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To go off of last week’s newsletter, and my inclination to share some thoughts on Joost Meerloo’s book “The Rape of the Mind” (horrible title), I thought it would be interesting to analyze the affects language has on the psyche. At this time, it also feels more appropriate than the intended short story I had planned for today’s post, considering the horrors which are taking place in Ukraine.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many politicians are corrupted, and detached from reality. Mainstream media has converted into a propaganda machine whose main goal is to increase their nation’s power. All the while, poverty is present, even in the so-called more “affluent” countries, while rampant money printing has created a false image of economic stability. Simultaneously, politicians tell us that if we are dissatisfied by how things are done, then we can retaliate at the polls. But is the democratic ideal truly the best road towards freedom? That’s to assume state power is the remedy for a sick society, while perhaps it is this very state power which poisoned everything in the first place.
As the last two years have demonstrated, viruses can spread throughout a population in pandemic proportions, but so too can contagions of the mind.
“Man does not make his ideas; we could say that man’s ideas make him.” (Carl Jung)
Ideas are the bedrock to both progress and destruction. Some ideas have the power to better the individual and the world, whereas others lead to suffering. The ideas with which we align determine our values and motivate us to act in distinctive ways. For this reason it is important to be conscious and critical which ideas we let in. They become our moral compass and teach us how to love and hate, what to love and hate, and how to act on those feelings.
“If he controls your ideas he will soon control your actions, because every action is preceded by an idea.” (Silvano Arieti)
We tend to passively accept whatever ideas form the zeitgeist of our time. Sometimes this passive conformity promotes our well-being, while at other times it stimulates the opposite. Some ideas weaken us, promote anxiety, cause us to regress psychologically and drive us towards hate. Joost Meerloo, a Dutch physician and psychoanalyst, argued that the automation of modern life has influenced people to become more yielding. Individuals no longer emphasize personal values or moral codes, but instead center on the values presented to them by the mass media. He called this subtle brainwashing ‘menticide’, and argued that we aren’t solely at risk of being brainwashed, but we are also, deep down, tempted by this brainwashing. There is something innately comforting in being told what to do. Like a child, we want the greater “Other” to take our hand and guide the way. But, like the child, we want to be an individual also, we want to assert ourselves in whichever way we please.
When the German army invaded The Netherlands in May 1940, Meerloo was a 37 year old Jewish man. He witnessed the war’s many hardships, and, due to the religion he inherited from his ancestors, he found himself in a particularly dubious position. Though he managed to flee to the States a few months later, his experiences with authority shaped his life and gave his work an extra dimension of shocking realism.
“Totalitarian leaders, whether of the right or of the left, know better than anyone else how to make use of fear. They thrive on chaos and bewilderment. The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics.” Joost Meerloo wrote in ‘The Rape of the Mind’. Through the mainstream media, our sense of understanding language, which used to feel straightforward and unambiguous, has become clouded and cryptic. A widespread state of confusion and mental disorientation has ensued amongst the citizenry: “Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews that the most upsetting experience they faced…was the feeling of loss of logic, the state of confusion into which they had been brought—the state in which nothing had any validity…they simply did not know what was what.” (Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind)
While living through these major historical events, one might wonder how we can possibly escape from this sick society. The events happening in Ukraine today make it clear that authoritarianism, and definitely not totalitarianism, is the solution. History shows likewise. Throughout the 20th century, more innocent people were killed by totalitarian/authoritarian regimes than by natural disasters, or even both world wars combined.
There are three ways in which one can define an “escape” — mental, physical, and future-oriented. The former entails a dulling of the senses through distractions. This can be anything from drugs, alcohol, or excessive media usage, all of which provide temporary relief. Mental escape does nothing to alter or prevent the rise of totalitarianism, and, if anything, promotes it. And, as Meerloo wrote in his book: “The cult of passivity and so-called relaxation is one of most dangerous developments of our times. Essentially, it represents a camouflage pattern, the double wish not to see the dangers and 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 those who were initially afraid of it.”
Physical escapes entail immigration and relocation to places which offer more freedom, whereas a future-oriented escape requires one to be critical of the media, and notice when one is being lied to, and act against these false forces.
As Meerloo warns in his book, language is being used as a weapon towards mass manipulation. An authoritarian regime, as in Russia, is built on and sustained by delusion. For, as I said earlier, only deluded adults can regress to the childlike status of submission. Only deluded men and women can hand over control of their lives to authority. In the same manner, only a deluded ruling politician can believe they possess the knowledge and means to control society from the top, down.
Through propaganda, speeches, etc., history has underlined the ambiguity of language, and how it can be morphed to create a nation of delusion. “Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation – the senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. Man doesn’t learn to question his world anymore; the screen offers him answers-ready-made.” (Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind)
Ambiguity is a defining factor of language, it is what makes poetry, prose, etc., so beautiful. Yet, this very ambiguity can also lead to social ruin. Therefore, it is our job as conscious human-beings to be critical, to become an authoritarian politician over our own bodies, before another does that job for you.
In a similar vein, I am currently listening to:
The books 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 all back up your thinking in this piece. Each of them in their own way explore the concept of how human society can be captured by totalitarian governments. All of them use some combination of drugs, propaganda, fear and indoctrination to stupefy, pacify and mold our human behaviors.
Brave New World is my personal favorite because of it's characters and their struggles, I wrote a very long essay on it, but all of them seem to have failed to be adapted into movies...there is however Brazil by Terry Gilliam which is the best shot at dystopia a film has ever taken. Beware watching it if you're feeling down lol.
It's interesting in that all the reading about dystopias and communist states that I've done it seems to be that intelligent persons suffer a distinct fate--they have the mental acuity necessary to pierce the veil of the propaganda state and thereby discover what mankind has lost and from then on live a life alienated from humanity. The accounts of intellectual depression are epic.
In this mind I take no stock from Zuckerberg because his company is a murderous beast of consolidation that eats competitors alive all while never having innovated anything other than targeted advertisements to replace the market he murdered. Before him the internet was more pure and since him society has been developing brain cancer on a massive scale.
My personal favourite piece of yours, Shifra.