Banality of Evil... and Heroism

During the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase about the “banality of evil” based on how “normal” Eichmann seemed. Robert Sapolsky in his best-selling book, Behave, mentions the “three of the most influential, disturbing, and controversial studies in the history of psychology” that showed:

1)      People want to conform, so much so that if enough people say or do something, they will start doing/believing the same;

2)     People are willing to punish others for failing to do something, if someone in a position of authority tells them to;

3)     When given power over others identified as being bad people (e.g. prisoners), people will go to any lengths to enforce discipline on them.

Sure, as Sapolsky says, these experiments have been criticized and their findings questioned, but it’s hard to dismiss them entirely given the genocides from former Yugoslavia to Rwanda to the much smaller (in scale) Ku Klux Klan.

Sapolsky lists the different reasons why such things happen time and again:

1)      Power of the incremental: or “You were okay shocking the guy with 225 volts, but not with 226? That’s illogical”. Sapolsky explains brilliantly where this line of reasoning leads to:

“What incrementalism does is put the potential resister on the defensive, making the savagery seem like an issue of rationality rather than of morality… When your conscience finally rebels and draws a line in the sand, we know that it is likely to be an arbitrary one.”

2)     Misdirecting responsibility: Your responsibility is to the team, not the enemy. I thought you were here to help. You signed a form. Even worse:

“It’s that much harder when the fine print reveals that is what you signed up for.”

3)     Statistical guilt: This is apparently why firing squads give one shooter blanks, not real bullets. It allows every shooter to rationalize:

“I may not even have shot him.”

4)     Anonymize the perpetrators: He cites the KKK and the Storm Troopers from Star Wars as examples who “deindividuate” to “facilitate moral disengagement so that you won’t be able to recognize you afterward”.

5)     Make the victim an abstraction: Don’t give the victim an identity, a name.

6)     Stress: “In stressful settings, rules gain power”. War. Us v/s Them.

If all this felt very negative, fear not for there is hope, writes Sapolsky. The key is for people to evaluate if there are alternatives. And even when it’s tough, “to imagine that resistance is not futile”. In fact, one of the guys behind the 3 famous experiments mentioned at the top emphasizes the “banality of heroism”. Just as evil doesn’t look like Darth Vader or Lord Voldemort, the good doesn’t have to look like a superhero or Harry Potter. Both sets are just ordinary people…