A Nonfiction Book
Must we manage an existential state that, if recognized, would cause us existential anxiety but that not recognizing can cause oppression?
Is Progressivism the problem? Is Liberal ideology why authoritarianism has become appealing? One can’t help but sense that impression from Berger, Hunter, and Rieff, but even if that’s true, we shouldn’t forget that there is something about Conservatism which is inherently authoritarian, for it sacrifices individualization to maintain social cohesion. If Liberalism in the West is making authoritarianism appealing, that easily means that Liberalism is making Conservatism appealing, so this line of inquiry should not be assumed as something which supports Conservatism. Rather, we are searching for a negotation between “givens” and “releases,” Conservatism and Liberalism, not that dominion of one over the other.
Generally, Liberals are ‘committed to expanding the areas of choice available to the individual [LGBT rights, women rights, etc.] and [are] prepared to live with the pluralism and uncertainty that results.’¹ For them, uncertainty is a small price to pay for justice, and the thought of accepting injustice because opposing it might increase existential anxiety is absurd and immoral (it’s hard to think of a worse rationalization, and it honestly sounds like a Conservative threat, a kind of suicide bombing). Furthermore, Liberals are ‘unlikely to be convinced by the implication that gay rights and day care centers are the first steps toward the Gulag.’² Perhaps existential anxiety increases the likelihood of an authoritarian backlash, but this is a risk that we must take for the sake of justice: after all, is not authoritarianism bad precisely because it is unjust? We cannot let what we fear come unto us, and besides, ‘is there not a[n] […] elitism in the implication that only a few can stand the psychic turmoil into which the relativizing consciousness of sociology leads?’³
Liberals seem to have personalities that are more likely to handle uncertainty (“Deleuzian individuals”), but even if this was true, it doesn’t necessarily justify the failure of Conservatives to adapt. I am no friend of determinism, and the idea that Liberals should stop their efforts to expand justice because Conservatives “don’t have the personalities to handle it” is appalling to me. Additionally, is not the argument ultimately being made that if Liberals don’t do what Conservatives want them to do and act like Conservatives, Conservatives will get mad and bring about an authoritarian backlash? Why in the world should Liberals ever cater to Conservatives because Conservatives will throw a temper tantrum? Conservatives often accuse Liberals of being “cry babies,” but what we judge is what we can become. Judgement entails focus, and we tend to become what we stare at long enough.
For Liberals, faced with uncertainty and what’s psychologically taxing, people should overcome and expand themselves: if Conservatives can’t, for all their talk of freedom, they don’t want to be free. Conservatives should learn empathy and understand people different from themselves, and not give into temptations to “escape from freedom.” I deeply sympathize with this Liberal vision, and I am disappointed by any unwillingness of people to be empathetic and “open” to people they don’t understand. Unfortunately, in a democracy, people don’t have to “get over themselves,” and arguably the whole point of voting is that they don’t. It’s not by chance that dictators are usually elected or that democracies often turn into oppressive regimes.
‘Society provides for the individual a gigantic mechanism by which he can hide from himself his own freedom,’ and is not “the sin” of Progressives that they want people to stop hiding from themselves?⁴ Is that really so bad? To dare to want people to see how free they really are? To define a “just world” as one where people embrace their freedom? Is freedom such a sin?⁵ Why shouldn’t Conservatives just learn to be more “open,” tougher, and mentally apt? Unfortunately, at least in America, half the country is Conservative, and to use language from “The Tragedy of Us” by O.G. Rose, if it is not “practically possible” to convince them to change, then even if it is “technically possible” to stop an authoritarian backlash in response to increased freedom, it is unlikely we will succeed. Also, no one thinks they support authoritarianism (just their party), as no one thinks they can’t handle “existential instability,” so the likelihood of convincing the majority of this is very improbable. Is this just? Does this mean society must be immoral because a larger portion of the population can’t handle changing? Is that not immoral?
Despite the fact Conservatism today seems to defend “givens,” it is paradoxically the case that Liberal Sociology often stresses the inescapability of social forces and how much of our lives is subconsciously and indirectly influenced and shaped by society, a point I find difficult to refute. ‘Role theory,’ as Berger called it, can ‘be summarized by saying that, in a sociological perspective, identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained and socially transformed.’⁶ We are all a collection of roles and characters, shifting between situations, as sustained, justified, and “upheld” by our societies. ‘As long as [people] play their roles as provided for in [social scripts], the social play can proceed as planned.’⁷ If the “play” breaks down, so to do identities, and though freedom increases, so to does existential anxiety. Being part of a “play,” ‘every institutional structure must depend on deception and all existence in society carries with it an element of bad faith’ (to allude to Sartre).⁸
We must manage an existential state that, if recognized, would cause us existential anxiety, but that not recognizing can cause oppression. We are our problem, a fact which suggests that we must, indeed, accept a certain level of “injustice” if society is to avoid falling apart. If that’s true, that’s a horrible realization, a tragedy which we would be immoral not to try to correct — a point which suggests morality itself might contribute to the destabilization that can make totalitarianism appealing (perhaps because Conservatism can’t handle freedom). Could the promise of “justice after death” help us cope with this possible reality? Perhaps, suggesting that Marx was right about religion and opium, a point which we would be monstrous to accept without a fight. “Perhaps we would be wise to reintroduce ‘A Myth of the Fall’ to our lives?” — whoever claimed this would contribute to oppression and yet at the same time could be right. And this is us. Liberals and Conservatives are equally at fault, like two sides of the same brain which seeks to silence the thoughts challenging it. We are a dialectical process that works to the degree we create tension in that dialectical process, which is to say to the degree we make ourselves not want to be a dialectical process.
Anyway, in regard to our “roles,” our understanding would be incomplete if we ‘regarded [them] merely as […] regulatory pattern[s] for externally visible actions.’⁹ We don’t think of “the patterns” we live out as “living out patterns” at all: we feel we are rather living out who we are. ‘The preacher finds himself believing what he preaches.’¹⁰ ‘It is very difficult to pretend in this world. Normally one becomes what one plays at.’¹¹ ¹² ‘A little boy considered to be a schlemiel becomes one, just as a grown-up treated as an awe-inspiring young god of war begins to think of himself and act as is appropriate to such a figure — and, indeed, merges his identity with the one he is presented with in these expectations.’¹³ As discussed throughout this work, “givens” are sources of such roles, and where no “givens” are present, roles will be hard to establish and maintain. In one sense, this is wonderful, for we won’t find ourselves socially conditioned and pressured to be something, but in another way it’s terrible, for we all want to be someone. The loss of “givens” coincides with the loss of roles, freeing us into a state into which we might not want to be freed.
In line with the thinking of Foucault and Derrida, Liberal Sociologists have taught for years that we don’t simply “pretend” to be our social roles — we in fact become them — and in so becoming establish a standard of “normal” and “how people should be” that indirectly, silently, and unconsciously oppresses those who fail to “act like they should.” Sociological theories that suggest this are correct, as they are correct about how ‘[an] individual’s choice of viewpoint will determine the way in which he looks back upon his own biography,’ about how embedded in language and definitions can be certain sociological assumptions, about how values like “sanity” end up being defined by ‘if one shares [a society’s] cognitive and normative assumptions,’ about how ‘each social situation in which we find ourselves is not only defined by our contemporaries but predefined by our predecessors’ (how our racial group fared in the past can have implications for us today) — and so on.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ This all in mind, focused on “Role Theory,” Berger wrote:
‘It would be a complete misunderstanding of what has just been said if the reader now thought that we are presenting a picture of society in which everybody schemes, plots and deliberately puts on disguises to fool his fellow men. On the contrary, role-playing and identity-building processes are generally unreflected and unplanned, almost automatic. The psychological needs for consistency of self-image just mentioned ensure this. Deliberate deception requires a degree of psychological self-control that few people are capable of. This is why insincerity is rather a rare phenomenon.’¹⁷
‘The liar, by definition, knows that he is lying. The ideologist does not.’¹⁸ Few are liars, but nearly everyone is an ideologist, ‘taken in by [our] own act’ for the sake of existential stability and functionality (even this language can imply more intentionality then there is).¹⁹ On this point, ‘[s]ociety can maintain itself only if its fictions […] are accorded ontological status by at least some of its members some of the time,’ which is to say that the fictions of a society can’t be universally seen as fictious but somehow “true stories” (a point which brings Hayden White to mind), which is both possible and needed because only “confidence” is possible, not “certainty.”²⁰ This isn’t to say “roles” in a society are illusions or that society would be better off without them (such a society is impossible); rather, the point is to ‘illuminate[] more clearly the paradoxical and infinitely precarious character of social existence.’²¹ As Berger wrote:
‘The structures of society become the structures of our own consciousness. Society does not stop at the surface of our skins. Society penetrates us as much as it envelops us. Our bondage to society is not so much established by conquest as by collusion. Sometimes, indeed, we are crushed into submission. Much more frequently we are entrapped by our own social nature. The walls of our imprisonment were there before we appeared on the scene, but they are ever rebuilt by ourselves.’²²
That said, ‘society defines man, and is in turn defined by man.’²³ Society structures the mind, but as it structures us, we structure it: the street is not one way. Expressing our freedom, we help create the ways by which we “escape from freedom.” To quote Berger at length:
‘Let us return once more to the image of the puppet theater that our argument conjured up before. We see the puppets dancing on their miniature stage, moving up and down as the strings pull them around, following the prescribed course of their various little parts. We learn to understand the logic of this theater and we find ourselves in its motions. We locate ourselves in society and thus recognize our own position as we hang from its subtle strings. For a moment we see ourselves as puppets indeed. But then we grasp a decisive difference between the puppet theater and our own drama. Unlike the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom. And in this same act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline.’²⁴
Liberal Sociologists rightly teach on this “social prison,” admonishing that unspoken assumptions, social structures, and the like oppress minorities. As elaborated upon in “Discussing Racism” by O.G. Rose, societies entail “majority privilege,” and minorities do in fact face assumptions about what constitutes being “normal” that work against them. Yes, perhaps like Berger wrote, we can exercise freedom by “looking up” and understanding the systems which move us, but there are still challenges minorities must face to do this that members of the majority do not.
All of this is important to understand, for it ultimately means that Liberals are right to argue that “givens” can oppress, and that the structures of a society (which hold back existential anxiety) cause hardship to those who don’t fit into those structures. Liberals are correct that there is indeed something oppressive about “roles” and “norms,” even if perhaps it is the case that it is impossible to create a society without them. And yet it is also true that authoritarianism becomes appealing to us in their absence: we dislike oppressive “givens” and the freedom that results from removing them. But this being the case, should Liberals stop trying to increase freedom or should people just develop the character to handle freedom? Can the majority ever handle freedom? What’s the “right” thing to do? Must what’s “right” pragmatically conflict with what’s “right” morally? Does this not benefit the powerful?
Liberals are correct that those who aren’t oppressed often fail to realize that these structures and hardships exist precisely because the structures “work” and are “given” to those they benefit (and hence are conveniently “invisible” like Heidegger’s doorknob). Minorities in America can lack the “plausibility structures” needed to believe and feel accepted in America, and long before Modernism and Pluralism, minorities suffered an existential anxiety that the majority is just recently beginning to suffer. Not being the minority, the majority can think the loss of “givens” and “plausibility structures” are “a new problem” — minorities know the problem is ancient. Perhaps it can be argued when the majority suffers the problem, it has reached a new severity that threatens to hurl the society over a breaking point (do note that this thought entails privilege), but it would be wrong to say the problem is entirely new (the feeling that “existential anxiety is new” is a privilege of being in the majority).
‘[T]he breakdown of taken-for-granted traditions and the opening up of multiple options for beliefs, values, and lifestyles’ has been ‘the great challenge of pluralism.’²⁵ But at the same time, this has also been its great victory — the challenge is the success — groups and minorities previously excluded are increasingly included. Perhaps this has weakened “givens,” but many have benefited from this weakening, and arguably this is what justice would demand of us. If it is indeed the case that a loss of “givens” increases the likelihood of authoritarian backlash, it would seem just as right to say that the backlash is against an increase in justice. Considering this, who’s the real problem? Liberals or Conservatives? Those fighting for justice or those who cannot handle the existential anxiety caused by increased justice?
‘The history of freedom in the modern world has for a long time been marked by the often conflicting claims of universalism and particularity’: between the universal claims of what justice would demand of a people and the particular claims of what individuals want to do; between the universal claims for a freedom that respects everyone’s independence and choice and a particular injustice which can only be stopped by infringing upon the freedom which some use to commit injustice; and so on.²⁶ Liberals tend to stress that “we are all in this together” and that the accomplishments of every individual are supported by countless others (no life is lived in a vacuum). Conservatives tend to stress individual autonomy and effort, and yet the arguably “tragic arguments” of Berger and Hunter seem to suggest that “we are all psychologically in this together,” that people cannot choose to live lives they want to live without them impacting others and “givens.” It seems in this way Conservatives are in support of reducing freedom in the name of psychological and existential stability (which would stop their authoritarianism from manifesting), in the same way that Liberals seem to support reducing freedom in the name of ending oppression and injustice (to stop authoritarianism). Surely though, having to choose between these two options, we should come down against Conservatives, for surely Conservatives should just learn to be more psychologically and existentially robust, yes? Laws oppressing minorities having nothing to do with personal responsibility or personal cultivation and everything to do with institutional forces outside individual control — surely Conservatives should support seeing themselves as the problem, for it seems Conservative to remove “givens” which hinder personal and individual development. Would not opposing Conservatism be the Conservative thing to do?
If the “tragic sociology” of Hunter and Berger is correct, then it is Conservatism that is likely to be the force that brings about authoritarianism. Perhaps in response to Progressivism, but the source all the same: it seems Conservatism must get what it wants “or else.” This is poor behavior and even spoiled, and seeing as it can preserve injustice, Progressives should not be faulted for not being impressed by it. And yet if it is the case that it is “practically inevitable” that there will always be an authoritarian backlash against the loss of “givens” — that the majority will never be existentially and psychologically capable of handing it — then what Hunter and Berger warn must be taken seriously, or else in the name of freedom and justice, we will lose freedom and justice.
Critically, we must understand that Liberals aren’t causing the world to be “existentially overwhelming” and “radically different” (as Deleuze teaches): the world is “radically different” and “existentially overwhelming” (“The Real” is tough, as Lacan tells us). By removing “givens” in the name of justice, Liberals are simply exposing Conservatives to the truth — Liberals aren’t causing the world to be this way, only unveiling the world to be how it “is.” In this way, Liberals aren’t “doing anything” to Conservatives, only creating an environment for the sake of justice which unveils that Conservatives “can’t handle the truth.” Should Liberals accept injustice so that Conservatives can avoid the truth? How is this not monstrous? Fair, but at the same time if Berger is right that society operates thanks to “bad faith,” which is to say society works because some percentage of citizens believes the society and its roles are “ontologically grounded” and/or “reflect capital-T-Truth,” meaning the society is not “arbitrarily grounded,” then for Liberals to increase justice they must risk unveiling that the society isn’t “ontologically grounded,” which means the social order could cease to function. Also, whether Liberal or Conservative, none of us can handle “absolute freedom,” which means if Liberals deconstruct “givens” too much, they too will be existentially overwhelmed, as will be the minorities who the Liberals hope to help.
Isaiah Berlin taught how some Counter-Enlightenment thinkers believed the “foundations” of a society (like tradition, religion, etc.) ultimately had to remain “in deep darkness,” per se, which is to say unexamined and unexplained, precisely because the foundations could not be explained or examined in rational terms: the very effort to try caused them to crumble apart, like an ancient document unraveled. The foundations for society are ultimately “nonrational truths” (to combine language from The True Isn’t the Rational with language used regarding Benjamin Fondane), which is to say they make rationality possible but cannot themselves be rationally understood. What cannot be rationally understood is “rationally” determined to be “irrational,” and that means rationality will “rationally” deconstruct the nonrational foundations of society which rationality requires to prove possible. This being the case, once the foundations of society are accessible, it arguably becomes rational to examine them, at which point it is too late to stop deconstruction. For “givens” to cease being “thoughtless,” and instead become something we can think about, is when social foundations can be accessed, and at that point they cannot be defended from rational critique except perhaps by a rationality (limiting itself) which understands that it needs to “hold itself back” (“rationally”) to avoid self-effacement. But this “rationality informed by nonrationality” is not possible where the dangers of “autonomous rationality” are not appreciated, as it is also not possible (as rational) where we fail to understand that humans are ontologically paradoxical (A/B), and thus need (an epistemological mixture of) “(non)rationality” (A/B) to thrive and harmonize with our being — but all that is material for The True Isn’t the Rational trilogy.
Efforts to increase justice can “rationally” and “morally” seek to deconstruct the “nonrational foundations” of society, efforts which we would be monstrous to oppose and yet efforts which could all the same cause social self-effacement. Societies are generally designed so that we never find out either way if they are “arbitrarily grounded” or “ontologically grounded,” which means there is space for us to “plausibly deny” that they aren’t “ontologically grounded” (as possible because certainty is mostly impossible). And this “Schrödinger-esq state” seems optimal, for if we knew for sure that x was “ontologically grounded,” we’d perhaps feel legitimate to force everyone to conform to x, but if we knew x was “arbitrary,” it would lack any authority or power to bind us into a social order and “shared intelligibility.” Absolutism and Relativism are both dangerous, but the middle between them seems unstable and only maintainable if rationality does not seek to rationally understand its “nonrational foundations,” as justice might compel rationality to so attempt. Does this mean ethics is why civilizations seem to have expiration dates? But don’t civilizations require ethics to function? Yes — they may require what kills them to live — and this is perhaps why history repeats.
To review, it is unfair that the majority likely can’t handle the existential anxiety that minorities have had to live with all their lives, but in a democracy, what isn’t fair can still prevail. Perhaps the majority is “existentially fragile” because they lack training and familiarity with anxiety and uncertainty, which suggests that they prime themselves to be overwhelmed by difference so that they can then moralize oppressing difference, all of which suggests the majority has incentive not to toughen up. Is that twisted dynamic at play? Easily, but all the same, faced with Pluralism and Modernity, if the majority fails to develop existential and psychological maturity or if their immaturity isn’t catered to, authoritarianism will likely manifest. And all this brings us to a disturbing dilemma.
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Notes
¹Making Sense of Modern Times. Edited by James Davison Hunter and Stephen C. Ainlay. Excursus: The Problem of Freedom by Donald L. Redfoot. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc., 1986: 117.
²Making Sense of Modern Times. Edited by James Davison Hunter and Stephen C. Ainlay. Excursus: The Problem of Freedom by Donald L. Redfoot. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc., 1986: 117.
³Making Sense of Modern Times. Edited by James Davison Hunter and Stephen C. Ainlay. Excursus: The Problem of Freedom by Donald L. Redfoot. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc., 1986: 117.
⁴Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 145.
⁵There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of freedom, such as those made by Isaiah Berlin, but I don’t believe those distinctions are needed here.
⁶Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 98.
⁷Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 95.
⁸Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 90.
⁹Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 96.
¹⁰Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 96.
¹¹Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 98.
¹²The fact humans become what they pretend to be might be evidence of human freedom: “bad faith” might prove we have freedom we can put our faith in (long enough to lose it, at least).
¹³Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 100.
¹⁴Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 51.
¹⁵Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 64.
¹⁶Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 84.
¹⁷Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 109.
¹⁸Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 112.
¹⁹Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 109.
²⁰Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 145.
²¹Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 145.
²²Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 121.
²³Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 155.
²⁴Berger, Peter L. Invitation to Sociology. New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1963: 176.
²⁵Berger, Peter L. and Samuel P. Huntington. Many Globalizations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003: 16.
²⁶Berger, Peter L. Facing Up to Modernity. New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1977: 141.
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