On July 2, a video caused a sensation online. A young man smashed a train window due to the extreme heat caused by the train's suspension. Many onlookers did not panic; instead, there was sparse applause, while staff attempted to stop the action. By the time the train arrived at the station, the man was taken away by railway police. The official response came quickly: although the carriage was hot, it "did not constitute an emergency level that warranted breaking the window." Thus, after this act deemed "non-compliant," the man ultimately received a reprimand and was not detained.
However, rather than focusing on whether the window was broken, I want to ask: if this is not considered an emergency, then what is? I find that many social events we encounter resemble a strange nesting doll. On the surface, no one is deliberately doing evil; in fact, everyone seems to be acting according to regulations, yet the direction of events is always chilling.
It reminds one of a statement made 60 years ago by philosopher Hannah Arendt in "Eichmann in Jerusalem": evil does not always present itself in the form of a devil; it can be ordinary people in neat uniforms simply following orders. This is her famous theory of the "banality of evil."
In the context of this news, if a person is merely acting according to regulations, and those regulations cause him to ignore the genuine anxiety and distress of passengers in a hot environment, does he also participate in a form of "banality of evil"?
Can Non-Evil People Also Do Evil?#
In 1961, Arendt was invited by The New Yorker to Jerusalem to report on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. Eichmann was the direct executor of the Nazi "Final Solution," responsible for orchestrating the transport of thousands of Jews to concentration camps and into gas chambers. He was a mid-level cog in the Nazi German bureaucracy, an indispensable link between commanders and executioners.
What shocked Arendt was that Eichmann did not appear as a bloodthirsty demon during the trial. He was polite, his speech monotonous, resembling a civil servant who clocked in and out on time and followed the rules. Arendt keenly observed this: this person was not a mad racist nor psychologically abnormal; he was simply "normal" to a shocking degree. In the report published after the trial, "Eichmann in Jerusalem," Arendt wrote her famous assertion: the evil in the banality of evil is not "malicious" evil; it stems from a lack of thought. She believed this was the most dangerous part: "Eichmann was not inherently evil; he was merely shallow, incompetent, and stupid, a follower of the crowd." He was not a devil; he just needed to abandon the ability to think from others' perspectives and obediently function as a cog in the ethical machinery of the system.
In Arendt's discussion, Eichmann reminds me of the protagonist in Albert Camus's novel "The Stranger." He accidentally kills a stranger but feels no remorse afterward. He has no particular motive or clear criminal intent; the crime just "happened." Similarly, Eichmann did not believe he was wrong; he always felt he was just a good man obeying orders and doing his job. In his view, he was merely ensuring the efficient operation of the transport system, albeit transporting living people.
It is this dulling of imagination and empathy that made Eichmann one of history's most indifferent executioners. Is there not a striking similarity to the reactions of some staff members at the scene of the Jinhua train incident? They did not shout or resort to violence; they simply performed their duties, following the rules, persuading passengers to wait for the next stop and maintaining order at the scene. In this tug-of-war between bureaucracy and physiological limits, they may not harbor malice, but they are not innocent either.
The True Nature of Banality of Evil#
Returning to today's train window incident. The young man who smashed the glass may have been reckless, but he did indeed ventilate the carriage. He might have been wrong, but he was not "evil." The question is, did those who acted according to the rules truly consider the human position in the situation at that time? Should the heat, anxiety, and panic also be seen as part of the "emergency"?
Eichmann's trial tells us that when no one is willing to take responsibility, all responsibility falls on the "process." Just like the familiar scene mentioned above. When we ask staff, "Can we open a window?" the response is, "The procedure does not allow it." You realize he has no malice; he is merely executing the standard operating procedure (SOP) word for word as instructed by superiors. If you become a bit emotional, he might say, "I understand your difficulties, but I have no way to help" ... You would want to ask: then who should we report to? Who in this system can still judge and think?
The answer may be no one. Because the system no longer requires thought; it only needs to operate. The more suffocating these events are, the harder it is to identify the real "bad guy." Because everyone only does a little of their own part, and no one does anything significantly wrong. It is these small, broken chains of responsibility that piece together the final deadlock.
This also explains why Arendt's "banality of evil" has sparked so much controversy, as it does not point to those "bad people" lurking in the shadows, but rather to every ordinary person who appears to have done nothing wrong. When they choose to turn a blind eye and mechanically execute orders, they may not be evil, but they become vessels of evil.
Thinking is the Starting Point of Resistance#
Finally, Arendt was indeed confused in her later years. In her early work "The Origins of Totalitarianism," she compared the Nazis to "the embodiment of hell": concentration camps are the deepest black hole in modern human history; they not only kill but also attempt to kill humanity itself. At that time, she firmly believed that Nazi evil was thoroughly and uncontroversially "fundamental evil." However, after seeing Eichmann himself, Arendt turned to the concept of "banality." She found herself caught in a thinker’s dilemma between these seemingly contradictory viewpoints.
The train window-smashing incident is certainly not Nazi, nor does it touch the boundaries of totalitarianism. But Arendt's theoretical shift remains significant: modern society trains people to become increasingly specialized and clearly divided in their roles, and when everyone is following the rules, true responsibility is quietly diluted. Because in this world, evil is not only the kind that shouts and kills; more commonly, it is the evil written into processes, the evil hidden behind indifference, and the evil that walks in neutral language. The way to resist it is always to think a little more, to think a little deeper, to stand in the position of others, even if only for three seconds.