The Banality of Cancerous Ideas, Part 4 of The Cancerous Ideas That we Live By

Two related stories dominate today's broadcast. The first derives from a fine movie entitled "Hanah Arendt," a philosopher who covered the Adolf Eichman trial in Israel and a New York Times article (3/2/2015) entitled "How We Learned to KIll" by Timothy Kudo, a Marine Captain and Graduate Student. Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil" and Kudo intones "In the madness of war I saw that taking a life could be banal." Today's story will continue to develop ideas begun earlier in this series and past broadcasts that help explain why killing seems so easy for our species in such massive and routine ways.  I will utilize evolutionary and psychoanalytic theories as my guide.