Arendt’s “banal” evil can be seen as just thoughtlessness. What if you say it’s choosing not to think about the harm you could cause. That’s a subtle but morally significant form of malice.
1. Thoughtless Evil vs. Willful Negligence
Arendt’s banal evil: “I follow orders; I don’t think; I do my job.”
No deep or obvious hatred, mostly cognitive disengagement.
“I know this could hurt people, but I will not think about it and just act anyway.”
Here, the actor is aware of potential harm but intentionally avoids moral reflection.
The person that thinks a bit but not enough is probably more common and worse.
2. This is a Form of Malice
Malice doesn’t have to be proactive hatred; it can be willful disregard:
Ignoring consequences you could foresee.
Suppressing empathy or moral concern deliberately.
It’s morally active: by choosing not to think, you are creating space for harm and accepting it as a possible outcome.
Malice is protected and often more effective if concealed.
3. Monstrosity in the Knowing Avoidance
The moral horror here is not in the ignorance, but in the intentional avoidance of ethical responsibility.
It’s almost like saying:
“I don’t want to know what this does, so I’ll act anyway.”
That deliberate disengagement, when combined with knowledge of potential consequences, is both cowardly and cruel, a subtle but potent form of evil.
4. Philosophical Note
This kind of malice sits between banal evil and ideological/intentional evil:
It’s not purely mechanical obedience (banal).
It’s not actively plotting harm (malignant) – at least in an obvious sense. It is possible to refuse to think because you hope damage will come to others. You think this helps protect you from feeling so bad about the destruction. So refusing to think may be your way of being malicious.
It’s knowing, choosing to remain blind, which still produces monstrous outcomes.
SO?
When someone knows that their actions could cause harm but chooses not to think about it, that is a deliberate moral failure. It’s malicious in a subtle sense. They are intentionally disengaging from moral responsibility. They are allowing harm to happen, or even increasing its likelihood, because reflection is avoided. They are protecting themselves from any chance of feeling regret. They cannot do this alone. They need to make others as bad as themselves. They set an example that spreads like wildfire. An individual and collective “refusal to think” arises and it is morally active, not merely passive. It likes to look more passive than it is.
All hate starts off as subconscious hate. A person being convinced they have no hate in their hearts can be wrong and usually is.
Beneath the surface, there may be:
Subtle resentment
Partial desire for harm
Biases or prejudices that influence the refusal to reflect
This doesn’t have to be explicit malice, but it can co-exist with the deliberate thought-avoidance, compounding the immorality.
FAITH IN THE SUPERNATURAL
Religious or spiritual faith broadly revolves around the notion that there is a higher power that works so that evil may only seem to have its way for a time but be overthrown to change into a greater good.
The risk taking of refusing to think is so irrational – and even potentially self-destructive - that surely the person must think as follows. “Nothing bad will happen to me. I have inexplicable immunity.” That is a sign of subconscious belief in miracles or magic.
And if a tendency to become malicious is in you, or if the malice is present, because it has a subconscious side, it is easy to read it as excusable. “I don’t want to hate. I don’t hate. I just want justice.” And, “I am not biased. The Holy Spirit is planting information in me. If you think that makes be biased, that is your problem.”
Another thing that can happen is, “If there is hate buried deep in me, even if I do not detect it, I can’t help it so it is not a sin. God puts it there or lets it be there for some purpose.”
And if you see hate as normally bad, you also think there are neutral situations where a state is as bad as it is good.
If hate is conscious, it can be pushed into subconscious for its own protection. Faith helps that pushing along.
Faith protects malicious and/or deliberate thought-avoidance, compounding the moral horror.
That many religions and spiritualities boast that they counteract and/or invalidate hate is shameful for it is such an over-simplification that it is a simple lie.