Doris Lessing - Group Minds
People living in the west, in societies that we describe as Western, or as the free world, may be educated in many different ways, but they will all emerge with an idea about themselves that goes something like this: I am a citizen of a free society, and that means I am an individual, making individual choices. My mind is my own, my opinions are chosen by me, I am free to do as I will, and at the worst the pressures on me are economic, that is to say I may be too poor to do as I want.
This set of ideas may sound something like a caricature, but it is not so far off how we see ourselves. It is a portrait that may not have been acquired consciously, but is part of a general atmosphere or set of assumptions that influence our ideas about ourselves. People in the West therefore may go through their entire lives never thinking to analyze this very flattering picture, and as a result are helpless against all kinds of pressures on them to conform in many kinds of ways.
The fact is that we all live our lives in groups-the family, work groups, social, religious and political groups. Very few people indeed are happy as solitaries, and they tend to be seen by their neighbours as peculiar or selfish or worse. Most people cannot stand being alone for long. They are always seeking groups to belong to, and if one group dissolves, they look for another. We are group animals still, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what is dangerous is not the belonging to a group, or groups, but not understanding the social laws that govern groups and govern us.
When we're in a group, we tend to think as that group does: we may even have joined the group to find "like-minded" people. But we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group. It is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissident opinion, as a member of a group.
It seems to me that this is something we have all experienced-something we take for granted, may never have thought about. But a great deal of experiment has gone on among psychologists and sociologists on this very theme. If I describe an experiment or two, then anyone listening who may be a sociologist or psychologist will groan, oh God not again- for they will have heard of these classic experiments far too often. My guess is that the rest of the people will never have heard of these experiments, never have had
these ideas presented to them. If my guess is true, then it aptly illustrates my general thesis, and the general idea behind these essays, that we (the human race) are now in possession of a great deal of hard information about ourselves, but we do not use it to improve our institutions and therefore our lives.
A typical test or experiment, on this theme goes like this. A group of people are taken into the researcher's confidence. A minority of one or two are left in the dark. Some situation demanding measurement or assessment is chosen. For instance, comparing lengths of wood that differ only a little from each other, but enough to be perceptible, or shapes that are almost the same size. The majority in the group-according to instruction-will assert stubbornly that these two shapes or lengths are the same length, or size, while the solitary individual, or the couple, who have not been so instructed will assert that the pieces of wood or whatever are different. But the majority will continue to insist speaking metaphorically-that black is white, and after a period of exasperation, irritation, even anger, certainly incomprehension, the minority will fall into line. Not always, but nearly always. There are indeed glorious individualists who stubbornly insist on telling the truth as they see it, but most give in to the majority opinion, obey the atmosphere. When put as baldly, as unflatteringly, as this, reactions tend to be incredulous: "I certainly wouldn't give in, I speak my mind. ..." But would you? People who have experienced a lot of groups, who perhaps have observed their own behaviour, may agree that the hardest thing in the world is to stand out against one's group, a group of one's peers. Many agree that among our most shameful memories is this, how often we said black was white because other people were saying it.
In other words, we know that this is true of human behaviour, but how do we know it? It is one thing to admit it in a vague uncomfortable sort of way (which probably includes the hope that one will never again be in such a testing situation) but quite another to make that cool step into a kind of objectivity, where one may say, "Right, if that's what human beings are like, myself included, then let's admit it, examine and organize our attitudes accordingly."
This mechanism, of obedience to the group, does not only mean obedience or submission to a small group, or one that is sharply determined, like a religion or political party. It means, too, conforming to those large, vague, ill-defined collections of people who may never think of themselves as having a collective mind because they are aware of differences of opinion-but which, to people from outside, from another culture, seem very minor. The underlying assumptions and assertions that govern the group are never discussed, never challenged, probably never noticed, the main one being precisely this: that it is a group mind, intensely resistant to change, equipped with sacred assumptions about which there can be no discussion.
Since my field is literature, it is there I most easily find my examples. I live in London, and the literary community there would not think of itself as a collective mind, to put it mildly, but that is how I think of it. A few mechanisms are taken for granted enough to be quoted and expected. For instance, what is called "the ten-year rule," which is that usually when a writer dies, her or his work falls out of favour, or from notice, and then comes back again. It is one thing to think vaguely that this is likely to happen, but is it useful?
Does it have to happen? Another very noticeable mechanism is the way a writer may fall out of favour for many years-while still alive, be hardly noticed-then suddenly be noticed and praised. An example is Jean Rhys, who lived for many years in the country. She was never mentioned, she might very well have been dead, and most people thought she was. She was in desperate need of friendship and help and did not get it for a long time. Then, due to the efforts of a perspicacious publisher, she finished Wide Sargasso Sea, and at once as it were became visible again. But-and this is my point-all her previous books, which had been unmentioned and unhonoured, were suddenly remembered and praised. Why were they not praised at all during that long period of neglect? Well, because the collective mind works like that-it is follow-my-leader, people all saying the same thing at the same time.
One can say of course that this is only "the way of the world." But does it have to be? If it does have to be, then at least we could expect it, understand it, and make allowances for it. Perhaps if it is a mechanism that is known to be one then it might be easier for reviewers to be braver and less like sheep in their pronouncements. Do they have to be so afraid of peer group pressure? Do they really not see how they repeat what each other says?
One may watch how an idea or an opinion, even a phrase, springs up and is repeated in a hundred reviews, criticisms, conversations-and then vanishes. But meanwhile each individual who has bravely repeated this opinion or phrase has been the victim of a compulsion to be like everyone else, and that has never been analyzed, or not by themselves. Though people outside can easily see it.
This is of course the mechanism that journalists rely on when they visit a country. They know if they interview a small sample of a certain kind, or group, or class of people, these two or three citizens will represent all the others, since at any given time, all the people of any group or class or kind will be saying the same things, in the same words.
My experience as Jane Somers illustrates these and many other points. Unfortunately there isn't time here to tell the story properly. I wrote two books under another name, Jane Somers, which were submitted to publishers as if by an unknown author. I did this out of curiosity and to highlight certain aspects of the publishing machine. Also, the mechanisms that govern reviewing. The first, The Diary of a Good Neighbour, was turned down by my two main publishers. It was accepted by a third and also by three European publishers. The book was deliberately sent to all the people who regard themselves as experts of my work and they didn't recognize me. Eventually, It was reviewed, as most new novels are, briefly and often patronizingly, and would have vanished forever leaving behind a few fan letters. Because Jane Somers did get fan letters from Britain and the United States, the few people in on the secret were amazed that no
one guessed. Then I wrote the second, called If the Old Could, and still no one guessed. Now people keep saying to me, "How is it possible that no one guessed? I would have guessed at once." Well, perhaps. And perhaps we're all more dependent on brand names and on packaging than we'd like to think. Just before I came clean, I was asked by an interviewer in the States what I thought would happen. I said that the British literary establishment would be angry and say the books were no good, but that everyone else would be delighted. And this is exactly what happened. I got lots of congratulatory letters from writers and from readers who had enjoyed the joke-and very sour and bitchy reviews. However, in France and in Scandinavia the books came out as The Diaries of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing. I have seldom had as good reviews as I did in France and in Scandinavia for the Jane Somers books. Of course, one could conclude that the reviewers in France and Scandinavia have no taste but that the British reviewers have! It has all been very entertaining but it has also left me feeling sad and embarrassed for my profession. Does everything always have to be so predictable? Do people really have to be such sheep?
Of course, there are original minds, people who do take their own line, who do not fall victim to the need to say, or do, what everyone else does. But they are few. Very few. On them depends the health, the vitality of all our institutions, not only literature, from which I have been drawing my examples.
It has been noticed that there is this 10 per cent of the population, who can be called natural leaders, who do follow their own minds into decisions and choices. It has been noted to the extent that this fact has been incorporated into instructions for people who run prisons, concentration camps, prisoner of war camps: remove the 10 per cent, and your prisoners will become spineless and conforming.
Of course, we are back here with the notion of elitism, which is so unfashionable, so unlikeable to the extent that in large areas of politics, even education, the idea that some people may be naturally better equipped than others is resisted. But I will return to the subject of elitism later. Meanwhile, we may note that we all rely on, and we respect, this idea of the lonesome individualist who overturns conformity. It is the recurrent subject of archetypal American films-Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, for instance. Take the way
an attitude towards a certain writer or a book will be held by everyone, everyone saying the same things, whether for praise or for blame, until opinion shifts: this can be part of some wider social shift. Let us take the Women's Movement, as an example. There is a lively, courageous publishing house called Virago, run by women. A great many women writers who have been ignored or not taken seriously have been re-evaluated by them. But sometimes the shift is because one person stands out against the prevailing tide of opinion, and the others fall into line behind him, or her, and the new attitude then becomes general.
This mechanism is of course used all the time by publishers. When a new writer, a new novel, has to be launched, the publisher will look for an established writer to praise it. Because one "name" says it is good, the literary editors take notice and the book is launched. It is easy to see this bit of machinery at work in oneself: if someone one respects says such and such a thing is good, when you think it isn't, it is hard to differ. If several people say it is good, then it is correspondingly harder.
At a time when one set of attitudes is in the process of changing to another, it is easy to see the hedging-your-bets mechanism. A reviewer will write a piece nicely balanced between one possibility and another. A light, knowing, urbane tone often goes with this. This particular tone is used a great deal on radio and television, when doubtful subjects are under discussion. For example, when it was believed that it was impossible for us to put men on the moon, which is what the Astronomer Royal said a few years before
it was done. This light, mocking, dismissive tone divorces the speaker from the subject: he or she addresses the listener, the viewer, as if it were over the head of the stupid people who believe that we could put men on the moon, or that there may be monsters in Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, or that….but fill in your own pet possibility .
Once we have learned to see this mechanism in operation, it can be seen how little of life is free of it. Nearly all the pressures from outside are in terms of group beliefs, group needs, national needs, patriotism and the demands of local loyalties, such as to your city and local groups of all kinds. But more subtle and more demanding-more dangerous-are the pressures from inside, which demand that you should conform, and it is these that are the hardest to watch and to control.
Many years ago I visited the Soviet Union, during one of their periods of particularly severe literary censorship. The groups of writers we met was saying that there was no need for their works to be censored, because they had developed what they called "inner censorship." That they said this with pride shocked us Westerners. What was shocking was that they were so naive about it, cut off as they are from information about psychological and sociological development. This "inner censorship" is what the psychologists call internalizing an exterior pressure-such as a parent-and what happens is that a previously resisted and disliked attitude becomes your own. This happens all the time, and it is often not easy for the victims themselves to know it.
There are other experiments done by psychologists and sociologists that underline that body of experience to which we give the folk name 'human nature.' They are recent; that is to say, done in the last twenty or thirty years. There have been some pioneering and key experiments that have given birth to many others along the same lines-as I said before, over-familiar to the professionals, unfamiliar to most people.
One is known as the Milgram experiment. I have chosen it precisely because it was and is controversial, because it was so much debated, because all the professionals in the field probably groan at the very sound of it. Yet, most ordinary people have never heard of it. If they did know about it, were familiar with the ideas behind it, then indeed we'd be getting somewhere. The Milgram experiment was prompted by curiosity into how it is that ordinary decent, kindly people, like you and me, will do abominable things when ordered to do them-like the innumerable officials under the Nazis who claimed as an excuse that they were "only obeying orders."
The researcher put into one room people chosen at random who were told that they were taking part in an experiment. A screen divided the room in such a way that they could hear but not see into the other part. In this second part volunteers sat apparently wired up to a machine that administered electric shocks of increasing severity up to the point of death, like the electric chair. This machine indicated to them how they had to respond to the shocks-with grunts, then groans, then screams, then pleas that the experiment should terminate. The person in the first half of the room believed the person in the second half was in fact connected to the machine. He was told that his or her job was to administer increasingly severe shocks according to the instructions of the experimenter and to ignore the cries of pain and pleas from the other side of the screen. Sixty-two percent of the people tested continued to administer shocks up to the 450 volts level. At the 285 volt level the guinea pig had given an agonized scream and become silent. The people administering what they believed were at the best extremely painful doses of electricity were under great stress, but went on doing it. Afterwards most couldn't believe they were capable of such behaviour. Some said, "Well I was only carrying out instructions." This experiment, like the many others along the same lines, offers us the information that a majority of people, regardless of whether they are black or white, male or female, old or young, rich or poor, will carry out orders, no matter how savage and brutal the orders are.
This obedience to authority, in short, is not a property of the Germans under the Nazis, but a part of general human behaviour. People who have been in a political movement at times of extreme tension, people who remember how they were at school, will know this anyway. ..but it is one thing carrying a burden of knowledge around, half conscious of it, perhaps ashamed of it, hoping it will go away if you don't look too hard, and another saying openly and calmly and sensibly, "Right. This is what we must expect under this
and that set of conditions."
Can we imagine this being taught in school, imagine it being taught to children. "If you are in this or that type of situation, you will find yourself, if you are not careful, behaving like a brute and a savage if you are ordered to do it. Watch out for these situations. You must be on your guard against your own most primitive reactions and instincts."
Another range of experiments is concerned with how children learn best in school. Some results go flat against some of most cherished current assumptions such as, for instance, that they learn best not when "interested" or "stimulated" but when they are bored. But putting that aside-it is known that children learn best from teachers who expect them to learn well. And most will do badly if not much is expected of them. Now, we know that in classes of mixed boys and girls, most teachers will-quite unconsciously-spend more
time on the boys than on the girls, expect much more in scope from the boys, will consistently underestimate the girls. In mixed classes, white teachers will-again quite unconsciously-denigrate the non-white children, expect less from them, spend less time on them. These facts are known-but where are they incorporated, where are they used in schools? In what town is it said to teachers something like this, "As teachers you must become aware of this, that attention is one of your most powerful teaching aids. Attention-the word we give to a certain quality of respect, an alert and heedful interest in a person-is what will feed and nourish your pupils." (To which of course I can already hear the response: "But what would you do if you had thirty children in your class, how much attention could you give to each?") Yes I know, but if these are the facts, if attention is so important, then at some point the people who allot the money for schools and for training programmes must, quite simply, put it to themselves like this: children flourish if they are given attention-and their teachers' expectations are that they will succeed. Therefore we must payout enough money to the educators so that enough attention may be provided.
Another range of experiments was carried out extensively in the United States, and for all I know, in Canada too. For instance, a team of doctors cause themselves to be admitted as patients into a mental hospital, unknown to the staff. At once they start exhibiting the symptoms expected of mentally ill people, and start behaving within the range of behaviour described as typical of mentally ill people. The hospital doctors all, without exception, say they are ill, and classify them in various ways according to the symptoms
described by them. It is not the psychiatrists or the nurses who see that these so-called ill people are quite normal; it is the other patients who see it. They aren't taken in; it is they who can see the truth. It is only with great difficulty that these well people convince the staff that they are well, and obtain their release from hospital.
Again: a group of ordinary citizens, researchers, cause themselves to be taken into prison, some as if they were ordinary prisoners, a few in the position of warders. Immediately both groups start behaving appropriately: those as warders begin behaving as if they were real warders, with authority, badly treating the prisoners, who for their part, show typical prison behaviour, become paranoid, suspicious, and so forth. Those in the role of warders confessed afterwards they could not prevent themselves enjoying the position of power, enjoying the sensation of controlling the weak. The so-called prisoners could not believe, once they were out, that they had in fact behaved as they had done.
But suppose this kind of thing were taught in schools? Let us just suppose it, for a moment.….But at once the nub of the problem is laid bare. Imagine us saying to children: "In the last fifty or so years, the human race has become aware of a great deal of information about its mechanisms; how it behaves, how it must behave under certain circumstances. If this is to be useful, you must learn to contemplate these roles calmly, dispassionately, disinterestedly, without emotion. It is information that will set people free from blind loyalties, obedience to slogans, rhetoric, leaders, group emotions." Well, there it is.
What government, anywhere in the world, will happily envisage its subjects learning to free themselves from governmental and state rhetoric and pressures? Passionate loyalty and subjection to group pressure is what every state relies on. Some, of course, more than others. Khomeini's Iran, and the extreme Islamic sects, the Communist countries, are at one end of the scale. Countries like Norway, whose national day is celebrated by groups of children in fancy dress carrying flowers, singing and dancing, with not a tank or a gun in sight, are at the other. It is interesting to speculate: what country, what nation, when, and where, would have undertaken a programme to teach its children to be people to resist rhetoric, to examine the mechanisms that govern them? I can think of only one- America in that heady period of the Gettysburg Address. And that time could not have survived the Civil War, for when war starts, countries cannot afford disinterested examination of their behaviour. When a war starts, nations go mad-and have to go mad, in order to survive. When I look back at the Second World War, I see something I didn't more than dimly suspect at the time. It was that everyone was crazy. Even people not in the immediate arena of war. I am not talking of the aptitudes for killing, for destruction, which soldiers are taught as part of their training, but a kind of atmosphere, the invisible poison, which spreads everywhere. And then people everywhere begin behaving as they never could in peace-time. Afterwards we look back, amazed. Did I really do that? Believe that? Fall for that bit of propaganda? Think that all our enemies were evil? That all our own nation's acts were good? How could I have tolerated that state of mind, day after day, month after month-perpetually stimulated, perpetually whipped up into emotions that my mind was meanwhile quietly and desperately protesting against? No, I cannot imagine any nation-or not for long-teaching its citizens to become individuals able to resist group pressures.
And no political party, either. I know a lot of people who are Socialists of various kinds, and I try this subject out on them, saying: all governments these days use social psychologists, experts on crowd behaviour, and mob behaviour, to advise them. Elections are stage-managed, public issues presented according to the rules of mass psychology. The military uses this information. Interrogators, secret services and the police use it. Yet these issues are never even discussed, as far as I am aware, by those parties and groups who claim to represent the people.
On one hand there are governments who manipulate, using expert knowledge and skills, on the other hand people who talk about democracy, freedom, liberty and all the rest of it, as if these values are created and maintained by simply talking about them, by repeating them often enough. How is it that so-called democratic movements don't make a point of instructing their members in the laws of crowd psychology, group psychology? When I ask this, the response is always an uncomfortable, squeamish reluctance, as if the whole subject is really in very bad taste, unpleasant, irrelevant. As if it will all just go away if it is ignored.
So at the moment, if we look around the world, the paradox is that we may see this new information being eagerly studied by governments, the possessors and users of power studied and put into effect. But the people who say they oppose tyranny literally don't want to know.
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Q What sort of response have you had to The
Good Terrorist?
Of all the books I’ve ever written, the letters I got afterwards were the most fascinating. I got letters from a lot of people who had been a part of such groups in various countries, but I think perhaps the most interesting thing was when I went to Rome. I met a woman whose husband had been killed the year before by the latest wave of terrorists. In order to cope with her grief she had taken to visiting the first wave of terrorists in prisons. What she told me was so fascinating that I’m thinking about it ‘til this day. She said they were all educated people like you or me, mostly rather pleasant, likeable people. They had committed unspeakable crimes – all of them. The thing that very much interested me was that all of them now got over this and were full of remorse, saying things like “It was as if we had been taken over by something; it was like being in a sailing ship and being driven full speed ahead” – this kind of metaphor kept coming up. They have all more or less recovered from what they regarded as a madness and are busily writing their memoirs, learning languages, and so forth, in prison. Now this raises many questions that we never even think about : we never ask what happens when people get taken over like this. What actually happens? What’s going on?
Another thing she said that really interested me was
the terrorists who’d committed the worst crimes and were full of guilt were in
100 times better psychological state than the group who said, “It’s not fair. I
was just standing by and didn’t mean to shoot the gun”. This brings you to the
ironical thought , Is it better to have been a real criminal than someone who is just assisting? The questions
that arise from all this are endless, in fact. (From Doris Lessing – Conversations
..p175)
Q You are very
hard on words, really.
You forget my
history. I have had a lot to do with politics, and there’s a point at which you
feel that if you hear one more speech you’re just going to vomit. And it’s the
truth : you suddenly cannot stand another rhetorical speech. And you begin to
hear nothing but...You know, any political speech can be reduced to nonsense in
about three sentences. They always take off into this garbage. I think that
children ought to be taught how to examine rhetoric to insulate them from it.
(From Doris Lessing – Conversations ..p170)
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From http://www.dorislessing.org/boston.html
Dream Walkers - Idries Shah
An Ancient Way to New Freedom - Doris Lessing
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How Can We Understand Their Hatred?
by Elie Wiesel
There is divine beauty in learning,
just as there is human beauty in tolerance. —Elie Wiesel
Even if only one free individual is left,
he is proof that the dictator is powerless against freedom.
But a free man is never alone; the dictator is alone.
The free man is the one who, even in prison,
gives to the other prisoners
their thirst for, their memory of, freedom.—Elie Wiesel
Fanaticism today is not a nice word; it carries an unpleasant connotation. But in ancient times, fanatics enjoyed a more favorable reaction from the public. They were linked to religion and, more specifically, to religious experience. In the Bible, Pinhas was praised for slaying a sinner. The Prophet Elijah was admired as an extreme opponent of the wicked Queen Jezebel. Later, in Islam, fana (meaning the annihilation of the will) described the Sufi’s desire to attain ecstasy in his union with the divine.
Today, in our modern language, fanaticism refers to excessive behavior, uncritical political opinions, ethnic zeal and religious bigotry. How did this come to be?
Previous centuries suffered from tribal and religious wars and from national extremism, but our last century was ravaged mainly by ideological and secular hatred. Nazism and communism moved fanaticism to unprecedented dimensions—dimensions future historians may term as absolute. Stalin used Terror just as Hitler used Death to oppress tens of millions of people: Never have man-made ideologies introduced so much evil into society; never have they given Death so much power.
Early in my own life, I experienced the consequences of fanaticism. On Sept. 11, like so many others throughout the world, I saw its terrible consequences again. Glued for days to the television, I witnessed unthinkable acts of terror. How, I asked myself, after the last century’s horrors, could fanaticism still hold sway?
On reflection, I believe that fanaticism appeals to people for a variety of reasons. But on the deepest level, fanaticism is seductive because it makes the fanatic feel less alone. The fanatic fails to understand that the tragedy of man is that, in essential matters, we are each condemned to be alone—we can never break out of the “self.” How does one cease being one’s own jailer? By becoming each other’s prisoner. The fanatic thinks he can tear down the walls of his cell by joining other fanatics. No need to think—the Party does the thinking for him, and the deciding for him.
The fanatic is stubborn, obstinate, dogmatic: Everything for him is black or white, curse or blessing, friend or foe—and nothing in between. He has no taste for or interest in nuances. Does he seek clarity? Driven by irrational impulses, he wants everything to be visible and necessarily clear.
The fanatic simplifies matters: He is immune to doubt and to hesitation. Intellectual exercise is distasteful, and the art and beauty of dialogue alien to him. Other people’s ideas or theories are of no use to him. He is never bothered by difficult problems: A decree or a bullet solves them ... immediately. The fanatic feels nothing but disdain toward intellectuals who spend precious time analyzing, dissecting, debating philosophical notions and hypotheses. What matters to the fanatic is the outcome—not the way leading there.
And more: The fanatic derides and hates tolerance, which he perceives as weakness, resignation or submission. That is why he despises women: Their tenderness is to him a sign of passivity. The fanatic’s only interest is domination by fear and terror. Violence is his favorite language—a vulgar language filled with obscenities: He doesn’t speak, he shouts; he doesn’t listen, he is too busy yelling; he doesn’t think, he doesn’t want anyone to think.
In other words, the fanatic, intoxicated with hatred, tries to reduce everybody to his own size.
He has a goal and is ready to pay any price to achieve it. Or more precisely: He is ready to make others pay any price in order to achieve it.
The fanatic feels important, for he presumes being capable of altering—and dominating—the course of history. Using the obscure power of hatred, he feels he can—and must—take charge of man’s fate. Working in the dark, forever involved in plots and counterplots, he thinks his mission is to abolish the present state of affairs and replace it with his own system. No wonder that he, the human failure, now feels proud and superior.
The fanatic who kills in God’s name makes his God a murderer.
To stem fanaticism, we must first fight indifference to evil … We fight indifference through education; we diminish it through compassion.
Let me conclude with this thought:
Of all the “isms” produced by the past centuries, fanaticism alone survives. We have witnessed the downfall of Nazism, the defeat of fascism and the abdication of communism. But fanaticism is still alive. And it is spreading fast. As horrible as it may sound, racial hatred, anti-Semitism and bin Laden terrorism are popular and still glorified in certain communities.
How can the fanatics be brought back to moral sanity? How can the killers and suicide warriors be disarmed?
If there is a simple answer, I do not know it. All I know is that, as we embark on this newest century, we cannot continue to live with fanaticism—and only we ourselves can stem it.
How are we to do this?
We must first fight indifference.
Indifference to evil is the enemy of good, for indifference is the enemy of everything that exalts the honor of man. We fight indifference through education; we diminish it through compassion. The most efficient remedy? Memory.
To remember means to recognize a time other than the present; to remember means to acknowledge the possibility of a dialogue. In recalling an event, I provoke its rebirth in me. In evoking a face, I place myself in relationship to it. In remembering a landscape, I oppose it to the walls that imprison me. The memory of an ancient joy or defeat is proof that nothing is definitive, nor is it irrevocable. To live through a catastrophe is bad; to forget it is worse.
And so, as we move forward from Sept. 11, let us continue to remember. For memory may be our most powerful weapon against fanaticism.
DL: The more we know about ourselves, the more we can choose how to behave. There was a chap in Canada -- and I'm going to leave it vague because nobody really approves of this kind of research -- who used brainwashing techniques. He would take, say, a Seventh Day Adventist and make this person a Roman Catholic, then two days later change the set of beliefs again into, oh, I don't know, Jewish, then later make the person a follower of Ian Paisley, and at the end of the time would turn this person back to the original set of beliefs. Now this seems to me an original piece of research we have chosen not to notice. What does that say about beliefs? What does it say about us? Doesn't it strike you as something we might pay attention to?
HB: But how do we use this kind of information?
DL: Let us say we now decide to set up a little group or movement to do something or other. There's a lot of information about the dynamics of groups. They nearly always develop leadership problems. They very often split in certain recognized ways. None of them ever end up where they were supposed to. Why doesn't anyone say, this is likely to happen so how do we stop it? How do we recognize a mad power lover who's using the words of idealism and doesn't even know he's a power lover? We could actually start thinking instead of emoting.
HB: Some of your writing works like that, like a probe: let's see how this situation or that group of people work. There's an experimental aspect to it.
DL: Yes, I think so. When I write I am all the time amazed at what I'm thinking, amazed at what I learn because I've been too lazy to think it before.
HB: You've written about the Sufis, and what you emphasize is their attention to the Zeitgeist, their dispassionate look at what is possible for human beings at a given time and place.
DL: There's a bit I quote at the beginning of Walking in the Shade where Idries Shah points out that until we understand what makes us tick, we're not going to change. He puts it more eloquently. What I admire about the Sufis, apart from any other dimension that they have, is their extraordinary sharpness. Idries Shah had the sharpest, most critical mind of anyone I've ever known. Listening to him talk for an hour, your brain used to rock with his comments on society and the world. Incredibly acute and I admired that. He died, you know.
HB: Yes, I read your appreciation. There's a website, a Doris Lessing website, which contains some of your occasional writings.
DL: A fan did that. I was very grateful to her.
HB: In Walking in the Shade you allude to the easy dismissal of religion, that takes no effort or thought. But now religious fundamentalism is a very powerful force. And it does cost something to oppose it.
DL: You'd never believe, when I was young, we genuinely believed religious wars were over. We'd say, at least it's impossible to have a religious war now. Can you believe that?
HB: In a piece you wrote in 1992, you said, "I am sure that millions of people, the rug of communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma." Don't you think religion and nationalism have entered to fill the void almost immediately?
DL: And political correctness, which has an appalling effect on academic life. Universities are being ruined by it. Freedom of thought has been destroyed. And that is bigotry. I'm so afraid of religion. Its capacity for murder is terrifying.
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Dream Walkers - Idries Shah
An Ancient Way to New Freedom - Doris Lessing
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How Can We Understand Their Hatred?
by Elie Wiesel
There is divine beauty in learning,
just as there is human beauty in tolerance. —Elie Wiesel
Even if only one free individual is left,
he is proof that the dictator is powerless against freedom.
But a free man is never alone; the dictator is alone.
The free man is the one who, even in prison,
gives to the other prisoners
their thirst for, their memory of, freedom.—Elie Wiesel
Fanaticism today is not a nice word; it carries an unpleasant connotation. But in ancient times, fanatics enjoyed a more favorable reaction from the public. They were linked to religion and, more specifically, to religious experience. In the Bible, Pinhas was praised for slaying a sinner. The Prophet Elijah was admired as an extreme opponent of the wicked Queen Jezebel. Later, in Islam, fana (meaning the annihilation of the will) described the Sufi’s desire to attain ecstasy in his union with the divine.
Today, in our modern language, fanaticism refers to excessive behavior, uncritical political opinions, ethnic zeal and religious bigotry. How did this come to be?
Previous centuries suffered from tribal and religious wars and from national extremism, but our last century was ravaged mainly by ideological and secular hatred. Nazism and communism moved fanaticism to unprecedented dimensions—dimensions future historians may term as absolute. Stalin used Terror just as Hitler used Death to oppress tens of millions of people: Never have man-made ideologies introduced so much evil into society; never have they given Death so much power.
Early in my own life, I experienced the consequences of fanaticism. On Sept. 11, like so many others throughout the world, I saw its terrible consequences again. Glued for days to the television, I witnessed unthinkable acts of terror. How, I asked myself, after the last century’s horrors, could fanaticism still hold sway?
On reflection, I believe that fanaticism appeals to people for a variety of reasons. But on the deepest level, fanaticism is seductive because it makes the fanatic feel less alone. The fanatic fails to understand that the tragedy of man is that, in essential matters, we are each condemned to be alone—we can never break out of the “self.” How does one cease being one’s own jailer? By becoming each other’s prisoner. The fanatic thinks he can tear down the walls of his cell by joining other fanatics. No need to think—the Party does the thinking for him, and the deciding for him.
The fanatic is stubborn, obstinate, dogmatic: Everything for him is black or white, curse or blessing, friend or foe—and nothing in between. He has no taste for or interest in nuances. Does he seek clarity? Driven by irrational impulses, he wants everything to be visible and necessarily clear.
The fanatic simplifies matters: He is immune to doubt and to hesitation. Intellectual exercise is distasteful, and the art and beauty of dialogue alien to him. Other people’s ideas or theories are of no use to him. He is never bothered by difficult problems: A decree or a bullet solves them ... immediately. The fanatic feels nothing but disdain toward intellectuals who spend precious time analyzing, dissecting, debating philosophical notions and hypotheses. What matters to the fanatic is the outcome—not the way leading there.
And more: The fanatic derides and hates tolerance, which he perceives as weakness, resignation or submission. That is why he despises women: Their tenderness is to him a sign of passivity. The fanatic’s only interest is domination by fear and terror. Violence is his favorite language—a vulgar language filled with obscenities: He doesn’t speak, he shouts; he doesn’t listen, he is too busy yelling; he doesn’t think, he doesn’t want anyone to think.
In other words, the fanatic, intoxicated with hatred, tries to reduce everybody to his own size.
He has a goal and is ready to pay any price to achieve it. Or more precisely: He is ready to make others pay any price in order to achieve it.
The fanatic feels important, for he presumes being capable of altering—and dominating—the course of history. Using the obscure power of hatred, he feels he can—and must—take charge of man’s fate. Working in the dark, forever involved in plots and counterplots, he thinks his mission is to abolish the present state of affairs and replace it with his own system. No wonder that he, the human failure, now feels proud and superior.
The fanatic who kills in God’s name makes his God a murderer.
To stem fanaticism, we must first fight indifference to evil … We fight indifference through education; we diminish it through compassion.
Let me conclude with this thought:
Of all the “isms” produced by the past centuries, fanaticism alone survives. We have witnessed the downfall of Nazism, the defeat of fascism and the abdication of communism. But fanaticism is still alive. And it is spreading fast. As horrible as it may sound, racial hatred, anti-Semitism and bin Laden terrorism are popular and still glorified in certain communities.
How can the fanatics be brought back to moral sanity? How can the killers and suicide warriors be disarmed?
If there is a simple answer, I do not know it. All I know is that, as we embark on this newest century, we cannot continue to live with fanaticism—and only we ourselves can stem it.
How are we to do this?
We must first fight indifference.
Indifference to evil is the enemy of good, for indifference is the enemy of everything that exalts the honor of man. We fight indifference through education; we diminish it through compassion. The most efficient remedy? Memory.
To remember means to recognize a time other than the present; to remember means to acknowledge the possibility of a dialogue. In recalling an event, I provoke its rebirth in me. In evoking a face, I place myself in relationship to it. In remembering a landscape, I oppose it to the walls that imprison me. The memory of an ancient joy or defeat is proof that nothing is definitive, nor is it irrevocable. To live through a catastrophe is bad; to forget it is worse.
And so, as we move forward from Sept. 11, let us continue to remember. For memory may be our most powerful weapon against fanaticism.
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