For the last few months I've been thinking of the social pathologies of life under communism and what, if any, lessons can be taken from the experiences of the east bloc.
Among the characteristics of those societies was the gaslighting (straight-up lying to you) of the people by the government and the elites. On first encounter one might wonder why the nomenklatura would risk their reputations by saying things that were demonstrably false?
That question misses the point. They weren't trying to convince anyone. Gaslighting is a power move, very popular among sexual and psychological abusers. It says "I can lie to you and you can't stop me." And then it goes further and says "I can make you say the same things."
There are other social pathologies, the snitches, tattletales and such trying to exert power or curry favor.
There is the general air of accepting unreality, exemplified by the old Soviet joke:
"We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us."
And many more, but for now, Vaclav Havel, a writer who went on to be Czechoslovakia's last president and after overseeing the split of the two countries, Czechia's first president. Here is an excerpt from his essay "The Power of the Powerless", this version via Bard College:
III
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves....
It's the pretending that will get you, either as an individual or as a society.
And November 4, 2021It is the political version of Hemingway's dialogue on the money problems of one of the characters in The Sun Also Rises:
“How Did You Go Bankrupt?”This is supposed to be the reason the American CIA was caught flat-footed by the rapidity of the collapse of the Soviet empire and Eastern European communist governments, exemplified by the Berlin Wall coming down.
“Two Ways. Gradually and Then Suddenly.”
I don't know if this is the case, I'll have to read the book.
From the Harvard University Press:
Private Truths, Public LiesThe Social Consequences of Preference FalsificationPreference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.
A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.
In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.
Private Truths, Public Lies uses its theoretical argument to illuminate an array of puzzling social phenomena. They include the unexpected fall of communism, the paucity, until recently, of open opposition to affirmative action in the United States, and the durability of the beliefs that have sustained India’s caste system.
This seems related to Vaclav Havel's essay on the greengrocer in communist Czechoslovakia that we've visited previously, "The Power of the Powerless".
That sets the stage. The next phase is when more and more people see that others think as they do.
....Kuran’s insight and its relation to explaining social and political change is that the prevalence of preference falsification means that there are always people simmering behind public choices with which they privately disagree. When the conditions regulating public expression shift, there can be a swift and massive recalibration of “public lies.” The following comes from a chapter of Kuran’s book titled “Unforeseen Political Revolutions”:
Where the status quo owes its stability to preference falsification, there are people waiting for an opportunity, and perhaps others who can easily be induced, to stand up for change. Some eye-opening event or an apparent shift in social pressures may cause public opposition to swell. The public preferences of individuals are interdependent, so a jump in public opposition may be self-augmenting. Under the right conditions, every jump will galvanize further jumps.
The potential for change is not fully observable. We can never know exactly how a given event will be interpreted; whether a new technology will alter the balance of political power; or what it would take to turn public opinion against the status quo. Such predictive limitations imply that shifts in public opinion, especially large shifts, may catch everyone by surprise. Yet an unforseen shift in public opinion may subsequently be explained with ease. The shift will bring into the open long-suppressed grievances and draw attention to factors that have made people cease supporting the status quo.
Kuran’s model introduces something called a “threshold sequence,” which can be understood as a statistical model for what are popularly referred to as “tipping points.”....
If this is the case it appears to be one way to battle totalitarians and other power freaks who have internalized Alinsky and whose most potent tool to keep people in line is to isolate them.
From Rules for Radicals, seventh chapter: Tactics:
Rules for Radicals #13 (longer version)
(short version)
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
I'm no political theorist so as I say, I'll have to read the book.
