How is it possible to murder a million people one by one? Hatred, fear, madness of one or many people cannot explain it. No one can be so possessed for the months, even years, required for genocides, slavery, deadly economic exploitation, sexual trafficking of children. In The Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation. "Extensive evil," her term for systematic horrific harm-doing, is actually carried out, not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters for extensive evil, nor enough saints for extensive good. In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family "disappeared" last week. So how can there be hope? The seeds of such evils are right there in our ordinary lives. They are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing and so protecting ourselves from responsibility for the worst and the best of which humans are capable, we can prepare to say no to extensive evil - to act accurately, together, and above all in time, before great harm-doing has become the daily work of 'normal' people.

How is it possible to murder a million people one by one? Hatred, fear, madness of one or many people cannot explain it. No one can be so possessed for the months, even years, required for genocides, slavery, deadly economic exploitation, sexual trafficking of children. In The Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation. "Extensive evil," her term for systematic horrific harm-doing, is actually carried out, not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters for extensive evil, nor enough saints for extensive good. In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family "disappeared" last week. So how can there be hope? The seeds of such evils are right there in our ordinary lives. They are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing and so protecting ourselves from responsibility for the worst and the best of which humans are capable, we can prepare to say no to extensive evil - to act accurately, together, and above all in time, before great harm-doing has become the daily work of 'normal' people.

This anthology poses challenges central to Elizabeth Minnich's book The Evil of Banality: On The Life and Death Importance of Thinking to outstanding thought leaders from a wide range of fields. In a time when even small acts can have consequences that spread wider and much faster than ever, when public discourse is more banal and superficial even as it is inflated by bluster and fractured by group-think, knee-jerk partisanship, and hyper-specialization, it is a book whose outstanding authors reflect with urgency on how we can and why we must think what we are doing as professionals, citizens, public actors, and, crucially also, as educators. The book brings together a group of distinguished thought leaders in widely varied fields: philosophy, evaluation, community organizing, sociology, systems thinking, business management, sociology, leadership, humanities, public policy, ethics, and religion. Each of these authors has struggled with how to practice as well as how to teach people not only to be "a success" as measured by title, office, and pay, but how and why it is crucial that each and all of us learn to think well about what we are doing, its effects, how and why we are doing it. They discuss issues such as lying; the ethics of 'fixing' genes that will then be passed on; knowing when, even whether, to intervene in genocide; unintended effects of economic development efforts; the effects of rewards only for short-term studies; making public policy with the public. Philosophically framed and interdisciplinary in approach, the book is written to be accessible to a general educated audience. It is designed to be thought-provoking, illuminating, and useful.

This anthology poses challenges central to Elizabeth Minnich's book The Evil of Banality: On The Life and Death Importance of Thinking to outstanding thought leaders from a wide range of fields. In a time when even small acts can have consequences that spread wider and much faster than ever, when public discourse is more banal and superficial even as it is inflated by bluster and fractured by group-think, knee-jerk partisanship, and hyper-specialization, it is a book whose outstanding authors reflect with urgency on how we can and why we must think what we are doing as professionals, citizens, public actors, and, crucially also, as educators. The book brings together a group of distinguished thought leaders in widely varied fields: philosophy, evaluation, community organizing, sociology, systems thinking, business management, sociology, leadership, humanities, public policy, ethics, and religion. Each of these authors has struggled with how to practice as well as how to teach people not only to be "a success" as measured by title, office, and pay, but how and why it is crucial that each and all of us learn to think well about what we are doing, its effects, how and why we are doing it. They discuss issues such as lying; the ethics of 'fixing' genes that will then be passed on; knowing when, even whether, to intervene in genocide; unintended effects of economic development efforts; the effects of rewards only for short-term studies; making public policy with the public. Philosophically framed and interdisciplinary in approach, the book is written to be accessible to a general educated audience. It is designed to be thought-provoking, illuminating, and useful.