western theology) was right.

St. Augustine recalled a childhood memory of his running throughout his neighbor’s yards, stealing 🍐fruit and then just throwing them on the ground — without eating them.

He was later obsessed w/this impulse of humans to go beyond what was required— even animals didn’t do that.

Out of this memory Augustine the AFRICAN Berber church father came up with a doctrine that everyone know adheres to: Today, it’s called the doctrine of original sin.

You might have heard of it?

(Not everyone).

But, it’s considered Orthodox Christianity.

St. Augustine felt that the Scriptures don’t just say sin is act, and if you do more good acts the sin you previously had done goes away. No, St. Augustine goes a step further and says sin is baked in our dna.

We are not whole, and we are corrupted at birth (see: Romans 5:12).

If you can boil it down it’s Walt Kelly's famous quote — We have seen the monster and it is us.” Augustine isn’t inventing the concept of sin, I believe he’s saying Christianity has a new spin on an old belief.

@drantbradley
— comparatively speaking, Jews/Muslims have a very different view of sin ... yes?

@drantbradley If so, it means that Orthodox Christianity is the only Abrahamic faith with this particular spin on sin.

@drantbradley The dissimilar teachings of its founder, apostles, teachers led to a dissimilar identity.

@drantbradley St. Augustine believes attempts to negotiate with God, by doing good things for bad things we had done is kind of useless.

The African Church Father contends that we are always aiming, but missing the mark!

@drantbradley We try to shoot our arrows, but due to our very nature, no matter how close we get to the target 🎯Augustine suggest we will will always miss the mark due to Original Sin.

@drantbradley “Whenever sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more.”

— Saul the Apostle (early Jewish Christian martyr, and one of the early founders of today’s largest religion — Christianity.

@drantbradley Paul speaking...

“For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about; but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? 'And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.'

@drantbradley Continue...

“Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”

— Saul (his Jewish name),
Later called Paul.

@drantbradley All of this informs Augustine’s view of Original Sin, and how Christianity engages the question of evil: Who is the monster? We all have a little monster in us. We all have potential for evil, because it’s part of our nature.

@drantbradley Thomas Merton: “One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . . The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing.

@drantbradley He continues: “We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people.

@drantbradley We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous.”

alanarchibald.homestead.com/ThomasMerton.h…