Life & Wisdom Quote by Alan Dean Foster

Foster is pushing back against a comforting modern reflex: the idea that evil is mostly clerical, thoughtless, “just following orders.” After 9/11, “banality of evil” became a kind of moral shorthand, useful because it locates catastrophe in ordinary people and ordinary systems. Foster doesn’t deny that kind of harm; he warns that the phrase can also seduce us into underestimating adversaries who plan, iterate, and optimize.

The pointed move is the contrast between “banal” and “carefully structured.” Banal evil is easy to file under bureaucracy and complacency; structured evil forces you to acknowledge design. It implies architecture: networks, ideology, logistics, recruitment, financing. The line “That’s where the real danger lies” isn’t just about scale, it’s about misrecognition. If you expect evil to look like mindless routine, you miss the version that looks like competence, patience, and strategic imagination.

The 9/11 reference matters because it’s a cultural hinge, the moment when many Americans learned that harm can be cinematic and systematized, not merely accidental or petty. By stressing that Dawn predates the attacks, Foster quietly claims prescience while also reminding readers that history doesn’t invent these patterns; it merely makes them impossible to ignore.

Subtext: our moral vocabulary shapes our readiness. Call evil “banal” and you prepare for paperwork and prevention-by-procedure. Admit it can be “well-thought-out” and you’re forced into the harder work of understanding motives, methods, and the uncomfortable fact that intelligence and evil are not opposites.