Janus (12 page)
Authors: Arthur Koestler
Art is a school of self-transcendence. So is a voodoo session or a Nazi
rally. But our responses to the various forms of illusion created by art
have undergone a process of sublimation on the road from childhood to
maturity and from the worship of icons to their aesthetic appreciation.
No comparable process of sublimation can be observed in those forms of
behaviour where the urge towards self-transcendence finds its expression
in social and political group-formation. In this respect, the stage on
which the tragedies of history are played is still populated by heroes and
villains, and the vicarious emotions which they arouse are still capable
of turning the peaceful audience into homicidal fanatics. This may serve
as an illustration of the ambiguous role played by the integrative
tendency in man -- which may manifest itself in primitive forms of
identification
, as distinct from mature
integration
. Social
history is dominated by the former, the history of art by the latter.
IV
AD MAJOREM GLORIAM . . .
1
The theoretical considerations outlined in previous chapters enable us
to take a closer look at the human predicament.
From the dawn of civilization, there has never been a shortage of inspired
reformers. Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Chinese sages, Indian
mystics, Christian saints, French humanists, English utilitarians, German
moralists, American pragmatists, Hindu pacifists, have denounced wars and
violence and appealed to man's better nature, without success. As already
suggested, the reason for this failure must be sought in the reformer's
mistaken interpretation of the causes which compelled man to make such
a disaster of his history, prevented him from learning the lessons of the
past, and which now puts his survival in question. The basic fallacy
consists in putting all the blame on man's selfishness, greed and alleged
destructiveness; that is to say, on the
self-assertive
tendency of
the individual. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as both the
historical and psychological evidence indicate.
No historian would deny that the part played by crimes committed for personal
motives is very small compared to the vast populations slaughtered in
unselfish loyalty to a jealous god, king, country, or political system.
The crimes of Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc
wrought by Torquemada. The number of people killed by robbers, highwaymen,
gangsters and other asocial elements is negligible compared to the masses
cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, the righteous cause.
Heretics were tortured and burned alive not in anger but in sorrow,
for the good of their immortal souls. The Russian and Chinese purges
were represented as operations of social hygiene, to prepare mankind for
the golden age of the classless society. The gas chambers and crematoria
worked towards the advent of a different type of millennium. To say it
once more: throughout hnman history, the ravages caused by excesses of
individual self-assertion are quantitatively negligible compared to the
numbers slain
ad majorem gloriam
out of a self-transcending devotion
to a flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction. Man has
always been prepared not only to kill, but also to die for good, bad,
or completely hare-brained causes. What can be a more valid proof for
the reality of the urge towards self-transcendence?
Thus the historical record confronts us with the paradox that the tragedy
of man originates not in his aggressiveness but in his devotion to
transpersonal ideals; not in an excess of individual self-assertiveness
but in a malfunction of the integrative tendencies in our species. I think
it was Pascal who said: man is neither angel nor devil, but when he tries
to act the angel he turns into a devil.
But how did this paradox arise?
2
Let us remember that in the basic polarity underlying all phenomena of
life, the self-assertive tendency of a holon is the dynamic expression
of its 'wholeness', the integrative tendency the expression of its
'partness', i.e., its subordination to a larger whole on the next higher
level of the holarchy. In a well-balanced society both tendencies play
a constructive part in maintaining the equilibrium. Thus a certain amount
of self-assertiveness -- 'rugged individualism', ambition, competitiveness
-- is indispensable in a dynamic society; without it there could be no
social or cultural progress. John Donne's 'holy discontent' is an essential
motivating force in the social reformer, the artist and thinker. Only when
the balance is disturbed for one reason or another does the self-assertive
tendency of the individual manifest its destructive potential and tend to
assert itself to the detriment of society. Most civilizations, primitive
or advanced, have been by and large quite successful in coping with
such contingencies.
However, the vagaries of the
integrative tendency
, which in our view
are mainly responsible for man's predicament, are less obvious and more
complex. One pathogenic factor I have already alluded to: the human infant
is subjected to a longer period of helplessness and total dependence on
the adults who rear it than the young of any other species. This protracted
experience may be at the root of the adult's ready submission to authority,
and his quasi-hypnotic suggestibility by doctrines and ethical commandments
-- his urge to
belong
, to identify himself with a group or its system
of beliefs.
Freud taught that moral conscience -- the super-ego -- is the residue of
identification with the parents, particularly with the father; that parts
of their personalities and moral attitudes are 'introjected' --
quasi-cemented into the growing child's unconscious mental structure.
One does not have to go that far, and accept that the mature adult's moral
conscience is 'nothing but' the product of this psychic transplantation,
to realize nevertheless that it plays an important part in the immature
adult's psychic make-up -- and in our present context we are mainly
concerned with emotionally immature adults, whose integrative tendency,
'the need to belong', manifests itself in infantile or otherwise
aberrant ways.
We can distinguish three overlapping factors in these pathogenic
manifestations of the integrative tendency:
submission
to the authority
of a father-substitute; unqualified
identification
with a social group;
uncritical
acceptance of its belief-system
. All three are reflected
in the gory annals of our history.
The first has, since Freud, become such a commonplace that it needs only
a brief mention. The leader who incorporates the father-image may be a
saint or a demagogue, a sage or a maniac. What qualities make a leader
does not concern us here, but obviously he must appeal to some common
denominators in the masses under his sway, and the commonest of denominators
is infantile submission to authority.
The leader-follower relationship can embrace a whole nation, as in the
case of the Hitler cult; or a small sect of devotees; or be confined
to a duet as in the hypnotic rapport, on the psychotherapist's couch,
or in the Father Confessor's curtained box. The common element is the
act of
surrender
.
When we turn to the second and third factors mentioned above --
the unqualified identification of an individual with a social group
and its system of beliefs -- we again have a wide variety of social
aggregations which can be designated as 'groups', and described in
terms of 'group-mentality' or
Massenpsychologie
. But this branch of
psychology tended to concentrate its attention on extreme forms of group
behaviour such as the outbreaks of mass-hysteria in the Middle Ages, or Le
Bon's classic studies of the behaviour of the heroic and murderous mobs
unleashed by the French Revolution (which Freud and others took as their
text). This tendency to focus attention on the dramatic manifestations of
mass-psychology made them overlook the more general principles underlying
group mentality and its dominant influence on human history, past and
present. For one thing, a person need not be physically present in a
crowd to be affected by the group-mind; emotive identification with
a nation, Church or political movement can be quite effective without
physical contact. One can be a victim of group-fanaticism even in the
privacy of one's bathroom.
Nor does every group need a personal leader or 'father-figure' in whom
authority is vested, as discussed under the previous heading. Religious
and political movements need leaders to get under way; once established
they still benefit from efficient leadership; but the primary need of a
group, the factor which lends it cohesion as a social holon, is a credo,
a shared system of beliefs, and the resulting code of behaviour. This may
be represented by human authority, or by a symbol -- the totem or fetish
which provides a mystic sense of union among the members of the tribe;
by sacred icons as objects of worship; or the regimental flag to which
soldiers in battle were supposed to hang on even at the price of their
lives. The group-mind may be governed by the conviction that the group
represents a Chosen Race whose ancestors made a special covenant with God;
or a Master Race whose forebears were blond demi-gods; or whose Emperors
were descended from the sun. Its credo may be based on the conviction
that observance of certain rules and rites qualifies one for membership
in a privileged elite in after-life; or that manual work qualifies one
for membership in the elite class of history. Critical arguments have
little impact on the group-mind, because identification with a group
always involves a certain sacrifice of the critical faculties of the
individuals which constitute it, and an enhancement of their emotional
potential by a kind of group-resonance or positive feedback.
Let me repeat that in the present theory the term 'group' is not confined
to a crowd assembled in one place, but refers to any social holon,
governed by a set code of rules (e.g., language, traditions, customs,
beliefs, etc.) which defines its corporate identity, lends it cohesion
and a 'social profile'. As an autonomous holon, it has its own pattern
of functioning and is governed by its own code of conduct, which cannot
be 'reduced' to the individual codes which govern the behaviour of its
members when acting as autonomous individuals and not as parts of the
group. The obvious example is the conscript who as an individual is
forbidden to kill, as a disciplined member of his unit is in duty bound
to do so.
Thus it is essential to distinguish between the rules which govern
individual behaviour and those which guide the behaviour of the group
as a whole.*
as a sum of its individual parts; and its activities depend not only on
the interactions of its parts, but also on the group's interactions, as a
whole, with other social holons on a higher level of the hierarchy. These
interactions will again reflect the polarity of the holon's self-assertive
and integrative tendencies, oscillating between competition and/or
cooperation with other groups. In a healthy social holarchy the two
tendencies are in equilibrium; but when tensions arise, this or that
social holon may tend to get over-stimulated and impose upon its rivals
or usurp the role of the whole. History provides a never-ending list of
such tensions, confrontations and conflicts.
Several factors responsible for this chronic disequilibrium have already
been mentioned in earlier pages -- such as the unique range of diversity
in our species with regard to racial characteristics and national
temperament, or the divisive effect of the multiplicity of languages --
which, in their ensemble, have always made
the disruptive forces in
mankind prevail over the cohesive forces on a local or global scale
.
An even more important cause of trouble is that the code of conduct of a
social holon includes not only the rules which govern the behaviour of its
members, but also moral precepts and imperatives with a claim to universal
validity. These imperatives carry a high emotional charge, and the group-mind
tends to react violently to any threat -- real or imaginary -- to its
cherished beliefs.
All that has been said points to the conclusion that in the group-mind
the self-assertive tendencies are more dominant than on the level of the
average individual; and that, by identifying himself with the group,
the individual adopts a code of behaviour different from his personal
code. The individual --
pace
Lorenz -- is not a killer, the group is;
and by identifying with it, the individual is transformed into a killer.
We shall see in a moment that this paradox can be observed not only on
the battlefield or among lynching mobs, but also in austere psychological
laboratories. Its paradoxical nature derives from the fact that the act
of identification with the group is a
self-transcending
act, yet it
reinforces the
self-assertive
tendencies of the group. Identification
with the group is an act of devotion, of loving submission to the
interests of the community, a partial or total surrender of personal
identity and of the self-assertive tendencies of the individual. In our
terminology, he relinquishes his 'wholeness' in favour of his 'partness'
in a larger whole on a higher level of the holarchy. He becomes to some
extent depersonalized, i.e., unself-ish in more than one sense. He may
become indifferent to danger; he feels impelled to perform altruistic,
even heroic actions to the point of self-sacrifice, and at the same
time to behave with ruthless cruelty towards the enemy -- real or
imagined -- of the group. But his brutality is impersonal and unselfish;
it is exercised in the interest, or supposed interest of the whole;
he is prepared not only to kill, but also to die in its name. Thus the
self-assertive behaviour of the group is based on the self-transcending
behaviour of its members; or to put it simply,
rally. But our responses to the various forms of illusion created by art
have undergone a process of sublimation on the road from childhood to
maturity and from the worship of icons to their aesthetic appreciation.
No comparable process of sublimation can be observed in those forms of
behaviour where the urge towards self-transcendence finds its expression
in social and political group-formation. In this respect, the stage on
which the tragedies of history are played is still populated by heroes and
villains, and the vicarious emotions which they arouse are still capable
of turning the peaceful audience into homicidal fanatics. This may serve
as an illustration of the ambiguous role played by the integrative
tendency in man -- which may manifest itself in primitive forms of
identification
, as distinct from mature
integration
. Social
history is dominated by the former, the history of art by the latter.
IV
AD MAJOREM GLORIAM . . .
1
The theoretical considerations outlined in previous chapters enable us
to take a closer look at the human predicament.
From the dawn of civilization, there has never been a shortage of inspired
reformers. Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Chinese sages, Indian
mystics, Christian saints, French humanists, English utilitarians, German
moralists, American pragmatists, Hindu pacifists, have denounced wars and
violence and appealed to man's better nature, without success. As already
suggested, the reason for this failure must be sought in the reformer's
mistaken interpretation of the causes which compelled man to make such
a disaster of his history, prevented him from learning the lessons of the
past, and which now puts his survival in question. The basic fallacy
consists in putting all the blame on man's selfishness, greed and alleged
destructiveness; that is to say, on the
self-assertive
tendency of
the individual. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as both the
historical and psychological evidence indicate.
No historian would deny that the part played by crimes committed for personal
motives is very small compared to the vast populations slaughtered in
unselfish loyalty to a jealous god, king, country, or political system.
The crimes of Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc
wrought by Torquemada. The number of people killed by robbers, highwaymen,
gangsters and other asocial elements is negligible compared to the masses
cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, the righteous cause.
Heretics were tortured and burned alive not in anger but in sorrow,
for the good of their immortal souls. The Russian and Chinese purges
were represented as operations of social hygiene, to prepare mankind for
the golden age of the classless society. The gas chambers and crematoria
worked towards the advent of a different type of millennium. To say it
once more: throughout hnman history, the ravages caused by excesses of
individual self-assertion are quantitatively negligible compared to the
numbers slain
ad majorem gloriam
out of a self-transcending devotion
to a flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction. Man has
always been prepared not only to kill, but also to die for good, bad,
or completely hare-brained causes. What can be a more valid proof for
the reality of the urge towards self-transcendence?
Thus the historical record confronts us with the paradox that the tragedy
of man originates not in his aggressiveness but in his devotion to
transpersonal ideals; not in an excess of individual self-assertiveness
but in a malfunction of the integrative tendencies in our species. I think
it was Pascal who said: man is neither angel nor devil, but when he tries
to act the angel he turns into a devil.
But how did this paradox arise?
2
Let us remember that in the basic polarity underlying all phenomena of
life, the self-assertive tendency of a holon is the dynamic expression
of its 'wholeness', the integrative tendency the expression of its
'partness', i.e., its subordination to a larger whole on the next higher
level of the holarchy. In a well-balanced society both tendencies play
a constructive part in maintaining the equilibrium. Thus a certain amount
of self-assertiveness -- 'rugged individualism', ambition, competitiveness
-- is indispensable in a dynamic society; without it there could be no
social or cultural progress. John Donne's 'holy discontent' is an essential
motivating force in the social reformer, the artist and thinker. Only when
the balance is disturbed for one reason or another does the self-assertive
tendency of the individual manifest its destructive potential and tend to
assert itself to the detriment of society. Most civilizations, primitive
or advanced, have been by and large quite successful in coping with
such contingencies.
However, the vagaries of the
integrative tendency
, which in our view
are mainly responsible for man's predicament, are less obvious and more
complex. One pathogenic factor I have already alluded to: the human infant
is subjected to a longer period of helplessness and total dependence on
the adults who rear it than the young of any other species. This protracted
experience may be at the root of the adult's ready submission to authority,
and his quasi-hypnotic suggestibility by doctrines and ethical commandments
-- his urge to
belong
, to identify himself with a group or its system
of beliefs.
Freud taught that moral conscience -- the super-ego -- is the residue of
identification with the parents, particularly with the father; that parts
of their personalities and moral attitudes are 'introjected' --
quasi-cemented into the growing child's unconscious mental structure.
One does not have to go that far, and accept that the mature adult's moral
conscience is 'nothing but' the product of this psychic transplantation,
to realize nevertheless that it plays an important part in the immature
adult's psychic make-up -- and in our present context we are mainly
concerned with emotionally immature adults, whose integrative tendency,
'the need to belong', manifests itself in infantile or otherwise
aberrant ways.
We can distinguish three overlapping factors in these pathogenic
manifestations of the integrative tendency:
submission
to the authority
of a father-substitute; unqualified
identification
with a social group;
uncritical
acceptance of its belief-system
. All three are reflected
in the gory annals of our history.
The first has, since Freud, become such a commonplace that it needs only
a brief mention. The leader who incorporates the father-image may be a
saint or a demagogue, a sage or a maniac. What qualities make a leader
does not concern us here, but obviously he must appeal to some common
denominators in the masses under his sway, and the commonest of denominators
is infantile submission to authority.
The leader-follower relationship can embrace a whole nation, as in the
case of the Hitler cult; or a small sect of devotees; or be confined
to a duet as in the hypnotic rapport, on the psychotherapist's couch,
or in the Father Confessor's curtained box. The common element is the
act of
surrender
.
When we turn to the second and third factors mentioned above --
the unqualified identification of an individual with a social group
and its system of beliefs -- we again have a wide variety of social
aggregations which can be designated as 'groups', and described in
terms of 'group-mentality' or
Massenpsychologie
. But this branch of
psychology tended to concentrate its attention on extreme forms of group
behaviour such as the outbreaks of mass-hysteria in the Middle Ages, or Le
Bon's classic studies of the behaviour of the heroic and murderous mobs
unleashed by the French Revolution (which Freud and others took as their
text). This tendency to focus attention on the dramatic manifestations of
mass-psychology made them overlook the more general principles underlying
group mentality and its dominant influence on human history, past and
present. For one thing, a person need not be physically present in a
crowd to be affected by the group-mind; emotive identification with
a nation, Church or political movement can be quite effective without
physical contact. One can be a victim of group-fanaticism even in the
privacy of one's bathroom.
Nor does every group need a personal leader or 'father-figure' in whom
authority is vested, as discussed under the previous heading. Religious
and political movements need leaders to get under way; once established
they still benefit from efficient leadership; but the primary need of a
group, the factor which lends it cohesion as a social holon, is a credo,
a shared system of beliefs, and the resulting code of behaviour. This may
be represented by human authority, or by a symbol -- the totem or fetish
which provides a mystic sense of union among the members of the tribe;
by sacred icons as objects of worship; or the regimental flag to which
soldiers in battle were supposed to hang on even at the price of their
lives. The group-mind may be governed by the conviction that the group
represents a Chosen Race whose ancestors made a special covenant with God;
or a Master Race whose forebears were blond demi-gods; or whose Emperors
were descended from the sun. Its credo may be based on the conviction
that observance of certain rules and rites qualifies one for membership
in a privileged elite in after-life; or that manual work qualifies one
for membership in the elite class of history. Critical arguments have
little impact on the group-mind, because identification with a group
always involves a certain sacrifice of the critical faculties of the
individuals which constitute it, and an enhancement of their emotional
potential by a kind of group-resonance or positive feedback.
Let me repeat that in the present theory the term 'group' is not confined
to a crowd assembled in one place, but refers to any social holon,
governed by a set code of rules (e.g., language, traditions, customs,
beliefs, etc.) which defines its corporate identity, lends it cohesion
and a 'social profile'. As an autonomous holon, it has its own pattern
of functioning and is governed by its own code of conduct, which cannot
be 'reduced' to the individual codes which govern the behaviour of its
members when acting as autonomous individuals and not as parts of the
group. The obvious example is the conscript who as an individual is
forbidden to kill, as a disciplined member of his unit is in duty bound
to do so.
Thus it is essential to distinguish between the rules which govern
individual behaviour and those which guide the behaviour of the group
as a whole.*
* In a paper on 'The Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct'The group, then, is to be regarded as a quasi-autonomous holon, not simply
Professor F. A. von Hayek defines as his aim 'to distinguish between
the systems of rules of conduct which governs the behaviour of the
individual members of a group (or of the elements of any order)
and the order or pattern of actions which results from this for the
group as a whole . . . That [they] are not the same thing should
be obvious as soon as it is stated, although the two are in fact
frequently confused.' [1]
as a sum of its individual parts; and its activities depend not only on
the interactions of its parts, but also on the group's interactions, as a
whole, with other social holons on a higher level of the hierarchy. These
interactions will again reflect the polarity of the holon's self-assertive
and integrative tendencies, oscillating between competition and/or
cooperation with other groups. In a healthy social holarchy the two
tendencies are in equilibrium; but when tensions arise, this or that
social holon may tend to get over-stimulated and impose upon its rivals
or usurp the role of the whole. History provides a never-ending list of
such tensions, confrontations and conflicts.
Several factors responsible for this chronic disequilibrium have already
been mentioned in earlier pages -- such as the unique range of diversity
in our species with regard to racial characteristics and national
temperament, or the divisive effect of the multiplicity of languages --
which, in their ensemble, have always made
the disruptive forces in
mankind prevail over the cohesive forces on a local or global scale
.
An even more important cause of trouble is that the code of conduct of a
social holon includes not only the rules which govern the behaviour of its
members, but also moral precepts and imperatives with a claim to universal
validity. These imperatives carry a high emotional charge, and the group-mind
tends to react violently to any threat -- real or imaginary -- to its
cherished beliefs.
All that has been said points to the conclusion that in the group-mind
the self-assertive tendencies are more dominant than on the level of the
average individual; and that, by identifying himself with the group,
the individual adopts a code of behaviour different from his personal
code. The individual --
pace
Lorenz -- is not a killer, the group is;
and by identifying with it, the individual is transformed into a killer.
We shall see in a moment that this paradox can be observed not only on
the battlefield or among lynching mobs, but also in austere psychological
laboratories. Its paradoxical nature derives from the fact that the act
of identification with the group is a
self-transcending
act, yet it
reinforces the
self-assertive
tendencies of the group. Identification
with the group is an act of devotion, of loving submission to the
interests of the community, a partial or total surrender of personal
identity and of the self-assertive tendencies of the individual. In our
terminology, he relinquishes his 'wholeness' in favour of his 'partness'
in a larger whole on a higher level of the holarchy. He becomes to some
extent depersonalized, i.e., unself-ish in more than one sense. He may
become indifferent to danger; he feels impelled to perform altruistic,
even heroic actions to the point of self-sacrifice, and at the same
time to behave with ruthless cruelty towards the enemy -- real or
imagined -- of the group. But his brutality is impersonal and unselfish;
it is exercised in the interest, or supposed interest of the whole;
he is prepared not only to kill, but also to die in its name. Thus the
self-assertive behaviour of the group is based on the self-transcending
behaviour of its members; or to put it simply,
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