https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XoGrh9eL9Y
(I love you stock)
A few posts back, we discussed "the banality of evil," a term coined by Hannah Arendt.
It refers to the simplicity of "evil" acts; sometimes people kill others for the sole purpose of making money.
Adolf Eichmann, who Hannah Arendt observed during his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, organized the Nazis' train schedules--he planned the shipment of prisoners to concentration and extermination camps.
But what if he wasn't ideologically committed to Third Reich maxims? What if he didn't believe in the superiority of the Aryan race?
Does that make him any less evil than Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor or head of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic), who spoke outright of the inferiority of all other races?
Is Adolf Hitler "evil" for what he did?
He rationalized his ideologies in his head. They made sense, somehow.
What if these three men committed "evil" for everyday reasons, just like someone mugging another on the street, trying to make some cash to feed a family?
I don't condone these crimes; I just think it's important to look at them through more than one dimension, and not to hasten characterizing the wholes of individuals by their acts.
We are much more intricate than that.
And I put evil in "" because I don't know what to call it.
ANYWAY
Today on an elevator, thinking of Arendt, I thought,
banality of good.
Think about it. On streets we pass samaritans and CEOs, hear them talk on phones. These two archetypes have done "good" in two archetypal ways. They have:
1.) Saved lives/supported others through struggle, even in the smallest ways (I'll call this "humanitarian good")
2.) Become financially successful and/or societally esteemed (and this, "the capitalist's good"...lol)
Again, these people are everywhere. Maybe I'm preoccupied with anonymity because I'm back in New York City.
And I'm distancing myself from humanity (and hoping that you, the reader do so for the remainder of this post, too) because I dig writing like I'm not part of humanity; like I'm a wide-eyed observer.
We all observe, and often respond with inflections of the tongue or compassionate countenances. I'm responding with a manifesto.
So, these particularly exceptional people--we may overhear them complaining to their mother on the phone, gossiping to a friend on a park bench, whispering under the sandpapering of leaves--exceptional people don't have to be exceptional all the time, and that fascinates me.
Or we may see a billionaire drop his Mister-Softee-vanilla-sprinkly-cone on cement, get showered by the Washington Square Park fountain, be unable to conceal her sweaty pits.
How can someone who's succeeded in life, done something many college kids I know are anxious about (made money), be so...normal. It doesn't match my gleaming idea of
(I love you stock)
Not that I value the title "CEO" above any other financial status/vocation. The extreme success of its reputation, however, fits to dispel my illusions with the greatest magnitude; the name makes the banality of good, or normalcy, pure humanity of the "good" individual, even more banal.
The tugs between society and the individual.
Is good banal, then? Is anything banal?
Recently I read a quote: "Their lives would have been an art of living" (Perec, 23).
How is any moment less than extraordinary?
The fact that I ask this question leads me to reason one of my greatest pet peeves.
when I hear life brushed off like it's nothing, I feel dehumanized, dirty, saggy, wrong.
But I brush it off, too.
"How was your day?"
"Eh, whatever."
Maybe I'm afraid that it really is whatever.
Always, though, I come back to the extraordinaries.
Those who have done "good," but act like anyone else.
The contrasts between reputation and person are extraordinary.
Maybe we brush off life because we're subconscious and self-conscious; we know how extraordinary it could be if we just went about seeing it differently.
IF we allowed ourselves to relish in the ordinary. Anything can become ordinary if we forget to call it extraordinary.
"oh, I work for the CIA, no biggie."
as a child that was your dream, and now you do it.
for hours you fantasize of lunch, and then you eat it.
you interview for 27 jobs, and score the one you most wanted.
then you go to work.
If we stood forever awestruck at the incarnation of illusion, I guess we wouldn't get much work done.
But I got this done.
We're all extraordinary, then. This is the only logical conclusion. Sorry.
how I remind myself to practice "the art of living":
it's rice and tomatoes.
"it doesnt get darker unless you expect it to."
Works Cited
Perec, Georges. Things: A Story of the Sixties. (David R. Godine: Boston, 1990).
