On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Dace wrote:
> Milgram, the authority figure, instructed people to subject an individual
> with what they believed to be tormenting and even lethal pain. There was no
> such authority figure at MyLai. No one told the soldiers to massacre
> unarmed civilians. The instructions given by the senior officers to the
> junior officers, including Lt. Calley, were ambiguous. It would be as if
Whoa. Read Yoshie's post on this or any reasonably accurate historical account. The orders were far from ambiguous.
> Individuals will sacrifice their ability to function morally (what Ken M.
> refers to as "psychosis") due to several factors, including rationalization,
> authority, and group-think. All of these are involved in typical instances
> of social evil. Take, for instance, the bombing of Yugoslavia last spring.
> Anyone who saw the news on TV or read the papers was aware that the
> large-scale ethnic cleansing of Kosovo occurred after the bombing began.
> Yet, within a week or two, the corporate press and the White House and NATO
> were "informing" us that the bombing was a *response* to the large-scale
> ethnic cleansing. The only way people could believe this obvious lie is if
> they wanted to. Americans are pre-disposed to believe that we are virtuous,
> and the other guy is evil. This is narcissistic. Narcissistic Personality
> Disorder involves the ability to recreate "reality" according to one's own
> wishes and to maintain that "reality" in the face of exposure to the facts.
I just don't understand what's to be gained from using these psychological terms. Putting a psychological label on this process is not much of an explanation. I'm much more interested in understanding the social processes by which the media tends to provide support for certain political positions. Calling the result "narcissistic" does not help at all in providing a thoughtful socioeconomic analysis of the mass media and public opinion. It's just name calling.
>
> I'm not trying to obscure the role of power. I'm trying to fully understand
> social evil. I want to understand it from both the political and the
> psychological sides. It's very useful to recognize that we're up against a
> wall of insanity here. They're not just a little bit wrong-- they're
> completely out-of-their-fucking-minds wrong. I think you're more likely to
> argue aggressively when you come in to a debate with that attitude. You're
> less likely to start giving ground, as liberals are wont to do. (And of
> course it's equally important to be aware of when that's not the case, and
> we do have something to learn from our opponents.)
>
Again, I think the only reason anyone would use this kind of mental disorder discourse is because it has rhetorical punch in an individualistic society. I don't see any wall of insanity here; I see an economic and political system that systematically provides resources to a small elite at the expense of the majority. I think it sucks, sure. But to call the people who support the status quo out of their fucking minds is exactly the kind of individualistic thinking that perpetuates the status quo. If you haven't already guessed, I'm with Foucault on this: the psy-sciences are one of the pillars of modern power relations, they are not the means to our salvation. The further we get from using this psycho-discourse, the better off we'll be.
Miles