Friends, a funny thing is happening this election season: the American people are apparently experiencing a psychotic break. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that perceptions of the economy, and negativity about current and future economic prospects, have soared to almost unheard of levels. At the same time, the economy itself just keeps growing, generating jobs, padding retirement accounts, etc. People believe the bad economy will inevitably get worse, whereas the truth is that the good economy is getting better. Ergo, I say: the voters have gone certifiably insane. They've lost touch with reality. All this is very good news for Democrats, of course, but it's bad news for Republicans and, more importantly, the human race. It suggests that spin and propaganda have taken hold of public opinion in a decisive way. None of this is unprecedented, mind you, but usually you can count on the American people to be able to discern that up is up, and down is down. Not nowadays, alas. I could go on: the border is secure, crime is down, unemployment rates are at rock bottom, but what would be the point? Clearly, America isn't listening to me, or to anyone telling the truth. And that ought to scare us mightily! (Boo!!!)
Dr. Waddy: I have always thought that the far left is motivated in large part by perfectionism. But since I am almost unschooled on perfectionism, I looked it up (once a librarian , always a librarian , I am compelled to say on pain of imperfect perception). And I found that some psychologists do think that mass perfectionism is diagnosable in mass groups of people.
ReplyDeleteIn individual cases perfectionism manifests chronic anxiety and panic , even "suicidal ideation". I think what history shows of "utopianism" is that it can produce unfulfilled prospects which induce extreme anxiety acted out in unrelenting , very destructive behavior.
Perfectionism in large groups is authoritatively described by psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill as "socially prescribed perfectionism" and manifests "perception that the world is highly demanding , deeply critical and that one must perform flawlessly".
Certainly a desire for better living conditions was understandably induced by the undeniable material, medical and threatening hardship of life for all until very recent times and then only for some societies. The illustration you posted effectively portrays it and strongly suggests the enervating and stultifying dread that the Great Depression produced.
Marxism, with its promise of a scientifically guaranteed ultimate well being understandably produces in societies where life is still very hard, determination to endure painful change , "fundamental thansformation". But Marxism is now proven by history to be incapable of producing well being; it has conclusively shown itself to guarantee almost universal destitution , both material and spiritual.
But hardship sometimes produces wisdom which, when relative improvement is realized , appreciates its benefits. The "Greatest Generation" exemplified this after it was delivered from its travails in the '30s and '40s.
So why are we seeing an apparent surge in the popularity of quasi and actual Marxist discontent with our still marvelous level of material opportunity and realized well being in our country?!
Maybe answers can be found in the origins of both mass and individual perfectionism (?) More. . .
Dr. Waddy : Negative experience , especially in early life, is described as producing psychological"coping mechanisms". Some of them can produce positive and productive behavior but some can manifest negative features such as unrelenting perfectionism. Can we, by extension , maintain that this is true of mass psychology, a term often used by social scientists?
ReplyDeleteI've always seen in the far left an inability to be satisfied with benefits produced by measured , prudent reform. Eg. the now mostly radicalized "environmental " movement: I grew up in then very polluted Buffalo NY in the '50 and '60s. But very obvious improvement was achieved by reasonably well conceived change , for example to our abundant rivers. They were sewers back then and they have been much cleansed. There was some cost; much of our often river situated heavy industry has departed . And gee, that WAS a way of life for a lot of people. But are the dominant radical environmentalists satisfied? Oh no , they would have unrelenting ever more "pristine".conditions mandated, along with heavy legal correction due to any heretics. "Why", they declare, "this is just the beginning" and promise ever more sweeping restrictions on access to and use of those rivers. And if it negatively affects people who these overeducated incipient totalitarians culturally disdain, they conveniently do not empathize or sympathize. Is this an example of bad kind of perfectionism? I say arguably yes.
Dr. Waddy, I agree — growth is steady, jobs are holding, this administration's actions and the latest indicators point to that continuing.
ReplyDeleteBut every time low-information voters drive past a station and see $4-plus on the sign, that number sticks and becomes their whole picture of the economy. What other price do they see multiple times a day?
At the same time, in some ways they’re not wrong. Fuel prices are sitting in the driver’s seat, and most of the economy is unwillingly riding shotgun.
RAY TO RICHIE
DeleteWelcome back, and thanks for your comment. Hoping you decide to post more often.
Dr. Waddy: My reading says that perfectionism and its frequent immediate cause, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder , a very widespread neurosis ,are the products of many influences.on individuals.These include inherited, environmental, traumatic and taught factors and many others.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they are inherent also in the complex phenomenon of human society and produce in the human macrocosm effects similar to those realized in individuals (?). Maybe the effects of consequent "socially prescribed perfectionism" account for the astonishing and unprecedented restlessness and discontent which apparently obtains in some advanced Western civilizations contrary to a material well being which would have much astonished even the most educated in times when, for example, fatal diseases raged not understood, uncured and unprevented . Since our prosperity and the blessed leisure it affords us, has the effect of giving us unprecedented leave to consider the "imperfections"
of our civilizations , does it pervert us as much as to the unrealistic extent of striving for perfection(?)Apparently it does and it is eagerly encouraged by the cynical , grim and assuredly murderous in power Marxists who purposely foment decisive discontent with our civilization, the better to clear the way for their by historical definition, arbitrary, incidental and whimsical totalitarian elite dictatorship.
Dr. Waddy: Above: " does it pervert a considerable and maybe vulnerable due to far leftist influence , numerous faction " instead of "us" is more to my thinking. Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: The almost fantastic material well being we now enjoy in the advanced countries is a new thing for humanity and maybe we are still discovering unanticipated effects of it. Could it be that prosperity itself produces significant discontent?! Could it become as intense as to recklessly open the door to counterintuitive "reform"?
ReplyDeleteJack, that's an interesting series of reflections on perfectionism. The irony is that political perfectionism need not, in my experience, be accompanied by personal perfectionism. Our mentalities are capable of a great deal more compartmentalization than that. There probably are some basic personality differences between conservatives and liberals, which are rooted more in genes than in experience, if you ask me, but in any case one's political allegiances are mostly a factor of the propaganda one consumes.
ReplyDeleteI would also point out that even Bolshevism could and did become "conservative" and appeal to people who were temperamentally conservative once the movement ossified into something institutional and "traditional"... The apparatchiks were the exact opposite of perfectionists. They were realists. So I guess what I'm saying is that the whole relationship between personality and politics is a complicated one.
Richie, politically, you're absolutely right. Gasoline prices have added fuel to the fire (pun intended) of the "cost of living" crisis, or perceived crisis. The truth, however, is that wages ARE keeping up with price increases, and there has been no meaningful reduction in Americans' buying power. They just think there has. I blame the media even more than I blame gas prices for that. They have an obligation to tell us the truth about the world around us, and they are manifestly failing in their duty.
Is our very prosperity at the root of many of our psychological dysfunctions and our contempt for established norms and institutions, not to mention ourselves? Very possibly. Prosperity gives us leisure and a veneer of intellectual sophistication (courtesy of free and mandatory public education), and those two things in combination have brought down plenty of civilizations before!
Dr. Waddy: A very good example of a Bolshevik conservative was Khrushchev. He was a peasant miner and bereft of the intellectual influences which guided so many of the Marxist founding fathers. His sense simply told him that communism was possible and ultimately good.He led a fairly austere personal life and was reportedly faithful to his wife. He probably perceived in NIxon after their encounter in the "Kitchen Debate" some of his own willingness to champion his country and may well have initially and mistakenly seen in JFK a privileged swell, defined by his reckless amorous adventures as a silly voluptuary without fortitude. That he was wrong on JFK had been long since established by JFK's demonstrated courage in WWII and was reprised in JFK's conduct of the Cuban Missile Crisis once it arose. But Khrushchev, despite being a mass murderer at Stalin's behest, never the less manifested the disdain held by people who lead personal lives of conservative restraint and principle, for libertines.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: In one way the "apparatchiki" were realists; they knew that unwavering compliance with whatever the party line was that day would yield them some deliverance from the dismal conditions of life under Marxism. And of course , under such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot they knew any deviation would leave of them "not even a wet spot". Some of them actually believed communism deserved to be sustained , even after catastrophic proof that it was not so. At any rate ,realistic self seeking required that they act as if the sham was somehow credible.
ReplyDeleteBut their tyrannical rulers unrelentingly ,unapologetically and with tragic belief ,imposed on them a doctrine proven in practice to be utterly unrealistic. It was a once attractive notion which when enforced flew in the very face of human nature, even that proven historically amenable to authoritarian rule . But they were "fine all the while" with it, like Comrade Leonid with his 100 car 'avocational"collection. They were "alright Jack!" Gorbachev broke that pattern when , as he admitted" we cannot go on like this anymore". N. Korea persists as an increasingly instructive veritable museum of Marxist humbug in practice. It viciously presumes to do so even with a prime example of the well being guaranteed by free enterprise and relative freedom, right next door.
But the once grimly laughable Marxist rationalization that "we just didn't do it right" is enjoying an astonishing reaccreditation in of all places, the US, the force until now very Nemesis to world communism. Its progenitors are from the far left wing of our politics and should be regarded as blindly convinced of their wisdom and justice, just as their murderous doctrinal predecessors were in the 20th century. I think their convictions are unrealistic and evil because they are motivated by a proven utterly unworkable bad dream.
Interesting perspective on Khrushchev. If pursuing an ascetic lifestyle, and eschewing corruption, are "conservative", then lots of leftists are conservative...which I don't mean to pooh-pooh, because in fact the line between the Left and the Right is a lot more squiggly than we generally care to admit. In any case, what I meant by the notion of a "conservative Bolshevik" was the type of Marxist who grew up with communism and came to believe in its righteousness and wished to preserve what the Soviets, for example, had achieved. You can see why some of them would have felt that way, since the USSR's social, technological, and maybe even political progress was impressive, and its military strength was virtually unsurpassed. But more importantly there are just a lot of people who accept the social order as they find it, look on the bright side and celebrate it, and then try to consolidate what is, rather than fantasize about what could be. I think they could reasonably be called "conservative". And I would underline what I've said before about every "communist" system we've ever seen: to the extent that they "succeeded", they did so because many of their features weren't communist at all. The USSR was, for instance, for most of its existence extremely un-egalitarian, and that matters.
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