#thinking is hard

It took me eight months to finish Eichmann in Jerusalem, and one concept stayed with me:

“The Banality of Evil.”

A phrase popularized through the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment, it is often (mis)interpreted as “everyone is capable of evil” and has often been misused to excuse “morally grey characters” or romanticize “villains.”

What Arendt actually means by “banality” is that Eichmann, the man who orchestrated the murder of six million Jews, was NOT a radical, monstrous, “Dark Lord”-like figure. On the contrary, he was banal: small, pompous, full of clichés, and completely unable to think for himself. Eichmann couldn’t grasp a world of plurality, so he sought to eliminate what was too different.

This thoughtless evil — one that can only view the world through borrowed eyes, provocative slogans, and extremist propaganda — has spread like a fungus, now accelerated by social media, and threatens to lay waste to the world.

Arendt never meant “the Banality of Evil” as an excuse for Eichmann. In fact, she made this abundantly clear in the book’s final chapter: Eichmann’s participation in the “final solution” maybe circumstantial, and in theory, many would have done the same in his place, but that doesn’t lessen his guilt. The law judges the actuality of a crime, not the potentiality of guilt. 

On the other hand, good can be ordinary, but never banal.

One thing I love about Schindler’s List is how it spends two-thirds of the film showing just how ordinary Oskar Schindler is. It is not grand ideology that drives him to save 1,200 Jews at the cost of his entire fortune. He is, above all, a businessman who hopes to profit from the war and retire in comfort and fame. He succumbs easily to luxury and lust, unable to stay loyal to one “Mrs. Schindler.” He even objects to Itzhak Stern’s secret plan to save Jewish intellectuals.

Yet, Schindler has not forgotten how to think and how to feel. He is learning. He is making up his own mind, slowly but surely. That contrast is what makes the image of the little girl in red and his final decision to make the list so powerful.

While Eichmann warns of the danger of thoughtlessness, Schindler demonstrates the power of an original thought, a self-determining act - even from a feeble mind, even from weak hands. Good is not some out-of-reach ideology. It might not even be consistent. But it is a concrete, humanizing act and it is life-saving. 

“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on... that’s who we really are.” — J.K. Rowling “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “I am part of that force which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” — Goethe

The duality of good and evil has been written about countless times in Western literature, yet it still surprises modern readers as “radical” whenever it reappears.

To me, the true difference between the Banality of Evil and the Ordinariness of Good lies in originality: the ability to think for oneself, despite how difficult it has become.

Instead of asking, “What would Hannah Arendt do?”, Arendt challenges us to describe the reality we find ourselves in, so we can resist it.

Because Thinking IS Good.

Tell me that I dont need to worry.

Thats not my responsibility any more.

My brain is too broken and useless, all those things I aspired for before ripped right out of my hands.

Please sit me on your shelf and tell me thats it. Thats all I need to do. Is make you happy.

I'm just a sweet doll who doesn't need a past and will never need more than the future you give it.

The way Brook immediately forgot about using polite speech when he saw Reuven lying on the floor like that. He keeps using it for over 60 years, but it's not his natural way of speaking, it's something he uses deliberately, probably to honor the memory of the two people he admired the most and who gave him the foundation on which he built himself

It's interesting that Oda chose not to show Reuven's face at any point in this scene. Last chapter we could still see his horns and wings, but they don't seem to be here now, and yet his face seems almost pointedly covered by the framing and even the speech bubbles. Since this is a flashback from Brook's POV, and he even tells the Straw Hats that he thought he had imagined what happened in that room because of trauma, I wonder if the idea was to show that this was such a painful memory for him that he can't even bring himself to recall how Reuven looked then

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So the fire bird wasn't one of the Five Elders, then? Those are Imu's black flames, but does that mean they are like a part of his body? He still seems to be present and conscious even without a physical body, and there doesn't seem to be any Abyss marks on the floor. Can he manifest like that because there's a God's Knight with a Depths Covenant around? Is it because there is something different about the Manmayers that he can do this? To go to Elbaf he seemed to need to use the Abyss like all the others, and in God Valley he had to manifest straight out of Saturn's body, though Saturn didn't dissolve like this and his body seemed much more solid than the fire bird

[Hilarious mental image of the God's Knights carrying a little jar of Imu's flames around with them in case Imu wants to manifest]

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Hey, I was right! Also, is it just me or does Brook seem more surprised that Shuri knows she's half Celestial Dragon than he does about the actual fact that she isn't Reuven's biological daughter? I don't know, the implications of Candelle being pregnant after that first Celestial Dragon visit and choosing to hide it are pretty damning and horrifying, but he seems to focus more on Shuri not considering Reuven her father anymore. To me, it says that he already knew. The Manmayer guy said Brook wasn't allowed to go near him (probably for Brook's own protection), but if he's as smart as he's depicted as, then it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to have at least guessed as much. He's not saying that Shuri isn't half Celestial Dragon, he's saying that she's still Reuven's daughter. Parents and children don't need proof, Reuven was the one who raised her and loved her, of course he's still her father. Maybe that's just semantics, but it's how I read it, at least

(chapter 1167)

As other people have already pointed out, Shuri sounds suspiciously like Shanks did when he infiltrated Marijoa. If we consider the possibility that she's doing all of this on purpose, then it would also explain her comment about Reuven being a terrible king for bringing his people to war instead of handing her over, which I'm sure she'd normally feel very guilty about. If this truly didn't have anything to do with her anymore, there would be no need for her to say that the war would be over now that the king is dead

Whether or not Reuven was in on this and told her to kill him (like Harald did with Loki) remains to be seen, but it really would make more sense for her to be faking all of this. We saw in the last chapter that there's a chance she has future vision, so maybe she saw that resisting would just mean the death and destruction of her whole country. Maybe she even saw that if she asked Brook for help when he got there, he would end up dying. Her love for him has been highlighted a lot, so I can see it being enough for her to pretend to be evil to prevent that from happening

(chapter 79)

All of this actually reminds me a lot of Nami, the whole pretending to side with the enemy in order to protect her loved ones, both when Nami was a kid and joined Arlong, and when she pretended to stab Usopp. Nami knew that the villagers had no chance of stopping Arlong, just as Shuri knows her country has no chance of defeating the World Government. Nami knew that siding with Usopp would just get him killed, and Shuri knows that Brook is strong but no match for a God's Knight (plus Imu). The possibility of her accidentally missing every single vital point in Brook's brain when she stabbed him isn't zero, but it is pretty small

(chapters 1186 and 74)

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There's a term for heterochromia in Japanese, and it's 虹彩異色症 (kousaiishokushou), which literally translates to "different colored iris condition", but that's not what he says here. He calls it 双極の瞳 (soukyoku no hitomi), with 双極 (soukyoku) meaning bipolar (as in a pair of things that are opposite to each other) and 瞳 (hitomi) meaning pupil or eye. With the added comment about the possibility of something awakening for her, it means that it's not just that her irises are different colors, but there really is something special about them

(chapter 1149)

I did wonder about that during the first time we saw her get possessed by Imu, especially with the emphasis on her left eye when she was remembering Brook and her right eye right before Imu takes over. Since her eyes are specifically called bipolar, it makes me think of things on opposite ends of a spectrum. I wonder if that means that Imu specifically is on one of those ends, or if it's just something that Imu can take advantage of to possess her

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Shuri is using one of Brook's attacks here, which is particularly cruel, especially considering he let his sword go, meaning he would rather die than attack the girl he's known since her birth, the child of the two people he owes a life debt to

The attack name is 革命舞曲 - with the furigana ガボット (gabotto) - ボンナバン (bonnaban). 革命 (kakumei) means revolution and 舞曲 (bukyoku) means musical dance. Bond en avant, or ンナバン (bonnaban), is a fencing term that means to leap forward. The gavotte, or ガボット (gabotto), is a French dance which in itself doesn't seem to have anything to do with revolution. It could be as simple as a French fencing term and a French dance along with the term revolution leading one to think of the French Revolution and the abolition of the monarchy in France, which fits into the themes of One Piece in general and a fight against the World Government and the Celestial Dragons in particular. Even if this attack was introduced way before all of this, the Straw Hats do have a history of deposing tyrants and bad kings (and replacing them with good kings, but that's an essay for another day and beside the point)

[Sidenote: the gavotte was popular in the court of Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, who was a symbol for absolutism and, according to Wikipedia, whose reign is the longest of any sovereign monarch in history. In other words, he's giving both Joyboy and Imu. I don't know if Oda had all of this in mind when he first introduced the attack way back in Thriller Bark, but it is interesting nonetheless, especially with a Domi Reversi'd Shuri using it right now. The association with Louis XIV also matches well with her bipolar irises, since the attack name would contain the opposing ideas of revolution and the Sun vs absolutism and an extremely long reign, two ends of the freedom spectrum]

The choice of using the first song Brook sang in front of Reuven as background for the last time he sees Shuri before now really rounds out their story, especially because the lyrics are a denial of everything the Celestial Dragons stand for, saying that there is nothing intrinsically different between a king and a slave (or a Celestial Dragon and the rest of the world), since in the end they all end up the same

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(chapters 1186 and 1154)

Ah, I wonder if this is what Jarul meant when he said the giants had an enemy a long time ago. If we can take Imu's words at face value, then it's possible that things are unfolding a bit like they did during the Void Century

Imu implied that Nidhoggr was a traitor, so we can assume that he at least thought that they were on the same side at some point. There's a chance that all of them - Imu, Joyboy and Nidhoggr - started off as friends or acquaintances, and when a rift formed Imu came to think of Nidhoggr as a traitor when he chose to side with Joyboy. Since I'm already speculating, I would say the reason they disagreed had to do with their different views about domination and freedom

(chapter 1181)

As retaliation, Imu would have then used Elbaf's children as hostages to pull Elbaf into the war on the side of the 20 nations, which could explain how they managed to defeat the Great Kingdom that was much more technologically advanced. It would also explain Gunko's speech about the giants being one of the deciding factors in who wins the war that's coming

(chapter 1146)

But something happened during/after the war because Elbaf didn't become a member of the new World Government at the end of the Void Century. Maybe it had something to do with the Sea God raging, as the Harley text said, which might have been the cause for the sea levels rising. If the 20 nations were all busy scrambling up the Red Line they wouldn't have had time to take control of Elbaf before they managed to break free. Maybe the possible link between Poseidon and Elbaf was one of the reasons why the Sea God raged?

There's also the possibility that Imu used the kids to control the giants first, and Nidhoggr managed to save them and pull Elbaf out of the war, which is why Imu calls him a traitor. If he couldn't, I wonder if those kids ever made it home. Maybe the reason why the Buccaneers worship Nika and are persecuted by the World Government is because they are mixed race descendants of those kidnapped giant children