THE NEW GARDEN OF EDEN

The banality of the good (New Statesman, 6/13/2003)

[T]here are two characteristic figures in Europe today: the deeply Europeanised anti-European and the deeply Americanised anti-American. We have all met him, the pinstriped Tory Eurosceptic who has a house in Tuscany, is an expert on French wines and knows a great deal more about Wagner operas than Chancellor Gerhard Schroder does. (This last may, admittedly, not be saying a great deal.) We have all met her, the ageing German anti-American peace campaigner, whose inspirations are Woodstock, Joan Baez and not the German Martin Luther but the American Martin Luther King....

There's a whole lot to be for in Europe today. Europe's horrible first half of the 20th century, from 1914 to Stalin's death in 1953, was characterised, between war, Holocaust and Gulag, by what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil". The past 50 years in western Europe, and the past 15 years (since the velvet revolutions of 1989) in central and much of eastern Europe (except the Balkans and parts of the former Soviet Union), have increasingly been characterised by what I would call the banality of the good.

It is the banality of the good that you see among the young Germans, Italians and now Poles and Russians making out in the cafes of Oxford, Madrid and Warsaw; the banality of the good that allows pinstriped Tory Eurosceptics to fly to the Dordogne for £4.99 and bejeaned anti-American demonstrators to join forces in Geneva for 8.50 euros; the banality of the good that has Europeans making love not war, while comparing notes, in Elf, about the latest American movie.

The Europeans believe they are creating a Paradise, in which the best the world has to offer is available, all desires may be satisfied, and war has been forever banished. Perfection on earth will soon be at hand ... All that is necessary is to deal with a few serpents ... Posted by Paul Jaminet at June 13, 2003 10:51 AM