We're All Sick in the Head

Hannah Arendt was a philosopher and political theorist, best known for her concept of the ‘banality of evil’. Her work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) is based on the account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who organised the deportation of Jews to concentration camps. 

Bratlett (2011, pp. 4-6) illustrates Arendt's theory from a kind of anthropological perspective of psychologists observing the life of humanoid beings on another planet. As outside observers, we realise that the majority population, with little or no explanation from those in charge, participate in genocides, wars, revolutions and terrorist acts without condemnation, and are even rewarded for them, while the (less than) one percent who oppose such acts are attacked and the facts denied. Regardless of the atrocities in which the majority population actively or passively participates, individuals cannot be blamed for these acts, which are socially recognised as a psychological normality: they have witnessed harassment, mass killings, etc., all their lives (2011, pp. 4-6).

In her work, Arendt asked whether someone can cause evil without being evil, and assumed that Eichmann was not a sadistic or demonic criminal, but an ordinary bureaucrat who acted without thinking deeply about the consequences of his actions. His ‘superficiality of thought’ led him to commit horrific acts without realising their moral weight. Bratlett points out that the concept of the banality of evil, as developed by Hannah Arendt, is based on the untested assumption that psychological normality is equivalent to mental health. This assumption leads to the question of how ‘psychologically normal people’, who by definition are supposed to be mentally healthy, could commit terrible atrocities such as wars, genocides, terrorism and torture. It is this surprise at human evil that suggests that a theoretical approach that relies on psychological normality as a standard of health is fundamentally flawed (Bratlett, 2011, p. 12).

So here you go: we're all sick in the head. If you want a longer explanation, read Bratlett's 'Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health'. But it's obvious: we're rotten to the core because of the society we live in. It's a society in which almost no one asks themselves if it's ethical to produce more children when it's clear that the human race is not sustainable. It's the society in which torturing and killing animals for mere entertainment is normal. It's a society in which people are killed in wars that are justified in the name of power. Last but not least, it is a society in which genocides can be carried out and financed by "first-world" countries.

References:

Lederman, S. (2019). The Radicalism of the Banality of Evil: Ideology and Political Conformity in Arendt. New German Critique, 46(2), 197-199. Retrieved on 23. 5. 2025 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334901265_The_Radicalism_of_the_Banality_of_Evil

Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Viking Press.

Bartlett, S. J. (2011). Normality does not equal mental health: The need to look elsewhere for standards of good psychological health. Praeger.

Lederman, S. (2019). The Radicalism of the Banality of Evil: Ideology and Political Conformity in Arendt. New German Critique. 46(2). Retrieved o n 23. 5. 2025 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334901265_The_Radicalism_of_the_Banality_of_Evil