－Omid-X to Hopesoo-Z (his companion on planet X)－
My most beloved and ever nurturing Hopesoo, I hope this email finds you well. The news of your latest progression in our planet’s administration were most cherishing and I wish I had been there to congratulate you in person.
I arrived late last night in Berlin, a historic city that is the capital of a very advanced and industrial country called Germany. The city has a long history as the seat of what used to be the Prussian empire, a European power which formed the core of the future Germany. Now, I am not going to delve too much into the city’s history, because just as my plan is to seek the journey and not the destination, I seek emotions and opinions in my writing, and not facts and history.
Perhaps Berlin is most associated with the two most horrible world wars, especially the second one, which directly caused the death of over 55 million people around the world, and another 30 to 40 million indirectly. I am not going to get into the details, because it will take too long to truly describe the atrocities that humans inflicted on each other during these two wars.
The reason I bring this up is that my entire experience and emotions in Berlin can be summarized in the way the remnants of the old Kaiser Wilhelm church stand right next to the modern one rebuilt in the 1960s. When you look from a distance and you see the ruin of the old church, which was not rebuilt, next to the modern one, you get a sense of fear-driven awe! Somehow, when I saw the tower of the old church, I felt the death and the destruction. For some reason, I could feel the atrocities of the second world war, by just looking at this ‘simple’ vestige of a grand majesty that withered in violence and crimes against humanity. That is why the city has kept this small piece of the old church as a memorial to the second world war.
As I walked along a big shopping street called, Kurfürstendamm avenue, I heard two young people discussing someone that I had not heard of before, Hanna Arendt. I bring her up because I heard the man tell the woman that when he sees the church as is, he can only think of what Hanna Arendt expression, ‘banality of evil’.
I looked up this concept, and realized how it can also apply to The Big One (TBO) on our planet, when half of our citizens basically attacked the other half with the intention of wiping them out.
Apparently, her postulate for this expression is that many people who have committed evil crimes are not actually fanatics or sociopaths or driven by some extremist ideology. They are very average people who are solely motivated by professional promotion and success, things considered ‘good’ in most societies. Banality in her sense is not that the actions are banal, far from it, but the motivation behind extreme atrocities can be a consequence of banal complacency and success-seeking behavior.* In her case-study, it was a man who represented an extreme evil during this same second world war, Adolf Eichmann.
Such lessons of history are often expected to teach people about ‘things not to do’ and identify feelings and opinions to ‘leave unattended’, but alas, it seems that this wisdom has not reached Earth yet, because we see time after time that an evil system designed by powerful minds (and evil) can turn ordinary people into evil criminals.
My dearest Hopesoo, I shall stop soon, for the thoughts that criss-cross my mind actually are beginning to wear me down. Tomorrow, I will leave Berlin and travel through this land to seek answers to some of my fundamental questions about the goodness (or not) of earthlings.
* Some of the descriptions for the term ‘banality of evil’ have been obtained from Wikipedia.
From Berlin, Germany - 24 April, 2024 (Earth)