I genuinely used to wonder as a kid how the Nazis ever got to power. How people could just stand by and let people like that take power? How could they just allow all the horrid shit?
There are so many layers to this stuff that it would blow this comment way out of proportion. I’d love to tell you about this but it would be so much to write.
Amathia. It is often translated as “ignorance,” as in the following two famous quotes from Socrates:
“Wisdom alone, is the good for man, ignorance the only evil” (Euthydemus 281d)
“There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance” (in Diogenes Laertius, II.31)
That’s the opening lines of the article. It’s only 2-3 pages, a couples of minutes read. I really do strongly suggest it.
But I’ll paste a a core bit
Here is the last interview given by Arendt, from which I will quote a few selected bits that are very pertinent to our discussion (boldface is mine, the interview is also found in the book Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview And Other Conversations):
“During the war, Ernst Jünger came across some peasants and a farmer had taken in Russian prisoners of war straight from the camps, and naturally they were completely starving — you know how Russian prisoners of war were treated here. And he says to Jünger, ‘Well, they’re subhuman, just like cattle — look how they devour food like cattle.’ Jünger comments on this story, ‘It’s sometimes as if the German people were being possessed by the Devil.’ And he didn’t mean anything ‘demonic’ by that. You see, there’s something outrageously stupid [dumm = ignorant, unwise] about this story. I mean the story is stupid, so to speak. The man doesn’t see that this is just what starving people do, right? And anyone would behave like that. But there’s something really outrageous [empörend = shocking, revolting] about this stupidity. … Eichmann was perfectly intelligent, but in this respect he had this sort of stupidity [Dummheit = irrationality, senselessness]. It was this stupidity that was so outrageous [empörend = shocking, revolting]. And that was what I actually meant by banality. There’s nothing deep about it [the ignorance] — nothing demonic! There’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing, correct?”
They’re crawling back out of their holes here again too
But generally I’d say most people don’t care
I genuinely used to wonder as a kid how the Nazis ever got to power. How people could just stand by and let people like that take power? How could they just allow all the horrid shit?
I don’t wonder anymore.
There are so many layers to this stuff that it would blow this comment way out of proportion. I’d love to tell you about this but it would be so much to write.
I got curious about it several decades ago have had some time to ponder and read.
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
That’s the opening lines of the article. It’s only 2-3 pages, a couples of minutes read. I really do strongly suggest it.
But I’ll paste a a core bit