Why you should read: Hannah Arendt [Recs]

Deindividuation, Totalitarianism, and the nature of Evil

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Recs is a series where I will dive into the work of a particular creator to explore the major themes in their work. The goal is to provide a good overview of the compelling ideas, that might help you explore the creator in more-depth

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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. 

- “The Life of Mind”, Hannah Arendt

Very important personalish updates before we dig into the details- 

1. I’ll be in Utah from the 23rd to the 25th (I leave early in the morning on the 26th). If you’re around, shoot me a message. 

2. A startup I’m working with dropped this very cool app to make Salesforce management easier. You can find it here on Product Hunt. Would really appreciate you giving it an upvote. It’ll take you a second, costs nothing, and will help our startup a lot. If you’re struggling to constantly update Salesforce-related data from various sources- this app will save you a lot of time (the app is free to download so you can try it out no problems). 

Executive Highlights (tl;dr of the article)

Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century political theorist, well known (amongst many other things) for her thoughts on the nature of evil, the rise of totalitarianism, and her strong emphasis on the importance of living the “active life.” Having seen the rise of totalitarian governments firsthand (she was a Jew in Nazi Germany), her insights into propaganda and how States willingly convince people to surrender their power are extremely relevant to any age filled with economic turbulence, alienation, and mass media. In this article, we will be elaborating on the following ideas- 

1. The Components of an Active Life- Hannah Arendt broke life down into 3 kinds of activities: Labor- the necessary activities for survival; Work the creation of lasting objects (work differs from labor b/c work has a dimension of artisanship and personal investment while labor is done purely for the sake of getting the job done); and Action- meaningful and public activities. To Arendt, modern society deprioritizes the latter two and overemphasizes Labor, which alienates people from themselves by limiting their critical thinking, freedom, and expression. The overemphasis on Labor transforms a group of humans into a blob of humanity, ripe for manipulation and susceptible to hysteria. 

2. The Origins of Totalitarianism- Arendt argued that totalitarianism was a new form of government arising from the breakdown of traditional society and an increasingly ungrounded populace. In the new godless world, all-encompassing ideologies become the new religions- grounding their populace through a fanatical devotion to the State as the new god (Stalin did this almost literally). This is where the previous section is important: this process requires people to give up their individuality, give up on their rough edges, and neatly become cogs in the machine. This kind of de-individuation creates a new kind of evil, one very different from the traditional depictions of evil. But a kind of evil that is far more destructive and much harder to deal with. 

3. The Banality of Evil- Arendt had a very controversial coverage of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi Civil Servant responsible for organizing the mass deportation of Jews to extermination camps. She argued that Eichmann’s participation in the Holocaust was not driven by deep-seated hatred or sadism but instead by thoughtlessness and blind obedience to authority. He wasn’t a Cletus Kassady who lived for bloodshed or an evil mastermind who liked to turn logistics into a game of human-candy crush. Eichmann was a very ordinary man who “simply did as he was told.” The Holocaust was made possible by the millions of Eichmann’s who did the paperwork, made the trains run smoothly, and transformed innocent people into numbers to be optimized. This portrayal of Eichmann caught a lot of flak from people- who claimed that it underplayed the severity but I think there are tons of thoughts to be thunk there- in what ways are we like Eichmann? In what ways do we “behave as we’re supposed to” and what implications does that have on people? 

No matter how much I try, no article will ever do a thinker like Arendt justice. She was too free, covered too much, and was too deep to be classified meaningfully by a hobbyist like me. So, instead, I’ll stick to the themes that spoke to me the deepest. In doing so, hopefully, I’ll convince you to look into the work of Hannah Arendt yourselves. 

Let’s get into the details of this article now. 

PS- I need more friends, so if you‘d like to talk to me, reach out to me through any of my socials over here or reply to this email.

In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

Labor, Work, and Action- How imbalances destroy humanity

The danger is that such a society, dazzled by the abundance of its growing fertility and caught in the smooth functioning of a never-ending process, would lose the very capacity for action and be transformed into a society of laborers.

Think about the last time you introduced yourself to someone new. Chances are your first two sentences have your name and job. Your first question (if you already know the name) is likely, “What do you do?”

If we operate on the assumption that we ask questions to get to know the other person better- this leads to a very interesting implication. Seems like we’ve collectively decided that a person’s job is the most pressing piece of information that we have to know about them. 

It's not the most fun thing they’ve done recently. Not what animal our new friend thinks they can beat in a fight. Not about the greatest sand castle they’ve ever built. Or what problems they think are worth solving, and what they’ve done to solve that. Apparently, none of that is as important as how the person makes money. 

If I asked you how you’ve been spending your time, would you answer with “Just been busy with work”? Has being “busy with work” become your default way to spend time over the last few years. 

That, my loves, is symptomatic of what Arendt called the “victory of the animal laborans.” It is the prioritization of life and the extension of life at all costs, even if it means sacrificing its richness. It’s reflected in the shoddy workmanship that’s passed off as ‘cost-efficiency’, the almost fanatical obsession with a limited set of metrics, and the mind-numbingly bland aesthetic of the modern world. 

It is the complete sacrifice of adventure and chaos at the altar of safety and stability. It’s the total renunciation of our stupidity so that we can live long, peaceful lives. Which is a pity, b/c our stupidity is by far the most interesting thing about us. 

That is that victory of Labor over Work and Action. 

Source

Of course, Labor is not the enemy. We need to Labor to live, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why Labor is its own component in what Arendt calls the ‘active life’. Without the Labor required to survive, nothing else would be possible. However, it requires a balance. Prioritize Labor too much, and we will end up chipping away at all individuality for the sake of efficiency. Prioritize it over all else, and we will end up seduced by the “smooth process” and let ourselves drown in the comforting monotony. We will allow ourselves to be stripped to our basic biological functions, too busy and distracted to stop our unique expressions from atrophying away. The more this happens, the more disconnected we feel from ourselves. And the more this happens, the stronger the urge to find what is missing in the safe confines of a group. All of that creates an interesting feedback loop-

 Under the right conditions, this creates the perfect situation for totalitarianism—conditions that our world seems eerily similar to. Let’s discuss them next.  

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist

- “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, Hannah Arendt

Understanding the Origins of Totalitarianism 

I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. .. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. ...Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? 

—“The Brothers Karamazov," Fyodor Dostoevsky

The 20th century had a few interesting factors that combined to give rise to totalitarianism- 

1. A loss of common morality/grounding that can be used as a social buffer (“the death of God,” as Nietzche called it). Thanks to constantly changing socio-economic conditions and the world wars, social orders were in upheaval, creating a lot of chaos. This reduced social cohesion leads to mass confusion, which is ideal ground for new groups to rise to power.

2. The loss of social bonds, common morality, and reduced prominence of God/any stabilizing narrative also leaves a vacuum for a new God, filled by governments, States, and politicians. It’s not surprising that all the totalitarian states 

3. A large group of very poor, very hungry youth were unable to provide for themselves and their families. This pent-up energy/anger can be redirected easily. 

4. The presence of mass media to speak en masse, manufacture narratives, overwhelm audiences with constant information, and ultimately induce a hypnotic state that allows for control. 

Remind you of anything? 

We’re seeing both increasing numbness and increased radicalization amongst my fellow Gen Z folk-

The American Psychology Association found that 67% of people 18 to 34 feel “consumed” by their worries about money and said stress makes it hard to focus. This comes as 66% of Gen Z adults live paycheck to paycheck. They also cite that in that same group, stress can be so overwhelming that it renders them numb

-The numb generation? Exploring the Gen Z mental health crisis

This is definitely concerning, especially given how clear Arendt’s work was. Personalized Social Media echo chambers + an increasingly digital world make this problem much worse since they make it very easy to end up with one-sided and extreme characterizations of “the others” without ever having to venture beyond a bubble and interact with the enemies. This can destroy our already terrible risk judgment and situational analysis, something Risk Assessment Expert Filippo Marino talks about quite a bit- 

Similarly, debates around crime in US cities often highlight our collective struggle with risk perception. Media coverage, focusing on sensational but rare events, skews public perception, making people believe they are in more danger than they statistically are. This "availability heuristic" – where vivid, easily recalled events distort our understanding of reality – exacerbates fear and leads to policy decisions driven more by public emotion than by data.

My favorite was this passage about AI- 

I have spent the last 35 years in risk-centric professions, from managing threats and hazards in a protective security capacity to serving as a strategic advisor and enterprise risk intelligence expert. The most surprising insight of my career has been the lack of RJDM training or competency — even across roles and professions where it is most needed.

Recently, my work has largely centered on how to leverage technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to elevate the quality of human risk awareness and decision quality. Just as I have for the past three decades, I speak weekly with professionals on both the leadership and consulting sides of the Fortune 500 risk mitigation industry. To ruffle some feathers, I must reveal that most corporate security, protection, and intelligence professionals know as much about risk as welders know about structural engineering or impact windows installers know about climatology.

To recap, we have bad economics, increasing social isolation, and other stressors being compounded by media that shows us only the most extreme things to keep us hooked. All of these hijack our already bad risk assessments, making us much more likely to turn windmills into giants and a barber’s basin into Mambrino’s Helmet. All while also making the lack of common ground problems worse, further increasing the susceptibility to group-think. Yikes

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

Fortunately, studying Arendt also provides us with clear solutions. Proactively seeking community in an isolated world, consciously cultivating our expression (sharing IG stories with no other action doesn’t count), and rejecting the constant attempts to control the narrative can help us fight the pressures towards groupthink. 

Arendt also emphasizes the importance of public discussions and constant societal participation. Encouraging open dialogue and debate fosters critical thinking, raises awareness about historical and contemporary forms of oppression, and strengthens democratic values. These discussions empower individuals to resist manipulation, question authority, and build bridges across social divides. A well-informed and engaged citizenry is less susceptible to the allure of totalitarian ideologies and better equipped to defend democratic institutions against authoritarian encroachment.

This is why I’m so skeptical of AI alignment efforts- especially when done by corporations or politicians. Both groups have always put themselves first, and been known to suppress inconvenient narratives. My worry is that these groups will use “safe AI” as a guise to suppress any inconvenient narratives. I don’t want Google to protect me from unsafe content. I want my education system to teach me how to protect myself so that I can explore things myself. If something is misinformation, release good information to combat it and let me make up my own mind. To gate things from me “for my own good” is paternalistic, creepy, and very sketchy. I’ll elaborate on this in a future piece. 

For now, let’s end this section by re-emphasizing the importance of having good-faith conversations and the willingness to challenge our most deeply held beliefs. That is the only way to fight dogma, and truly ensure that we have a society of free individuals. The alternative is a terror so chilling that it makes Cthulhu seem like a sweet little Pitbull (Pitties are the best breed, and I’ll fight anyone on that).

These 3 almost made me give up my nomadic ways and settle down with them in Memphis, TN. 

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is a dangerous activity.

The Devil has Executive Assistants. And They are Much Scarier

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

Arendt is perhaps best known for the “Banality of Evil”- which she coined to talk about Eichmann. At its core, her thesis is fairly simple to understand- 

1. Eichmann wasn’t a malicious actor. He wasn’t particularly anti-Semitic, bloodthirsty, or any of the traits one would associate with Evil. He simply carried out his orders without thinking about them, w/o no ill will. If he had been asked to switch the trains and transport Jews to safety instead- he would have switched w/ no trouble. 

2. What was scary was that there were millions just like him, living completely normally, that turned into an angry mob- killing, torturing, and condemning the Jews to concentration camps. All w/o true animosity towards them. Imagine having to go through life never knowing when your neighbor, your fav Deli guys, or mob-character C will flip a switch and condemn you to suffering. One fiery speech, one changed law- and the people you considered your community will suddenly feed you to the dogs w/o second thought.

3. This kind of evil introduces an assembly line-like scale to mass murder and genocide. By letting different Eichmann’s specialize in different sub-tasks, you introduce some serious division of labor -ensuring that genocide happens efficiently. Since every individual is only responsible for a small part of the process (loading people on the trains, ensuring tracks are laid out properly, building camps..)- any given individual can deny responsibility for the murders. The alienation of said individual, God-like presence of the state, and the deindividuation of all people make it much easier for anyone to keep their heads down and do their job. 

Think of Traditional Evil as prime Neymar- flamboyant with strong individuality. This kind of evil is easy to point out, since it stands out in opposition to society. This is how one might view Hitler, Stalin, and the other usual suspects- larger-than-life figures that can build a cult of personality and unleash their personal brand of despotism by pushing the agenda on their own. You can easily point to them as the main driver, whether they succeed or fail. 

Eichmann’s Evil is like Sergio Busquets — understated but chillingly effective. It blends within the larger tiki-taka of tyranny as the backbone that allows everything to function smoothly. Everyone in this system plays a very defined role, and responsibility is often passed around. This makes it much harder to pinpoint responsibility or truly diagnose problems. After all, turn to any individual, and all you will hear is “I was just doing my job,” “What else could I have done” or “If I didn’t do it, someone else would.” And that’s much scarier b/c to a degree- I agree with those answers. I can’t with complete confidence say that I would have been different, that I would’ve fought against the all-mighty State, even when things seemed hopeless. Are there any morals I hold strongly enough to drink the hemlock for, or would I crumble- and keep my head down and “know my place,” even if it means being an accomplice to another’s suffering? And to what degree am I doing that already?

 In a nutshell, how much of my morality is a function of convenience that will change with the times? How easily will I sacrifice another at the altar of ideology? Thinkers like Arendt force these uncomfortable questions into the forefront. And just for that, they’re worth a read. 

These questions are a lot closer to us than you’d assume. Tech Companies, for instance, have been known for using child labor in their supply chains, engaging in union-busting, withholding pay from gig workers, and all kinds of other tactics to squeeze out every possible dollar in the name of their stock reports and operational efficiency-

There has also been a strong push toward the use of AI in mass surveillance, suppression of free information, weaponized misinformation, and automated weapons development. The people behind all of these are not grandma-punching supervillains but people not too dissimilar to us, also doing their jobs and raising revenues. 

“When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. ”

We have covered these a bit, but there is so much more that I haven’t been able to go through because of all the developments on the more mainstream side of AI. Going forward, we will be covering these in more detail. Hopefully, those more eclectic use cases will interest you.

In the meantime, I hope I’ve convinced you to look into Hannah Arendt in more detail. More than anyone, I find Arendt’s writing to be a strange blend of chilling and hopeful. In uncovering the banality of totalitarian evil and how easy it is for all of us to engage in it- Arendt also shows us that it is possible to prevent it. All we need is the willingness to courageously confront it, within ourselves and in the world. The courage to think when the world wants us to mesh, the courage to bear the weight of being an individual. That is a very empowering message. 

But with that comes a humbling reminder that we’re not too different from the Eichmanns that we villainize, the enemies that we fight. It doesn’t take much to take our passion and our energy and twist them into something unrecognizable. That’s something we have always to be vigilant for. Otherwise, we might find ourselves tuned into future corpses: shouting at nothing, accomplishing nothing, and signifying nothing.

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