Individual freedom and democracy are not the natural state of a human society. With the exception of maybe a few tribes in some remote locations dominion of the few over the many has been the standard. There are always stronger, faster or more knowledgeable people who under normal circumstances will accrue more power over time. Thus a conscious effort is needed to maintain some kind of equilibrium of power and freedom. This effort being absent individual freedom and democracy are under threat. As R. Reagan put it: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”.
Over millennia individual identity and freedom had little significance versus belonging to a group. The survival of the group and of the individual required it. In the same time it also met a deep human need of belonging and meaning. The enlightenment’s definition of the human being as a self-responsible individual opened then a new perspective on human rights and opportunities. It led to the incredible development in the west. In the last 100 years, however, we observe an increasing dissolution of the social structures together with an extreme growth in personal choice options. This development let freedom lose importance vs. the more and more unmet needs of belonging and meaning. As a reaction we can see a rise of ideologies and believe systems which seem to cover such needs. They almost never will coexist with individual freedom. The first post in this series starts the exploration of this phenomenon.
Our society offered us opportunities for belonging and meaning
Humans develop slowly because of their brain size. They can only survive if they are taken care of for quite some time after birth. This is ensured by a genetically implanted need for attachment. This need is so basic that we will do almost anything to have it met one way or another.
This blog is not the place to delve into the psychology of child development. It will focus on those aspects of human culture which are central to meeting this need. The easiest way to do it is to ask how the culture is providing us with a sense of belonging and is offering opportunities to live a meaningful life.
Our western society (which is the subject of the blog) had a range of options to “belong” available to us. For hundreds of years we felt home in the family or, beyond that, a clan or a village. We belonged to a religious group with a shared understanding of the world. We identified as a member of a nation and were ready to defend it with our blood. We shared values and ideas about important aspects of life like, work, sex, our role in society, the importance of facts and science, the value of life, the function of a government etc. These shared values and ideas gave us coordinates along which we could define meaning for our lives.
Looking at the development in our western society over the last 50 years we can see that we are in the process of losing many of the structures and values which were connecting us to each other. It is rather obvious that this development is not just a sign of an ageing affluent society. This development is actively promoted.
The destruction of our roots
Universities teach their students the postmodern relativism about religion, science, western values, history etc. In media, politics, schools individual identity is being replaced by membership in groups (e.g. black, female) and their intersections. People with conservative beliefs in god or in family values are made fun of by politicians and Hollywood or are even called racists. The biological sex is removed as a basis for identity. Facts are undercut as a source of orientation and are replaced by narratives. Person to person relationships are displaced by Facebook and Twitter. The national identity is undermined by twisting the national history and by destructing the shared myths. The family structure is undercut by subsidising alternative ways of living. Abortion up to the moment of birth is advocated in the name of freedom for the “people with uterus”. Compassion, once an important way to connect us, has been turned into a cult of victimhood. The division within our societies has progressed to a point where we hardly feel part of the same communities anymore.
The structures and values which provided us with a sense of meaning and of belonging are actively discredited and subverted. As a consequence more and more people are missing a fulfilling integration into a social structure and an anchor in the form of a strong value system.
The need for attachment has not disappeared, however. As Hannah Arendt and others observed uprooting the individuals makes them easy targets for seduction and manipulation. Atomization of a society strongly reduces its resistance against a totalitarian development.
Seduced by ideologies
We can see the consequences. One dimensional ideologies like Marxism and critical race theory (1,2) as well as totalitarian believe systems like social justice replace the values which made the West so successful. Climate change has become the spearhead of a green religion which redefined sin as acting against the interest of a twisted idea of nature. They all claim to fight for the “good”. Who can argue against justice, against taking care of the environment, against “black lives matter”? The words stand for the moral high ground and promise meaning as well as belonging to the good and just. Not surprisingly they have little problems seducing individuals which struggle to find a fulfilling purpose in life. And of those there are many as the subversion of the western social fabric has been going on for a long time now.
The problem becomes obvious when you look behind the words. All these ideologies target the values and institutions which we inherited from the enlightenment and which allowed more freedom, dignity and prosperity for the individual than any other culture. They flat out deny these achievements. Instead they claim all the real and many invented and imagined shortcomings of the (western) world to be due to exactly these values and institutions. Their claimed moral superiority allows them to demand full compliance with their fight against the evil of the western ways.
Our freedom needs to be destroyed for them to win
The most visible result: Freedom of thought and freedom of speech are under attack. Beware of publicly quoting opinions or even facts resp. data which question or contradict these ideologies. You will be cancelled. Be it global warming (1,2,3), be it immigrants, “trans”-issues or any other subject they consider important to their fight: if you have the wrong position you are personally attacked and in danger of losing your job.
If you publish opinions (1,2) or data which question the narrative of the critical race theory or the need to wear masks against Covid you will be uninvited from scientific conferences and/or deleted by the tech giants.
There are thousands of examples. The frightening aspect is how many “normal” people take part in these movements to subvert and destroy our inherited freedom and liberties. Moral superiority seems to be a very tempting way to find meaning in our lives. It even sanctifies resentment, hate of the perceived evil others. Which is a highly attractive proposition from a psychological point of view.
Not surprisingly the succumbing to one dimensional ideologies is high among intellectuals and further concentrated in the upper white middleclass and the urban areas. These are the communities where the traditional social fabric and the related values have been in decline for a long time. The need for belonging and for meaning has not disappeared, however.
The perverse consequences of these ideologies become obvious if we look at facts and data (for those who still believe they are important) instead of the narratives. To solve the “climate problem”, politics produces fantasy worlds of net zero emissions. Where CRT determines politics the minorities are not better off . Covid measures to protect the population have mainly benefited the powerful and rich and harmed the small and disadvantaged. Further posts will look at such examples.