September 24, 2007

People who use "empty talk" or aphorisms use recycled cliched language as announcements rather than having something valuable to say. Devoid of reality, cliches are a comforting replacement for a life not worth remembering.

If there is a connection between using stock phrases and cliches to compliance and genocide, then Eichmann is a good example. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt writes that as an expert in "forced evacuation," Adolf Eichmann eventually talked because of his compulsion to talk big. He was tired of being an anonymous nobody. A non-specific man who, from the start, thought he deserved more than just a "bureaucrat" job.

Eichmann was an "idealist" Arendt says. He was not merely a man who "believed in an 'idea' or someone who did not steal or accept bribes, though these qualifications were indispensable." An "idealist" is a man who lives for his idea, and who is prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. Eichmann had confessed that had he been required, he would have sent his own father to his death - to show what an "idealist" he had always been.

According to his taped police examination, Eichmann was incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliche. He used "empty talk," repeating word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented cliches that are reminiscent of those who have nothing original to say.

Using language in this way, we don't need to re-visit our deeds should memories prove to be unreliable. The speaker puts distance between himself and reality. Cliched language is terminology created by other people - they serve as testimonials to a generic life of ideals.

Catch phrases of "my honor is my loyalty," or "these are battles which future generations will not have to fight again," still exist so that a community doesn't have to solve the problem of conscience. A collective language replaces the individual's scruples - now we are involved in something historic, grandiose, and unique. Our imagination, memories and associated responsibilities are exchanged with "empty talk".

We, like Eichmann, can say, "Look at the horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties."

Maybe that's why I'm guarded when I hear people use stock phrases or aphorisms.