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Video Description
We like to think we choose our ideas — but the truth is often the reverse: our ideas choose us. This lecture from Academy of Ideas shows how a single idea can spread through a society like a demon. Drawing on Dostoevsky, Jung, and Arieti, it argues that the most dangerous ideas are the ones about human nature and human potential that quietly weaken us. The authoritarian idea first possesses the power-hungry, then uses propaganda and mind control to shape the masses. As Arieti warned: if someone controls your ideas, they will soon control your actions, because every action begins as an idea.
Full Video Transcript
Man does not make his ideas. We could say that man’s ideas make him.
Ideas are the seeds of our greatest creations, but they can also sow destruction.
Ideas, when put into action, lead to individual and social flourishing or to individual suffering and social ruin.
And certain ideas, as we will explore in this video, can induce a mass psychosis and motivate individuals to commit acts of such cruelty and depravity that to an outside observer, the society will appear to be possessed by evil.
Reflecting on the mass psychosis that broke out across Europe in the mid-20th century and that led to multiple wars and multiple genocides, Carl Jung wrote the following.
Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished the belief in demons,
it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins,
the demons were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans.
Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and illusions were abroad everywhere,
and people began to believe the most absurd things, just as the possessed do.
do. Jung devoted his life to studying the psyche of man and was acutely aware of how ideas influence
individual and social development. We must, therefore, be careful which ideas we affirm
and which we deny. And this is especially true with regards to our ideas about human nature,
the human potential, and the proper structure of society. For this set of ideas helps determine
our value system, impelling us to act in certain ways and to strive after certain things. These
ideas are an integral component of our moral compass, teaching us what is right and wrong,
what to love and hate. And our ideas about human nature place bounds, wide or small,
on our potential at both an individual and collective scale. Most of us, however, are not
careful when it comes to the ideas that occupy our minds, as we passively accept whatever ideas
form the zeitgeist of our time. Most of us, in other words, are controlled by the ideas of other
people, and we give little thought as to whether such ideas are right or wrong, beneficial
or harmful.
And as the psychologist Silvano Arrietty warns,
If he controls your ideas, he will soon control your actions, because every action is preceded
by an idea.
Sometimes this passive conformity in the realm of ideas promotes our well-being and contributes
to a prosperous society, but at other times the ideas that make up the spirit of our age
do the opposite. Certain ideas weaken us, make us prone to fear and anxiety, disconnect
us from reality, drive us to excessive hate, cause us to regress psychologically, and distort
our view of human nature and the human potential. Ideas of this variety, the Russian author
Fyodor Dostoevsky labelled as demons. And as Richard Pevier wrote in the preface to
Dostoevsky’s novel Demons, throughout Dostoevsky’s work exists the possibility of an evil or
alien idea coming to inhabit a person, misleading him, perverting him ontologically, driving
him to crime or insanity.
The person born of the idea may be distorted and even destroyed by it.
When possessed by demons, an individual is less capable of facing up to the challenges
of life.
For demons, by distorting and degrading our image of human nature and the human potential,
a man or woman into acting in ways that are maladaptive to the environment and injurious
to individual flourishing and social prosperity. Demons are not based in truth and are not built
on an appeal to facts and evidence, but are illusions and as Jung wrote,
illusions are inimical to life. They are unhealthy and sooner or later trip you up.
But humans are very susceptible to illusions. And advances in science and technology have not
made us immune to illusory ideas. Or as Jung wrote,
a nation which is almost invariably connected with ideas of this sort produces a fanatical
obsession with the result that all dissenters, no matter how well-meaning or reasonable they
are, get burnt alive, or are disposed of in masses.
Demons take many forms, be it ideas that promote learned helplessness or passivity and so degrade
the human potential, social or religious ideas that deem a race or ethnic group as a plague
to mankind and so promote persecutions and mass cruelty, or political ideologies that
elevate a select few far above the rest of mankind and so set a society up for the mass
psychosis of totalitarianism.
This latter belief, which divides society into two classes, the rulers and the ruled,
has a long history and many variants.
Whether it be communism, rule by kings, queens, or pharaohs, or in the modern day, unchecked
rule by bureaucrats and politicians, this demon of authoritarianism prevents the prosperous
functioning of a society by inhibiting the potential of the masses and shackling society
within the constraints of total control by a small group of power-hungry and corrupt
individuals.
It is delusional, writes the doctor Joost Meerloo, to think of man as an obedient machine.
It is delusional to deny his dynamic nature and to try to arrest all his thinking and
acting at the infantile stage of submission to authority.
How do these authoritarian ideologies which set a society up for the horrors of totalitarianism
spread throughout society?
Typically, the first to be possessed by the demon of authoritarianism are individuals
with a particularly strong thirst for power and who desire to quench this thirst through
control over others.
Not all men want to dominate a large number of other persons, writes Arrietty, but those who do affect the life of many.
When individuals of this nature attain positions of institutional and political power, the scene is set for the spread of the demon of authoritarianism.
For these individuals gain power and resources the more this demon spreads, and so they instinctively seek to disseminate their favored authoritarian ideology as far and wide as possible.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, advances in the field of psychology, and specifically in the understanding of group psychology,
has allowed for the development of very effective methods of molding the minds of the masses,
and politicians and bureaucrats the world over now make use of these methods of mind control.
Or as Meerloo explains,
public opinion have enabled him to refine and perfect the weapons of psychological warfare.
And totalitarian psychological warfare is an effort to propagandize and hypnotize the
world into submission.
But are the individuals who spread these authoritarian ideologies simply evil?
Do they spread these ideas, in other words, with the intention of causing harm to other
people?
The Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who lived in a society caught in the grip
of the authoritarian demon of communism, suggests that such individuals are evil, but that they
lack full awareness of the fact that they are setting society up for ruin.
Instead, such individuals convince themselves, and then others, that what they are doing
is for the good of society and not merely for their own personal gain.
Or as Solzhenitsyn writes,
To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or
or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law, or as he further
explains, ideology.
That is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification, and gives the evildoer the
necessary steadfastness and determination.
That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own
and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses, but will receive praise
and honors.
In the next video, we will explore how this small group of power-hungry individuals is
able to spread the demon of an authoritarian ideology to the masses at large, and in the
process induce the mass psychosis of totalitarianism.
We will explore the techniques that are used for the dissemination of this demon, the conditions
that create fertile ground for its spread, and the role that modern technology plays
in this process.
The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental.
Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism.
Evil powers from the archaic past return.
An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops.
To justify one mistake with a new one.
To enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life.
This delusion starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.
Source: Academy of Ideas