Donal: Aside from its ethical and emotional appeal, it also appeals to something immature and child-like in us that does not want to accept the imperfect in the world or in ourselves or to take the kind of personal responsibility that might lead to genuinely improving things.
This has been studied. The originator of the idea was Theodore Adorno. His theory was that there are authoritarian personalities that gravitate towards dictatorships. Since his time, others have studied it. It is also linked to child raising practices. Adorno based his idea on Freud. Others have since studied it from other angles. Voting practices seem to verify this. People usually vote the way their parents do or did. What fascinates me is that a few people can actually switch their personalities. As in switching from one political party to another.
Veronica Caley Milford, MI----- Original Message ----- From: "Donal McEvoy" <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, December 03, 2010 5:38 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Giving Thanksgiving --- On Fri, 3/12/10, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Is there a major thinker that wasn't linked to totalitarianism in some way or other?>
Much depends on whether "linked" is restricted to fathers or includes six or more degrees of separation. It also depends how wide or restrictive we take "totalitarianism" to be. Consider the converse: is there a major totalitarian thinker that wasn't linked to anti-totalitarianism in some way? E.g. Plato. It depends.
The question is still very worthwhile though, partly because it may help throw light on the appeal of totalitarianism. In P's 'TOSE' the totalitarian approach is seen to have immense ethical and emotional appeal [Hitler was 'elected' as someone who would 'clean up the mess' not on an explicit platform of exterminating men, women and children]; and the concomitant "revolt against reason" is part of a perennial struggle between the friends and enemies of the open society (a similar suggestion is, I think, made in Eric's post, though Eric depicts it as a post-Enlightenment struggle whereas P suggests it goes back at least as far as the Greeks). While we live in times when the appeal and threat of totalitarianism is not what it was for most of the twentieth century, that could change long before the end of this century.
Totalitarian modes of thought no doubt permeate much of what appeals to us, even anti-totalitarians, as remains reflected in our attraction to cultural practices [religion; music; art] that seem to offer access to a higher, purer way of being. [Conversely, this helps explain why aesthetic types, like Yeats and Eliot and Pound, could find much that was attractive in broadly totalitarian modes of 'thought', at least as applied to culture, and consequently could behave like political imbeciles].
Aside from its ethical and emotional appeal, it also appeals to something immature and child-like in us that does not want to accept the imperfect in the world or in ourselves or to take the kind of personal responsibility that might lead to genuinely improving things. If we did not have the terrible lessons of the death-camps and mass murders that totalitarianism has provided, many more of us might be preaching a totalitarian solution to the myriad problems of the world. Some still are.
Donal London ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
