Arendt Offers a Guide in an Age of Cancellation and Forgetting

In an age when Facebook walls are filled with hatred and political quarrels divide the world into black and white, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism should be required reading for Estonian politicians and voters.

The article recommends beginning the substantial work with translator Merili Salura’s detailed afterword. It describes the afterword as a map of Arendt’s central ideas that leads readers directly to the painful points of contemporary society.

That reading leaves a difficult question hanging: is thinking one of the conditions that can keep people from committing evil acts? And what happens when empathy disappears?