Conspiratorial Psychology

[causticus]

Well, this random internet comment explains a lot, doesn't it?

The execution of Charles I was at the hands of the same Calvinist/Puritan/Manichean dichotomy of good/evil that runs through American history and motivates elites and populace alike. It is so ingrained in the American psyche, if we can generalize here, that any attempt to analyze a situation and find root causes, such as group narcissism or profit motive, is overlooked if it doesn’t yield evil geniuses with the conscious intent to do harm. The dichotomy is alive and well in group narcissism, for which innocence and purity require an absolute, metaphysical evil beseiging them--unified and conspiring against them.

It seems that we see this fundamental mentality shows up on all sides/stripes of the political spectrum here in the US. I'd say it's rooted in the human condition, but this tendency was greatly amplified by the spread and mass adoption of dualistic religions. Get rid of the big centralizing institution (the Catholic Church) that mostly kept these behaviors under wraps, and all of a sudden watch the phenomena of "holiness spiraling" and blaming all misfortune on a personified "big bad" become facts of everyday life.

Comments

[jprussell]

Hmm, interesting. Another facet of the whole "the Liberal tradition is secularized puritanism" thread that seems to explain so much about American political history.

Your comment about the Catholic Church keeping this stuff somewhat contained got me thinking about an idea I've noodled around with on the role of confession. There's the obvious (well, these days) "therapeutic" benefit of getting the things you feel guilty about off your chest, but I've also thought about the fact that a) most parish priests lived within fairly small communities, b) everyone in those communities confessed their sins to them, and c) those priests then offered penance, counseling, and sermons. Take all of this together, and the priest would actually have a really well-calibrated idea of normal human sinfulness. If every man in town has confessed to impure thoughts about the local hot chick, he'd likely give fairly mild penances, but also put more emphasis on counseling and sermons to help the guys with whatever relationships they were in. All of this would create at least some feedback where the folks in the community would have a better idea of what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Take away confession, and it's just you alone with your gnawing doubts that all of your worst thoughts and fears are being actualized by somebody out there. Add this to the isolation and alienation of larger communities, and it starts going into overdrive.

[causticus]

haha, take away confession and all of a sudden you're one of "the good people" so as long as you belong to the right congregation. No more Jordan Peterson priest in every parish to confess your inner evil to. Instead, what evil lurks in the hearts of men, manifests outward and collectively. I do wonder how many dinky little "Pastor Bob" type churches become nasty egregore factories.

I suppose this is all a good lesson on the concept of Chesterton's Fences. In this case, removing the ritual protocols that were in place for many centuries tends to unleash one form or another of progressive madness. Which brings up another theory of mine; that Progressivism is baked into all Magian religions. The reason why these religions tend to go in a very totalitarian-theocratic direction once they become established and hegemonic is to contain those innate progressive tendencies due to the linear conception of time and history (and "end of history" eschatology) that is within the very nucleus of this civilizational worldview. The "Prophetic Revelation -to- Apocalyptic Communism" pipeline is so very Magian. Too bad we're stuck dealing with this right now, though with a strong Faustian technocratic flavor to our version of this.

In light of all this madness, the old Indo-European worldview of cyclical time seems so comforting and serene right about now.

[jprussell]

Whoops, composed this a few days ago and thought I had posted it:

Hmm, that's interesting. I think you might be onto something. I have to wonder as well whether the Faustian adoption of Magian religion might be especially madness-prone. The Magian worldview sees all of time (creation to apocalypse) as "contained", and outside of it is "the real thing". The Faustian obsession with infinite extension takes the moral-flavored linearity of the Magian religions and once it has discarded the ritual and the codes of law and other restraints, all that's left is an unshakeable moral conviction that the direction you're going is right. Scary enough as is, but even worse when the civilization's age of reason takes all of that pure, undiluted righteousness and confines it to a secular worldview, where heaven (or hell) will be found in the material world. Witness the 20th century.

As for the comfort in cyclical time, I'm agreeing with you with my whole mind as hard as I can right now.