The banality of evil

By lorri - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in News & Politics

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Auschwitz and Kolyma created by ignorance of science

A key question in understanding the genesis of totalitarian ideologies is the (mis)understanding by many of their creators of what is science, how does it proceed, what are its methods. If one looks at the writings of people like Comte, Hegel, Marx, not to say about more recent guys like Heidegger,... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 5:48 AM | add or view comments (0) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Un-scientific nostalgies for alleged scientific ideologies

It is rather curious the following thing. Some of the most influent and pernicious totalitarian ideologies wrapped themselves in "scientific" visions (unfortunately, their proponents had a vision of what is science that is, in fact, a caricature of it): nowadays, their supporters continuously refer... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 12:59 AM | add or view comments (1) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Social ineuqualities in totalitarian regimes

A curious thing about totalitarian regimes was that they, among other things, were the ones in which social differences were mostly enhanced. If you was a people's enemy you could not work, your son had not access to institutional educations, if you were deported,in the case you survived you could... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 11:56 PM | add or view comments (1) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Monday, June 4, 2007

Some differences among the Nazis and the Communists

With the Nazis one, in general, did not run the risk of being arrested or deported unless he/she was Jew or if he/she in fact took some action against the regime: the category of the enemies was rather clearly defined. It was not so under the communist regimes. In some epochs under Stalin-not to say... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 12:47 PM | add or view comments (3) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Again on totalitarianism in love

Very often we believe that matters concerning love, emotions, etc. are somewhat existing per se out of ourselves, ruled by strictly emotive laws which, by definition, do not admit interventions by reason. Again, it is a sort of comfortable determinism which exempt us from taking active actions to... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 6:59 AM | add or view comments (2) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Are we totalitarian in our own lives?

Until now we have dealt with some consequences of totalitarian thoughts in social and political fields: what about our own private lifes? How many lives are ruined or destroyed by unconscious application of totalitarianism to our own ways of thinking, feeling, loving? Are we all little Stalin one... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 5:29 AM | add or view comments (2) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Friday, June 1, 2007

The present does not matter: only the future counts

Rather curiously, in the totalitarian minds the whole richness complexity and variety of the real world is reduced to a mere abstract simplifying formula, a sort of caricature. A physicist would argue that that the world is highly nonlinear and it cannot be linearized. The real men and women living... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 12:28 PM | add or view comments (3) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Why one that benefits of political freedom supports totalitarian faiths?

A key, although not new, question is: why so many people in many free, western countries have (too) often be fascinated by totalitarian faiths? How it was possible that in the 70's young people in Italy marched supporting even...the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxa? How it was possible that so... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 11:21 AM | add or view comments (0) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Choosing a "good" faith

Cynically speaking, if one embraces a totalitarian faith which is particularly well presented, full of good intentions, promising the paradise on this Earth, endowed with an articulate, elaborated intellectual structure, he/she is in the position of killing hundreds of thousands people with the... Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 12:29 PM | add or view comments (0) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

Monday, May 28, 2007

The evil could be in everyone of us

Recognizing that people so common in every society of ours can transform in systematic killers is making banal certain events? Or, instead, does not help us in taking our own responsibilities and in keeping our minds and hearts watchful, elastic and resistent to certain distorting influences? Sign in to see full entry.

posted by lorri at 3:00 PM | add or view comments (2) | leave calling card | link to this | view only this entry

About this Blog

The aim of this blog is to focus on certain charachteristics of the different totalitarisms which plagued the past century by trying to compare some key features of theirs.

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