Mega Thread: How to Escape from a Sick Society - Academy of Ideas

[Fleetinglife]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, reflecting on the Soviet Union's descent into totalitarianism rule in the mid 20th century and all the things that could have been done to prevent it, wrote the following:

''If...if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation ... we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.'' - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

The 20th century clearly shows that totalitarianism is not the solution to any problem, but a social ill of the most horrific kind. More innocent men, women, and children were killed by totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century than by natural disasters, pandemics, or even the two world wars. 

If, therefore, we are unfortunate enough to be living in the world flirting with the sickness of totalitarianism, what can we do to escape?

Relying on the insight of those who studied, and lived under totalitarian rule, we are going to explore what is called a forward escape from the control of cruel and twisted minds of the would-be totalitarians. 

To understand what this form of escape entails we will contrast it with two other ways to escape from the hardships of living through an attempted totalitarian takeover - the backward escape and the physical escape. 

The backward escape entails dulling one's awareness of the reality and precariousness of one's situation through the use of drugs and alcohol or by zoning out in front of screens for hours on end.

The backward escape can provide short-term relief from feelings of anxiety, depression, and boredom, but the more one relies on such activities the more one's mental health deteriorates. 

Furthermore, the backward escape does nothing to prevent the rise of totalitarianism as it promotes docility, passivity, and apathy all traits that make people more manipulable and controllable or as Doctor Joost Meerlo wrote in his book on totalitarianism: 

"The cult of passivity and so-called relaxation is one of the most dangerous developments of our times. Essentially, it represents a camouflage pattern, the double wish not to see the dangers or challenges of life and not to be seen ... Silent, lonely relaxation with alcohol, sweets, or the television screen ... may soothe the mind into a passivity that may gradually make it vulnerable to the seductive ideology of some feared enemy. Denying the danger of totalitarianism through passivity may gradually surrender to its blandishments to those who were initially afraid of it." - The Rape of the Mind, Joost Meerloo. 

The alternative to the backward escape is the physical escape which is to relocate to a place that offers more freedom. This form of escape has many benefits, for given that we have one chance at life, why not live somewhere absent of control of corrupt and power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats. 

But there are problems with this form of escape. Firstly, for many people, it's not practical to pack up and move to another land. Furthermore, if we live at a time when the rise of tyranny is a global phenomenon the practicality of the physical escape diminishes further, as the sought-out pockets of freedom are few and far between.  

What is more, if totalitarianism is permitted to proliferate the places that are free now, may not remain so for long. Running away, like escaping backward, is not the ideal solution to the rise of totalitarianism, instead, the solution is to escape forward into a better and new reality.

What does the forward escape entail?

To answer this question we need to dispel the notion that totalitarianism can be defeated through compliance. 

Many people cede to the commands of would-be totalitarians because they believe that so doing is the quickest means to return to some semblance of normality. 

But this is a cowardly and ignorant way to act. For compliance only emboldens totalitarian regimes, a point emphasized by the political philosopher Hanah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: 

... the most characteristic aspect of totalitarian terror [is that] it is let loose when all organized opposition has died down and the totalitarian ruler knows that he no longer needs to be afraid ... Stalin started his gigantic purges, not in 1928 when he conceded, "We have internal enemies," ... but in 1934 when all former opponents had "confessed their errors", and Stalin himself, at the Seventeenth Party Congress declared "...there is nothing more to prove and nothing more and, it seems, no one to fight.'' - The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hanah Arendt. 

Compliance is the food that feeds totalitarians. Compliance is not, and never will be, the path back to some form of normality. Rather, non-compliance and civil disobedience are essential to counter the rise of totalitarian rule. 

But in addition to resistance, a forward escape into a reality absent the sickness of the totalitarian rule requires the construction of a parallel society. 

A parallel society offers two main purposes: it offers pockets of freedom to those rejected by the totalitarian system, or to those who refuse to participate in it, and it forms the foundation, it grows the foundation for a new society that can grow out of the ashes of destruction wrought by the totalitarians. 

Or as Vaclav Havel, a dissident under the communist rule of Czechoslovakia, explains in his book The Power of the Powerless:

''When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when those people begin to create what I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins, of itself, to become structured in a certain way ... [these] parallel structures do not grow ... out of a theoretical vision of social change (there are no political sects involved) but from the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people''.  - Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless. 

There are innumerable ways to contribute to the construction of a parallel society. One can build technologies that promote freedom or agoristic economic institutions that further voluntary exchange. 

One can run a business that resists implementing unjust laws or mandates, or one can create media or educational institutions that counter lies and propaganda of the state. 

Or one can create music, literature, or artwork that counters the staleness of totalitarian culture. 

The parallel society is a decentralized and voluntary alternative to the centralized and coercive control of the totalitarian society and as Havel explains: 

"One of the most important tasks that ''dissident movements" have set themselves is to support and develop [parallel social structures] ... What else are those initial attempts at social self-organization than the efforts of certain parts of society to... rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the [totalitarian] system"  

"...it would be quite wrong to understand the parallel structures and the parallel [society] as a retreat into a ghetto and an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of those who have decided on such a course... The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official structures... simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from below and are put together in a fundamentally different way".

- Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless and Living in Truth. 

The construction of a parallel society, however, is not merely a long-term solution to totalitarian destruction, but also serves to counter the rise of totalitarian rule. 

The act of building parallel social structures reveals that not everyone will just roll over and submit to total state control and as was noted by Hanah Arendt, this keeps the would-be totalitarians in check. 

This process also counters the social atomization that comes with totalitarian rule by promoting voluntary communal bonds between those who cherish freedom.

And as an added benefit, for those who partake in this process, it can serve as a healthy vehicle to escape the day-to-day feelings of anxiety, boredom, and depression that accompany living in a world teetering with a descent into totalitarianism. 

For if we pick a goal for the construction of the parallel society, and work towards it in a disciplined and focused manner, we give our life more meaning and we open up to attaining the peak experiential states of flow and Rausch.

 

Flow is an optimal state of consciousness:

"... in which attention is so narrowly focused on an activity that a sense of time fades, along with the troubles and concerns of day-to-day life."

Natasha Dow Schull, Addiction by Design.

Rausch, on the other hand, is the word Nietzche used for a peak cognitive state similar to flow. 

''What is essential in Rausch is the feeling of increased strength and fullness.''

- Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols. 

Rausch is an emergent by-product of focused attempts to effectuate real-world change and when in Rausch, as in flow, we perform at our best, or as John Richardson explains in Nietzche's New Darwinism: 

''In Rausch, the organism feels its capacities at a peak and takes pleasure in this heightened potency. These capacities are the drive to work on the world, and in Rausch, one feels oneself "overfull" with them, bursting to change things to fit oneself." - John Richardson, Nietzche's New Darwinism.

Both flow and Rausch are healthy ways to escape from the day-to-day miseries of living in a sick and corrupted society. 

Unlike the numbing experiential zones of the backward escape which weaken us in body and mind, flow and Rausch strengthen us and increase our feelings of power. 

The more people who experience flow and Rausch the harder it is for those in power to herd a populace into the chains of totalitarian servitude and as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned:

''No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower."

- Aleksandr Solzhenistyn, The World Split Apart.

To attempt a forward escape by contributing to a creation of a parallel society and in the process attaining the states of flow and Rausch comes with risks, and success is not guaranteed, but it is a far better option than merely sitting passively by just hoping things will get better. 

''Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of men". 

- Nietzsche, Human All Too Human.

In place of mere hope, courageous action from as many people as possible is needed to prevent the rise of totalitarian rule and the sooner people act in defiance of would-be totalitarians, the greater the chances of success. 

For the mistake that was made over and over again in the totalitarian countries of the twentieth century was that people didn't act soon enough.

Milton Mayer, In his book ''They Thought They Were Free'', interviews an individual who lived through Hitler's rule, and his word should serve as a warning for those who live in a world at risk of being engulfed by the life-destroying machinery of totalitarian rule:

''You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you with resisting somehow... But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes ... If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest one, thousands, yes millions would have been sufficiently shocked ... But of course, this isn't the way it happens, In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next...

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible to them, all rush in upon you ... and you see that everything - everything - has changed ... Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed no one is transformed..."

- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Fleetinglife]

Why an Obsession with Safety creates Sick Minds and a Sick Society

 

 

"Condition for being a hero. If a man wants to become a hero, the snake must first become a dragon: otherwise, he is lacking his proper enemy."

- Nietzsche, Human All Too Human

Our age has been called many things, but the age of cowards may best describe it, given the immense fear, anxiety, and helplessness that most people display in the face of even trivial threats. 

We are not a generation that moves forward into the uncertain future in a bold and heroic manner, instead, most people fear the future and prefer safety, comfort, and ease of life, to risk-taking, experimentation, and freedom.

Or as the 21-st century sociologist Frank Furedi writes:

"Young people are socialized to feel fragile and overawed by uncertainty [and as a result] ... the defining feature of the 21st-century Western version of personhood is its vulnerability. Although society still upholds the ideal of autonomy and self-determination, the values associated with them are increasingly overridden by a message that stresses the quality of human weakness. And if the vulnerability is,  indeed, the defining feature of the human condition, it follows that being fearful is the normal state..."

- Frank Furedi, How Fear Works

Overawed by uncertainty, fearing the future, conceptualizing oneself as vulnerable, weak, and fragile is not a recipe for individual or social flourishing. 

Rather this way of life promotes mental illness and paves the way for authoritarian rule and so, as we will explore here, the world would benefit if more people were willing to live just a little more dangerously. 

For danger, when a by-product of pursuing worthwhile goals or in defense of values like freedom, justice, and peace, is life-promoting and as the Roman historian Tacitus put it:

"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise".

- Tacitus, Annals, Book XV

Not all societies, however, have ranked safety as high on the scale of values as does the modern West. Many flourishing societies of the past considered safety to be a secondary value and showed a remarkable capacity to take in the face of an uncertain future and to display courage and bravery in the presence of danger. 

"Historically some of the most prosperous societies - Ancient Athens, renaissance Italy, nineteenth-century Britain - were amongst those that were mostly oriented towards experimentation and the taking of risks."

- Frank Furedi, How Fear Works

In taking the opposite approach and showing a strong preference for safety over risk-taking the unfolding of human potential is not actualized but stunted. 

For to develop on an individual level, and to advance as a species, exploration of the unknown and experimentation of novel ways of interaction with the world is a necessity, and this entails taking risks and confronting danger.

But such is the price that must be paid as the alternative is to stagnate in the confines of an ever-shrinking comfort zone, to regress in body and mind, and to fall victim to anxiety disorders, depressions, and other diseases of despair. 

A further flaw with an approach to the future that strongly favors the safe road is that creates fertile ground for tyrannical or even totalitarian rule, for as Alexander Hamilton famously stated:

"...to be safer they at length become willing to run the risk of being  less free."

- Alexander Hamilton,  The Federalist Papers.

When a society elevates safety to a position of a first-order value, freedom is by necessity demoted to a position of a second-order value which can be trampled on by those in power who, throughout history, have disguised tyrannical intentions with claims of wanting to make a society safer.

What makes matters worse is if a society socializes people to be fearful of the future and overawed by uncertainty, the masses will welcome, or openly call for authority figures to protect them, or as Furedi notes:

''Relieving people of the burden of freedom in order to make them feel safe is  a recurring theme in the history of authoritarianism."

- Frank Furedi, How Fear Works

Given that a society that defies safety is also a society ripe for tyranny, it is up to those who favor freedom to take a more heroic approach to life. For when the menacing clouds of authoritarian rule darken the horizon unless more people are willing to take risks and face danger in the service of values such as freedom, justice, peace and social cooperation, the grip of tyrants will only solidify, or as John Stuart Mill put it:

''A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of man better than himself."

- John Stuart Mill, Principles of the Political Economy

As role models for  the task of living more heroically we can look to the Ancient Greeks, a civilization that rightly held safety to be a secondary, not primary value, and which saw risk-taking and facing danger as morally commendable;

"Danger makes men classical, and all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk."

- Albert Camus, Ressistance, Rebellion and Death.

Freidrich Nietzsche was also the proponent of this classical approach to life and he praised Pericles, the Atheninan leader who in his famous funeral speech celebrated the Athenian's "indifference and contempt for safety, body and life".

Contrast this to the modern world, where, to paraphrase the author Christopher Cocker;

''...we tend to deprive [the bold risk-takers who spur safety] of the fullness of their lives in order to support the smallness of our own".

- Christopher Cocker, The Warrior Ethos.

Fortunately, we don't need to wait around for politicians to pass legislations to approve of the bolder approach to life, we just need to live in this manner.

We need to look at the uncertain future not merely as a source of threats, but also of hope and opportunity, and we need to see risk-taking as justified when in defence of cherished values or in the pursuit of worthwhile goals. 

By demoting safety to it's rightful place as a secondary value, we will cease living as a helpless pawn who must be coddled from youth to old-age by an authority figure and we will regain the ability to shape the course of our life. 

We will mature psychologically and become better equipped to cope with whatever the future brings, for as Nietzsche explains: 

"Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources: our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong - otherwise one will never become strong''.

- Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols

While taking greater risks and flirting with danger can shorten one's life, it is helpful to remember that a long life is not necessarily a good life. A safe life, lacking real challenges and absent in adventure, is inert and leads to a withering away of body and mind into staleness, repetition, boredom and stagnation - such is not living, it is mere existing, or as the Roman stoic Seneca put it:

"...there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles, he has not lived long - he has existed long".

- Seneca, On The Shortness of Life

In addition, to helping one live more fully, a courageous willingness to take risks and to flirt with danger can turn us into a great benefactor of mankind. 

For as long as the values that guide us, and the goals we pursue, are noble and life-promoting, courage reveals a caring attitude for the wellbeing of others. 

For unlike the coward who is concerned primarily by his or her own safety and who demands everyone else conform to his or her own neurotic ways, the hero is willing to risk life and limb in the service of values that move society forward, or as Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory:

"If someone says that he cares for some individual, community or cause, but is unwilling to risk danger on his ,her or its behalf, he puts into question the genuiness of his care and concern. Courage, the capacity to risk harm and danger to oneself, has its role in human life because of this connection with care and concern".

- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

If, therefore, we desire a fulfilling life, care for our mental health and care for the future of our society we need to act with courage and not worship at the altar of safety. 

We need to take risks in the service of life promoting values, and not adhere to the view that a good life is a safe life. 

"For believe me! - the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitifullnes and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into the uncharted seas!... Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in the forest like a shy deer!"

- Nietzsche, The Gay Science

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

Be ware the cult of libertarianism. It is sneakier than totalitarianism.

[Fleetinglife]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Be ware the cult of libertarianism. It is sneakier than totalitarianism.

I've noticed these freedom and liberty biases in his videos and channel, but I am only recommending it since I feel people like me need a solid theoretical grounding and practical embodiment in the works and advocacy he presents in his videos to escape from, survive in, prosper in and eventually transcend stage blue societies in which we live and are governed by on an individual level. That's why I found his channel appealing and feel I lack severe embodiment of these upper-stage orange values and lifestyle in contrast to the society I live in.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Fleetinglife