The Psychology of Totalitarianism - #50

Isn’t it dangerous to give up rationality as an ideal? This question prompts me to a small reflection, which only due to the seriousness of its subject is not banal.

35,000 children die of hunger every day.

Why doesn’t this upset the masses, while a virus does?

In our rational view of humanity, why don’t we save these young, hungering lives at a much lower cost than those threatened by the coronavirus, without the risk of losing civil liberties, and without the dangers associated with experimental medical interventions? No one panics for a child that is dying on the other side of the world.

This is the inconvenient truth.

The rationality and humanism of the Enlightenment are in many ways a masquerade and a fig leaf. Strip man of this masquerade and you look into the eyes of irrationality; look behind the fig leaf of rationality and you will find the ancient human vices. A rational worldview does not prevent us from giving free rein to irrational thinking. On the contrary, it prevents us from recognizing irrationality. And as such, irrationality takes on grotesque proportions.

On the other hand, one who knows the limits of his intellect usually becomes less arrogant and more humane, more capable of allowing the other to be different.

When his intellect stops shouting, he is able to hear the things of life murmur their own story. He realizes that he is also entitled to his own story. The awareness that no logic is absolute is the prerequisite for mental freedom. The gap in the logic literally opens up a space for our own style and for the desire to create. “I became healthy while creating”— this is how Goethe described his medicine against the ailment that is life.

Perhaps, it might also work against viruses?

In any case, this remedy ensures that we can honor the right to free speech and the right to self-determination without feeling threatened by one another. It encompasses the potential to mitigate anxiety, discomfort, frustration, and aggression, without the need for an enemy.

This is the point at which we no longer need to lose ourselves in the crowd to experience meaning and connectedness, this is the point where the winter of totalitarianism gives way to a new spring of life.

YouTube - https://youtu.be/I-Y4mza2rlA & https://youtu.be/zzDVguEy0O0

Spotify - https://anchor.fm/jsk/episodes/The-Psychology-of-Totalitarianism---50-e1lugnp

Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jonathan-kogan-show/id1519798213?i=1000574594877

References - https://amazon.com/the-psychology-of-totalitarianism

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