One
of the most significant threats that can occur to any democracy is that of the
election to a position of leadership of someone who has the potential to be an
autocrat. Such a person can attempt to
undermine the checks and balances with respect to other branches of government
in order to use dictatorial powers. Such
a person can consolidate his control and decide that elections would only
potentially upset his long-term plan for the country. It would then become much simpler to declare
himself president for life. This course
of events has unfortunately happened before in history. Two of the most notable examples of this
happening in the last century were Russia under Lenin and Germany under
Hitler. In many cases, autocratic
leaders maintain the pretense of multiple candidate elections in order to
satisfy the expectations of the world community. The elections are fixed, as the autocrat
keeps winning election after election. A
good example of this is Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
One
of the secrets of an autocrat’s success is his capacity to take advantage of
the frustrations of the populace in order to get the populace to back him. It is a matter of getting people to back him and
his vision and his sense of destiny. It
is a matter of getting people to merge psychologically with him and to make the
imprints that he wants to make and preserve on the world their imprints. The reason that people are willing to give up
so much of their individual identity and merge with the autocrat is that they
perceive their own opportunity to make and preserve individual imprints to be
significantly diminished. A major reason
in the modern world that the opportunities to make and preserve individual
imprints are significantly diminished is the effects of modern technology on
human fields of experience in the external world.
This
diminishment occurs on several distinct levels.
First, technology has replaced what once would have been called artisan
work with mass production by complex machines in factories. Second, robots are replacing the human
workers who used to work with the mass production machines. Third, more recently, there has been the
introduction of 3-D printers which make products from scratch with only the
most minimal involvement of human beings.
Finally,
there is the replacement of natural organic surfaces and the surfaces of
artifacts and architecture of more traditional cultures with the hard cold
unyielding surfaces of modern technology, modern technology-based artifacts and
modern technology-based architecture.
The more natural and traditional surfaces created fields of experience
that yielded to new ongoing organic imprints, so that a person could feel
potent and fully alive, able to make and preserve his own organic imprints and
create a surrogate immortality built both on actual products and on the
memories that remained with other people after his death. But now that technology is so good at
preserving indefinitely all kinds of imprints, there seems to be less and less
room in the fields of experience of people today for truly new imprints. That
is, apart from the invention of new devices, that either get rid of work and
the possibility of new imprints being made by other workers, or else create
more and more layers of mediated experience that remove people more and more
from the immediate sensory world and the opportunity to make and preserve new
meaningful organic imprints.
So
this is a difficult time for people in a country like the United States, people
who want to feel alive and create their own individual surrogate
immortality. Along comes someone like
Donald Trump, who not only offers to bring back manufacturing jobs, but who, on
a deeper level, offers to restore a sense of potency. Believe in Trump and you can participate in
his vision which will create a collective imprint on the U.S. A collective imprint that will endure and
turn into a collective surrogate immortality.
Believe in Trump and blur into him.
Blurring
into a political leader in order to leave a collective imprint is not what one
would normally consider a typical strategy in a modern democracy. One of the supposed advantages of a democracy
is its focus on the individual. In the
United States, according to the Declaration of Independence, there is a
fundamental belief that all human beings have the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. The
implication is that each individual has a right to pursue his own distinct path
to personal satisfaction and will not feel predisposed to give up his own
distinct path by blurring into someone else’s path. Although political leaders can be
charismatic, they are not supposed to use psychological tactics that seduce
people into becoming a part of an enveloping collective identity. Having a good chunk of the populace merge
into an enveloping collective identity is the foundation for setting up a
totalitarian government, which, of course, is antithetical to the maintenance
of a democracy.
And
this is why Trump is such a dangerous man.
His sense of entitlement, his belief that he has the right to go around
all kinds of established rules and conventions with regard to the American
government, complements perfectly the desperate dreams of his supporters who
want nothing more than to believe there is some magical way for them to bypass
their sense of impotence with regard to their daily lives. Trump allows them to live their dreams, if
only vicariously, through him. By
letting them blur into him, Trump allows these people to participate in
creating vicarious organic imprints on their field of experience. The vicarious collective organic imprints of
a Trump presidency. In so doing, it
allows these supporters to feel fully alive and to feel they haven’t lived
their lives in vain. So that when they
are about to die, they will know they have participated in leaving a meaningful
impress on the world.
Trump
is unique in the way he changes many of his positions so often both out of
expediency and out of a desire to be able to control and manipulate Americans
by throwing them off balance. He also is
constantly making new surprise attacks on individuals, corporations and
movements with no warning. And although
it throws them off balance, Trump’s supporters love the abrasive friction of
all of his changes and surprises. But in
other parts of the world, there are leaders and movements that are also
penetrating the numbness and the jadedness of their constituents by coming up
with revolutionary proposals to change things dramatically. The change is not necessarily focused on actually
fixing particular problems with particular solutions, but rather is oriented to
leaving new dramatic splashy collective imprints that pull people out of their
numbness and jadedness and allow them to feel more fully alive. Many times the changes brought about by these
new leaders and movements don’t really fix the problems of their supporters and
may actually exacerbate existing problems situations. But, on some levels, increased abrasive
friction may be exactly what these supporters need. And someone like Trump, who flip-flops on
many issues and creates ongoing shows and surprises is actually perfect for
creating the ongoing intermittent kicks that keep these people alive. And his flip-flops and surprise attacks are
perfect for making many new imprints in which his supporters can
participate. And many of these imprints
can be preserved in people’s memories leading to a constantly expanding
collective surrogate immortality.
Now Brexit
was a big collective imprint and a big shock and it is going to precipitate all
kinds of other shocks as the leaders of Britain and the European Union try to
navigate Britain’s separation from the European Union. This was not a change that was very well
thought out by most of its supporters, and it could very easily produce
unforeseen consequences that will repeatedly impact in a negative way the very
people who wanted to promote it.
There will be more votes
in the future that bring about unfocused dramatic change, as people try to promote
the kind of change legislatively that they can use as a psychological
substitute for the kind of change they would actually desire to bring about in
their fields of experience within their daily lives. It is highly unlikely that these changes will
deal effectively with the underlying problem that people have today of a loss
of organic grounding in their living environments.
In one of my earlier
columns, I wrote about two different kinds of crime that corresponded to
adaptations to two different kinds of living environments. In more traditional more natural
environments, a person could be overstimulated by organic stimuli, by the
flowing blendable continual stimuli that are the foundation for strong
emotions. This, in turn, created the
foundation for crimes of passion. I use
the term crimes of passion in a much broader sense than it has been
traditionally used. In my construct, it
means not just revenge for unfaithfulness in love, but also any crime based on
greed, lust, anger, envy and other strong emotions.
Then, as modern
technology started moving into living environments and creating sensory
distortion: understimulation and overstimulation, people started to use crime
to pull themselves out of their numbness and jadedness in order to feel simply
alive. Thus began all the seemingly
senseless crimes like the mass shootings by one or two gunmen that have become
so prevalent in modern American society.
Somehow, I am beginning
to think a similar pattern is appearing in the process of voting in modern
democracies. People used to vote based
on passionate beliefs, passionate connections.
This was how it happened as people were transitioning to modern
technological living environments.
During the transition, people still had some significant connection to
more traditional styles of living environments.
In America, homesteaders kept pushing further and further west, keeping
alive the idea of the American frontier.
Even those who remained in the big cities could fairly easily escape to
rural areas.
But now even rural areas
are dominated by the transformative experiential effects of modern consumer
technology. People are increasingly numb
and jaded and feel increasingly impotent in terms of their capacity to make and
preserve imprints in their fields of experience. A man like Trump comes along and he pulls
people out of their numbness and jadedness and out of their sense of
impotence. And the more he flip-flops,
the more he makes people feel more alive and that they are part of a movement
that is making things happen. It doesn’t
matter what is happening, just that something is happening in their lives. This is what we are dealing with in the Trump
phenomenon.
© 2016 Laurence Mesirow
No comments:
Post a Comment