Dog Flax Oil Teaspoon

The madman Gaddafi Individual and totalitarianism


Source
Hannah Arendt's portrait

Again I am reading Hannah Arendt, a thinker whose work is more timely than ever. In particular read, "Responsibility and
trial, which has to do with the responsibility of the individuals who gave to or actively participated in the Nazi regime of 30 and 40 years of the twentieth century. look back and say "never again", but not so easy. Fascism now recognize as a particular form of power. But while some embodiments of this doctrine among us again grow globally, we react blindly. As Arendt said about what happened at that time: "We had learn everything from the beginning ...
... "(P. 47). In the 30's the Germans lacked the necessary categories to understand what was happening.

We on the other hand, we have all the categories we need, but do not know how to react to different growing totalitarianism almost casually around us. Resist as tennis players to return balls to their opponents, but do not think about the game. What are the balls that "they" cast?

To name a few:

-the right to Habeas Corpus is desapreciendo in the world, is particularly notable in the older democracies
-growing political violence -many wars in the world have no viable reasons justifying *; , governments have less transparency with each passing decade. The reaction of those in power Wikileaks publications attests to this.

Arendt says that ordinary citizens act as mere teeth in the wheels of a heavy machinery. Keep systems running even the most immoral. We, the people, teeth are expendable: our responsibility is "a marginal issue" (p. 51). However, each officer is a human being. And for this reason the Eichmann trial in Israel, years after the Third Reich, you could ask:


"He made you, an individual with a name, date and place of birth, identifiable, and therefore not dispensable, the crimes for which he is accused? And why did it? "
(p. 52)

Arendt says:
" ... if you want to define a bureaucracy ... as a form of government - is a system of offices, as opposed to a system of bureaucracy men ... unfortunately no one is a regime, and for this reason is the least humane and cruel rule "
(p. 52).

Eichmann proclaimed his innocence because he was but a "tooth." But one can ask: "Why did you become one?

Just like Eichmann, all have to decide at some point. And this makes us responsible. Although, as noted by Arendt, born into a world that already exists.

*

Note: Personally I can not think of any war that really was "necessary." Even the Second World War could have been avoided if the victors of the First would have used something like the Marshall Plan. Discontent in Germany had been channeled through non as fascists.

Reference: Hannah Arendt. Responsibility and Judgement. Edited with an introduction by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken, 2003).