People living under arbitrary rule recast accidents and evil as destiny

Evidence

Franz Kafka knew well enough the superstition of fate which possesses people who live under the perpetual rule of accidents, the inevitable tendency to read a special superhuman meaning into happenings whose rational significance is beyond the knowledge and understanding of the concerned. He was well aware of the weird attractiveness of such peoples, their melancholy and beautifully sad folk tales which seemed so superior to the lighter and brighter literature of more fortunate peoples. He exposed the pride in necessity as such, even the necessity of evil, and the nauseating conceit which identifies evil and misfortune with destiny. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 625

Categorization

• DEFINE: Mechanism of how subjection to perpetual arbitrary power produces fatalism — a conceptual tool for understanding how dominated populations narrativize their suffering.