I was in a somewhat philosophical mood the
last days, as witnessed by my entries in
Nederlog, and yesterday did some
programming, that I rarely can do for
lacking the energy and the cognitive
clarity to do it well for any length of
time, which is the main reason there was
no Nederlog yesterday.
Today there is more philosophy -
practical philosophy, as I use the term:
See "Multatuli
en de filosofie", which is
Dutch, but has clear tabular definitions
that clarify my meanings and distinctions
- that also relates to Searle's ideas
about the university and education, that I
treated a few days ago in On an
interview with John Searle
and that I intend to write more about,
namely as appearing in
I linked it here so that you may
consider it if you are interested in the
subject, as I also intend to discuss some
of it in Nederlog later. It is from 1990,
which is no setback, but rather an
advantage, that gives some perspective
readers of 1990 did not and could not
have, also known as 'the benefit of
hindsight'.
But to do that I decided first to
translate the last of the regular columns
in Spiegeloog that I published in 1988 and
1989, that were for the most part about
the decline of the universities and indeed
the decline of civilization, that then
were going on in Holland since about 1970,
and are still going on and were discussed
publicly by me e.g. here
Here follows my translation of the last
regular column that I then published
monthly, over the course of the academic
year 1988-1989. It was published in
December 1989 and was written in the days
the Berlin
Wall and the Iron
Curtain (<- Wikipedia) came down.
I have added 25 notes in square brackets
that link to the texts of the notes that
follow the essay, and some links to my
Philosophical
Dictionary, for those who want
to see how I understand the terms I use:
The
ideological ape
As I write this,
it seems as if one of the greatest social
revolutions is taking place that humanity
has ever known. [1]
Today a demonstration of at least 250.000
people is expected in Prague. Yesterday, for
the second time in two weeks, the whole
central committee of the East German party [2] has stepped down, and
at the same time has been accused of
fargoing corruption. In Hungary some ten
days ago the communist party has been
abolished. In Poland a government that
consists mostly of non-communists is in
power. In Bulgaria the leader of the party
has been ousted and made subject of legal
prosecutions. Last week the Iron Curtain has
been opened. In Russia, for the first time
in 70 years, it is possibly to speak
honestly of political or religious ideas
without having to fear for sanctions like 10
or 20 years of concentration camp. [3]
And so on, and so
on, and so on: Within some few weeks or
months the complete social system that ruled
the lives of over a billion human beings
seems to be collapsing. The consequences can
hardly be foreseen at present. [4] The only thing that is
certain now is that the world will be
radically different in the coming ten or
twenty years from what seemed to be the case
until some weeks ago.
What interests me
about this right now, apart from noting the
fact that you and I are living at a time
that in terms of social changes can only be
compared with the
decline of the Roman empire [5], is to indicate a -
very schematic -
explanation.
The social system
that we call "socialism"
(to settle on a term [6])
is, like earlier social
systems, the product of a combination
of war and revolution; the ideas of a
philosopher; the acts of a few handfuls of
revolutionaries misled by eschatological
illusions
[7]; the dictatorial
aspirations of so called humanitarian
revolutionary leaders [8];
the normal corruption, incompetence and
egoism of those in power,
whoever, wherever, whenever [9];
and blind historical chance. [10]
Socialism
(<- Wikipedia) (as we know it [11]) is a totalitarian
system both in political and intellectual
terms. Politically, all power
is in the hands of a very small elite that governs by means
of coercion and terror. Intellectually, each
citizen has been educated
in an ideology
in which truth,
beauty
and goodness
[12] depend for their
contents and meanings on the decisions of
the central committee of the Party.
What is
psychologically amazing about this [13] and in need of an
explanation may be expressed by questions as
follow:
Why did so many
millions of human beings, including very
many prominent intellectuals [14], against all factual
evidence, believe that the existing
socialist state formed for the most part an
admirable social system? What is the reason
that literally tens of millions, and
possibly hundreds of millions, of human
beings believed that dictators like Stalin
and Mao, each responsible for the
deaths of at least 20 million human beings
[15], were the greates
geniuses and benefactors mankind had ever
known? What motivates human beings to
believe that evidently megalomaniac dictators
are the very best of humankind, and to
experience their police states as the utopias
that humankind has longed for ever since it
became conscious?
The fundamental
reason is this: Human beings are
ideological apes. [16]
An ideology
is a system of beliefs about what
reality is like and what it should be
like. An ideology consists of a set of presupposed
facts
and values:
Thus is the world; such are human beings;
and those are our ends and norms. [17]
Just like each
animal is born with instincts that it needs
to orient itself, so human beings, as members of the
rationalizing animal species, need an
ideology, a worldview: A system of ideas,
ideals and idols to interpret and evaluate
the world. [18]
The need for an
ideology is next to the linguistic
ability one of the most typical human
properties. Religions
are ideologies.
Political systems of ideas are
ideologies. Most popular philosophies are
ideologies. [19] Every
social system is carried by an ideology in
which human ideals (brotherhood, wealth,
justice ...) are embedded in ideas (human
society is the product of: God, capitalist
exploiters, Jewish plutocrats ...) and
attached to idols (mahatma Gandhi, comrade
Stalin, the Great Helmsman Mao...). [20]
Because ideologies
are especially used as inspiration and
social cement they are rarely reasonable
and always founded on emotions:
Ideologies express
desires
and values
in the first place, and the contents of the
worldview of an ideology normally is
subservient to its desires and values.
Each popular
ideology is based on the ideological fallacy
aka wishful
thinking: "A statement is true if and
only if it is desirable". [21]
This also is the reason that real science
cannot be made subservient to ideology,
although it may be abused for ideological
ends and may be travestied: Real science is
too much committed to truth
and logic
to be useful as ideology.
The
ideological fallacy is the
psychological basis of most of the ideas of
the followers of an ideology: True
is what should be the case according to
their ideology ("There are no concentration
camps in the Soviet Union, because socialism
is a humanism" [22];
"The pope is infallible" [23]);
false
is what should not be the case according to
their ideology.
So far, human
history has been mostly a history of
human incompetence; a history of stupidity
and hypocrisy
in the service of the egoistic
ends of small corrupt elite [23]: Every
one and a half year in the last 2000 years
there was 'a major war' somewhere;
everywhere those who have dissident ideas or
who do not look like the majority does have
been persecuted; in this century alone more
people have been murdered than in all of the
rest of human history [24].
And this century has known the most horrific
police states that ever existed - police
states that were founded by believers in an
ideology that promised freedom, equality and
justice, and was kept going by torture
chambers, concentration camps and terrorism
by completely
phony dictators who were revered as if
they were semi-divinities who acted in
the name of the highest human ideals.
Now that system is
collapsing. The consequences cannot be
foreseen and mainly depend on the humane
that is the moral, intellectual and artistic
gifts of the leaders that are taking over. [25]
Right
now the world seems a lot better than it did
a month ago. In any case, it is a quite
different world, even though it may not seem
like if from Holland: The world after 1989
will be a fundamentally different one than
the one before 1989.
Notes
[1] This seems to
me still correct, and whoever believes
something like "1989 is long ago - 22
years have passed" forgets that while 22
years is around a third of a human
being's time of life, in historical
terms it is not long, and forgets,
does not see, or disagrees that in
the former socialist countries that were
under the aegis of the Soviet Union it
still is mostly a mess.
Also, if one takes the trouble to look
at some maps and statistics, one will
find that Soviet socialism occupied a
lot of earthly territory, and comprised
more than 1000 million human beings.
This is more than the Roman Empire, both
in territory and in population.
[2] This was not
called "Communist Party" (generally
abbreviated as "CP") but "SED", mainly
for propagandistic reasons. For
background see the article
East Germany in Wikipedia.
[3] I wrote this in
November 1989, as the things mentioned
in this paragraph happened. There seems
to have been rather good press coverage
of much that happened, though when I
wrote the present essay in Dutch most
journalists and political commentators
were still trying to be not committed,
and were waiting for definite
outcomes to choose sides.
[4] The reason I wrote
this is that many who did write about
the changes of 1989 as they happened, in
November and December of 1989 as well as
in the early 1990ies, were quite certain
about what had been achieved and what
should be done: In brief, a return to
proper democracy and proper market
capitalism, to be funded the first years
by the West, so that all would turn
allright real soon.
I regarded that already then as
wishful thinking and very probably
false, because whole states fell apart
in a very short time, while their
populations had lived under dictators
all their lives. See e.g. my On
Zinoviev's Theory of (Soviet) Man.
[5] The link - the
decline of the Roman empire - is
to a useful edition of Edward
Gibbon's monumental series of
books "The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
(<- Wikipedia). These books, plus
those of Thucydides,
Machiavelli
and Burckhardt
seem the best introduction to history
I know of.
[6] The term
"socialism" dates back to Robert Owen or
his followers, in the 1820ies. It has a
quite vague or ambiguous meaning, and
there have been nominal socialists of
many kinds, from Hitler, Stalin and
Lenin to pacifistic vegetarian
anarchists, with folks like Tony Blair
and other European "democratic
socialists" inbetween.
[7] Revolutionary
movements tend to be eschatological
movements i.e. concerned with the final
end of man, the world, God, or whatever.
Alternative terms with similar meaning
for this type of movement are
millenarianism aka
millenialism.
[8] Especially
socialist leaders - Lenin, Stalin,
Mao - were revered by many millions as
if they were superhumans. In fact, it
seems to me, at least the last two, and
possibly the first as well, were more in
the nature of persons with a
considerable talent for mafia-boss, who
invested that talent in politics. See
e.g. Montefiore's "Stalin - The
Court of the Red Tsar" and my
Dutch review of it:
Stalin in boekvorm.
[9] I think "the
normal corruption, incompetence and
egoism of those in power,
whoever, wherever, whenever" is quite
true, with few exceptions: "All power
corrupts. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely." (Lord Acton) Also, almost
all political leaders, whatever their
public stances, seem to be in
politics because they have a
deeply felt personal concern to exercise
power
over others. (It can't be that they are
interested in a pleasant life or the
acquisition of much knowledge or
civilization, for then they are in the
wrong place in politics.)
[10] There are
such things in nature and in politics
and social developments as chance
events, or so I think. Much of what
seems design in real fact was muddling
through misunderstood events and
grasping at coincidences.
[11] With "Socialism
(<- Wikipedia) as we know it" I mean
especially to refer here to the Soviet
Union and the nominally socialist
countries under its aegis. See also [6].
[12]
Truth, beauty
and goodness
are fundamental in a human's life, since
so much is done, believed, desired or
not done, disbelieved and not desired by
reference to these categories.
[13] Note that I was
writing, in the Dutch original, for
students and lecturers and professors of
psychology.
[14] Many prominent
intellectuals of many kinds in the 20th
century were socialists, communists,
anarchists, fellow-travellers,
progressives or at least liberals, and
considered themselves to be politically
on the left. This also often had
respectable moral reasons, relating to
the economical crisis of the 1930ies;
the rise of Mussolini, Hitler and
Franco, and the Spanish civil war and
World War II; the practices of the Nazis
in concentration camps and with Jews;
the injustice in the division of the
social product and of necessary work;
and later the Vietnam War. The problem,
at least with the many who did not
become leaders, is not so much with
their morality as with the intellectual
foundations of their political
positions, that generally were poor and
mostly prejudice.
(It is more or less the same in the
middle and on the right of the political
spectrum:
Politics as practised is wishful
thinking and
propaganda rather than rational
thinking and science.)
[15] That dictators
like Stalin
and Mao were each responsible for
the deaths of at least 20 million
human beings is very probably a
rather gross understatement: 40 millions
murdered under the aegis of each seems
more in line with the facts, though
indeed part of these deaths were not
caused by mortal violence but by
starvation or mistreatment. See e.g. the
statistics of Rummel, that I give here:
Opening
of "On "The Logic of Moral Discourse"".
[16] The phrase
and the idea do not originate with me: I
know it from F.J. Thieme's "De
ideologische aap". Then again,
much of it can be found in
Machiavelli and the Machiavellians.
[17] Again this is
typically human, and also what makes
human groups and societies
possible: Groupthinking,
conformism,
cooperation.
It does not need to be bad
or do harm:
The problem is mostly that the great
majority of human beings are not capable
to understand the issues they judge, and
tend to follow the leaders
in their social
groups, and tend to believe, much
like other social animals, that their
own local group, local leaders, local
ideals, ideas and idols, "must" be the
best there are, and that everybody who
disagrees is not moral
or hardly human (in the excellent ways
of their own group and kind). See also:
Goffman
reveals all (nearly) - Groups
& Groupthinking
[18] Note that one
of my points is that ideologies are necessary
for social animals like human beings,
who are too intelligent to be led by
innate instincts only, and therefore need
a worldview and some code of moral laws,
if only to be able to cooperate.
[19] Meanwhile,
this follows by such definitions as I
have used or presupposed. One important
consequence is that most ideologies and
religions are mostly propaganda
by and for interest groups, rather than
rational belief or science, even though
many political and religious groups
insist their beliefs are rational and
scientific, somehow.
[20] The
combination of ideas, ideals and idols
does belong together in ideologies,
whether political or religious: They all
have them, generally without much real
rational concern for the rational
tenability of the ideas, nor for the
practicability of the ideals, nor indeed
for the real morals or competence of the
idols.
What matters in practice for the
members of an ideological group are faith, emotion,
propaganda,
and what comes with it as a matter of
course: prejudice,
wishful
thinking, bias, dishonesty, hypocrisy,
and doubletalk, all normally not only
exonerated in political groups, but
required and desired: "Who is not with
us, is against us."
Also, in the end nearly all followers
tend to be the willing dupes of their leaders, who tend to
leaders not for the reasons they
publish, but because they want power,
wealth and status.
[21] The
ideological fallacy
aka wishful
thinking: "A statement is true if
and only if it is desirable" is the main
tool of thought, of conformism, and of
propaganda of all ideological -
religious, political - group: In the end
the presumption is that the present
leaders, or at least the founders of the
movement, party, faith or religion, have
some unerring insight into the way
things and human beings are. This manner
of belief is irrational about anyone
born as a human being, but none the less
common among the faithful followers of leaders of all kinds -
and I quote my Philosophical Dictionary
on the subject:
It is a curious and important fact
about the human animal that most men
follow leaders, and are conformists
and followers.
In part this seems due to humans being
social animals; in part to the fact
that relatively few are intelligent,
independent, or strong; and in part to
the fact that every human being spends
the first 15 or 25 years of his life
as a weak dependent of stronger and
larger adults.
[22] A quite
(in)famous statement of fellow-traveller
Jean-Paul Sartre, and an excellent
example of the fallacies
wishful
thinkers fall prey to, or indeed
abuse (for Sartre was not so naive as he
liked to present himself: he probably
lied knowingly, and seemed to have
conceived of The Revolution as a
convenient way into the bed of
attractive you women).
[23] The infallibility
of the pope is not older than 1871
A.D/C.E., when the first Vatican Council
honestly and rationally agreed on it,
with only 2 votes against.
[24] By "this
century" I meant in 1989 the 20th
century, for which see e.g. the
statistics of Rummel, that I give here:
Opening
of "On "The Logic of Moral Discourse"".
Of course, there also were vastly more
human beings in that century than in
previous centuries. Being not a great
optimist, it is my belief the present
21st century is likely to be more bloody
than the 20st: All the reasons for
conflict, war, and persecution are still
there, to which are now added new ones,
like depleted minerals, sources of
energy, and potable water; former
socialist countries still mostly messed
up; an economical crisis that keeps
festering on; and hardly any competent
political or religious leader in sight.
[25] As you may have
noted, I am quite careful and not very
optimistic, and "the moral, intellectual
and artistic gifts of the leaders that
are taking over", or indeed of almost
any political or religious leader that I
know of, are not great - which is one
main reason these persons are
political or religious leaders: More
intelligent and less moral than most,
they know how to mislead and manipulate
the masses, but not the few, which they
generally don't mind, since the few with
good minds and good morals rarely make
it as political or religious leaders,
and are easily arrested and silenced by
those in power.
The notes and translation are today's;
the Dutch original was written in the last
days of November 1989.
I see no reason to believe that I was in
any major way mistaken, but agree that
this does not inspire me with much
confidence that political and religious
leaders and their followers will be any
less irrational or any more reasonable
than the religious leaders and their
followers of The Century of War (*), in the second
half of which I lived.
(*) Title of a book
by Raymond Aron.
P.S. Corrections,
if any are necessary, have to be made
later.
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