The Banality of Banality

To paraphrase Maryam: "What are we going to talk about this morning?"

Women and children killed in US raid
AFP Published:Oct 05, 2007

BAGHDAD - At least 17 Iraqis including women and children were killed in a US air raid near the city of Baquba today, Iraqi officials and witnesses said.

"Seventeen people were killed, 27 were wounded and eight are missing including women and children," a defence ministry official told AFP.

US helicopters attacked the village of Al-Jaysani, near the mainly Shiite town of Al-Khalis, around 2 am (2300 GMT), destroying at least four houses and killing up to 25 people, witnesses said.

Yet the "Top Stories" are:

AP
Beef recall forces Topps to shut down AP - 7 minutes ago
Tests help mutt owners find identity AP - Sat Oct 6, 7:18 AM ET
Jena mayor calls song inflammatory AP - Sat Oct 6, 7:19 AM ET
Ramirez's homer in 9th lifts Red Sox AP - Sat Oct 6, 7:20 AM ET
New prototype phone gives fitness check AP - Sat Oct 6, 7:17 AM ET

And yet, we still don't "get it."

The Banality of Evil is a phrase coined in 1963 by Hannah Arendt in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal (emphasis added).

It may seem paradoxical to any who have followed the posts here on Free Will that I should be concerned about guilt. For surely, if there is no Free Will there supposedly would be no guilt. But, the lack of Free Will actually demands a revised Ethics, and in that Ethics there is responsibility. But I have to think about this before we look at it further.