Ideas, Projection, Evil and Good
The human brain, feeble in its grasp, struggles to
comprehend the vast change soon to steer the direction of the planet Earth, afflicting
all animals and ecosystems, including that dominant greedy species, the human
being. An historic tsunami has launched,
its origin point one of the most cataclysmic days of recorded time, 11/5. On that day, Donald Trump attained the office
of the Presidency of the United States. The
cultish obedience of his core followers, tens of millions of citizens, will
propel him to claim total power for himself.
He is likely to succeed, given the lessons of history concerning the social
infection that is fascism. Anyone who
stands in the way will be terrorized by his core followers, who at this point are
similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts (Sturmabteilung), their violence abetted by laws that make it
legal for citizens to own military-grade assault rifles like the AR-15.
Below I offer two angles from which to consider this grim
transformation of the course of fate. The
second angle elaborates on the first.
Part One: The
Power of Ideas
Our starting point is the sheer power of simple ideas.
Consider an example from the past, the Curse of Ham. This simple idea fueled great evil for
centuries:
For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a
Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery because they
were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core
religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
https://theconversation.com/the-curse-of-ham-how-people-of-faith-used-a-story-in-genesis-to-justify-slavery-225212
The Curse of Ham did not on its own secure the legalization of slavery.
But it was a crucial member of a set of ideas related to race and
racism. Note that, very obviously, the
Curse of Ham is a cruel, irrational, faith-based idea. Note, as well, that its lack of rationality
or morality didn’t matter at all.
Why? Because human rationality is
easy shut down by cultures of ignorance, that is, cultures that support a rich
upper class which not only benefits from general ignorance, but ferociously and
actively fosters it.
If there is a God above, that God created a universe where
cruel, irrational, brutal ideas, a mentality of evil, can take over and drive a
cattle call of stampeding multitudes, who bring ruin on themselves and others. Their seduction by darkness changes the
nature of society with slaughterous permanence.
Some claim that divine punishment occurs after death, in
some preternatural realm beyond our reckoning.
“There’ll be pie in the sky when you die.” And yet there is zero scientific evidence for
such empyrean justice. The universe in
which we dwell, though, is analogous to a purgatory: a place where either evil or good can reign, depending
on our own choices, a place where we consign ourselves to a living hell, or lift
ourselves to cultivate a decent, happy society.
Whatever the outcome, it is leveraged by the collective state of the masses,
who can be influenced to trample and stampede, or to behave in accordance with
moral laws of fairness and equality.
Some Inoculants
In our universe, where the gods have abandoned us to our own
stupidity, knowledge is the best inoculant against the spread of hellish social
systems. But the people in power who
benefit from ignorance--for instance, by proclaiming the Curse of Ham to be the
divinely ordained truth--do everything they can to prevent the spread of
knowledge.
Another way to protect society from hellish social systems
is to develop ways to identify demagogic psychopaths, such as Donald Trump, who
rise to power as dictators. But this
would require teaching the discipline of psychology to young students, starting
at least in high school, probably earlier.
And yet an enlightened curriculum would require that local school board
officials be rational, instead of dogmatic in service to politicians who
benefit from ignorance.
There is solid basis behind Mark Twain’s quip, “In the first
place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
And so, despite potential inoculants to ignorance and folly,
various Catch-22s hold us hostage in cultures designed to be unfair and cruel.
A Simple Formula
In general, ideas affect behaviors, which in turn affect the
world. A handy heuristic:
I > B > W
Power is another element, because you need power to impose
your beliefs:
P > I > B > W
Let’s employ the above formula. The vast power of the USA, with the strongest
economy and military in the world, can be mobilized to impose certain
beliefs. Those beliefs will be those of the
dictator. And they will include core
concepts of fascism: a Master Race; Superiority
of the Male over Female; and the Call of Conquest. Vini Vidi Vici.
Given the bully fist of the United States, which can be held
up to the face of other countries with aggressive clout, fascism is soon to stagger
and immiserate the entire world.
Donald Trump is our messiah now. Ecce Homo!
Part Two: Through a
Dark Mirror
However, fascism is not merely an idea, any more than Donald
Trump is a rational actor. Fascism is a mental
sickness, a crippling social dysfunction.
This closely intertwines with the psychiatric disorders that Mr. Trump
suffers, namely, narcissism and psychopathy [1].
The tsunami of Darkness about to hit the world, then, is not
so much about ideas as it is about a disordered mind getting to do whatever it
wants wherever it wants. In other words,
the world will become a dark mirror of Donald Trump, someone who is infinitely
insecure and infinitely ugly. Someone
who perpetually hides from his own bottomless self-doubt by doing whatever
it takes.
In the field of psychology, projection is often understood
as blaming others for what you yourself inflict or suffer. It can, though, also be understood as a reshaping of the environment. If you have
enough power, you can mold the world to the interior of your mind.
Unfortunately, it is easier to spread fear and loathing than it is to spread love. The reason is that it is easier to beat others into submission than to build healthy bonds. To quote Milton in Paradise Lost, "To create is better than created to destroy."
To destroy, all it takes is weapons. And the USA has plenty of those.
Similar To Domestic Abuse
Consider the psychology of a domestic violence perpetrator. This abuser controls his partner and children
through many kinds of force and mental manipulation. He terrorizes them with insidious strategies
and tactics, and so gains full control to shape the home. The home comes to reflect the broken,
atrocious, disgusting mental state of the abuser’s psyche. It is a place of fear, of brutal force, of
total control, and of loyalty tests that require accepting lies as truth. It is
a home where a single insecure man obsesses on every detail of his partner’s behavior,
always working to maintain and increase his power over her and the children.
Donald Trump will remake the United States in ways akin to the
domestic-violence abuser. Now, some people might
object to the use of “evil” to describe a domestic violence perpetrator. But such a perpetrator is a ruthless, brutal coward, who takes advantages of emotional connections to the people he
is supposed to love the most and, instead of loving them, terrorizs them with methodical and precise calculation. He destroys
his victims' self-esteem and keeps them in perpetual fear. He beats them with objects, and with his
fists, but this is only part of the greater insidious manipulation.
To shatter any resistance from a victim, the perpetrator threatens to
kill the children and the family pets. This cruelty goes on and on, day after day. Endless surveillance and menace. Always--always--the
threat of force.
The word “gaslighting” comes from a loyalty test that a fictional
domestic abuser inflicted on his partner.
The light on a wall-mounted lamp might be shining bright; but if the
abuser says it is turned off, the victim knows full well that they better convince him that they believe it is turned off as well. The victim knows that they will be scrutinized, all the time, every inch of their
body language, for any perceived deception and, as well, to ensure fully
obedience, body and soul.
Here is part of a description of what life was like under
the dictatorship of Al-Assad in Syria, who was recently forced to flee the
country, after 20+ years of methodical, calculated control:
At school, I learned that if you wanted to get anywhere,
you had to be part of the informant system that Syrians have lived with for
decades. If you handed in your list of names of your classmates who spoke badly
about the teacher, you’d be made head of your class. Everyone thought everyone
else was reporting them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/opinion/al-assad-syria.html
This is a plausible future under the cultish dictatorship of
Donald Trump. Total surveillance. Total control. Including the minds of every child. Trump’s evil will be far worse than that of a
domestic abuser, because he has the power to kill or jail people, en masse, and
get away with it.
For instance, the genocide in Gaza, for which the USA is
supplying the weapons, will accelerate.
The Good News
I’m going to end on a positive note, which, I know, is a shocking turnaround. The good news is that enlightened ideas can drive
the world, too. Likewise, a virtuous mind
can project health and harmony. The idea of human rights follows the heuristic above: rights affect behaviors, which alter the world. The world has changed, for the better, quite a bit in the last few hundred years. Our ethics technology climbed to levels never before seen.
Tragically, however, we have taken a sad turn into a Lord of the Flies scenario. Those in power, such as Trump, are as
immature as 14-year-old boys who find themselves able to do whatever they want,
with no adults around to stop them.
We’re in a dark place.
But don’t stop trying. When you act out of Good, you
are doing something special and rare, and it will affect the collective human
consciousness more than you know.
The way to counter Evil is Good. The simplest little act can be resplendent with ethical light. Send your message up to the
universe. Maybe you will even shock the
gods, who seem to have abandoned us.
If we act as ants, we are ants to the gods. This statement came to me in a
dream.
And yet, ponder this: what happens if we do not act as ants?
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Footnotes
(1) The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, Editor
"In THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP, twenty-seven psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health experts argue that, in Mr. Trump’s case, their moral and civic “duty to warn” America supersedes professional neutrality. They then explore Trump’s symptoms and potentially relevant diagnoses to find a complex, if also dangerously mad, man."
(2) Domestic violence occurs frequently without actual physical violence. However, it is absolutely still fully abuse. 'Words hit hard as a fist.' They shred self-esteem and perception of reality. A great movie to watch on this, which just came out on Netflix, is Alice, Darling.
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