alt Hacker News> It turns out that the kinds of career pressures familiar to employees everywhere — the desire to revive a stalled career or obtain a minor promotion — can be enough to incentivize lower- and midlevel officials to violate professional obligations, fundamental norms and even basic morality.
I understand that research needed to look for credible data in order to advance, but these conclusions are really close to what Hannah Arendt tells in the Banality of Evil: regular citizens trying to get their promotion and advance their careers, doing untold damage in the process because they happened to be working during an autocracy. It's nice though that data eventually corroborate what philosophy first observes, even if the observation doesn't necessarily directly prompts an investigation.
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> but these conclusions are really close to what Hannah Arendt tells in the Banality of Evil
That's why the article actually mentions it.
I’d also recommend reading Modernity and the Holocaust as a good intro to studies of the Holocaust through a similar lens. None of this is new
Unfortunately she had the wool pulled over her eyes by her primary subject. Eichmann was absolutely every bit the monster you'd assume for the Architect of the Holocaust. He played up being "just a functionary" incredibly well during Nuremberg, but if you look into his history, perhaps he wasn't as flamboyant as some of his contemporaries like Himmler or of course, Hitler, but he very much held similar views.
This is not to say she got it wrong, I think the banality of evil absolutely holds up in a number of readings of historical events. I just don't think Eichmann was a good example.
Well,
I gotta mention that Arendt relationship with actual NAZI ideologue Martin Heidegger might have somewhat colored her analysis of evil. I mean, she had a reason to dismiss the importance of ideas, propaganda and prominent intellectuals in creating "evil" regimes when she had a connection to such things (just as she and others covered up how much of an overt NAZI and antisemite Heidegger was, even Hitler took power).
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Marburg_(1924%E2...
And naturally this is a controversial take since Arendt and Heidegger have defenders to the present day.
The banality of mentioning the holocaust in a non-related thread. That should be Hannah's title
I think this is an artifact of any large organization of people.
Humans tend toward doing things that are best for them. The challenge of large-organization-designers (governments, companies, etc.) is how to design a system that 1) leverages this behavior; ie maximize the value of ambition to the system, and 2) is not vulnerable to this behavior; ie checks & balances
Small organizations can get around this because outcomes are easier to share, and selecting people who aren't selfish is possible.
We can do our best to put guidelines around selfishness, but history tells us this is hard