The Virtual Crowd

 

Social media and the Internet enable the formation of virtual crowds. Crowds may always be, or become, dangerous.

A friend recently asked me to explain why such large numbers of people – in this case Americans – have come to accept the same body of extreme beliefs. In my mind, this meant the extreme white nationalist and anti-government sentiments that erupted on January 6, 2021. I immediately thought of Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. For Freud, society rests on the coercive agency of the Superego (das Uberich) implanted as the child faces its dependency on the world beyond it. This explained for him the peculiarities of crowd psychology – the ready response to Leaders, the need for authority and the eagerness to use or accept repression.

For Freud, the Leader defines the crowd (Masse), taking the place of the internal agent of outside authority (the Superego) left behind by childhood. A crowd is a collection of people mobilized not around a common interest or purpose per se but around a stand-in for the father, be it a collective Superego (ideology or belief/faith instrumentality), a Leader, a hero or a personalized god. This state of dependence is based upon shared feelings of fear and guilt that give outlet to the ambivalence the child directs at the father. Erotic ties (Eros) bind together individuals to each other and to the Leader, around whom all revolves.* The Leader serves as the object for this longing and defines, as father-surrogate, the relation in which all are united as "brothers" in submission to him.

The erotic tie between Leader and follower takes the form of an identification that brings the former into the psyche via the Superego, repeating the process that established it through identification with the first parental authority. Individuals in a crowd thereby come to share the same Superego, submitting to it, in like manner, their individual selves. Crowds, says Freud, are made up of "a number of individuals who have one and the same object in the place of their ideal self and have consequently identified themselves with one another sharing the same [surrendered] self (das Ich)." This bond through identification denies the crowd any critical faculties the individuals, as individuals, may possess and leaves them vulnerable to control by "suggestion."

The crowd represents a return to the primitive horde; in both we find "an individual of superior strength among a troop of equal companions." Freud suggests that fear and anxiety are always at the edge of crowd behavior, tending to increase, not decrease, in the face of challenges to the ties that bind individuals together. The individual in a crowd feels a need for authority that manifests in the submission of his self to the Leader. The Leader has this role because in "...the mass of mankind there is a powerful need for an authority who can be admired, before whom one bows down, by whom one is led and perhaps even ill treated."

For Freud, the principle phenomenon of mass psychology is the individual's "lack of freedom." Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his liberty for a portion of security. Submerged in a crowd, people behave like a collective neurotic. Freud saw such behavior as symptomatic of society, with its origin in the repression of desire and the consequent implantation within each individual of a Superego serving as the internal agent of that repression. The individual is directed toward submission to a Leader or to the over zealousness of compulsive morality continuing the infantile relationship to authority. Over a lifetime, the individual's character and identity are built, largely unconsciously, around that ready submission. The exercise of consciousness is never fully developed and the self is never free to author its rational being.

Culture's reliance on repression (and the other forms of psychic defense) and its extraction of surplus control subjects the individual to an ever increasing burden of guilt even as actual control of desire diminishes. As culture – especially in its Western, capitalist guise – affords humanity more and “better” ways of gaining satisfaction, it creates a larger and larger realm of potential satisfaction it must control. Control inevitably weakens and results in a situation where the erotic drives are only weakly held in check. The aggressive drives, always hard to restrain, become ever more difficult to control as they are increasingly deployed to master the erotic drives. The individual, trapped in this escalating conflict and spiral of anxiety, suffers increasing existential unease (Unbehagen). For we Americans – with a shallow history, a consumer-oriented culture and relatively vast riches unequally distributed – many are ready to "break loose" at any time.

I’ve taken this dive into Freud to get to my further point. In the age of mass social media, crowds may now form virtually. Without direct face-to-face contact, people can come to share a collective consciousness built around submission to some shared beliefs personified by a Leader. The social media niches where such virtual crowds mingle can intensify these beliefs into extreme forms. When the members of these groups actually do come together, they are vulnerable to the Leader’s suggestion and to the apparent dictates of their shared belief system, rational or mostly not. Then all hell can break loose.

* For Freud, Eros is more than sexuality, it’s a longing for something we do not have, for completeness, for other, for beauty, for the good.

The Cosmic Designer

Having written The Cosmic Design and the Designer to explore what modern science can say about the nature of our universe and reality, I’ve been wondering what it might be possible to tell about the Designer: did it have an origin, where did it come from, what is it like? The first two questions seem, on the face of it anyway, truly unknowable. They eventually reach the point of whether it’s turtles all the way down. But the question of what the Designer might be like, how it might be described, is perhaps open to some exploration.

Considering the nature of the Designer depends on the questions we ask. We might start by asking if, from our perspective, the Designer did a good job or a bad one? Given the state of the world we live in at the dawn of the 21^st Century, you could go either way.

Or we might begin by considering whether humans are in the Designer’s image. (Humans have long imagined their gods in their own image, but somehow greater.) At our best, we are conscious, rational individuals with free will and the capacity to act with the moral sense of right and wrong, good and bad. At our worst, we are killers who shit in our our nest and do not always even eat what we kill. In between, we are weak souls often unable to perceive and understand our own self-interest. The cosmic design allows our best form, so perhaps the Designer is also a rational agent with free will, one that defines, by its own nature, the good. I’ll go with that.

Freud’s work on the healthy soul and Alastair McIntyre on individual practical reasoners can help us describe the rational agent. According to Freud, the psychically healthy individual is one where our I (das Ich) has absorbed the It (das Es) and the Over-I (das Uberich). The I holds the soul's facility of intellect and reason. In Freud's conception, psychic health is attaining the proper internal order, one where the I overcomes and absorbs the Over-I (the imposed internal agent of outside authority) and the It (the drives and desires of our animal and infantile self). Thus freed, the individual becomes capable of choosing and acting in a rational and practical manner, following our own defined ends and goals, within the confines of what reality presents. McIntyre looks to moral virtue (aretḗ) as elaborated by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Human beings are animals, they begin as such and remain as such with the bodily desires and needs of all animals. We possess the intelligence common to other animals such as the dolphins and our fellow great apes. But with language we can move beyond this to become independent practical reasoners (Freud’s healthy soul) following the necessary reciprocal obligations of giving and receiving (the virtues) that allow us as social animals to collectively live the good life.

Free will manifests as choice. Choice – the ability to choose and the act of choosing (as confined only by the laws of nature) – expresses free will. How does choice get made? Through individual consciousness. Consciousness allows choice and is a property of an individual agency, a being. Free will is an expression of an individual consciousness operating in a universe that permits the ability to choose between different achievable outcomes. Consciousness powers the will.

Consciousness – in the human at least – rides a wave generated by individual, biologically-based processes running through and on our “wetware” of neurons and neural networks with inputs from our bodily organs, processes and senses. These processes produce what might be termed native intelligence (as opposed to artificial intelligence) one that comes about through the biological equivalent of “machine learning” and probably includes quantum computing elements and entangled states. When the brain and neural networks of higher animals – great apes, dolphins and others – became complex enough to support quantum processing, that may have been the point at which consciousness is kickstarted into self-consciousness.

Humans are self-conscious creatures capable of reasoning and choice and, thus, also of acting morally. If we are in the image of the Designer, it must be also. The Designer included free will in the design because it enjoys free will and values it. Of course, who really knows and how could we tell? One might suppose our apparently designed universe was a random creation out of nothing, simply an accident (one of an infinite variety of random big bangs). Or perhaps it’s some form of “simulation” (as a higher dimensional form of entertainment?). But as I have argued before, these beg the questions of how and why there should be anything rather than nothing. If there was a design – and following St. Thomas’ finger – the Designer had to be an individual, conscious being.

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 21

For episode 20, see here

The Theory of the Nation State

XXI. Thomas Hobbes
 A. Hobbes' political writings occasioned by civil war and were intended to
      support the King. 
 B. Sought to account on scientific grounds for all facts of nature including
      society and individuals (an approach now defined as materialism).
       1. Derived complex appearances from underlying simple motions.
       2. Used a geometry and physics to account for individual physiology
           and psychology and those to build a philosophy of the most complex
           "artificial" bodies, society and the state.
 C. That which was natural for Hobbes was not an end (e.g. natural law) but a
      cause (the psychological mechanism of the human animal).
       1. Resulting in societies made up of mutual actions and reactions of
           individuals upon each other.
       2. Not moral ideals but causes that will evoke generally cooperative
           behavior are conditions of a stable union.
 D. All emotions and desires derive from primitive attractions or retractions
      from stimulus.
 E. Rule behind all behavior is that a living body is set instinctively to preserve
      or heighten its vitality.
       1. Leads to restless pursuit of means to continue existence.
       2. Means that security is always precarious with result that there is no
           limit on the desire for security and power ("the present means of
           obtaining apparent future goods").
       3. This plus a rough equality in capabilities leads to a war of all against
           all -- with no "right" or "wrong" -- and thus making civilization
           impossible. 
 F. Reason is second principle of human nature.
       1. Makes pursuit of security more effective.
       2. Ruthless pursuit of individual advantage cannot be basis of society.
       3. Calculating selfishness brings man into society.
 G. Laws of nature state what ideally rational beings would do to achieve
      security. 
       1. This forms postulates upon which rational construction of society
           takes place.
       2. Laws amount to this:
           i. peace and economy have greater utility for self-preservation than
              violence and general competition
           ii. peace requires mutual confidence in the surrender of the "right to
               everything"
 H. Society is simply the means to an end.
       1. Based on utilitarianism and individualism.
       2. Such a notion of individualism was a clean break with customary 
           ideas about economic and social institutions.
       3. The defense of monarchy superficial next to this.
 I. To safeguard covenant by which all surrendered rights, a coercive
     power, i.e. government, was required. 
       1. Men do what they dislike on pain of suffering what they dislike even
           more.
       2. Cooperation is formed by union of individuals -- not consent from
           "citizens" -- which acts as, and through, one sovereign individual. 
 J. Law and morals are the same, simply the will of the sovereign.
 K. All necessary powers belong to the sovereign and are individual and 
      unalienable. 
       1. There is no justification for resistance.
       2. Yet if resistance is successful and the sovereign unable to govern
           (provide security), he is sovereign no longer.
       3. Monarchy not essential to the theory.
       4. Church is the only other corporation existing as an act of sovereign will.
 L. Advantages  of government are tangible and must accrue to individuals.
 M. Rests on no general or public good or will, only self-interested individuals. 

Next week: Radicals and Communists

Freud and Plato - The Politics of the Soul (Pt 1)

Freud -- with Marx, Darwin and Einstein -- ranks among the intellectual fathers of the 20th Century.  The core concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis still pervade Western society.  We talk about the meaning of dreams, make "Freudian" slips, appreciate the power of unconscious desires and accept the influence of childhood experiences on the adult.  However, Freud’s relevance for the 21st Century lies more in his call for a renovation of human consciousness.  Freud's concern with the health of the soul and the support he sought to give to reason and intellect places him in a dialogue with Plato and gives psychoanalysis roots deep in Western culture.  Both Freud and Plato practiced statecraft of the soul, reforming the “inner city” that determines individual and collective character.  Both attempted to help the individual gain control over desire through establishing proper order among the parts of the soul.

As we move through these first years of the new millennium, it sometimes appears that the world has become too large, too complex and more dangerous and inhospitable every day.  We seem beset by nightmares: terrorism, fanaticism, fascism, communism, tribalism, nationalism, racism and the other -isms that have prevented us, as individuals and as societies, from thinking clearly and acting with humanity.  We paid dearly for these nightmares in the 20th century and the end is nowhere in sight.  We feel increasingly challenged to preserve a minimum sense of security and well being in the midst of the planet-wide struggle of billions of others to do the same.  In this struggle, our political systems -- the governments that oversee our domestic and foreign affairs and the organizations that connect us internationally -- often seem overwhelmed by the effort to stave off ever-threatening crises and disasters of one kind or the other.  No place, no one, no system appears immune to difficulty.  At a time when the major ideological and systemic competitors to Western liberal-democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, neither democracy nor the market appear to offer, by themselves, the answers we need to our many problems.

We in the West have been especially blessed by history.  But with an abundance of natural and human resources, a long and secure tradition of democracy and individual rights, and the strongest and richest mass economies the world has ever seen, we nevertheless remain afflicted by poverty, prejudice, racial injustice, declining living standards and political system mired in parochialism and shortsighted partisanship.  We have proved incapable of preventing the death of innocent men, women and children from terror, war, famine and disease -- which are, after all, largely the result of human action or inaction.  And although the world has providentially taken a step back from nuclear Armageddon, we are still poisoning our environment and degrading its capability to feed, care and comfort us.  To be fair, it is not that we are at a loss for ways to resolve many of these problems.  One can imagine solutions to most of them that could succeed if we were determined enough, worked hard enough and sacrificed enough.  Yet, when we are not dreaming, it seems naive to believe that we could ever achieve such outcomes in the "real" world.  So, our feet firmly planted on the ground, we hope for the best while fearing, more and more, the worst.

In all, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that we have reached a point in global history that demands finding new ways to live, individually and collectively.  We have lost our faith in ourselves and in our ability to reason our way forward.  After the terrors of the 20th Century, the Enlightenment and its faith in the ability of human intellect to help us perfect our world have come to seem like a bad joke.  The nightmares have entered our very souls and made us doubt our ability to think, reason, discuss and decide with our fellow human beings the many problems that we face.  Some believe that the only response is to trust instinct, listen to our blood, and fight to protect what we have while seizing the high ground before others do so.  Reason must be rescued if we are to find a better way. 

Freud can yet help us begin.  His conception of the human soul and the conflict within us reconnects our problems with the similar concerns of Plato and Aristotle.  Freud's work recalls Socrates' invitation, in the Republic, to establish within ourselves the rule of reason without which we cannot have just and well-ordered societies.  2300 years later, this solution remains difficult to achieve.  But after all this time, we have even more cause to believe that "knowing thyself" may be the only way to leave the nightmares behind.