The Banality of Evil. Serviced offered by Rev. Wayne B. Arnason and Anne Obradovich

1 The Banality of Evil Serviced offered by Rev. Wayne B. Arnason and Anne Obradovich broken Sunday, February 6, 2011 West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Rocky River, OH The jewelry box lid is broken. I can fix it, I told her, years ago. I can fix it. I just haven t done so. The top of the box is a painting of Boston Common on a snowy day in another time, people walking across the park at twilight. The four pieces that framed it lie on top of the dresser, waiting to be remembered into wholeness. I walk by every morning without the glue or the intention to fix what is broken. Now I have gone so long that broken seems normal. How did I become accustomed to a life of unfinished and disrepair? I can fix it; I just haven t done so. ~Milton Brasher-Cunningham at Don't Eat Alone Sermon Part 1 Wayne Arnason What about Hitler? my friend challenged me, as we were having one of our occasional theological tussles brought about by casual chatting about current events. This time the subject was whether Canada should reinstate the death penalty. Some people are just evil, he said. Maybe they were human once, but when they commit murders or genocide, as far as I m concerned, they re broken. I don t keep things that are broken beyond repair just because they used to work! I get rid of them! He really didn t want to hear my Unitarian Universalist belief in the basic goodness and redeemability of all humanity. For him it was impossibly naïve and romantic and admittedly, in a world where there is so much suffering, so much evil, so much brokenness, this kind if theology can be a hard sell - a hard sell even when I m talking to myself. During the month ahead we ll be taking up the theme of Brokenness in our worship services. It s a rich theme with many layers. We can feel broken in the sense that jewelry box lid in the poem we heard is broken we can perceive that there is a wholeness to our lives and we can see even the pieces that we know can be joined together again, but we don t have the time or the energy to work on it. We get used to the brokenness. We can also feel broken in the sense that our lives are not working the ways that they should. We move from one day to the next, knowing that we are spiritually out of tune, and we wonder how that can be fixed. These are aspects of feeling broken that we will explore as the month unfolds, in the services and in the Connection Circles and in the coffee hour conversations but this morning we want to ask ourselves the most ancient religious question that the theme of brokenness poses to us are human beings inherently broken? Are we basically evil, rather than basically good? It s a question that is answered in most traditional Christian churches by saying that we were born original sinners, and that this state of sin was redeemed for us by God s grace in sacrificing his son Jesus for our sakes. That s not the theology you hear from this pulpit, but not so much because we doubt that Jesus has a saving message, but instead because we dismiss the idea that human evil can be explained as our birthright by ascribing it to a mythical first sin. Human evil is much more complicated than that. It s complicated because it s commonplace. One of the most famous reflections on evil written during the 20 th century came not from theologian but from a political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who was asked to write articles for The New Yorker magazine on the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. In her extensive reflections on how the trial exposed Eichmann s inner life and moral accountability, she concluded that the evil he displayed was banal, a word that means drearily commonplace, undistinguished, trite. Her work was immediately controversial. The world did not want to hear that a man who presided over concentration

2 camps was more like us than not. We want to be able to continue to ask the question What about Hitler? to help us feel secure in the knowledge that there are monsters who have stopped being human, who aren t like us any more, who are beyond redemption and who deserve to be killed. Adolf Eichmann was found guilty and he was executed by the State of Israel in 1962. Was he an exceptional monster or was he a common criminal, common in the sense that any human being has the capacity to act as he did? Anne Obradovich has some reflections to share from her reading of Hannah Arendt, but first she s going to share a short section from her 1963 book: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Reading Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (The Jewish theologian) Martin Buber called the execution a mistake of historic dimensions because he said it might serve to expiate the guilt felt by many young persons in Germany Professor Buber went on to say that he felt no pity at all for Eichmann, because he could feel pity only for those whose actions I understand in my heart, and he stressed that he had only in a formal sense a common humanity with those who took part in the acts of the Third Reich. This lofty attitude was, of course, more of a luxury than those who had to try Eichmann could afford, since the law presupposes precisely that we have a common humanity with those whom we accuse and judge and condemn. Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. He was in complete command of himself, nay, he was more: he was completely himself.under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was elated and forgot this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes [of his life] he [Eichmann] was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thoughtdefying banality of evil. (p. 252) Sermon - Part II Anne Obradovich The quote I read to you from Eichmann in Jerusalem announces the concept, the banality of evil. It does not mean we are all potential Eichmanns. What it does mean is that there was something Eichmann lacked which was, compassion. It was his total lack of fellow-feeling, his total inability to see things from anyone else s point of view that made him evil, but in a banal fashion. Arendt stated, a more specific, and also more decisive flaw in Eichmann s character was his almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow s point of view. Although he knew & worked with many Jews, he had no idea, no feeling of what they were like or what they were living through. The longer one listened to him [Eichmann], the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely related to an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of someone else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words & the presence of others, & hence against reality as such. (p. 49) He was totally wrapped up in & of himself, so much so that he was oblivious to the outside world. Instead of thinking in terms like, oh what a terrible place it is I am sending those Jews he would think, what a terrible burden on me all this transporting of Jews is. This lack of compassion meant that Eichmann, although normal, could not tell right from wrong. Arendt noted that the the judges [could not] admit that an average normal person, neither feebleminded, nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong. He did not think that what he was doing was wrong. He was doing his job, he was following orders. And he thought, as many other war criminals had thought, that he was only doing his duty. But only a total lack of compassion can lead someone to believe that in doing his duty, even though that duty involved crimes against humanity, he was still doing the right thing. Without empathy, without sympathy of feeling, there is a lack of the ability to understand good and evil. this normality [of Eichmann & others like him] was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied that this new type of criminal commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong. Eichmann thought of himself as a kind of idealist: An idealist [according to Eichmann s notions] was a man who lived for his idea & who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea, everything, & especially,

3 everybody. (p.42) This surely is a most frightening kind of idealist one who stops at nothing to use ends to justify means. Here again there is no compassion, for compassion would not allow one to sacrifice everybody. One wonders if a person is truly normal who does not possess compassion. Not that everybody has to have the compassion of the Dalai Lama, but surely a definition of normalcy would, or perhaps should, contain at least the germ of compassion. For isn t it part of our very human nature to have fellow feeling? Isn t it part of our nature to turn against murder, especially the murder of millions, out of a feeling of repulsion arising from compassion? The book 365 Dao: Daily Meditations states: once you ve seen the face of God, You see that same face in everyone you meet. The author, Deng Ming-Dao, means that once we have a direct experience of God, we have a direct experience of the universality of life and everyone & everything in it. And the reverse is true: when we look into someone s face, we are seeing the face of God. He goes on to say it s only because we let our egos get in the way that we can t see God in the face of others. And this must have happened with Eichmann his own petty ego was big enough for him not see the face of God in the faces of the Jews he sent to their deaths. The Dalai Lama, in his little book Of Love and Compassion, states: Basically we should approach others openly, recognizing each person as another human being just like ourselves. There is not so much difference between us all. He also states: To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, & on the realization that others have the right to be happy & overcome suffering just as much as you. This is something Eichmann was totally unable to do. And this was the banality of evil. Reading from Rev. Dr. Jeremy Taylor D. Min. (A Unitarian Universalist Community Minister who has had a practice of dream therapy for thirty years.) Repression and projection are a matched set; one generates the other. "Repression" is the technical name for the interior psychological and emotional process that creates denial, and all the other forms of self-deception. When some dimly sensed aspect of the authentic, but not-yet-speech-ripe self appears to be too problematic and difficult to acknowledge and take conscious responsibility for, it is "automatically" repressed and denied, creating the inevitable, linked projection of that very same aspect out onto other people. It is most important to understand that this is a natural process, one which ordinarily takes place beyond the control and attention of conscious self-awareness. Whatever is being repressed and denied within does not actually "disappear"; it will inevitably "show up" as an unconscious projection, and will be perceived in the waking world as the exclusive "property" of someone else. Fortunately, it is possible to make these unconscious denials and consequent distortions of perception more conscious. When this is accomplished, behaviors change, and even the most seemingly intractable collective problems and individual people open up and become available to the processes of growth, evolution, and change. There is a prayer exercise from the Hindu- Buddhist tradition that often has a striking and transformative effect on the effort to become aware of, and withdraw unconscious projections. In Sanskrit, the prayer phrase is: "Tat Tvam Asi", or, literally, "I am that." Ram Dass offers what I think is a brilliant emendation of the strictly literal translation. He offers the prayer as: "I am that too." Sermon Part 3 Wayne Arnason Anne Obradovich has offered us an important answer to what was missing, or perhaps what was broken, from the humanity of Adolf Eichmann which made it possible for him to be an administrator of the Holocaust: he was so self-absorbed that he lacked compassion for others. Those of you familiar with psychiatry might recognize that medicine has words for people like this psychopaths or sociopaths. In the Diagnostic Manual the two words fall under the broad diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, and afflict a small fraction of human beings for reasons we don t clearly understand scientifically. There is the usual speculation about whether a lack of compassion arises from a physical cause, like a neurological disorder in the brain, or whether we should look instead at psychological reasons in the family history and the nurture of parents. Many researchers

4 presume that both sources are involved. What is important for us to understand today is that the disorder is understood as a mental illness, and not a moral decision. In recent decades new drug treatments control the disorder, and some clinicians and clergy alike will point to cases of recovery from antisocial personality disorders that have happened entirely through spiritual means. But no one argues that sociopaths and psychopaths are representative of humanity, that they are the baseline of the human condition which most human beings overcome by spiritual means. Individuals who suffer from the disorder are degraded from the human norm. We presume that compassion for and with others is one of the defining qualities of human beings, rather than a special spiritual achievement. Yet, we also notice that a huge amount of spiritual literature and reflection from the greatest religious teachers is devoted to the cultivation of compassion. It seems that compassion doesn t just come naturally, or that it can slip away easily. If our natural birthright is compassion, if our hope for every child born into the world is that parental love and care will be their very first experience of compassion, then why does it have to be cultivated throughout the course of a lifetime? Is it because we are basically selfish and that compassion isn t that widespread, that it s exceptional quality that only a few spiritually advanced people develop? I think there are two reasons why compassion must continue to be cultivated: one of them is based in the individual and one of them is based in what human beings do when we are together in groups. Let me talk first about the individual, about you and me. Each of us recognizes that not only do we experience the unique consciousness and moral awareness that is part of being human, but that we also share with all other species some common needs and desires. With all animals, we experience a self-preservation instinct, a desire to survive and to feel safe. We focus that instinct mostly around our physical needs for food, water, shelter, and warmth and when we perceive or imagine a threat to those needs, we become defensive. The reading from Jeremy Taylor described a widespread human trick that we all do when in some way, psychologically or physically, we feel threatened. We don t like to feel threatened and we want the feeling to go away, so we package it up and throw it out, project it, at someone or something else. It s a lot easier to deal with discomfort when it s out there, and can be identified and controlled or eliminated. It s a lot easier when everything that makes us frightened or uncomfortable is understood as the fault of one obvious group say the Jews, or the Islamic fundamentalists, or the Republicans. Repression and Projection is as banal, that is, it s as commonplace as evil. We all do it in mostly small but sometimes big ways. We do it with our parents, our siblings, our political opponents, with foreigners of all kinds. What s important about repression and projection in our individual lives is that it s the counterweight to compassion. If you find yourself disliking someone intensely, or having a negative feeling about a particular group of people, it s hard to feel compassion for them. But try responding to that experience with a few repetitions of that Hindu prayer as Ram Dass teaches it what if you say to yourself I am that too. I am that too. For me it s like a needle that punctures the balloon of my projection, and makes it hard to keep inflating it my own thoughts about how evil someone else is. One of the most important tools that I ve ever found in my own life for cultivating my compassion is that simple prayer, I am that too. Now I said that there is a second reason why compassion has to be cultivated that has to do with how we human beings behave in groups. We all know that in groups we behave differently than we do when we re alone or in couples. We yell louder when we attend the football game than we do in our living rooms. We experience events differently when shared with others. Most of the time there s nothing evil about this. Group life enhances our humanity. But what happens when repression and projection is active in a large group, even a group as large as a country? That s precisely what happened in Nazi Germany as the individual ideologies of Nazi leaders were cultivated and encouraged by rallies, by political party organization, by media, by social customs, by repression, and by laws. An individual lack of compassion and distortion of the humanity of an entire group of people became a social norm. So what Hannah Arendt identified as banal about the evil perpetrated by Adolf Eichmann was that it had become socially acceptable. The authority structures of Nazi society reinforced it. Those who spoke against it were eliminated or intimidated. The national goals of the state became based on an evil projection. Individuals who had jobs in the

5 bureaucracy that created the Holocaust were not just following orders; i.e. they were being good members of the society in which they participated. Could they, should they, have individually stood up and challenged the system? Does obeying orders excuse individual moral responsibility? This is the question the defense has asked in the Eichmann trial and in others where similar issues are at stake. Legally, most of the time, the answer is no. An individual is still responsible for the crimes he or she may knowingly commit while under orders if there was some way to preserve their own safety and avoid carrying them out. For us the important question that arises from the banality of evil in the Eichmann trial is the question of where the evil lives, Does it live in each one of us as a part of the human condition? Are we in that sense broken? Or is it something that we have the capacity to create through ignorance, fear, and anger projected both individually but especially collectively into the world? Human history has too many heroic stories of moral courage, where individuals acted on their compassion and stood against mobs and states, for me to believe that the human condition is one of brokenness. At the same time, I cannot cast aside those who help create the evil of which we are capable, individually and together, into an outer darkness of non-humanity. When our Universalist ancestors said that there is no hell, I know that they meant no hell in another life, but I would expand that to say, no hell in this life either. No human being can forever exile themselves from the reach of human compassion. The only hell we have is the physical hell of poverty, discrimination, and destruction we create through our own fear. So, if I am that too, then I am Eichmann too. I am the person whose self-absorption could become so great that I could abandon the compassion that is my birthright. Perhaps, in that sense, I am broken. If nothing that is human if foreign to me, I am broken too. Our task here, however, our reason for being as a church each and every Sunday, is to serve health and wholeness, to inspire more people to lead lives of meaning and purpose. To do that we must accept all of who we are, not just what we re proud of. Perhaps that is the message in the mysterious poetry that Leonard Cohen set to music in anthem. There is a light that can illuminate our human condition, that can drive away the shadows of repression and projection, but it s a light that can only get in if we accept that we too are cracked. I want to see honestly everything I am, everything I can be, and everything I could become, so I try to remember those four words of prayer and come back to them again and again: I Am That Too.