JUST SIT
Last night was the night that my
wife’s Book Club convened at our house. In my bright, bouncy and typically
boundary-less manner, I made an offer to help entertain our guests. I gave my
wife the choice of a) readings from my Blog, b) a talk on family history
research, or c) a brief demonstration of male pole-dancing.
I detected some reluctance from
her and when I then threatened to flounce off on my own for the evening there
were visible signs of relief on her part.
This turned out well for me
because I went to see the film about Hannah Arendt.
I’ll give Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian
review here to set the scene:
‘There is something perhaps a
little stagey and mannered in Margarethe von Trotta's film about Hannah Arendt
and her experiences in the early 1960s writing her iconic report on the Adolf
Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. At times, in fact, it seems like a radio play with
pictures. But for all that, this is an interesting film about ideas, and how
explosive they can be.
‘Arendt, played by Barbara
Sukowa, is shown being commissioned by the New Yorker to write about the trial.
The result was her celebrated coinage "the banality of evil": her
epiphany in realising that Eichmann was not a scary monster but a pathetic
little pen-pusher. For Arendt, it was in this shabby and insidious mediocrity –
emblematic of a nation of administrators obediently carrying out the Holocaust
– that true evil resided.
‘But for many in Jewish circles,
this was too sophisticated by half: her remarks on perceived Jewish
collaboration in the Warsaw ghetto were resented and her association with the
philosopher and Nazi associate Martin Heidegger was not forgotten. (Perhaps the
nearest dispute in our day was Gitta Sereny's apparent leniency on the subject
of Albert Speer.) This is a formal and pedagogic production, but worthwhile
nonetheless’.
Bradshaw seems to touch on
damning with faint praise an extraordinary attempt to translate the rich
complexities of philosophy and the human condition into entertainment. I
thought it was brilliant
It casts a bright light on
some of the topics that I try to sketch in this Blog, relating to the nature of thought
and the importance of moral disobedience. I have never termed the Blog 'Buddhist'
but I would guess that anyone who has tried to follow the Path will recognize
an occasional marker, through my longstanding interest in the relationships
between words, our internal dialogues and action - and the necessity of being 'awake'.
[For some of the more obvious examples
see:
http://kjohnsonnz.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/coffee-with-martin-and-peter.html
]
Anyhow, the clash between the Yang of Love [which includes empathy] and the Yin of Ignorance [which includes bureaucratic banality] is a marvellous topic for meditation, thought and action, as my rough-and-ready header maps out. And if you want some brain teasers try 'passionate thought' and 'radical evil'.
Anyhow, the clash between the Yang of Love [which includes empathy] and the Yin of Ignorance [which includes bureaucratic banality] is a marvellous topic for meditation, thought and action, as my rough-and-ready header maps out. And if you want some brain teasers try 'passionate thought' and 'radical evil'.
For more on the film and the ideas that it presents, see the
two clips below – in particular, the wonderful lecture / question time held by
Richard J. Bernstein at the New School in New York.
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