So, I've been working on hatching a theoretical structure to address the quandary of MAGA for a long time. I think it is almost impossible to combat it unless one can identify grasp the causal factors of the eruption of a mass psychosis. This is going to be a really long thread and I'm developing it slowly. Please feel free to mute me if this irritates you - I'm thinking aloud here. And most of my ideas aren't original, I'm just sometimes gathering them together in novel ways. #musings
Yesterday I made a series of posts on the paradox of authority within a society. That while authority often fails, it must operate on the falsehood that it doesn't. In essence, I argue that hypocrisy is essential to an organized culture. Now I know I will lose the anarchists among you, and there's no fix for that, but I will argue that, with few exceptions, civil societies require a hierarchy of authority to function, and this is probably due to our experience of familial structures. #musings
The human infant is born, by mammalian standards, prematurely and requires extraordinary levels of protection and instruction. We have parental figures both as carers but also 'law-givers' who teach us the rules of the road, so to speak; what to expect in our interactions with others. This creates an internal and broadly shared series of expectations that allow us to make sense of our reality, even when there are radical divergences from this expected order or sequence #musings
Our relationship to these figures who, in effect, teach us a patterns that designate coherence, of expectations of sequence and consequence... this model of relationship persists. Even if it fails, we measure our relations with the world in accordance with how much or little it resembles the first figures of authority we encounter. We are taught principles of fairness and honesty from very young, and they persist and colour our response to unfairness and dishonesty even in adulthood. #musings
And even from very early on, we notice failures of fairness or honesty - in our own parental figures. But we also notice that there is an attempt to hide those failures. That drive to hide the failure actually underscores the value of the principles even as they are transgressed.
As humans we are very tolerant of disappointment, as long as it is acknowledged that a failure has occurred, that a mark has been missed, that a law has been transgressed. #musings
What is far more cognitively problematic is when the transgression is no longer acknowledged as a deviation from the norm, but reformulated beyond the parameters of principles or laws or morality. Consider that even the term outlaw contains the word 'law' in it. An outlaw is measures by how far from the law he has strayed. But the concept of law is still the referent here. The coherence here is that 'law' is the pole star and 'out' describes its distance from it. #musings
I am going to use the metaphor of a substance-addicted parent, which may be disturbing but will be apt later, as I develop this train of thought. An alcoholic parent can be absolutely traumatic to a child, but inherent in that relationship, at moments, will be a sense of shame on the part of the parent (if they still call themselves a parent) because inherent in the concept of parent is the idea of a carer. In this case, a figure who fails to be caring, and often evinces shame about it #musings
That shame, in a moment of sobriety, that acknowledgement of not being a 'good parent' in a moment of clarity, reinforces the principle that parents in general, are caring and should be. So even failures reinforce the association of authority with caring and fairness.
I'm going to move on, taking the model of expectations of how those who possess authority should behave and that, even when they fail to meet our expectations, their attempts to hide or deny it still reinforce an ideal #musings
History haunts us with the specters of catastrophic leaders. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Of ideologies that were used to excuse barbaric atrocity. But history has grappled far less with why such a mass of their citizens willingly participated, tolerated or were ambivalent to the horrors of their actions over long periods of time. Historians have attributed their collaboration to ideology also. But I do not find this satisfying. #musings
And with the rise of leaders like Trump or Johnson or Putin, that rationale of ideology really fails. These men have no ideology, unless one can conceive of greed as an ideology (which is a concept I'm prepared to entertain). I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler or Mao in terms of historic catastrophe, but in terms of the effects he has on his followers. I simply don't believe ideology accounts for this. #musings
Sometimes it's hard to live out here, and winter is especially isolating. As we all retreat and focus on inner work and reprieve from the often constant movement of other seasons, we tend to reach out less, travel less. This is true for both us and our friends we see often, usually, and so since the Solstice it's been quiet here at the Ranch. We've really not gone anywhere, and no one has really come to visit.
However, I'm reading "The Independent Farmstead" by Shawn & Beth Dougherty, and feeling renewed and inspired. Sometimes this path feels too difficult, and I reminisce on the period of my life where I was ignorant of the depth and multitude of the issues that plague our species and where I just lived in the way that society dictated. In a way, ignorance really is bliss. In a way, it was just easier.
But I think back on the suffering I experienced then: the suffering I experienced at jobs, at the hands of others abused by our society, the suffering I experienced feeling like I was drifting along without a purpose, and the suffering that came from seeking purpose in careers that I could never attain because of my chronic inability to engage in personal politics. In a way it was easier to work many hours a week, eat out, go to parties, and move through life unthinkingly chasing the next thing that made me feel alive, connected, loved, despite that those experiences never lived up to my memories of them and despite that they were always so fleeting.
So it's not that we don't suffer now, of loneliness or of hardship or of our own interpersonal shortcomings. But we feel guided by purpose and by duty, and in so many ways that eliminates suffering. Though we don't always have other humans here to feel connected to, we do often, and in their absence we are connected to place, and to other living things that help sustain us and which we sustain in return.
My social #class is a bit difficult to pin down. I don't have enough money or an impressive enough CV to count as middle class, but I probably talk too much like a middle class person and generally come across as too much of a middle class person to count as working class or underclass. #musings#sociology#SocialScience
@analgesicsleep Or worse, sharks AND corpses? But I suppose that wouldn't make sense, you'd figure the sharks would eat the corpses, right? #Musings#BaroqueSun