The Totalitarians – Driven By Anxiety – Driven By Ideology – Incapable of Being/I-Thou
Hannah Arandt, who was a philosopher and political theorist, says something very interesting about totalitarianism, the topic, after she spent time in a detention camp in France for being a Jew, she spent her life studying. What she said is totalitarianism is movement – it’s about becoming rather than being.
What is being? What is becoming? To answer that question is to help us distinguish between the kind of political leaders who will take us in a totalitarian direction and the kind of leaders who will take us in a democratic direction.
Martin Buber defined being for us. He said there are two different ways of existing in the world – one of them was being and it is characterized by a particular kind of relation – I-Thou which is in-the-between – which is not subjective with us all wrapped up in ourselves, what we want, which is not objective, rather it takes place in the between, where we engage in real talking and real listening and make a response to that which is addressed to us.
Michel Foucault’s philosophy on the other hand was all about becoming. He described reality as a war of all against all. That is the essence of the Incomplete ones like Dick Cheney, the paranoid ones, the ones who are a threat to America because they will take us in a Totalitarian Direction – Defense is their primary mode of operation. At the heart of their constant movement, the movement Arandt talks about is an incompleteness, a lack of rootedness. From the very beginning of their lives they are unmoored from their own nature growing up in families that are all about imposition, where personalities are imposed upon them rather than allowing their natures to unfold. These are the people – these ones immersed in constant becoming – who have a hole in their soul, an emptiness which they constantly seek to fill up, a fear which forms the essence of their lives. These are the Dick Cheneys whose life is a constant defensiveness, and who corrupt the societies they live in with constant becoming – with the absence of being, the absence of living in the present, the absence of I-Thou relating, real listening, real speaking, capable of going over to the other side, putting themselves in another’s shoes without losing themselves in the process.
So we now have a formula for identifying these people with a Hole in their soul – these Dick Cheneys – who will take us in a totalitarian direction. They are incapable of being, of relating in an I-Thou way, of real speaking AND real listening. They are incapable of the being-in-the-between – that being is. They are all about defense. Karen Horney gives us insight into them. At the heart of their defensiveness is anxiety – they fear people. They are the Dick Cheney paranoids who think of the world as an unsafe place.
Hannah Arandt – a Jew who spent time in a detention camp for being a Jew – still was a person of being – who embraced the world, who trusted the world, who could see the goodness of the world.
What is the difference between the paranoid Dick Cheney and Hannah Arandt. Arandt could think. Arandt was reflective. She could carry on an I-Thou relationship with herself, a relationship of constant inner dialogue. She could question her own assumptions.
The Dick Cheneys of the world driven by anxiety are not at home in the world. They lack the rootedness that comes from a dialogical life with themselves and others. Karen Horney describes their constant defensive orientation – they are the self-effacers, the masochists, the chameleons without a solid sense of self – they cannot be. They are also those with expansive trends – the narcissists, the perfectionists, the arrogant-vindictive types – they cannot be – they cannot engage in real dialogue. They are also the resigned types, the emotionally uninvolved who have withdrawn from a life they do not trust.
All of these defensive types, these types in constant motion who cannot be, live with an idealized self, with an image of an idealized self of who they are in their mind that makes them feel superior, important, unconflicted. All of these defensive types, who cannot be, live with the Tyranny of the Shoulds, in terms of demands they make on themselves and others, no longer spontaneous, but driven by inner compulsion. All these defensive types who have anxiety at their core, who do not feel at home in the world because their real selves were never unfolded, live with neurotic pride, their behavior Karen Horney says shows an enormous reversal of values – the things they are ashamed of belong to their real self, the things they are proud of that give them prestige bolster their idealized false self. Underneath their bravado, their claims of exceptionalism is self-hate and self-contempt for their humanness, the humanness of others.
Horney describes these people of constant becoming, what Arandt calls constant becoming as driven, not really in life. Pride governs his/her feelings. Like Dick Cheney they are driven to remake the world over into their ideal conception of what it should be.
These totalitarians refuse to accept anything as it is, Arandt tells us: they see what IS only as a stage of some further development. Their ideology becomes their reality. And they often replace positive law with Terror.
“If lawfulness is the essence of nontyrannical governments,” Arandt said, “Terror is the essence of Totalitarian domination.”
These are the people who embrace torture, who start programs like Government Gang Stalking, who don’t care about guilt or innocence or enlightenment values about liberty. Their regimes are built on “an intense regulation of individual behavior so everyone is functioning as this undifferentiated mass.”
Beware of our political candidates who show themselves incapable of dialogue, incapable of real speaking and real listening . Beware of those who make their ideologies into a law of motion taking us in the direction of an idealized, inhuman life, totalitarian life.