Here's a law student's reaction to the WWII guard's trial in The Reader.
Student (angry) I used to believe in this trial. But now I think it's diversion
Teacher: diversion from what?
Student: They choose six women, and put them on trial. They say, they were the evil ones, they were the guilty ones. Because one of the victims happen to write a book. That's why they are on trial, and nobody else! Do you know how many camps there were in Europe? Everyone knew! Our parents, our teachers. That isn't the question . The question is how could you let this happen?
The Banality of Evil. This is what this student is angry about. This concept was proposed by Hanna Arendtz in 1963 in a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which documented the trial of a World War II war criminal named Adolf Eichmann. During the trial, this highly regarded Nazi officer, without remorse, said I am simply doing my job, doing my duty.... I am not only obeying orders, I am obeying the law. Much like Hanna's in Answering your own reasons for letting three hundred Jews burn alive instead of opening the door to save lives, It's my job. It's
easy to express anger for these people who have lost their conscience. Just like AIG used the Poor honest tax payer's money to give out big bonuses during the financial crisis, and the American people were angry, we are also easy to fall into the circle of anger, as if whoever is more angry, whoever has more conscience .
In the history of human beings, there have been more than one staggering bestiality, Genocide, Holocaust, is it a genetic mutation of a certain ethnic group in this period, born with moral illiterate? It's easy to get angry, but it's not easy to figure out why this happened.
Man is an animal that is easily stunned by fanaticism, and even has a tendency to seek fanaticism in his nature. Religious fanatics can often view life as dung. In the red tide of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards at such a young age could still beat to death the teachers they met every day.
Indifference is tied to fanaticism. The mass slaughter of Jews was not because there were so many anti-Semites, but because the anti-Semites (Hitler's gang) created a frenzy that drew countless people without anti-Semitic tendencies or political intentions into the machine. So they can pick out batches of people to die without any hesitation like Hanna, so they don't think 300 human lives are worth much, and the most basic compassion in human nature has been dulled, so after so many years, still That sentence, it's my job.
This reminds me of a conversation between detective Mills and John Doe in the last episode of The Seven Deadly Sins. John killed seven people for preaching, each representing a sin.
Detective: I thought all you do is to kill innocent people.
John: Innocent?…….Only in a world this shitty, could you even try to say these were innocent people. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin in every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common. It's…it's trivial
. When the number rises to a certain level, even principles can be easily edited. When the people around were in a frenzy and indifference, then, batches of people like Hanna melted in. melt in.
Finally, genocide. Holocaust. There
are very few people who stick to the chain of human nature like Schindler. There are so many out, and they will be made into "Schindler's List".
Judgment, indeed, is diversion. The law does not blame the public, and the law does not blame the public.
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