General Omar Bradley, who was George S. Patton’s boss during World War II, is widely attributed with the famous aphorism that “amateurs study strategy but professionals study logistics.” Now, this is a bit of an oversimplification. Military professionals do study strategy, of course, since it’s a necessary part of the job. It’s also the cool part. It’s why millions of civilians, who would never dream of a career pursuing military glory, love to play games like Risk and Axis & Allies.
Logistics, on the other hand, are usually pretty tedious, the minutia of supply lines and equipment maintenance. Risk would be a much less popular game if it required planning how to deliver cannonballs to your invasion force in Western Australia. But games are for amateurs. Any real world military operation without proper logistical planning and execution would fail miserably, which is why real militaries (as opposed to armchair military hobbyists) figure out how to get this part of the job done correctly, or else suffer the consequences.
Logistics are critically important for any large-scale project, military or otherwise — including blatantly evil ones. “Evil” naturally calls to mind dramatic acts of destruction and oppression. To cite a fictional example, “evil” is represented by the Death Star blowing up Alderaan. But the Death Star doesn’t get constructed in the first place without the administrative folks paying the contractors and managing inventory.
In the real world, someone has to manage delivery and storage of the artillery shells flattening elementary schools in eastern Ukraine. China’s increasingly sophisticated digital surveillance state probably has a QA department. And the complexity of the logistical apparatus underlying the international illicit drug trade must be staggering.
Hence the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s famous concept of the “banality of evil.” Arendt, who was reflecting on the rather boring German bureaucrats who ran the day-to-day operations of the Holocaust, recognized that evil is not just sociopaths committing unmentionable crimes or dictators hatching plots for world domination and ethnic cleansing with their general staff. Sometimes, evil is unremarkable people just doing their jobs. While some wickedness is spontaneous or nearly so, much of it requires mid-level managers, project review meetings, and loads and loads of spreadsheets.
But if evil is banal, then so is goodness.
The term “goodness,” like “evil,” naturally prompts us to think of the remarkable or spectacular. I personally think of Roger Olian, a sheet metal worker, who in 1982 plunged into a partially frozen Potomac River to try to rescue the passengers of Air Florida Flight 90. The obviously heroic certainly occurs alongside the obviously diabolical in our lived experience, but in most cases goodness (like evil) is far more mundane in nature. Someone has to make sure the concrete is mixed correctly for the construction of the new hospital. Someone has to manage the Disability Insurance Trust Fund.
Nor is the story different when it comes to the Kingdom of God. For example, at several places, the Bible impresses upon us the importance of raising our children in the faith. The “raising” part of parenthood, of course, necessitates juggling transportation, scheduling, and logistics in a way that rivals the invasion of Normandy. Or consider the regular gathering of Christians to worship. Keeping a local church up and running involves everything from budgeting to landscaping to getting the AC fixed to (that most difficult of feats) coordinating the schedules of the half-dozen lay people in the pastoral search committee. All this stuff has to happen, but it’s usually not cool or fun. It’s, to be honest, kind of banal.
Moreover, it’s pretty easy to feel disconnected from spiritual realities like the Kingdom when you’re mired in the quotidian. On particularly bad days, the banality of goodness seems to have deteriorated into simple banality. After all, you can see the progressing construction of a new hospital, or the liberation of France, but the Kingdom of God grows in a hidden and unpredictable manner (see Mark 4:26-27). All of which prompts the question of why God runs things this way. Why can’t our work in building the Kingdom be more exciting, or at least yield more obvious results?
I actually don’t have a great answer as of yet. The cynical answer immediately presenting itself is that the Kingdom is just a figment of our overwrought religious imaginations. But such skepticism only leads to further problems. It certainly doesn’t relieve the mundaneness of ordinary existence, which in the long run is tolerable only if we can believe that it leads to a good future for ourselves and our loved ones. And how can we possibly know that it will? Faith, then, is an unavoidable category regardless of our theological convictions (or lack thereof). To paraphrase Paul, God has subjected (much of) the world to banality in hopes that we will look beyond this world.
If Christianity is true, however, then nothing is finally banal. When Luther dared to broaden the concept of “vocation” beyond explicitly religious callings to things like farming, shoemaking, and raising families, he meant that the “ordinary” has eternal significance. Spiritual heroism glorifies God, but so does doing the small tasks. My guess is that guys in charge of storing stuff in rear echelon supply depots during World War II weren’t always cognizant of their importance to the ultimate Allied victory. They were probably sometimes bored and maybe even got a bit cynical. It didn’t matter — they showed up for work and the Allies won. Because “one who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.”
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2 responses to “The Banality of Goodness”
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This idea reminds me of a concept from the Rule of Benedict in which the common tools/utensils of the monastery are to be regarded as sacred as the vessels at the altar. I will likely die with no influence, having not changed the world, but thanks (my cousin x-time removed) for the encouragement to continue, especially in this season of life, “juggling transportation, scheduling and logistics in a way that rivals the invasion of Normandy.”
This is so good David, thank you. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time, especially as I consider new career/job directions in the near future.