A Mendacious Triangular Trade (Part IV)
Given humanity's recent history, the need for a Grand Illusion is entirely understandable. Without the conviction that their forebears were dying to rid the world of slavery, how else can modern man, faced with the facts of the American Civil War, retain even a smidgen of sanity? Without the illusion that they were dying to make the world safe for Democracy, how else excuse the millions slaughtered in the trenches and no-man's lands of the first great war? And how could Adolph Hitler ever have coaxed the civilized people of Germany to sacrifice 6 million of their finest youth and another 6 million of the world's Jewry without the illusion of cultural superiority and the "need" for Lebensraum?
It was not that the soldiers chose to die for those illusory causes. They "chose" to die rather than be branded cowards or traitors. It was not that the executioners at Auschwitz believed themselves superior, but that they believed they were ridding the world of a pestilence and were ordered to do it just this way. It was not that humanity has ever believed itself depraved. It was that we are susceptible to the convincing arguments of Grand Illusions. We can be led to see beauty in evil, and truth in attrocity. We are essentially fools.
History does not move by the whims of God, nor by the mystical forces of Hegelian Great Spirits. Tolstoy likened history's movement to a herd of sheep following the trail of greener grass. If the herd seemed to be following a lead sheep, that was the illusion, for the leader, same as the rest of the sheep, was following his stomach and found himself only by chance at the front of the herd. Tolstoy should have taken his analysis a step further (and perhaps did in stuff I haven't read). It wasn't the Grand Army of the French Republic that followed Napoleon to Moscow. It was 500,000 individual soldiers, each of whom had reasons of his own. They seemingly moved as a mass because they shared the same fears, the same hungers. The paths of thought that brought them individually to the same conceptions of those fundamental drives were no doubt different, but were brought together by the same sorts of illusions that led the commoners of the southeren states to fight for "their rights" and the murderers of Jews to commit their mortal sins. They were fools.
Joseph Conrad came a step closer. "No fear can stand up to hunger," he wrote in trying to explain the slab of human flesh carried in the lunch pails of the Congolese "converts" who -- the Belgians thought -- had been brought into the human fold. It was, after all, those same Belgians -- the righteous ones -- who were headed up river to correct Mr. Kurtz of his "unsound methods." The God-fearing Belgians did not so much object to Kurtz's product -- tons and tons of precious ivory -- as to the fact that he had shed the trappings of civilization in delivering the goods. He had shucked off the illusions of gentility. He had seen the whited sepulcher of the Belgian Empire for what it actually was and acted accordingly. Kurtz was no fool for seeing through the illusion, only for believing he would be permitted to live for having seen. Conrad and Tolstoy had both understood well what they had seen of life. Conrad had just seen more of it.
Does Mrs Housewife need an electric can opener? Perhaps not, but if she can somehow be made to confuse the gadget with food or clothing or warmth, if she can be deluded into seeing civilization itself in power-driven frippery . . . men have killed and died for less. Does the world need energy? Well, for certain, at least in quantities greater than can be delivered by oxen (who have to be fed). Does Mary Ann need a rag doll that actually cries and that wets on demand? Maybe not, but if Mommy believes her foal "must not be deprived of her childhood," dolls that talk and wear foldable nappies become the basics of life itself. After all, Mommy may reason, the economy would collapse if children were made to create their own toys. "And besides, what's to separate the 'good' little girls who are rewarded from the 'bad' who are not if they are all left to their own designs?" Solid reasoning, you see, the stuff gas chambers are made of.
Mommies are mostly fools.
To be continued.
It was not that the soldiers chose to die for those illusory causes. They "chose" to die rather than be branded cowards or traitors. It was not that the executioners at Auschwitz believed themselves superior, but that they believed they were ridding the world of a pestilence and were ordered to do it just this way. It was not that humanity has ever believed itself depraved. It was that we are susceptible to the convincing arguments of Grand Illusions. We can be led to see beauty in evil, and truth in attrocity. We are essentially fools.
History does not move by the whims of God, nor by the mystical forces of Hegelian Great Spirits. Tolstoy likened history's movement to a herd of sheep following the trail of greener grass. If the herd seemed to be following a lead sheep, that was the illusion, for the leader, same as the rest of the sheep, was following his stomach and found himself only by chance at the front of the herd. Tolstoy should have taken his analysis a step further (and perhaps did in stuff I haven't read). It wasn't the Grand Army of the French Republic that followed Napoleon to Moscow. It was 500,000 individual soldiers, each of whom had reasons of his own. They seemingly moved as a mass because they shared the same fears, the same hungers. The paths of thought that brought them individually to the same conceptions of those fundamental drives were no doubt different, but were brought together by the same sorts of illusions that led the commoners of the southeren states to fight for "their rights" and the murderers of Jews to commit their mortal sins. They were fools.
Joseph Conrad came a step closer. "No fear can stand up to hunger," he wrote in trying to explain the slab of human flesh carried in the lunch pails of the Congolese "converts" who -- the Belgians thought -- had been brought into the human fold. It was, after all, those same Belgians -- the righteous ones -- who were headed up river to correct Mr. Kurtz of his "unsound methods." The God-fearing Belgians did not so much object to Kurtz's product -- tons and tons of precious ivory -- as to the fact that he had shed the trappings of civilization in delivering the goods. He had shucked off the illusions of gentility. He had seen the whited sepulcher of the Belgian Empire for what it actually was and acted accordingly. Kurtz was no fool for seeing through the illusion, only for believing he would be permitted to live for having seen. Conrad and Tolstoy had both understood well what they had seen of life. Conrad had just seen more of it.
Does Mrs Housewife need an electric can opener? Perhaps not, but if she can somehow be made to confuse the gadget with food or clothing or warmth, if she can be deluded into seeing civilization itself in power-driven frippery . . . men have killed and died for less. Does the world need energy? Well, for certain, at least in quantities greater than can be delivered by oxen (who have to be fed). Does Mary Ann need a rag doll that actually cries and that wets on demand? Maybe not, but if Mommy believes her foal "must not be deprived of her childhood," dolls that talk and wear foldable nappies become the basics of life itself. After all, Mommy may reason, the economy would collapse if children were made to create their own toys. "And besides, what's to separate the 'good' little girls who are rewarded from the 'bad' who are not if they are all left to their own designs?" Solid reasoning, you see, the stuff gas chambers are made of.
Mommies are mostly fools.
To be continued.
posted by Benedict S. at 11:37 AM
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