This is a well-written little anecdote, the type of morsel that stays with you for some time.
Hearing people confess to crimes in a nonchalant way has a strange effect on the listener. It is not so much the relation of the crime that shocks us. No, it is something other than that.
It is what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil": the strange dichotomy that arises from the fact that despicable acts are committed by ordinary, drab individuals who seem just like us. It disquiets us because we expect a monstrous crime to be matched with an equally monstrous personality.
The fact that horrible things can be done by all of us--even jovial raconteurs like this gang member--should be a reminder to us all of the beasts that lurk behind the facade of the ordinary man.
Hearing people confess to crimes in a nonchalant way has a strange effect on the listener. It is not so much the relation of the crime that shocks us. No, it is something other than that.
It is what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil": the strange dichotomy that arises from the fact that despicable acts are committed by ordinary, drab individuals who seem just like us. It disquiets us because we expect a monstrous crime to be matched with an equally monstrous personality.
The fact that horrible things can be done by all of us--even jovial raconteurs like this gang member--should be a reminder to us all of the beasts that lurk behind the facade of the ordinary man.