Control In Crisis - Quareness Series 147th "Lecture".
It appears today that our formerly reliable social institutions may be wobbling with growing numbers of the public losing trust in many of our financial, legal, medical and political authorities. Simmering differences and rivalries are taking on a new intensity as the competing sides grow more militant, breeding new life into latent ritualistic instincts. And unless such instincts are somewhat moderated they may quickly get out of any control.
Down through our human history we see a thread of evidence that rituals, religions, festivals and political institutions evolved at least in part to prevent the recurrence of social upheavals in which runaway cycles of vengeance are converted into unifying violence against scapegoated victims. However, history also tells us that when there is extreme austerity and increased rigour in the observance of all interdicts we can quickly find ourselves faced with the same dangers in the form of totalitarian directed violence. In more modern times we have seen such with for example Nazi fascism and Soviet communism, both of which exhibited a strong puritanical streak and hostility to anything outside their own order. Fascism of course is inherently reactionary in that it arises in response to looming social breakdown (whether real or imagined). Either way it's clear that many human societies create/evolve a "priestly" caste which is tempted to take every opportunity to impose rigorous proscriptions, rituals and taboos which serve to increase its own power. And maybe its best opportunity is a crisis that can be attributed to people's "sinful ways"?
In this regard our current period of covid-19 tactical long-lasting social "lockdowns" has been quite revealing in that they've been largely accompanied by totalitarian tendencies and a quasi-intellectual hostility to anything resembling public fun. Indeed it seems that many of our public health measures can enthusiastically and readily display a distinct ritualistic bent as well as an obsession with "pollution". It's even hard not to notice that our social responses to covid bear so striking a resemblance to ritual ideas and practices (masks, sanctimoniousness, tabooed people, etc.) that you have to wonder whether our public health policy is really more a disguised "religion" than scientifically based. For that matter we might more deeply ponder to what extent our official science today differs, given its tendency to institutional dysfunction under a shroud of dogma. Ultimately the validly or otherwise of these ideas and practices comes down to whether our systems of public knowledge production (i.e. science and journalism) are sound as well as whether our medical and political authorities are trustworthy. Those who doubt public health orthodoxy will say no and must source evidence from outside officialdom...evidence which for the true believers is illegitimate by definition. One can hardly prove the "priests" wrong by using their own officially anointed information...you risk being exposed as a "heretic" if you try.
Today applying the term "conspiracy theorist" is one of the ways to dismiss and dehumanise those dissenting from the public health orthodoxy and the speed with which such deviants are consigned to subhuman categories is quite alarming in itself. It can seem like just what is needed for priming the public to identify ready-to-hand scapegoats. Given the now widespread labelling being applied e.g. "anti-maskers", "anti-vaxxers", "covidiots", "science deniers" and even "domestic terrorists", it ain't difficult to discern the growing fertile ground for such "retaliation" through a kinda virtual pogrom that blames, humiliates and tries to (at least digitally) extinguish its targets.
What totalitarian societies and covid lockdowns have in common is a reflex of control and this reflex tends to meet any failure of control with more of it. The totalitarian mindset foresees every action and every object being monitored, labelled and controlled with no room for anybody or anything to be out of place and every action authorised. And for the "insiders", its critics seem to be deluded, ignorant enemies of both progress and any betterment of humanity. But such a paradise of total control is a mirage, receding more quickly the faster we approach it. The more tightly order is imposed, the more chaos gets to squeeze out through the cracks. As a perceptive man said "violence too long held in check will overflow its bounds"...in the real world extreme order creates its opposite.
It may be easy to connect the dynamics of the sacrificial victim with other programs of control, but both depend on a false reduction with a temporary appearance of success cloaking the persistence of deeper problems. The cause of immigration is not just immigrants; the cause of school shootings is not just shooters; the cause of disease is not just pathogens; the cause of climate change is not just greenhouse gases. These may just be the more conspicuous among a complex of causes. Like the scapegoat, they can be convenient targets for the exercise of power. And having exercised it, the majority may rest satisfied that something has been done (even though the underlying problems remain unresolved).
Worth thinking about?
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
August, 2021.