AUTHORITARIANISM

by Hugh M. Lewis

It is a small person who counts success by other people’s failures, and their strengths by others weaknesses. These same people will regard others success and strength as their failure and weakness. Unfortunately, the world is not lacking in such small people.

The slave owner may be harsh and unforgiving, or kind and generous, but remains still a slave owner. A slave may be a good worker or a worthless one, but still remains a slave.

Fear is always irrational, though it may be put to extremely rational ends.

First we fear, and then we fear our fear and feel guilty and ashamed because we are afraid.

It is one thing to preach tolerance in the world according to one’s own standards of right and wrong, but it is altogether something else to become tolerant in the world of others standards. Each new generation on earth must learn this lesson anew, and each generation must be taught it over again by the next.

The greatest human capacity that can be acquired is the capacity for tolerance of human differences in the world.

Authoritarianism is the ‘dis-ease’ of authority. It is due to the inevitable human corruption of power in the world. All Authority casts a dark shadow of authoritarianism. Americans have never been immune from this disease, and it has frequently been of critical influence in the perpetration of injustice in all spheres and phases of social life.

Humankind must take seriously the appellation ‘Homo auctoritas’ as indicative of a universal proclivity towards the power and corruption of authority in the world. If evil comes from the arbitrariness of Authority in the world, then no human being is completely free of its possibility, and even the notion of an Arbitrary God must cast such a shadow.

Self-skepticism is the only antidote to such disease—the possibility of our own evil in the world must be discovered and recognized in everything we think, say and do. It is when we begin taking ourselves too seriously that we are led to trouble with others in the world. Being too serious about ourselves in the world leads to an incapacity to deal with others in a realistic way. The practice of regular self skepticism leads to becoming equally skeptical of others in the world as well—the proclivity to accept ourselves too seriously leads to our taking others in the world too seriously as well.

The quest for perfection in the world must always end up in frustration. When the need and drive for Perfection becomes an obsession and a compulsion, it becomes dangerous. When we cease making mistakes by always doing the right thing, we cease to learn anything in life, and we become then anti-human by definition. The intolerance of imperfection leads to a need to stomp it out and deny it wherever it is found.

Show me a perfect person and I will show you a perfect fool.

One person’s vice is another’s virtue. One person’s failure is another success. One person’s weakness is another’s strength. One person’s folly is another’s wisdom. For each action, there is an opposite but equal reaction.

When we fear failure we then need to find it in others we do not know. We then need to avoid getting to know those others who we treat as our own symbolic failures lest such knowledge refutes our own preconceptions. We end up avoiding what we fear and fearing what we avoid—we fear the unknown and end up avoiding it instead of taking the only route, which would ultimately dissipate our fears in the first place. We even go so far as to collectively set aside and systematically segregate certain categories or ‘types’ of people as socially sanctioned symbols of failure. Because we are taught to fear such people, we learn to see them symbolically in terms, which are dangerous, dirty and unpredictable—terms, which then in turn justify their social discrimination and control. There is a self-reinforcing closure about this kind of belief and behavior in life, which remains effective until we experience such discrimination ourselves. When we must walk in the footsteps of failure, we come face to face with the projective possibilities of our own fear.

Inordinate fear of failure leads to an obsession with failure, which begets a gambling compulsion—the uncontrollable need to take inordinate risks that are normally unnecessary.

It is not coincidental that any society, which highly prizes and rewards well achievement and success at all costs, should beget a great many failures who have unwisely gambled away all their resources for the unrealistic promise of success.

Unfortunately, the very values most worth living for are those that are also most worth dying for. It is a tragic irony of human history that so many have died for values and causes that prove to be hardly worth living for.

It is not too uncommon or too difficult to face death bravely—but it has been unusual and extremely hard to go on living bravely in the face of death. The weal and wicked fight with weapons and fear—the courageous and faithful fight with words, freedom and peace.

There is no person so perfect as not to be in need of some improvement. There is no human strength without its hidden weakness. There is no armor so complete as to be without its vulnerable spots. The best protection in life is the well kept illusion that hides the bestial nakedness of humanity beneath the veil of greatness. The best weapons are truth that pierces the armor of illusion, and honesty which lifts the veil of ignorance.

As surely as the night must follow the day, and the moon must rise in the shadow of the sun, great weakness must accompany great strength, grand mistakes must follow great successes, great depths make great heights more pronounced. Without the darkness and shadow, life and light would be flat, uninteresting, and without the necessary contrast that gives it depth.

Life is meant to be taken seriously, but never too seriously. When we begin to take things too seriously we lose sight of the fact that though life is serious business, it is also a grand joke we play upon ourselves.

It is difficult to find it in ourselves the same kinds of negative qualities that we so facilely attribute to others, but seeing such similarities can be a sobering experience to the ego, and having the romantic illusions we ascribe to others fade and turn ugly can have a chilling influence upon our hearts.

One person’s illusion is another’s reality. One person’s destiny is another’s fate. One person’s myth is another’s history.

It is easy to envy what others seem to have and we do not. But to have compassion enough to find in each person what is most valuable is compensation for our jealousies.

The fear of failure frequently leads to a Pyrrhic victory, for in our desire to succeed at any cost, we become willing to risk everything.

When we fear, fear, we end up denying our fears, and in our denial we become trapped in our own vicious circle of deceit.

We fear that which we do not understand, and because we fear it, we tend to ignore it, to avoid having to face it and get to know it. Then we fall victim to our own prejudices. We end up avoiding our own ignorance and blaming others for the fear that is in ourselves.

The first lie begins a long chain of deceit, when we have to cover over one lie with another until we’ve forgotten what the original lie was. Lying is inevitably a self-defeating strategy. It many be effective in the short term, but it eventually backfires upon the chronic liar who must cover lies with other lies until reality is lost sight of.

Lying undermines trust, which is the basis of mutual respect in interpersonal relationships. Without respect, there can be no love or friendship.

Those who live by fear of the truth learn to become liar, and those who lie learn to live in fear of the truth. Fear and lying are always closely connected, where one is found, the other is sure to be nearby.

Fear is the fate of the coward. The courageous cannot live well with fear and are too troubled by lying. They must sooner or later grab the bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground.

The world is full of fools. To be foolish takes no special talent or skill at all, but to call the fool’s bluff takes wisdom, and to free ourselves from the fool’s spell, takes strength and courage.

We develop a need not to know that which we fear. To confront our fears face to face entails a challenge to our own sense of identity in the world. We would rather bury our heads in the sand and believe whatever lie and illusion we need in order to keep us from having to face, and learning to live with what we fear most.

No other person can know better than ourselves what it is we most need and want in life. Sometimes another person can help us to see what it is in ourselves that we fail to see, but it is only upon ourselves that we must lay the heavy burden of responsibility for success and failure in our own life. It is all too easy and common to seek solutions to our own dilemmas from others, and then to blame them when they prove to be wrong.

People see what they wish to see, and cannot be made to face that which they do not want to.

Authority tends to blind people, creating its own aura of power until inevitable contradiction reveals the human being underneath the badge and uniform.

When we hate, we become imprisoned by the thing we hate. In our attachment to hate, our hate comes to control our consciousness and undermine our own sense of freedom. To not like or care for something does not mean that one must hate it. One does not have to love that which one does not hate, or hate that which one does not love.

We blame the world for our own weaknesses, and blame ourselves for the faults of the world. The only salvation is the release from our sense of guilt. But such release is not found in socio-pathic absence or freedom from responsibility, but in its saintly embrace.

The sense of security in a mass oriented society is that everyone seems to be doing the same thing no matter how foolish and nonsensical it may really be. This is a false and dangerous illusion that justifies the method of social order and behavior by the madness of the crowd.

The mass mind is an oxymoron—the crowd has only a herd mentality.

It is never wise to underestimate the deliberate cunning of people who have the quest for power as their primary motive and ultimate goal in life. They will be the first to attack and the last to retreat, and will go to any end imaginable to accomplish their designs, and though utterly defeated, they will never relinquish their goals.

I am proud to claim that I have never treated another person in the same ugly way that so many people have felt appropriate to treat me. I have come to have little patience for the kind of deliberate ignorance and prejudice by which others misappropriate one’s identity in the world for their own convenience. I no longer regard with great compassion people whose sense of success feeds upon the feelings of failure by others. It is saddening to know how many different kinds of people in the world do this very thing without a sense of self-conscious guilt or shame.

People only feel ashamed or embarrassed when they are afraid of the consequences of their actions and the reactions of others.

We choose our own values in life and then judge others in the world according to those choices, without realizing not everyone makes the same set of choices, or even that if they seem to share similar values, they may well have chosen them for very different, even contradictory reasons. People either choose the values they live by, or if failing to choose, then inevitably have them chosen for themselves by others.

The fear of persecution is the source of guilt. Freedom of the mind demands freedom from fear and guilt, which depends upon not been threatened by persecution or violence. The only way to gain such freedom is by becoming non-violent and non-authoritarian oneself, and by seeking out and cultivating non-violence and non-authoritarianism in others. Fear, violence, guilt are all social chains which imprison the mind. A prisoner of the mind is still a prisoner even if the body is emancipated.

It is unfortunate that authority and legitimacy is increasingly co-opted and mandated within the World System, and is measured in quantitative terms which frequently has little or no nothing to do with human qualities and virtue.

The world will become more human and humane, more subjectively satisfying and less alienating, when there is less mass and impersonal exploitation and greater individual equality and interpersonal compassion.

If we have a certain existential investment in our illusion in life, no matter how ill founded they may really be, we will tend to act in ways that will maintain our illusion in spite mounting contradictory evidence.

If the investment in the illusions of our own identity is very strong or dear, then we may perseverate in reinforcing our fictions in such a manner unrelentingly, piling illusion upon illusion and denying anything which does not support our identity in the world.

In such a manner, we will suffer an unending chain of crisis, each connected to the next, and how we manage to resolve these crisis, or fail to, will determine the net outcome of our realistic adjustment to the world.

We take advantage of whatever opportunities we can get, even if it is often at someone else’s expense. We pay attention mostly to those who receive the same advantages as ourselves and disregard the rest. We call any person a fool who passes over opportunity for another’s sake, and honor as heroes those who take the most advantage of any situation.

If aggression comes from and leads to the need to proclaim and reaffirm one’s identity in the world, then authoritarianism is a consequent and a cause of the need to control that aggression in the world.

The illusion of authority is always some superhuman ideal, idea or idol. We cannot value the lives of others too dearly when we subordinate the value of our own. If we hold as most sacred that which is beyond our own lives and humanness, then we cannot regard the lives and humanness of others as sacred enough not to be violated.

Predictability is the primary weakness of the authoritarian.

The authoritarian is married to her/his unconscious obsession with authority. All other relationships in the world are secondary and subservient to this. The authoritarian is the most adulterous monogamist and monogamous adulterer in the world.

Authority is the only religion of the authoritarian. It does not matter really what the symbolic trappings of the ideology and ritual really are, as long as they feel the perverted power and violent force that authority represents. One religion’s prophets and saints is another’s heretic and rebel.

No human being is free from authoritarianism of others but remain blind to the possibilities of our own authoritarianism. This blindness is the very symptom of our own authoritarianism. When we say emphatically 'Screw Authority’ we are really announcing to the world a love hate dependency upon the very thing which we must so emphatically renounce and deny.

Authoritarianism is the obsessive preoccupation with Authority. Can we have authority without authoritarianism, and power without moral ethical perversion?

Authoritarians are blind to their own Authority. Authorities are blind to their own authoritarianisms. For them it is more a matter of routine and of regimen—a taken for granted matter of course. This transparency of authority and authoritarianism is rooted in the unconscious control which authoritarianism has upon our lives. We act without being fully aware of the unconscious causes and consequences of our actions. Because it is mainly unconscious, our preoccupation with authority becomes expressed symbolically and transforms our lives into a vicious circle of obsession and compulsion. We seek to find and control in our external world what we cannot face and control in our internal world. Because authoritarianism controls us, we seek to control the world.

It is amazing how conscious like and deliberate what is basically unconscious authoritarianism can seem. This is so perhaps because unconscious authoritarianism seeks to frame and constrain the conscious mind which therefore cannot act independently from such control, but which must then act in such a manner that is consonant with and reinforcing of the unconscious. Though authoritarians are fundamentally closed minded, their unconsciousness can be read like an open book.

A person can serve only one master, and can be master of only one person.

Our World System had long promoted and reward a kind of political economic authoritarianism. Colonial fascism has always been the dark side of the coin of Imperial Capitalism. When we are successfully authoritarian, we call it ‘high achievement’ motivation and fail to acknowledge the dangers of its exploitative, victimizing, aggressive, competitive, and acquisitive characteristics.

Authoritarians are quick to dismiss the liberal attitudes of others as a problem of authority. Because they themselves lack much imagination or the ability to entertain questions or tolerate doubt, they find people who have such capacities as a threat to their own sense of order, and people who exercise their freedoms as ‘breakers of the law’ and irresponsible. Authoritarians see their restricted version of authority as being necessary to their sense of the world and therefore as fundamentally unquestionable. Non-authoritarians regard such blind faith in Authority to be basically a personality problem of freedom.

The most significant factor about modern ‘mass’ authority and authoritarianism in the world system is that it is impersonal. Victimization and violence have their own logic in the world which is not fully logical but pathological. The pathologic of violence and victimization is that the victim is regarded as guilty, responsible for the violence, the cause and not the effect of the violence. The kind of pathologic is the ultimate repression of one’s own responsibility and projection of guilt onto others.