A post by Maynard
Arthur Koestler has lately caught my eye. He is best known for his anti-totalitarian novel, “Darkness at Noon”, which you may have read in high school. Koestler’s personal odyssey broadly echoes Tammy’s: Struggling with emotional issues in his youth, he was drawn into the political Left with its utopian dream of paradise by command.
Koestler was born in central Europe in 1905. In the post-WWI turbulance, it seemed the day of the individual had passed, and the future would be built upon a collectivist foundation. Therefore, a 1930’s-era European liberal must choose between socialism and fascism and communism. Koestler embraced the latter and fled from Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s Russia. After witnessing the Soviet “experiment” up close, he began to realize the terrible consequences of his generation’s well-intentioned mistakes. His dead-on lament from his (sadly out of print) autobiography, “Arrow in the Blue” sounds a vital warning for our time:
We fought our battle of words and did not see that the familiar words had lost their bearing and pointed in the wrong directions. We said “democracy” solemnly as in a prayer, and soon afterwards the greatest nation of Europe voted, by perfectly democratic methods, its assassins into power. We worshipped the will of The Masses, and their will turned out to be death and self-destruction. We regarded capitalism as an outworn system, and were willing to exchange it for a brand-new form of slavery. We preached broad-mindedness and tolerance, and the evil which we tolerated demoralized our civilization. The social progress for which we fought became a progress towards the slave labor camp; our liberalism made us accomplices of tyrants and oppressors; our love for peace invited aggression and led to war.
He continues, rather chillingly:
As I am writing this, more than twenty years later, the storm is still on. The well-meaning “progressives of the Left” persist in following their old, outworn concepts. As if under the spell of a destruction compulsion, they must repeat every single error of the past, draw the same faulty conclusions a second time, re-live the same situations, perform the same suicidal gestures. One can only watch in horror and despair, for this time there will be no pardon.
Hello? Is this thing on?
Koestler was a student of various disciplines, ranging from rigorous science to kooky spirituality. He wrote on many topics, always seeking to connect the dots. Earlier in his autobiography, in discussing his time in Paris in 1929, he offered an interesting interpretation of the mindset of the Parisian prostitutes that voluntarily placed themselves under control of abusive pimps. Why do people degrade themselves like this? What inner demons drive humanity towards self-destruction? Koestler speculates as follows:
The secret of this pathological relationship seemed to lie chiefly in the pimp’s brutality to his women. It is a calculated and nauseating kind of brutality which has its own ritual and cant. There are, of course, other factors which vary from case to case, but brutality is the common denominator, and its obvious function is to satisfy the tramp’s craving for punishment — a craving the more consistent as it is unconscious. “I will punish you” is a favorite expression in the pimp’s vocabulary, and the threat alone seems to have the required effect. “Punishment” consists mostly in slaps, kicks or mere verbal abuse; overtly sadistic practices hardly ever occur. They would defeat the purpose of the whole relationship, which is based on the axiom that the punishment is an act of justice which the victim deserves for being “bad”. In short, the prostitute creates her own ritual of penance; the kick on the shin and the slap in the face represent the act of absolution; the unsavoriness and repellent physique of the protector and avenger are a logical part of the pattern.
The experience of that period taught me a lesson of which I only became conscious later. It was a meeting with the sense of guilt in its crudest, most primitive and tangible form. It was startling to see how powerfully this complex guilt acted upon creatures apparently devoid of any sense of moral responsibility. It was even more startling to discover that the sense of guilt and craving for atonement did not procure them grace, but drove them even deeper into perdition.
Individuals destroy themselves, just as nations destroy themselves. It’s a phenomenon that seems to make no sense on the surface, but we observe it time and time again. We see it in street prostitutes; we see it in the films coming out of Hollywood: An “understanding” of why others hate us and want to do us harm; an endless mea culpa that we somehow owe the world. A plea for punishment at the hands of our adversaries. Why do we do these things? Tammy has had a lot to say about her experiences and observations in regard to the politics and psychology of masochism. As you can see, this battle has been going on for a long time. We must persevere, even while understanding that the war is not going to end anytime soon.
The pathology of social and political destruction Arthur Koestler describes in these excerpts is pervasive and perennial. People often appear to me as if they were born yesterday. I am never happy when I see it in young adults. When I see it in those who are older I am dumbstruck by their unwillingness to see parallels between today and the past. When I see politicians spreading general misconceptions of how the world works in economics and international relations for example, I wonder, are they simply ignorant or, are they cunning and cynical?
We are motivated in two fundamental ways. One is toward the acquisition of pleasurable results. The other is away from a painful results. The lessons of human failings must be taught continuously. The Left is currently promoting the concept the free American citizen in his pursuit of happiness by way of capitalism and free market economies are the cause of human suffering and the destruction of the planet. In their propaganda a byproduct of our success is that we torture and murder the victims of our war, we indiscriminately make war on the children of our enemies and, we rape and plunder the earth. In other words we happy and peace loving free Americans are the cause of the world’s pain. We therefore according to them must move away from this pain. Their propaganda is dangerously ubiquitous.
Earlier this week an attorney friend called me. We ended up talking about current affairs. He, a white bread middle aged American born man, told me that George Washington was the big terrorist of his day. I demanded that he tell me how many English school children he blew up or beheaded. People I know and love condemn as evil profiteers other Americans who discover miraculous cures and therapies for a wide ranges of physical diseases or, other Americans who risk their lives and treasure to supply them with the oil they demand every day.
To all who are asleep or blinded by propaganda I say, w a k e u p !
Tammy, I confess. I haven’t read Arthur Koestler. Thanks for your recommendation.
The pathology of social and political destruction Arthur Koestler describes in these excerpts is pervasive and perennial. People often appear to me as if they were born yesterday. I am never happy when I see it in young adults. When I see it in those who are older I am dumbstruck by their unwillingness to see parallels between today and the past. When I see politicians spreading general misconceptions of how the world works in economics and international relations for example, I wonder, are they simply ignorant or, are they cunning and cynical?
We are motivated in two fundamental ways. One is toward the acquisition of pleasurable results. The other is away from a painful results. The lessons of human failings must be taught continuously. The Left is currently promoting the concept the free American citizen in his pursuit of happiness by way of capitalism and free market economies are the cause of human suffering and the destruction of the planet. In their propaganda a byproduct of our success is that we torture and murder the victims of our wars, we indiscriminately make war on the children of our enemies and, we rape and plunder the earth. In other words we happy and peace loving free Americans are the cause of the world’s pain. We therefore according to them must move away from this pain. Their propaganda is dangerously ubiquitous.
Earlier this week an attorney friend called me. We ended up talking about current affairs. He, a white bread middle aged American born man, told me that George Washington was the big terrorist of his day. I demanded that he tell me how many English school children he blew up or beheaded. People I know and love condemn as evil profiteers other Americans who discover miraculous cures and therapies for a wide ranges of physical diseases and, other Americans who risk their lives and treasure to supply them with the oil they demand every day.
To all who are asleep or blinded by propaganda I say, W a k e U p !
Tammy, I confess. I haven’t read Arthur Koestler. Thanks for your recommendation.
Jerocrat, Washington wasn’t the biggest terrorist of his day, he was like, the Chuck Norris of his day. Or any day…the present beware…the future beware…didn’t you know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ8BCNj2oao
If in the 1950s and 1960s we saw Nazi-leaning politicians dominate European legislatures; if we saw one of the major political parties in America openly sympathize with Nazis around the world and demand that we make “peace” no matter the cost; if we saw America lose a war to Nazis in a Third-World country and sit idly by as Nazi imperialism gobbled up other countries; if we saw Hitler-like leaders come to power in Latin America and American “artists” traveling to pay homage to them; if we saw American universities chock full of professors preaching Nazi ideals as Gospel and persecuting colleagues and students who dared to dissent; we would conclude that the Axis had really won World War II regardless of what had actually transpired on the battlefield.
Interestingly the shia have a holiday where they parade out in the street beating themselves and flailing themselves bloody.
I will add that the actions of the mohammedan “morality” police in various countries are interesting in this light as well.
Jerocat, it’s as simple as ignorance. I suggest you read a book called The Ominous Parallels by Dr. Leonard Peikoff. It’s a philosophical look at how the Nazis were able to come to power. Remember that Germany was not some backward, medieval country. It wasn’t close to being a Saudi Arabia or any of the middle eastern hack countries. It was a highly educated population.
For you philosophy buffs it covers everything from Germany political structure, education system, even its Arts and Entertainment. The soul killing garbage that passes for art in this country was exactly done in Germany. Even the silly hippies of the 60’s, they were in Germany pre and post WW I.(That part shocked me the most)I cannot promote this book enough.
As far as American citizens are concerned, we have become concrete bound, so short sighted on everything. This kind of thinking or rather non-thinking has been trained in into people from grade 1 through graduate school. These candidates will promote the welfare state regularly to the applause of ordinary citizens, despite the fact that their paychecks will be ciphoned to pay for so called “free” health care. People have been trained to be collectivist. They want the government in every nook and cranny of their lives. This means that individual rights will no longer exist. And government has carte blanche to do whatever it wants.(Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot, Stalin, shall I continue?) Maynard, I will try to look for the works of Arthur Koestler. At least he was honest enough to see the errors of his thinking.
I found this book review for the “The Ominous Parallels” on the book’s web site:
“Dr. Peikoff has produced an extraordinarily perceptive thesis. His insights into the parallel philosophical tracks of pre-Nazi Germany and contemporary America are frightening. Everyone concerned with the collectivist trend in today’s world should read this book.
Alan Greenspan,
Chairman of the Federal Reserve”
Thanks SLIMFEMME. That makes two authors including Tammy’s important pick, Arthur Koestler, as soon as I finish Tammy’s “The Death of Right and Wrong.”
I believe strongly in what Adam Smith described as the invisible hand. That each of us working to further our own interest, move society in forward in a positive way. We all have a fear of loss and a desire for gain.
What strikes me odd is that so many socialists think that a few thousand egg heads, with high I.Q.s and lots of degrees, can engineer the society in a beneficial way. These arrogant self important little social planners actually think they can out design and out perform the perfection of millions of us ordinary folk, each deciding for ourselves what direction we wish our lives to take, and working toward our individual goals.