Weapons of Terror and Mental Manipulation
Cover. Le Désespéré [Desperation or The Desperate Man], 1843-1845. Artist: Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet [1819 - 1917].
Preface
This text is an extract from The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing [1956] by doctor and psychoanalyst, Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo [1903 - 1976].
________________________________________
Synopsis
SINCE 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective 'truth' on their victims' minds. The first two and one-half years of World War II, Dr. Meerloo spent under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at firsthand the Nazi methods of mental torture on more than one occasion. During this time he was able to use his psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge to treat some of the victims. Then, after personal experiences with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially. In this capacity he had to investigate not only traitors and collaborators, but also those members of the Resistance who had gone through the utmost of mental pressure. Later, as High Commissioner for Welfare, he came in closer contact with those who had gone through physical and mental torture.
After the war, he came to the United States, where his war experiences would not permit him to concentrate solely on his psychiatric practice, but compelled him to go beyond purely medical aspects to the social aspects of the problem. As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed - Cardinal Mindszenty, Colonel Schwable, Robert Vogeler, and others - his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the word menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime. His knowledge of these totalitarian procedures has been officially acknowledged; he served as an expert witness in the case of Colonel Schwable, the Marine Corps officer who, after months of subjection to physical and mental torture following his capture in Korea, was made to confess to having taken part in germ warfare. It is Dr. Meerloo's position that through pressure on the weak points in men's makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a 'traitor.'
And in The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurising people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematised 'rape of the mind.' He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The Rape of the Mind is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists.
________________________________________
The Cold War Against The Mind
Only blind wishful thinking can permit us to believe that our own society is free from the insidious influences mentioned in Part One. The fact is that they exist all around us, both on a political and a non-political level and they become as dangerous to the free way of life as are the aggressive totalitarian governments themselves.
Every culture institutionalises certain forms of behaviour that communicate and encourage certain forms of thinking and acting, thus moulding the character of its citizens. To the degree that the individual is made an object of constant mental manipulation, to the degree that cultural institutions may tend to weaken intellectual and spiritual strength, to the degree that knowledge of the mind is used to tame and condition people instead of educating them, to that degree does the culture itself produce men and women who are predisposed to accept an authoritarian way of life. The man who has no mind of his own can easily become the pawn of a would-be dictator.
It is often disturbing to see how even intelligent people do not have straight thinking minds of their own. The pattern of the mind, whether toward conformity and compliance or otherwise, is conditioned rather early in life.
In his important social psychological experiments with students, Asch* found out in simple tests that there was a yielding toward an erring majority opinion in more than a third of his test persons, and 75 percent of subjects experimented upon agreed with the majority in varying degrees. In many persons the weight of authority is more important than the quality of the authority.
* Asch [n.] The Asch conformity experiments or the Asch paradigm were a series of psychological experiments conducted by Polish-American Gestalt psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s. The experiments revealed the degree to which a person's own opinions are influenced by those of a group. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to conform to the rest of the group.
If we are to learn to protect our mental integrity on all levels, we must examine not only those aspects of contemporary culture which have to do directly with the struggle for power, but also those developments in our culture which, by dulling the edge of our mental awareness or by taking advantage of our suggestibility, can lead us into the mental death - or boredom - of totalitarianism.
________________________________________
'It is often disturbing to see how even intelligent people do not have straight thinking minds of their own. The pattern of the mind, whether toward conformity and compliance or otherwise, is conditioned rather early in life.'
________________________________________
Continual suggestion and slow hypnosis in the wake of mechanical mass communication promotes uniformity of the mind and may lure the public into the 'happy era' of adjustment, integration, and equalisation, in which individual opinion is completely stereotyped.
When I get up in the morning, I turn on my radio to hear the news and the weather forecast. Then comes the pontifical voice telling me to take aspirin for my headache. I have 'headaches' occasionally [so does the world], and my headaches, like everyone else's, come from the many conflicts that life imposes on me. My radio tells me not to think about either the conflicts or the headaches. It suggests, instead, that I should retreat into that old magic action of swallowing a pill. Although I laugh as I listen to this long-distance prescription by a broadcaster who does not know anything about me or my headaches and though I meditate for a moment on man's servility to the magic of chemistry, my hand has already begun to reach out for the aspirin bottle. After all, I do have a headache.
It is extremely difficult to escape the mechanically repeated suggestions of everyday life. Even when our critical mind rejects them, they seduce us into doing what our intellect tells us is stupid.
The mechanisation of modern life has already influenced man to become more passive and to adjust himself to ready-made conformity. No longer does man think in personal values, following more his own conscience and ethical evaluations; he thinks more and more in the values brought to him by mass media. Headlines in the morning paper give him his temporary political outlook, the radio blasts suggestions into his ears, television keeps him in continual awe and passive fixation. Consciously he may protest against these anonymous voices, but nevertheless their suggestions ooze into his system.
What is perhaps most shocking about these influences is that many of them have developed not out of man's destructiveness, but out of his hope to improve his world and to make life richer and deeper. The very institutions man has created to help himself, the very tools he has invented to enhance his life, the very progress he has made toward mastery of himself and his environment - all can become weapons of destruction.
________________________________________
The Public-Opinion Engineers
The conviction is steadily growing in our country that an elaborate propaganda campaign for either a political idea or a deep-freeze can be successful in selling the public any idea or object one wants them to buy, any political figure one wants them to elect. Recently, some of our election campaigns have been masterminded by the so-called public-opinion engineers, who have used all the techniques of modern mass communication and all the contemporary knowledge of the human mind to persuade Americans to vote for the candidate who is paying the public-relation men's salaries. The danger of such high-pressure advertising is that the man or the party who can pay the most can become, temporarily at least, the one who can influence the people to buy or to vote for what may not be in their real interest.
The specialists in the art of persuasion and the moulding of public sentiment may try to knead man's mental dough with all the tools of communication available to them: pamphlets, speeches, posters, billboards, radio programs, and T.V. shows. They may water down the spontaneity and creativity of thoughts and ideas into sterile and streamlined clichés that direct our thoughts even although we still have the illusion of being original and individual. What we call the will of the people, or the will of the masses, we only get to know after such collective action is put on the move, after the will of the people has been expressed either at the polls or in fury and rebellion. This indicates again how important it is who directs the tools and machines of public opinion.
________________________________________
'.... when people no longer have confidence in any program, any position, and when they are unable to form intelligent judgments any more, they can be more easily influenced by any demagogue or would-be dictator, whose strength appeals to their confusion and their growing sense of dissatisfaction.'
________________________________________
In the wake of such advertising and engineering of consent, the citizen's trust in his leaders may become shaken and the populace may gradually grow more and more accustomed to official deceit. Finally, when people no longer have confidence in any program, any position, and when they are unable to form intelligent judgments any more, they can be more easily influenced by any demagogue or would-be dictator, whose strength appeals to their confusion and their growing sense of dissatisfaction. Perhaps the worst aspect of this slick merchandising of ideas is that too often even those who buy the experts, and even the opinion experts themselves, are unaware of what they are doing. They too are swayed by the current catchword 'management of public opinion,' and they cannot judge any more the tools they have hired. The end never justifies the means; enough steps on this road can lead us gradually to Totalitaria.
At this very moment in our country, an elaborate research into motivation is going on, whose object is to find out why and what the buyer likes to buy. What makes him tick? The aim is to bypass the resistance barriers of the buying public. It is part of our paradoxical cultural philosophy to stimulate human needs and to stimulate the wants of the people. Commercialised psychological understanding wants to sell to the public, to the potential buyer, many more products than he really wants to buy. In order to do this, rather infantile impulses have to be awakened, such as sibling rivalry and neighbour envy, the need to have more and more sweets, the glamour of colors, and the need for more and more luxuries.
The commercial psychologist teaches the seller how to avoid unpleasant associations in his advertising, how to stimulate, unobtrusively, sex associations, how to make everything look simple and happy and successful and secure! He teaches the shops how to boost the buyer's ego, how to flatter the customer.
________________________________________
'Advertising agencies dream of 'universitas advertensis,' the world of glittering sham ideas, the glorification of 'menus vult decipi,' the intensification of snob appeal, the expression of vulgar conspicuousness, and all this in order to push more sales into the greedy mouths of buying babies. In our world of advertising, artificial needs are invented by sedulous sellers and buyers .... After all, advertising symbolises the art of making people dissatisfied with what they have.'
________________________________________
The marketing engineers have discovered that our public wants the suggestion of strength and virility in their product. A car must have more horse-power in order to balance feelings of inner weakness in the owner. A car must represent one's social status and reputation, because without such a flag man feels empty. Advertising agencies dream of 'universitas advertensis,' the world of glittering sham ideas, the glorification of 'menus vult decipi,' the intensification of snob appeal, the expression of vulgar conspicuousness, and all this in order to push more sales into the greedy mouths of buying babies. In our world of advertising, artificial needs are invented by sedulous sellers and buyers. Here lies the threat of building up a sham world that can have a dangerous influence on our world of ideas.
This situation emphasises the neurotic greed of the public, the need to indulge in private fancies at the cost of an awareness of real values. The public becomes conditioned to meretricious values. Of course, a free public gradually finds its defences against slogans, but dishonesty and mistrust slip through the barriers of our consciousness and leave behind a gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction. After all, advertising symbolises the art of making people dissatisfied with what they have. In the meantime it is evident man sustains a continual sneak attack on his better judgment.
In our epoch of too many noises and many frustrations, many 'free' minds have given up the struggle for decency and individuality. They surrender to the 'Zeitgeist,' often without being aware of it. Public opinion moulds our critical thoughts every day. Unknowingly, we may become opinionated robots. The slow coercion of hypocrisy, of traditions in our culture that have a levelling effect -- these things change us. We crave excitement, hair-raising stories, sensation. We search for situations that create superficial fear to cover up inner anxieties. We like to escape into the irrational because we dislike the challenge of self-study and self-thinking. Our leisure time is occupied increasingly by automatised activities in which we take no part: listening to piped-in words and viewing television screens. We hurry along with cars and go to bed with a sleeping pill. This pattern of living in turn may open the way for renewed sneak attacks on our mind. Our boredom may welcome any seductive suggestion.
If a period of peace can be used to soften up a future enemy, the totalitarian armies may be able in time of war to win a cheap and easy victory. Totalitarian psychological warfare is directed largely toward this end. It is an effort to propagandise and hypnotise the world into submission.
________________________________________
Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror
Every human communication can be either a report of straight facts or an attempt to suggest things and situations as they do not exist. Such distortion and perversion of facts strike at the core of human communication. The verbal battle against man's concept of truth and against his mind seems to be ceaseless. For example, if I can instil in eventual future enemies fear and terror and the suggestion of impending defeat, even before they are willing to fight, my battle is already half won.
The strategy of man to use a frightening mask and a loud voice to utter lies in order to manipulate friend and foe is as old as mankind. Primitive people used terror-provoking masks, magic fascination, or self-deceit as much as we use loudly spoken words to convince others or ourselves. They use their magic paints and we our ideologies. Truly, we live in an age of ads, propaganda, and publicity. But only under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes have such human habit formations mushroomed into systematic psychological assault on mankind.
The weapons the dictator uses against his own people, he may use against the outside world as well. For example, the false confessions that divert the minds of dictator's subjects from their own real problems have still another effect: they are meant [and sometimes they succeed in their aim] to terrorise the world's public. By strengthening the myth of the dictator's omnipotence, such confessions weaken man's will to resist him.
________________________________________
'There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological shock. The Beautiful Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason .... For the galloping lie can never be overtaken, it can only be overthrown.'
________________________________________
If a period of peace can be used to soften up a future enemy, the totalitarian armies may be able in time of war to win a cheap and easy victory. Totalitarian psychological warfare is directed largely toward this end. It is an effort to propagandise and hypnotise the world into submission.
There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological shock. The Beautiful Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another .... For the galloping lie can never be overtaken, it can only be overthrown.
The technique of psychological shock has still another effect. It may so confuse the mind of the individual citizen that he ceases to make his own evaluations and begins to lean passively on the opinions of others. Just as the technological advances of the modern world have refined and perfected the weapons of physical warfare, so the advance in man's understanding of the manipulation of public opinion have enabled him to refine and perfect the weapons of psychological warfare.
________________________________________
The Indoctrination Barrage
The continual intrusion into our minds of the hammering noises of arguments and propaganda can lead to two kinds of reactions. It may lead to apathy and indifference, the I-don't-care reaction, or to a more intensified desire to study and to understand. Unfortunately, the first reaction is the more popular one. The flight from study and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism, we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and consciences.
We cannot be enough aware of the continual coercion of our senses and minds, the continual suggestive attacks which may pass through the intellectual barriers of insight. Repetition and Pavlovian conditioning* exhaust the individual and may seduce him ultimately to accept a truth he himself initially defied and scorned.
* Pavlovian Conditioning, also called Classical Conditioning, is a type of conditioned learning which occurs because of the subject’s instinctive responses, as opposed to operant conditioning, which is contingent on the willful actions of the subject. It was developed by the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849 - 1936].
The totalitarians are very ingenious in arousing latent guilt in us by repeating over and over again how criminally the Western world has acted toward innocent and peaceful people. The totalitarians may attack our identification with our leaders by ridiculing them, making use of every man's latent critical attitude toward all leaders. Sometimes they use the strategy of boredom to lull the people to sleep. They would like the entire Western world to fall into a hypnotic sleep under the illusion of peaceful coexistence.
________________________________________
'The more you have forsaken .... their so-called outmoded concepts, the better you will cooperate with those who want to take mental possession of you. Every political strategy that aims toward arousing fear and suspicion tends to isolate the insecure individual until he surrenders to those forces that seem to him stronger than his former friends.'
________________________________________
In a more refined strategy, they would like to have us cut all our ties of loyalty with the past, away from relatives and parents. The more you have forsaken them and their so-called outmoded concepts, the better you will cooperate with those who want to take mental possession of you. Every political strategy that aims toward arousing fear and suspicion tends to isolate the insecure individual until he surrenders to those forces that seem to him stronger than his former friends.
And last but not least, let us not forget that in the battle of arguments those with the best and most forceful strategy tend to win. The totalitarians organise intensive dialectical* training for their subjects lest their doubts get the better of them. They try to do the same thing to the rest of the world in a less obtrusive way.
* dialectic [n.] Originally synonymous with the 'critical examination of the truth of an opinion, formal reason and logic applied to rhetoric and refutation' or the '[art of] philosophical discussion or discourse;' in modern philosophy refined by Kant ['the theory of false argumentation leading to contradictions and fallacies], then by Hegel, who made it mean 'process of resolving or merging contradictions in character to attain higher truths.' Used generally in 20c. Marxism for 'evolution by means of contradictions.'
We have to learn to encounter the totalitarians' exhausting barrage of words with better training and better understanding. If we try to escape from these problems of mental defense or deny their complications, the cold war will gradually be lost to the slow encroachment of words - and more words.
________________________________________
The Enigma of Coexistence
Is it possible to coexist with a totalitarian system that never ceases to use its psychological artillery? Can a free democracy be strong enough to tolerate the parasitic intrusion of totalitarianism into its rights and freedoms? History tells us that many opposing and clashing ideologies have been able to coexist under a common law that assured tolerance and justice. The church no longer burns its apostates.*
* apostate [n.] 'one who forsakes his religion or faith;' in non-religious situations, 'one who has forsaken the party, opinion, etc., to which he previously adhered.'
To the totalitarian, the word 'coexistence' has a different meaning than it has to us. The totalitarian may use it merely as a catch-word or an appeaser. The danger is that the concept of peaceful coexistence may become a disguise, dulling the awareness of inevitable interactions and so profiting the psychologically stronger party. Lenin* spoke about the strategic breathing spell [peredyshka] that has to weaken the enemy. Too enthusiastic a peace movement may mean a superficial appeasement of problems. Such an appeal has to be studied and restudied, lest it result in a dangerous letdown of defences which have to remain mobilised to face a ruthless enemy.
* Vladimir Ilich Lenin [1870 - 1924] Original name Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, founder of the Russian Communist Party [Bolsheviks], ispirer and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution [1917], and the architect, builder, and first head [1917–24) of the Soviet state. He was the founder of the organisation known as Comintern [Communist International] and the posthumous source of 'Leninism,' the doctrine codified and conjoined with Karl Marx’s works by Lenin’s successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview.
Coexistence may mean a suffocating subordination much like that of prisoners coexisting with their jailers. At its best, it may imitate the intensive symbiotic or everparasitic relationship we can see among animals which need each other, or as we see it in the infant in its years of dependency upon its mother.
In order to coexist and to cooperate, one must have notions and comparable images of interaction, of a sameness of ideas, of a belonging-together, of an interdependence of the whole human race, in spite of the existence of racial and cultural differences. Otherwise the ideology backed by the greater military strength will strangle the weaker one.
Peaceful coexistence presupposes on both sides a high understanding of the problems and complications of simple coexistence, of mutual agreement and limitations, of the diversity of personalities, and especially of the coexistence of contrasting and irreconcilable thoughts and feelings in every individual of the innate ambivalence of man. It demands an understanding of the rights of both the individual and the collectivity. Using coexistence as a catch-word, we may obscure the problems involved, and we may find that we use the word as a flag that covers gradual surrender to the stronger strategist.
________________________________________
Totalitaria and its Dictatorship
There actually exists such a thing as a technique of mass brainwashing. This technique can take root in a country if an inquisitor is strong and shrewd enough. He can make most of us his victims, albeit temporarily.
What in the structure of society has made man so vulnerable to these mass manipulations of the mind? This is a problem with tremendous implications, just as brainwashing is. In recent years we have grown more and more aware of human interdependence with all its difficulties and complications.
I am aware of the fact that investigation of the subject of mental coercion and thought control becomes less pleasant as time goes on .... Can totalitarian tendencies take over here, and what social symptoms may lead to such phenomena? Stern reality confronts us with the universal mental battle between thought control [and its corollaries*] and our standards of decency, personal strength, personal ideas, and a personal conscience with autonomy and dignity.
* corollary [n.] 'a proposition proved from another that has been proved.'
Future social scientists will be better able to describe the causes of the advent of totalitarian thinking and acting in man. We know that after wars and revolutions this mental deterioration more easily finds an opportunity to develop, helped by special psychopathic personalities who flourish on man's misery and confusion.
My task, however, is to describe some symptoms of the totalitarian process [which implies deterioration of thinking and acting] as I have observed them in our own epoch, keeping in mind that the system is one of the most violent distortions of man's consistent mental growth. No brainwashing is possible without totalitarian thinking. The tragic facts of political experiences in our age make it all too clear that applied psychological technique can brainwash entire nations and reduce their citizens to a kind of mindless robotism which becomes for them a normal way of living. Perhaps we can best understand how this frightening thing comes about by examining a mythical country, which, for the sake of convenience, we shall call Totalitaria.
________________________________________
The Robotisation of Man
First, let me utter a word of caution. We must not make the mistake of thinking that there is any one particular nation that can be completely identified with this hypothetical land .... Totalitaria is any country in which political ideas degenerate into senseless formulations made only for propaganda purposes. It is any country in which a single group - left or right - acquires absolute power and becomes omniscient and omnipotent, any country in which disagreement and differences of opinion are crimes, in which utter conformity is the price of life.
Totalitaria - the Leviathan* state - is the home of the political system we call, euphemistically, totalitarianism, of which systematised tyranny is a part. This system does not derive from any honest political philosophy, either socialist or capitalist. Totalitaria's leaders may mouth ideologies, but these are in fact mainly catch-words used to justify the regime. If necessary, totalitarianism can change its slogans and its behaviour overnight. For totalitarianism embodies, to me, the quest for total power, the quest of a dictator to rule the world. The words and concepts of 'socialism' and 'communism' may serve, like 'democracy,' as a disguise for the megalomaniac intention of the tyrant.
* leviathan [n.] 'sea monster, sea serpent,' sometimes regarded as a form of Satan, from Hebrew livyathan 'dragon, serpent, huge sea animal,' of unknown origin, perhaps from root l-w-h- 'to wind, turn, twist,' on the notion of a serpent's coils.
Since totalitarianism is essentially the social manifestation of a psychological phenomenon belonging to every personality, it can best be understood in terms of the human forces that create, foster, and perpetuate it. Man has two faces; he wants to grow toward maturity and freedom, and yet the primitive child in his unconscious yearns for more complete protection and irresponsibility. His mature self learns how to cope with the restrictions and frustrations of daily life, but at the same time, the child in him longs to hit out against them, to beat them down, to destroy them - whether they be objects or people.
Totalitarianism appeals to this confused infant in all of us; it seems to offer a solution to the problems man's double yearning creates. Our mythical Totalitaria is a monolithic and absolute state in which doubt, confusion, and conflict are not permitted to be shown, for the dictator purports to solve all his subjects' problems for them. In addition, Totalitaria can provide official sanction for the expression of man's most antisocial impulses. The uncivilised child hidden in us may welcome this liberation from ethical frustration.
________________________________________
'Man has two faces; he wants to grow toward maturity and freedom, and yet the primitive child in his unconscious yearns for more complete protection and irresponsibility. His mature self learns how to cope with the restrictions and frustrations of daily life, but at the same time, the child in him longs to hit out against them, to beat them down, to destroy them - whether they be objects or people.'
________________________________________
On the other hand, our free, mature, social selves cannot be happy in Totalitaria; they revolt against the restriction of individual impulses.
The psychological roots of totalitarianism are usually irrational, destructive, and primitive, though disguised behind some ideology, and for this reason there is something fantastic, unbelievable, even nightmarish about the system itself. There is, of course, a difference in the psychic experience of the elite, who can live out their needs for power, and the masses, who have to submit; yet the two groups influence each other.
When a dictator's deep neurotic needs for power also satisfy some profound emotional need in the population of his country, especially in times of misery or after a revolution, he is more easily able to assume the power for which he longs. If a nation has suffered defeat in war, for example, its citizens feel shame and resentment. Loss of face is not simply a political abstraction, it is a very real and personal thing to a conquered people. Every man, consciously or unconsciously, identifies with his native land. If a country suffers from prolonged famine or severe depression, its citizens become bitter, depressed, and resentful, and will more willingly accept the visions and promises of the aspiring dictator.
If the complexity of a country's political and economic apparatus makes the individual citizen feel powerless, confused, and useless, if he has no sense of participation in the forces that govern his daily life, or if he feels these forces to be so vast and confusing that he can no longer understand them, he will grasp at the totalitarian opportunity for belonging, for participation, for a simple formula that explains and rationalises what is beyond his comprehension. And when the dictator has taken over finally, he transfers his own abnormal fantasies, his rage and anger, easily to his subjects. Their resentments feed his; his pseudo-strength encourages them. A mutual fortification of illusions takes place.
Totalitarianism as a social manifestation is a disease of inter-human relations, and, like any other disease, man can best resist its corroding effects if, through knowledge and training, he is well immunised against it. If, however, he is unfortunate enough to catch the totalitarian bug, he has to muster all the positive forces in his mind to defeat it. The raging internal struggle between the irresponsible child and the mature adult in him continues until one or the other is finally destroyed completely. As long as a single spark of either remains, the battle goes on. And for as long as man is alive, the quest for maturity keeps on.
________________________________________
The Final Surrender of the Robot Man
What happens to the common man in such a culture? How can we describe the citizen of Totalitaria? Perhaps the simplest answer to this question lies in the statement that he is reduced to the mechanical precision of an insectlike state. He cannot develop any warm friendships, loyalties, or allegiances because they may be too dangerous for him. Today's friend may be, after all, tomorrow's enemy. Living in an atmosphere of constant suspicion - not only of strangers, but even of his own family - he is afraid to express himself lest concentration camp or prison swallow him up.
The citizens of Totalitaria do not really converse with one another. When they speak, they whisper, first looking furtively over their shoulders for the inevitable spy. Their inner silence is in sharp contrast to the official verbal bombardment. The citizens of Totalitaria may make noise, and utter polite banalities, or they may repeat slogans to one another, but they say nothing. Existing literature reveals that leading authors, among them H.G. Wells, Huxley, and Orwell, grow more and more concerned about the ghastly future of the robotised man, trained as a machine on a standard of conformity. They translate for us the common fear of a mechanised civilisation.
In Totalitaria, the citizen no longer knows the real core of his mind. He no longer feels himself an 'I', an ego, a person. He is only the object of official barrage and mental coercion. Having no personality of his own, he has no individual conscience, no personal morality, no capacity to think clearly and honestly. He learns by rote, he learns thousands of indoctrinated facts and inhales dogma and slogans with every breath he draws. He becomes an obedient pedant, and pedantry makes people into something resembling pots filled with information instead of individuals with free, growing personalities.
________________________________________
'In Totalitaria, the citizen no longer knows the real core of his mind. He no longer feels himself an 'I', an ego, a person. He is only the object of official barrage and mental coercion. Having no personality of his own, he has no individual conscience, no personal morality, no capacity to think clearly and honestly. He learns by rote, he learns thousands of indoctrinated facts and inhales dogma and slogans with every breath he draws. He becomes an obedient pedant, and pedantry makes people into something resembling pots filled with information instead of individuals with free, growing personalities.'
________________________________________
Becoming wiser and freer implies selective forgetting and changes of mind. This we accept, this we leave behind. Alert adjustment requires a change of patterns, the capacity to be de-conditioned, to undo and unlearn in order to become ripe for new patterns. The citizen of Totalitaria has no chance for such learning through unlearning, for growth through individual experience. Official oversimplifications induce the captive audience into acceptance and indoctrination. Mass ecstasy and mass fanaticism are substituted for quiet individual thought and consideration.
Hitler taught his people to march and to do battle, and at the end they did not know wherefore they marched and battled. People become herds - indoctrinated and obsessed herds - intoxicated first with enthusiasm and happy expectations, then with terror and panic. the individual personality cannot grow in Totalitaria. The huge mass of citizens is tamed into personal and political somnambulism.* It may be scientifically questionable to compare experiences gained from individual pathological states with social phenomena and to analyse the partial collapse of the ego under totalitarianism by analogy with actual cases of madness.
* somnambulism [n.] 'walking in one's sleep or under hypnosis,' 'sleepwalker.'
But there is in fact much that is comparable between the strange reactions of the citizens of Totalitaria and their culture as a whole on the one hand and the reactions of the introverted, sick schizophrenic on the other. Even though the problem of schizophrenic behaviour in individuals and groups is extremely complicated and cannot be fully handled within the scope of this book, the comparison can be helpful in our search for an understanding of the nature and effects of totalitarianism.