Anxiety
is Your Private Censor; Their Roles in a Coherent Social Theory
C.W.
Rietdijk, D. Sc.
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The pre-eminent instrument of power is the anxiety
that deters us from violating taboos. Jointly with repression, these protect
mainstream ideas and vested interests. |
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1. Socio-cultural evils come from a
mentality or hidden motives rather than amounting to coincidental errors; they will
be ideology
Some phenomena arouse my particular suspicion. Among them are:
a) Religion will be more restrictive with respect to sexuality than
non-religious people. Social science appears not to be interested in why we see
this.
b) The great authors of Antiquity appear to have been so conformist that none
among them ever criticised slavery.
c) Establishments will hate whistle-blowers.
d) “Progressives” generally tend to a “nurture” rather than a “nature”
position; the helping organizations will join with this.
e) Leftists will be more positive as to immigration from the Third World than
others. (They unconsciously look forward to the votes of the “disadvantaged”.)
I am of the opinion that social science fails in its not clearly establishing
that in all above instances, and many more, (un)conscious interests play a
part. Interests that are extensively discussed elsewhere on this website, and
also partly below. The general failure of sociologists and many others as to
identifying and exposing concrete interests in ideology, in much of received
wisdom and in mainstream thinking, actually boils down to a deficient role of
reason, rational values and coherent emotions – that is, of man’s enlightened
side – in their addressing the relevant problems. This already constitutes an
instance of the weak aspects of man and of the double agendas reflected in some
of our values or standpoints.
We
go even as far as to hypothesise that the
simplest and most coherent model of history and society is one in which socio-cultural dynamics mainly originates from the open
or unconscious (hidden) antithesis of the enlightened and the dark sides of
man: reason, rational values, emotional openness and coherence versus troubled
waters, dogma, taboo and repression or (inner) censorship. Or, such dynamics is
directly related to how much room and weight we allow to rational argument, in
all domains of knowledge and judgment. The antithesis in question is highly
similar to that of the original left and right, but differs much from their current
contrast. Actually, the latter is such a mess that
prominent Dutch journalist H.J. Schoo could posit that in the 1960ties left and
right largely exchanged their positions. For example, think of “progressives’”
tolerance with respect to cultures that never passed through an enlightenment,
and their supporting educational reforms that more and more substituted
knowledge and the intellectual by social skills and adjustment. Or note current
leftists’ little enthusiasm for the idea of progress and the “Promethean” in
the first place.
The
enlightened and the “dark” position both amount to a mentality. The essence of the first is our looking forward to man’s ever more
taking his destiny in his own hands via techno-science and his awakening to
rational values that put first and foremost integrity and total well-being. On
the contrary, the basically conservative position – whose historical prototype
is that of nobility and clergy as contrasted with their Enlightenment opponents
who in principle started from reason – is that the wisdom of history, of “God’s
hand” and of collective-cultural, largely unconsciously produced values and
institutions, will be superior to that of “short-term and local” reason, at
least in fundamental questions. Apart from mentalities, therefore, the two
positions also amount to hypotheses on the factual level about the relative
wisdom of collectives and history as compared with the reason of Galileo,
Voltaire and Einstein.
This
author, though in both the first instance and in the last resort an “adherent
of God’s hand” (see also his work in theoretical physics), is disappointed by
such hand’s faculties in the medium term. I am very impressed by some
“intelligent design” (ultimately based on remarkably coherent natural laws and
constants) in biological evolution as well as in the social one of the past
millennia. Also, I am by the collective wisdom that unconsciously produced
consistent language and writing. On the other side, and in the spirit of our
two motto’s, I cannot see much of such hand and wisdom in the above-mentioned
nobility and clergy, in Victorian morality and its more moderate variants, in
“God, King and Country”, in censorship and autocracy, in massive and age-long
wars, looting and persecution, in anti-Semitism, slavery and torture. Also
because of this, I don’t trust the wisdom of history or the collective in
current ideas or developments such as anti-intellectualistic educational
reforms, “abstract art”, subjectivist philosophy, moral relativism, political
correctness and other brands of inner censorship. Neither do I believe such
phenomena to be “coincidental errors”.
On
the contrary, my strongly guided hypothesis – on account of what history
teaches us, and of simplicity and coherence –
is that both ideologically disguised interests and man’s inheritance from the
jungle play a vital part in them. For example, nationalism, most religion and
unenlightened convention are unconscious compromises between on the one side
the establishment’s striving after “many exerting themselves for the interests
of a few” and on the other side the masses needing solidarity against the
adversities, uncertainty and anxiety of life. In recent times,
anti-rationalistic philosophy, “abstract” art, anti-intellectualistic
education, other-directedness (Riesman), and relativism (also with respect to
progress, science and the quality of human individuals) can most coherently
be understood as modern and more indirect variants of the same anti-reason and
ideologically disguised interests as we saw more openly with nobility and
clergy two centuries ago. The frequent absurd
doubt “whether modernity and the Enlightenment made people really more happy”
betrays that the doubters – far from deeming God’s hand more efficient than
reason as to progress – do not even want the latter in the first place, as also
appears from popular relativism that emasculates both rational argument and the
idea of progress (and thus shields the status quo and the establishment against
reason and exposure). This basic support of the status quo is in line with
positing that genetic engineering and eugenics are against the “inviolability”
of man as he actually exists.
2. Interest-based mentality is kindred
to unconscious conspiracy
In current sociology, convention that suppresses
women, nationalism that causes many to sacrifice their lives for economic
interests or the lust for power of an “elite”, medieval Church fostering guilt
feelings that in turn made people more psychically dependent on that Church,
will all be accepted at face value. Within this scope, it is far from modern
sociologists to consider “conspiracy theories”, not even if the relevant
motives are unconscious, which they indeed will be. Say, consider the cases a)
– e) of Sect. 1 , nationalism or the use as scapegoats of witches, Jews or
foreign countries. This attitude of “face value” rather than unconscious
interest-driven motives makes sociology much less coherent than it should be.
For example, our joint explanation, in other sections of this site, of
existentialist and relativistic philosophy, “non-figurative” irrational art,
modern “post-religious” anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualistic educational
reforms and most sexual taboos, as present-day and more subtle (unconscious)
successors of the anti-Enlightenment position of the earlier-mentioned nobility
and clergy, is rejected by mainstream sociology. (As to sexual taboos, our
explanation sees them as an emotional analogue of censorship on the
intellectual level, with a similar purpose: keeping people in “inarticulate,
unconscious ignorance” so that manipulation is more easy.) In short,
“coincidence” passes for the main source of explanation in modern sociology, as
contrasted with “unconscious conspiracy”. Machiavelli and the historical role
of ideology have been forgotten: our establishment is always deemed to be in
good faith, as are culture and institutions. You should not seek unconscious
motives behind, say, more and more substituting hard knowledge in education by
social competences and other-directedness, or behind the circumstance that the
juridical domain and its procedures become ever more complicated and different
from common sense (lawyers keeping thriving).
In
all, our socio-cultural and philosophical thinking did not yet awake to the
insight of a vital historical parallel. That is, in past ages, interest groups
like clergy and nobility tried to keep reason and enlightenment away from being
applied too seriously to the vital problems of life and society, whereas in our
present era we see something similar happen before our eyes. But the sad thing is that hardly anybody sees the parallel:
subjectivist philosophy, irrational art, man as he is being considered
“inviolable” (anti-euthanasia, also as to seriously handicapped new-borns,
anti-eugenics), “group-minded” education, and politically correct ideology all conspire – indeed unconsciously – to give precedence to man, his life-world and
socio-cultural ideas as compared with reason, coherence and transparency, as to
fact and value. History repeats itself…
Just
as clergy and nobility, in the rightist tradition, wanted religion and
convention to be people’s mainstay rather than reason and inner autonomy, current
anti-enlightenment prefers mainstream thinking and an other-directed attitude
to guide us. Note that both attitudes or
mentalities equally contrast with putting first and foremost reason and
rational values.
I
continue by giving four arguments that bring more simplicity and coherence in
our model of society and culture, as well as in philosophy.
(1) All above major orthodoxies point in the same anti-rationalist direction, from subjectivist philosophy through political correctness: people as
they are and think are put on a pedestal. Can this be a coincidence? Even in
theoretical physics a kindred spirit emanates from “fundamental uncertainty”
and the abandonment of coherent models in microphysics.
(2) The “orthodoxies” are shielded by taboos; especially, one will seldom
publicly ridicule “modern art” or the contorted verbiage in Heidegger’s and
much other philosophy, or champion eugenics, whereas political correctness is
taboo-loaded in itself.
(3) Why deviating from mainstream thinking would strongly have been discouraged
through the ages if no interests were
at stake? Are we witnessing the first time in history this does not hold?
(4) Historically recently, man emerged from the jungle state of survival of the
fittest, in which his “claws, teeth and outsmarting others”, also by deceit,
were his primary assets. Nobody doubts that man still is more jungle and
self-affirmation than enlightened reason. Well, is it plausible then that in
his current values, institutions and habits of thinking – in sum, in his
culture – he would suddenly have given up latitude for such “claws” etcetera,
rather than cherishing many troubled waters in his culture and society that
shield vested interests or evil subtly ideologically? Small wonder that many
“insiders” prefer complicated bureaucracies, laws and procedures, “the
poly-interpretable”, the “political way of being”, relativism and fundamental
uncertainty to coherence, reason and “those going to the light because their
deeds were in God” (John 3: 19-21).
All of the above is vital to understanding society and its evolution and to the
position of the main players in their relevant preferences and ideas. Crucial
in this is a mentality that clearly senses that too much emphasis on consistent
reason and enlightenment, up to and including in the domains of the intimate
and the unconscious, is not in the best interest of various major social
players, no more so than it was in the era of clergy and nobility. The
poly-interpretable, conventional values rather than rational ones, and both
man’s intelligence and his emotions being manipulated by taboos, repressions
and an inner censorship based on anxiety, are preferred by many, in the
establishment and beyond. In particular, taboos and mainstream thinking
precisely shield us from insights that make not happy many among the most influential.
A
major present-day specimen of vested interests censoring, repressing and
tabooing common sense about rational values (moral or as regards human quality)
is provided by what we may call the “disadvantaged industry”. Starting from the
idea that “nurture” is more important than “nature” as to poverty, underperformance
in education, crime and underclass phenomena, redistribution and related
organizations – also via political correctness – taboo much of common sense and
scientific results about the role of genes. That is, results pointing in the
direction of eugenics, or which refer to genetic differences as regards the average
talents of various races, and to who and what is
responsible for poverty, problem youths, crime and anti-social behaviour. Among
the relevant common sense and results are facts like these:
a) In spite of an enormous increase of funds and energy spent on the
“disadvantaged” since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”, poverty, crime and the
underclass were far from reduced. So much and so long can ideology and inner
censorship mislead us.
b) Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, found in IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Praeger, 2002) that the economic performance of a country is highly
positively correlated with the average IQ in that country: low-IQ countries will
have low prosperity. Our governments join so much in the ideological game that
they are apparently disinterested in this, also in the sense of not
understanding that they are importing ghetto’s and many problem cases by
allowing massive immigration from low-IQ Third-World countries. Neither do they
appear to be interested in Richard Lynn’s alarming result that in the Western
world the lower social strata – generally having lower IQ’s – outbreed the
higher ones. See his Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (Praeger, 1996). About all “well-thinking people” are protractedly
wrong on the nature-nurture question, just as the authors of Antiquity were
about slavery and those in Erasmus’ time about witches. (Note in the above
context that Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994) taught us that a low IQ is correlated with many other
unfavourable characteristics.)
A second major step in making our model of the (socio-cultural) world simpler
and more coherent is our awakening to the semi-truism that the core of the
(irrational) power instruments throughout history is constituted by the
(un)conscious anxiety and interests preventing both the masses and the elites
from violating or abandoning taboos, (inner) censorship and, therefore, mainstream
thinking. (The first major step was made in Sect. 1 and
referred to the antithesis of pro- and anti-enlightened tendencies in the
struggle of interests.) There’s no irrational power, social abuse or
anti-enlightened manipulation apart from the relevant censorship and mainstream
thinking that will be the ideology of the establishment. Without such censorship etcetera we would see a true survival of
the fittest of arguments, which in turn would
lead to progress also beyond techno-science and the economy. The above conduces
to the guided hypothesis that it is the
mere frustration of such survival by anxiety and mainstream conformism which
prevents most problems from being solved in an optimum
way. Also in this sense remind Franklin Roosevelt’s: “We
have nothing to fear but fear itself”…
For
the rest, man’s capacity of repressing the evident is almost beyond limits.
Think of repressing the genetic factor by political correctness, or of the two
main sources of sexual frustration even in a free society: a shortage of
physically and psychically attractive people and the primitive,
chance-meeting-dominated, nature of the love market.
Further,
there is one major additional argument that should convince us that the general
anti-enlightened mentality that emanates from many different sources and
standpoints – and that converges to mainstream thinking – is far from a
coincidence but is so much coherent that it boils down to an unconscious
conspiracy that also refers to the moral and emotional levels. That is, our leaders seldom show moral indignation or “abdominal
sentiments” towards social abuses and chutzpah. Neither do they do about the
fate of whistle-blowers, nor about multi-offenders, nor about bloated
bureaucracy, and so on. They appear to be virtually disinterested in everything
except politically managing and coordinating big vested interests: big business
and big labour, juridical, educational and medical establishments, farmers
etcetera. They practically ignore deteriorating educational levels and the
genetic deterioration to which Lynn pointed in his Dysgenics, and a host of other problems and evils. Philosophical relativism
appears to have spilt over to the factual socio-cultural level (or conversely).
I want my leaders to be outraged about injustice done to me, rather than their
belittlingly speaking about “gesundenes Volksempfinden”. In addition, unconscious conspiracy on behalf of big interests, via a
mentality, is obvious because of the consistency and the coherence of how
our establishment ignores common sense and rational values in so many cases,
not showing moral indignation. It’s indeed a comprehensive mentality. Again,
”there is system and consistency in the madness.”
In
sum, all of this amounts to a mentality that substitutes the moral and partly the
emotional dimension by power and politics. The latter, as known from before
Machiavelli and modern ideologies, concentrate on friendly humouring the
well-organised at the cost of the individual voter and of the concept of
progress at many instances (such as education, human genetic quality,
crime-fighting,…). As I made sufficiently clear in the foregoing and in other
parts of this website, such friendliness extends to the level of ideas: (inner)
censorship corresponding to unconscious conspiracy towards a mainstream
thinking that, from the Church and convention to nationalism and Riesman’s
other-directedness, was or is also friendly to the big players. The mainstream
mentality of all well-thinking people is the result of the unconscious
conspiracy in question, which is a conspiracy precisely because material and
psychological sanctions (such as anxiety) will indeed conspire to making
prevail such mentality.
Conclusion: There is a mutual coherence and
consistency in
a) Robert Michels’ Iron law of Oligarchy
(to the effect that in all organizations a tendency toward oligarchy prevails
in the long run),
b) The phenomenon of the cartel of major interests we call the establishment,
c) The appearance of a socio-cultural (ideological) complex of ideas that –
having as prototypes nationalism, orthodox religion and anti-enlightened ideas
in general – fulfil a function in supporting the establishment and major
interests; this complex is “a cartel of ideas”,
d) The mainstream mentality of all well-thinking people (cultural leaders),
which is at the background of such complex,
e) The circumstance that even things such as the above-mentioned ones about
sexuality and genes could be massively repressed via unconscious ideological
conspiracy.
The
power of the oligarchic structure of society can be seen from the mere
difficulty of reducing bureaucracy: though society as a whole is benefited by
such reduction, the combination of special interests and the establishment’s
moral-emotional disinterest in progress (efficiency) causes Parkinson’s law to be operative, to the effect that local and special interests will
prevail on the common good and bureaucracies expand.
Among
the content of mainstream-ideology is a crucial manipulation of the important
concepts of solidarity and public spirit. The latter actually means
subordinating individual and special interests to those of us in general. In
actual fact, however, mainstream thinking and current ideas on “belonging”
transformed this into “joining in with the game of the great We”, into our
conforming with the mainstream or one’s particular group. Whistle-blowing or
fundamentally defying received wisdom or taboos is positively not wanted. It is
expected from you that you accept all major players as they are, and feel
solidary in the establishment’s context and that of corresponding mainstream
ideas. People are more solidary with their country, organization, sports’ club
and so on than with the moral or public good and corresponding enlightened
ideas. The most coherent conclusion from this, and from points a) through e)
is:
The main reason why society is far from a Utopia is that the Machiavellian
tendencies in the leaders and the anxiety of the majority (un)consciously
conspire to producing a general disinclination towards leaving mainstream
thinking or violating taboos. Problems remain
unsolved mainly because in order to find a solution one should precisely do so.
Solutions will be frustrated by the
frustration of true free trade in arguments.
That is, by conformism, taboo, (inner) censorship and other unenlightened
phenomena that are all pushed unconsciously by ideological manipulation in
behalf of vested interests.
An
anti-enlightened and conformist mentality that amounts to unconscious
conspiracy irrefutably appears to exist from the mere fate of
whistle-blowers up to and including the
collective (“conspiratorial”) resistance against the violation of taboos and
the again collective hushing up of various incorrect ideas. (On the other hand, harmless pseudo-non-conformism such as “modern”
art is protected by taboo.)
We
conclude with a vital result. In this Section 2
we virtually devastated the moral authority of mainstream conformism and the
establishment. This makes it far more easy for anyone who has a minimum of
inner independence to cast off their moral power over him or her and,
therefore, the very censoring anxiety the title of this essay speaks about.
3. A core antithesis in society: reason
and freedom from intimidation versus (inner) censorship and repression
If true survival of the fittest of arguments would
have prevailed, social evil and stagnation would not have played a major role
in history, and socio-cultural progress would far more directly have followed
techno-scientific developments. The mere fact that so many are far from
enthusiastic about this idea illustrates why this did not actually happen: many
instinctively sense that such “Darwinism of arguments” is not in their best
interest and that troubled waters, ideology, taboos and sanctioning deviation
from the mainstream even in science give better results in Machiavelli’s
varnished jungle. We can also say that enforcing mainstream thinking by
anxiety, (inner) censorship and taboo is the primary instrument of social
evil such as irrational power. If political
correctness, anti-euthanasia or anti-eugenics strongly discourage us, say, from
freely arguing about genetic causes of underclass behaviour or about the
equally genetic basis of some Third-World countries being “disadvantaged”, you
should be on your guard as to various interests being ideologically active,
such as the “redistribution bureaucracy”. (As to those Third-World countries
see again R. Lynn and T. Vanhanen: IQ and the Wealth of Nations.)
We
cannot sufficiently emphasize that, as far as society fails by “the human
condition”, one should not acquiesce in this but concretely find out where the
jungle sides of man seize opportunities via less than enlightened instruments
such as other-directedness, mainstream conformism and taboo.
We
give some more concrete examples of how mainstream conformism works by the
repression or tabooing of major facts or arguments.
1)
By repression of the earlier-mentioned undersupply of attractive individuals
and of the primitiveness of the love market, the relevant frustrations remain
unconscious and produce anxiety rather than more rational reactions. Such
anxiety, in turn, can be manipulated into upholding taboos.
2) As regards educational problems, one will repress the genetic factor, so
that “reformers” can endlessly try and fail to “emancipate” low-IQ students.
Also, one represses the core factors in the “reforms”: less and less coherent
facts, more and more “social skills”. Thus the anti-intellectualism and
conformism remain shielded.
3) More generally, one emphasizes “nurture” and semi-taboos “nature”, for the
benefit of “emancipating” bureaucracies devoted to crime-fighting, problem
cases, or the underclass.
4) The major fact is repressed that the enormous increase of money that is
spent on “the disadvantaged” since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society did not
reduce their number (compare the foregoing).
5) It is repressed that prevailing relativism and subjectivism as to facts,
moral standards and human quality (that is also kindred to egalitarianism)
actually amounts to devaluing the argument, reason and progress and, therefore,
is utterly reactionary rather than “progressive”. Ultimately, the status quo
cannot be exposed in the relativistic frame of thinking.
6) The successive opposition of the churches to contraception, abortion, euthanasia,
and their total disinterest in scientific research into a possible afterlife,
strongly suggest their striving after monopolizing the domains of life and
death and thus is the umpteenth specimen of ideology transforming interests
into moral dogma.
7) In Sections 4.3 (Candidly, on Economics) and 2.5, part 6, item
13 of this website I gave a possible approach of the problem of economic
recessions. It implies some vested interests having to make concessions, such as
wage controls. This mere circumstance sufficed for silence about my proposal
from the side of mainstream economists.
8) The popularity of “literary defeatism” such as of Camus, Céline, Houellebecq,
the subjectivists and postmodernists, logically stems from the circumstance
that in fact they deny that “there is system in the madness” so that nothing
can be done about it.
9) The increasing complication of organizations, juridical actions, procedures,
formalism and bureaucracy, that means a head start for insiders and
“position”
versus common sense and the general public, is (of course) not really fought by
the establishment. It is the essential source of the increasing gap between
government and the voters. Again, it is vested interests that obstruct
remedies. Among the latter are roughly reducing all taxes to income tax, and
reducing about all civil juridical procedures to a small number of round-table
meetings of judges, the parties and their lawyers who radically reduce
formalism but engage in a substantial common-sense discussion. This basically
has earlier been proposed by jurist Brenninckmeijer in his inaugural speech in
Leiden (1994).
10) What should ultimately be done is that social science addresses as its main
problem the question why and how the inner censorship works concretely in
keeping even most scientists within the mainstream, and in preserving taboos,
thus at the same time leaving vital problems unsolved and unsolvable. The
relevant anxiety and manipulation should in particular be unearthed. For,
they are the core of the mechanism of power. Resistance will be
strong because many invested very much in position, power and the veiled-jungle
way of doing. Simply realize that many would even be abhorred by the idea, say,
of genetic rearguards to be easily identifiable by scientific methods. They
want latitude for troubled waters, for the underhand and “political” way of the
struggle for life and for the Machiavellian dimension. All of this is reflected
in our values and culture too, and needs relativism, “the poly-interpretable”
or “fundamental uncertainty”…
4. On socio-cultural survival of the fittest among power
mechanisms such as ways of censorship, coherent organization (states,
bureaucracy, oligarchies,…), conventions and ideologies
Conservatives
are of the opinion that historical institutions and convention are valuable
because they will be the result of a survival of the fittest process as to
social workability. This is largely true, on the condition that we read
“fittest” particularly in the sense of fittest in self-preservation and
power wielding, not in producing optimum happiness for most individuals.
History is our teacher. A few points:
(1) From a standpoint of self-preservation (of states, organizations, ethnic
groups,…) oligarchy has a head start, also as regards which individuals will
come at the helm. This may very well explain Robert Michels’ Iron Law of
Oligarchy
(1911): individuals and more or less integrated minorities compete for power.
That is, this law rests on two bases. First, there is an internal survival of
the fittest (SF) process in organizations from which those come to power who
tend to stand out as to “meritocratic talents” or superior power instruments
(manipulation, ideological and self-preservation instinct,…). Second: the mere
oligarchic nature of mutually competing businesses shows that oligarchy will
be the most efficient way of managing organizations, which, therefore, became
prevalent.
(2) John Dewey said: “If we once start thinking no one can guarantee the outcome,
except that many objects, ends and institutions will be surely doomed”. This
crucial fact explains why censorship has always been a vital instrument of all
vested interests, that wanted to survive. This censorship in recent democratic
times became internalised into other-directedness, our conforming to mainstream
thinking and anxiety as to violating “correctness” or taboo. “Correctness” such
as the RU (relativism-uncertainty) paradigm or the “religion of Man” (see
Sections 1.1 through 1.5 of this website).
(3) The (relativistic-egalitarian) “correctness”, the RU way of thinking, and
the (other-directed) religion of Man have especially two common focal points:
a) The new God – “We” – is never morally in default: no bad faith or
unconscious conspiracy is operative from the side of established groups and
interests,
and
b) No individual or group is below others in genetic or fundamental moral
quality.
Both
“We” and separate individuals are in the last resort felt to be above rational
values and natural law (free will, no inferior quality or genes, moral
inviolability, values originate from the community rather than rational
argument). The whole of this point (3) amounts to censor or conform away
the exposure of much that (Dewey) is “certainly doomed” by reason. Convention,
religion, violence and ignorance found their modern-“liberal” successors as
regards censoring instances and shielding vested interests from indeed being
doomed.
(4) The above also contains that secularised new religion continued the
function of its openly dogmatic and authoritarian predecessors as to
sanctioning the (fundamental) status quo and shielding it by anxiety,
censorship, taboo and group-mindedness. All of this highly resulted
within the scope of a social survival of the fittest of (also
unconscious) power mechanisms.
Note
that the above shows that the two core current taboos – against radically
declaring in default “the group” and the genes of some individuals – precisely
support the establishment and the disadvantaged industry, respectively.
Realize
that the relevant other-directed mainstream conformism also covers
socio-cultural science and partly even (micro)physics: “fundamental
uncertainty” and the impossibility of constructing understandable models call
the tune. For example, googling <“string theory”> produces 1,750,000 hits
versus 33 for <”understandable models” microphysics>.
(5) The above points suggest an integration of phenomena and explanations into
a coherent model or theory that amounts to a rather radical generalization
of Michels’ Iron Law. That is, we see a general competition
(SF) in society among power-seeking individuals or groups as well as among
(their) instruments (such as ideologies, conventions, taboos,
bureaucratic organizations, manipulative techniques or, simply, “meritocratic
talents”). In society and culture as a whole the SF leads to the oligarchy
constituted by the establishment (SF of power instruments is included), whereas
in organizations it (the SF) tends to result in oligarchy (Michels) via both internal
and external competition. The latter is important because of the mere greater
efficiency of oligarchic organizations. On the other hand, in
the macro organization which society as a whole is, SF results in the fittest power
instruments’ survival. Hence the predominance in society of subtle
variants of (inner) censorship and other instruments that tend to frustrate the
red thread of enlightenment that is essential in our general socio-cultural
theory. Such frustration of reason is a condition of life for irrational power
by the mere pronouncement of Dewey in (2) above. It is Galbraith’s onslaught
of circumstance that ultimately still causes the red thread to overcome the
relevant SF of counter-forces. (Galbraith observed that traditional ideas are
often defenceless against new inventions, economic developments and other
uncontrollable circumstances.)
This
point (5) adds SF of power-fostering instruments to the phenomenon of
unconscious conspiracy as a major source of successful anti-enlightened forces. A link
between the two is that social actors will often intuitively sense what
policies, ideas, repressions and taboos serve their purposes and which do not.
All of this generates mainstream thinking as a resultant “policy” of the cartel
or oligarchy of vested interests the establishment constitutes. This occurs in
coherence with the need of safety and hope, and the credulity, of the general
public. Nationalism and anti-rationalism are among the prototypical results.
[Compare: “Nationalism is an instrument for making the many exert themselves
for the benefit of the few” of an unknown author, and also remind point (2)
above.]
Of
course it is in the interest of the “competing oligarchs” to maintain that the
phenomena discussed above are all “coincidence”.
(6) One among the facts that refute this idea is that received wisdom and many
variants of mainstream thinking will all point in similar directions (also “by
coincidence”?) and are often extremely nonsensical, vigorously resisting all
common sense and shielded by taboo. Think of most “abstract art”, the contorted
verbiage of many modern philosophers, the evasion of everything offensive to
mainstream ideas by current sociology, “comprehensive” and non-systematic
education, the repression or tabooing of the genetic factor in social results,
and the idea that there has not been much social and moral progress since the
Enlightenment.
For
the rest, the vested-interest mentality, the indifference as to progress, and
the appeasing attitude of current establishment is already demonstrated,
respectively, by the treatment of whistle-blowers, the indifference with
respect to dysgenics (compare Lynn’s earlier-mentioned book) and the tolerance
with respect to both squatters and the extreme bonuses of many business leaders.
(7) The described situation is very negative for both socio-cultural science
and the solution of many problems. For mainstream conformism and concomitant
repression and taboo are precisely attuned to frustrating reason as well as to
causing various problems to be unsolvable. The latter appears with respect to
such solutions that violate major vested interests. The repression of “nature”
as compared with “nurture” and of the idea of genetic quality, as well as
anti-rationalism and relativism, an aversion to lie-detector-controlled
group-interviews, not allowing euthanasia for seriously handicapped new-borns
and, last but not least, the deplorable state of current sociology and
philosophy, have all much to do with the situation and mechanisms described
above.
(8) The foregoing implies that radically improving both the level of
socio-philosophical sciences and society essentially boils down to the
exposure of also sophisticated variants of censorship – based on
anxiety, repression and taboo – that now also keep most scientists from
abandoning mainstream conformism. This would at the same time lead to “solving
the unsolvable”: problems whose solutions are unwanted by influential sectors
of the macro-oligarchy. Let the intelligentsia and scientists resume their exposing
roles rather than supporting the orthodoxy of RU, Camus-Céline defeatism and
the dead-end pseudo-non-conformism of “abstract art”. Let sociology abandon
its position that there is nothing to expose behind political correctness,
anti-rationalism, sexual taboos, anti-intellectualist education and a taboo of
ridiculing “abstract art”. Let’s clear the way for
the solution of many problems that are now made unsolvable by dogma and taboo
that shield interests.
I.L.
Horowitz, S. Andreski and A.C. Zijderveld already emphasized that sociology
evades about all major problems. I tried to indicate and explain many of them
concretely. Who follows suit?
5. Who should run the country and from what ideals? How can we
improve establishments? Current
egalitarianism versus objective values as inner basis
To
a large degree, oligarchy and the appearance of an establishment are
inevitable, the more so because we need expert specialists in everything, so
why not in government? Democracy to some degree “humanizes” the relevant SF and
concomitant (un)conscious manipulation. Actually, the vital point is not
whether the Davos people, alumni of top universities or “populists” are at the
helm, but what are the purposes and ideals, and whether the rulers
are in a position to get things done from a “technical” point of view. The
Davos people or alumni should particularly be controlled as to whether they put
first and foremost the happiness of the people and true progress as to this.
An
instrument for realizing this could be that anyone running for parliament
should undergo extensive lie-detector-controlled tests or interviews that
should find out how far he (she) gives precedence to the common good and
progress as compared to his (her) status, career or income, or to pressure groups.
Such procedure would guarantee that 85 % of those defining macro policy will
vote according to the correct priorities. (Mind that lie-detectors are about 85
% reliable.) Because any candidate should answer many questions, the 85 % is a
minimum. Candidates who wrongly flunk would be a victim of cumulative errors of the
apparatuses. The voters would better be informed via this proposal. It is
revealing that it has not been made earlier. The mere
fact that most politicians will not be very clear and straightforward is a sad
consequence of the fact that manipulation will pay off better. Therefore,
something should be done about this, like intended by my proposal.
Milton
Friedman and others explained why politicians will give precedence to vested
interests as compared with the public good. (This is apart from our own
explanations.) He essentially argues: big business, organized labour, the
juridical, medical and educational establishments, farmers and so on will be
motivated more intensely by their special interests than the general voter is
as to the public good. Now such special interests negotiate alliances to the
effect that doctors vote for agricultural subsidies if farmers do for
monopolistic fees for doctors, and so on. Funding electoral campaigns does the
rest. Lie-detector-proof politicians would refuse to join in such game.
Note
that the above “Friedman cartelisation” is a political analogue of business
cartels. Both sponge on the majority and should equally be fought, inter
alia,
by the above lie-detection method.
Current relativistic-egalitarian “correctness” functions as a compromise
ideology between the establishment and John Doe (the masses). Essentially it
abandons the very ideas of truth, good, evil and human quality. This amounts to
undermining both the concept of some judgment above the powers that be and of bestowing
people with variable quality. Both the rulers and the subjects are shielded
from moral exposure. Note that such idea precisely joins with what
we earlier identified as the two current main taboos: against major parts of
the establishment to be in bad faith (unconscious conspiracy) and against many
individuals to have low genetic quality. This is apart from the benefits for
the disadvantaged industry and the egalitarian-“nurture” position. (Compare
with the above the orthodox religion of the past as a similar compromise
between the status-quo forces and the masses who wanted to belong, in
solidarity.)
Note
in the above context that relativism and egalitarianism are mutually very kindred,
also in their anti-enlightened, anti-progress, purport: they actually devalue
truth, an hierarchy of quality and the idea of progress. The community and the
status quo remain as ultimate references. Fundamental conformism and
other-directedness are concomitants.
Now what is the alternative as to our starting points in life? In the first
place, scientific truth and its apparent coherence. In the second place, our
common natural desire to optimise our individual well-being and minimize
unhappiness. A direct logical consequence of this is that we accept as a rational
ethic
the conclusion that the best results for mankind as a group will be produced if
we jointly aim at optimising our common well-being: if I should sacrifice a not-so-intense
satisfaction in order to produce a more intense one for my neighbour, I should
indeed do so. If it cannot be found out whose satisfaction is the most intense,
my choice is morally indifferent.
Now this rational foundation of ethics
still falls short as an emotional contribution to my life
to be based on hope, meaning and coherent action. What should be added? Or,
what should logically be our ultimate factual, moral and emotional motivation
that gives a meaning to our existence? A motivation that can successfully
compete with nation, God, career, status and money? Speaking from my personal
introspection, my “spiritual inventory” is largely this:
a) A both egoistic and altruistic emotional urge to fight tragedy and
wickedness.
b) The emotions of beauty and impressiveness I will experience in connection
with the sun setting over the sea, the starry sky, beautiful music or sex.
c) The inner voice of “God saying to me” in such experiences: “I neither play
dice, nor can I be outwitted”; that is, the idea that what happens is no
coincidence but obeys deep, coherent laws.
d) At the same time my imagining the “writing on the wall” of the Bible: “Mene,
mene tekel ufarsin” (“Weighed, weighed, and being found too light”).
e) Within the scope of a deep coherence in nature, evolution, techno-science
and the Promethean, I look forward to a society in which genetic engineering,
artificial intelligence, and subtle “measurement of minds, preferences and
lies” will make possible an approximate “organization of happiness”, inter
alia,
by our being in a position of optimally matching individuals and their jobs or
other tasks, love partners, and individuals and experiences in general, by
means of science-based methods. The solution of conflicts will than also evolve
from current stages. In all, I look forward to a true scientifization of
life and culture.
f) Also, I look forward to science teaching us much more about the coherence of
the world and consciousness, a possible afterlife included.
g) Further, psycho-social science can do much to remove obstacles that now
prevent the solution of many problems, also by studying the anxieties that
currently cause people not to violate the taboos.
Actually,
I experience all of this as overwhelming, standing supreme as compared with
status and what others find of me…
For
the rest, small wonder that our era is highly characterized by meaninglessness,
despair, God’s playing dice with destiny, disinterest in progress and the fact
that only a few study near-death experiences and the like…
Finally, an essence of my work and of its position with respect
to others
1. In his Die Arbeit tun die Andern sociologist
Helmut Schelsky advanced the idea that ideologists and mind manipulators tend
to hate and fear technology because the latter will make man less dependent on
the overwhelming forces of nature. In turn, such independence makes him less
eager to embrace the (Utopian) products of the mind mongers.
2. There is an analogy of on the one side such
technology and on the other the rationalism, techno-science-based
progress-mindedness and the “spiritual inventory” a) through g) above. That is,
my coherence- and progress-centred physical and socio-cultural theories offer a
concrete rational alternative of both myth (irrational ideology) and the
current “religion of Man”: they make the individual not only independent of
the overwhelming forces of nature, but of “the others” and their convention,
taboos etcetera as well. They give us autonomy via an independent
mainstay.
3. Even more radically, my socio-cultural
explanations so often expose those others and their ideas – on unconscious
conspiracy, genetic inferiority,… – that they will utterly contrast with the
“religion of Man”.
4. Also by this, my comprehensive ideas
radically reduce the very anxiety (fear of the others) that in this essay we
found to be at the basis of keeping up (inner) censorship and taboo. My theories
make one highly independent of “the others” and their mainstream ideas.
5. My very independent theories demonstrate this
once more in the sense that I did not feel any urge or anxiety tending to my
conforming. I even feel agreeably superior to those many who collectively hush up my
arguments but at the same time posit that there is no unconscious conspiracy in
society; and I don’t need any mainstream to hold on to: its unenlightened
features are a major source of our frustrations, which disqualifies it.
6. It is a major difference between my social
theory and competitors that the latter show the fatal flaw that neither
happiness, nor progress, nor evil plays a part in them as a
vital concept. Additionally, they are seldom revealing.
7. Those happiness etcetera are also at the core of
things because man’s all-important choice in life, the one as regards the
meaning of existence included, refers to the question whether one’s ultimate
mainstay or “God” is either objective-scientific truth, its
coherence and their relations with happiness, progress and evil, or convention
and what those in power say.
8. One more major difference between my concept of
socio-culture and virtually all others is that in my model a concrete
explanation is given of the much (over-)emphasized phenomenon that in the past
few ages reason and enlightened ideas did only partly succeed in eliminating social
evils. The essence of it is that neither social scientists nor our
leaders did consistently apply reason to all major problems of life and
society, but continued to humour vested interests, prejudice and taboo, in contrast
with this essay and my work in general. Concrete instances: free will,
four-dimensional realism and an alternative of “fundamental uncertainty”,
sexuality, incoherent art, political correctness and the “religion of Man”,
ideology and unconscious conspiracy, the function of relativism, etcetera. In
sum, I refused my intelligence to renounce consistent thinking about orthodoxy,
prejudice and taboo. Others did not, and clung to what “all well-thinking
people” say.
9. The gist of the controversy around my work
can be formulated in a few words: the “children of light” have more interest in
destiny and the world to obey deep coherent laws than in basic uncertainty,
incoherence and coincidence, which also frustrate openness. On the other hand,
the “children of darkness” have an interest in evil to be poly-interpretable,
relative, or due to coincidence. (By the way, if evil
were only a question of social agreement, why then refrain from it if no one
looks on?)
10. I fear that most socio-philosophical science is
now in the category of “expression by those who have nothing to say”. It
reflects mere mega-inflation of non-information. S. Andreski (Social
Science as Sorcery) wrote that obscure and poly-interpretable
philosophers will have more followers and paraphrasers than, say, clear
Bertrand Russell. For you cannot endlessly elaborate on the latter and on
clarity at all, whereas at the same time many in the bloated intelligentsia and
academia seek “expression”, “being active in the field”. We can radically
generalize Andreski’s important conclusion to domains such as “abstract art”,
literature, bureaucracy, sports (that actually does not refer to anything of
substance), details mongering, verbiage, the inflation of laws, regulation and
procedure,… We witness a round game (the term is from Anton Zijderveld who
referred to sociology). Those who actually have something to say are a menace
to both the game and the in-crowds, and we see coming into being one more
unconscious compromise of the establishment and the rank and file.
11. In the foregoing, we also generally emphasized
that modern opposition against the enlightened red thread in history, against
“Utopia” as an ideal and against the spirit of my work has its ultimate origin
in “the negative sides of man”, such as loving troubled waters for the benefit
of vested interests, and clinging to “our claws and teeth” from the jungle.
Actually, we could concentrate this social model to an imaginable vital core by
the following formulation. History shows abundantly that having power
over others is about the single most intense drive in at least most
among our leaders. Well, it is precisely enlightened reason, Utopian
tendencies and the spirit of my work that tend to reduce such power to a major
degree. Hence an instinctive opposition…
12. How life and destiny could ever have a meaning
if they would (partly) be based on chance rather than obeying deep and coherent
laws? That is, if nature (“God”) would play dice with tragedy, triumph and
history at all? The core problem of life having a meaning or not is therefore
essentially related to physics, at least if we look apart from the
hypothesis of sorcery. For such meaning co-depends on a vital question about natural
law:
we know that causal processes coherently obey the latter, but the
major question is now whether results or outcomes as such do so too. If natural
law would not have an aspect of finalism or teleology that guarantees outcomes
and results to show a dimension of coherence (up to and including
“orchestration”), God would indeed play dice with suffering and we cannot
have any meaningful, ordered, destiny. It is illustrative of
the level of modern philosophy that this point hardly ever has been made
earlier. Why not? Probably major powers prefer the problem of meaning and
destiny to remain beyond the domain of rational science. In Sect. 6.1 of this
website more about “the physics of results” can be found, such as about
retroaction and natural law to refer to four-dimensional processes rather than
three-dimensional objects.
Note
that we cannot but accept that there is some dimension of
finalism and orchestration in natural law. What else could have guided Newton’s
hand in writing the Principia? The only escape is positing that
Newton did not function according to that law.
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