The illusion of "rational" argument
Like a woman, … who will submit to the strong man rather than dominate the weakling, thus the masses love the ruler rather than the suppliant, and inwardly they are far more satisfied by a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom; they often feel at a loss what to do with it, and even easily feel themselves deserted. They neither realize the impudence with which they are spiritually terrorized, nor the outrageous curtailment of their human liberties for in no way does the delusion of this doctrine dawn on them.
Reading these words, one would imagine them to be from the pen of one or other great democratic theorist; in fact they are the self-consciously cynical observations of one of the great masters of political manipulation of the twentieth century: none other than Adolf Hitler. He announced this with plenty of advance warning in his autobiography Mein Kampf in 1925 - and it was certainly prophetic. Lest you may mistakenly imagine I have a copy at home, no: the citation is contained in Erich Fromm’s 1943 analysis of the social psychology of Nazism, The Fear of Freedom.
It is not my intent to imply we are in similar circumstances, nor to endeavor a parallel analysis (more than hazardous ex-ante, but all too easy, I fear, ex-post) of the world we live in today. But I want to point to some interesting reflections Fromm has on the tendency to justify with apparent logical argument thoughts and ideas which are based in unreason. The consequence hereof is to undermine the illusion of seeking the truth through democratic civil debate and to lay bare the profound tectonic forces under the surface which often shape “debates” only superficially conducted in scientific tone.
Each individual sincerely believes that he is a “he” and that his thoughts, feelings, wishes are “his”. Yet, although there are true individuals among us, this belief is an illusion in most cases and a dangerous one for that matter.
Fromm is easily able to prove the reality of this phenomenon through experiences conducted in the hypnotic state. Those in the audience who have seen events play out from the induction of the hypnosis have a very different view of them to those who might only happen upon the scenes once they are underway.
The phenomenon, however, is by no means to be found only in the hypnotic situation. The fact that the contents of our thinking, feeling, willing, are induced from the outside and are not genuine, exists to an extent that gives the impression that these pseudo-acts are the rule.
This does not mean that they are necessarily wrong. However they, at best, vehicle the thoughts of others, but in a grandiose manner and with a false authority. Fromm contrasts the natural wisdom of a local fisherman, grounded in experience, with the notions of two visitors from the city:
The first of the two city summer guests is a man who, when we ask him his opinion, knows that he does not understand much about the weather nor does he feel any compulsion to understand anything about it. He merely replies, “I cannot judge. All I know is that the radio forecast is thus and thus”.
The other man whom we ask is of a different type. He believes that he knows a great deal about the weather, although actually he knows little about it. He is the kind of person who feels that he must be able to answer every question. He thinks for a minute and then tells us “his” opinion, which is in fact identical with the radio forecast. We ask him for his reasons and he tells us that on account of wind direction, temperature, and so on, he has come to his conclusion. This man’s behavior as seen from the outside is the same as the fisherman’s. Yet, if we analyze it more closely, it becomes evident that he has heard the radio forecast and has accepted it. Feeling compelled, however, to have his own opinion about it, he forgets that he is simply repeating someone else’s authoritative opinion, and believes that his opinion is one that he arrived at through his own thinking. He imagines that the reasons he gives us preceded his opinion, but if we examine these reasons we see that they could not possibly have led him to any conclusion about the weather if he had not formed an opinion beforehand.
Fromm concludes that regardless of apparent logic, we cannot assess truth claims without “tak[ing] into account the psychological motivations operating in a person”. Note that it is not necessary that these claims benefit the one making them, except in gratifying some potentially neurotic impulse.
This phenomenon is not limited to thought :
Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves.
He goes on to list a number of examples and to explain how the true motivations of the behavior in question are to be found in psychological, that is in neurotic, patterning, and concludes that :
It almost seems that “original” decision is a comparatively rare phenomenon in a society which supposedly makes individual decision the cornerstone of its existence.
This raises important questions both of a phenomenological and a political order, but I do not wish to dwell on those here. Nor am I really competent to unpack what elements of messaging and manipulation really led people to adopt all sorts of manifestly ungrounded opinions in the recent context of the auto-induced Covid “crisis”. It is even possible, in fact, that no one knows this, and that all of this was driven, albeit towards a selected goal, by machine learning algorithms. For all I am aware, in the published literature on the social psychology of these phenomena we only have Matthias Desmet’s very apposite observations on mass hysteria, which nevertheless, as Fromm’s work makes clear in the Nazi context, constitutes only one layer of analysis of what is certainly a more complex whole. There is also a requirement of a certain character disposition, itself the fruit of a complex interplay between developmental and sociocultural factors :
The authoritarian character does not lack activity, courage, or belief. But these qualities for him mean something entirely different from what they mean for the person who does not long for submission. For the authoritarian character, activity is rooted in a basic feeling of powerlessness which it [seeks] to overcome. Activity in this sense means to act in the name of something higher than oneself. It is possible in the name of God, the past, nature or duty, but never in the name of the future, of the unborn, of what has no power or of life as such… If the authority in which he believes shows signs of weakness, his love and respect change into contempt and hatred… His belief is rooted ultimately in his doubts and constitutes an attempt to compensate them.
The cultural basis of this character disposition is surely to be found in the operation of the patriarchal economy, but Fromm’s observations, in 1943, are not yet embedded within such a wider interpretative framework.
In addition to the clinical form of sado-masochism, Fromm identifies :
a milder form of dependency which is so general in our culture that only in exceptional cases does it seem to be lacking… I am referring to the kind of persons whose whole life is in a subtle way related to some power outside themselves… They expect protection from “him”, make “him” also responsible for whatever may be the outcome of their own actions. Often the fact of his dependence is something the person is not aware of at all… There is no definite image linked up with that power… The “X” which has these qualities may be called the “magic helper”.
Fromm’s notion of the “magic helper” seems not to have had the uptake in mainstream psychotherapy which it might seem to merit, a likely sign, in my view, that it was too true for comfort. I feel it merits an article in its own right, so I plan quickly to follow up on this one with another which is specifically devoted to it.
In the meanwhile, I believe the main takeaway is the extreme caution we need to display in interpreting public debates at their surface value when we are in the presence of destabilising emotional elements. A small part may consist in original thought. A much larger part, doubtless, assumes this mantle as a condition sine qua non of admission to the public arena, but has no foundation or authority, even, sometimes, if it may have formal credentials. We are used to questioning discourse from a standpoint of cui bono and ultimately there may well be a cui bono story. But this story does not motivate the vast majority of actors who are seemingly caught up in it and propagate it of their own free will. We need to add to this a psychological understanding, or we are punching at shadows.