Solzhenitsyn on externalising evil

[Freespeecher]

A recurring theme on these boards (the Sam Smith thread being the latest) is the observation that people that otherwise see themselves as virtuous see no problem with aggressively going after women who go against some element of their ideology.
This applies to TRAs, Momentum, the Woke in general etc.

I've been trying to work my way through 'The Gulag Archipelago' for a while. It's hard going but worth it because of the gems uncovered. I think he below is spot on and, while it applies to many, many groups, it's particularly relevant to those mentioned above.

Essentially, if you fight 'evil' by defining other external individuals and groups as evil and fighting them then there is no requirement for introspection and self-examination. Hence, while I'm sure that some of the leaders are cunning game-players, a lot of their followers would be (and are) genuinely shocked at the idea they're doing anything wrong.

'If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?'

(Sure it's a well-known quote but I think it's worth dusting off every now and again).

(Shamelessly bumps own thread with another quote but it's apt! Apt I tell you).

'Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice'.

Interesting. I can’t remember enough Solzhenitsyn to comment meaningfully but I’ll dig out TGA and add it to my lockdown (re)reading pile.

It should be compulsory reading. Plus teaching about the Stasi and Mao. Most of the AIBU threads at the moment prove why.

I mentioned the Stasi in that connection less than five minutes ago!

Informers being encouraged to dob in their neighbours....

I've not read TGA, but The Cancer Ward is one of my favourite books that I re-read every year or so.

'NoDebate' immediately made me think of TCW. Rusanov's insistence that all decisions made by the Party were final, there was no debate. Even apparently self-contradictory positions were correct, if that's what the Party stated. There was never to be any debate.

And the young woman, Asa, educated and privileged, whom simple, uneducated Dyoma falls in love with, also embraces the Party whole-heartedly. She mocks Dyoma when he tentatively suggests that there are other ways to think, ways that are not mandated by the Party.

I've never read Solzhenitsyn but I've observed the phenomena. Many people do not have any sense that they could be mistaken or wrong, or even that their own motives might be mixed or compromised. It took me some time to clue into this because it was always obvious to me that my own motives were often quite mixed, that it was very easy to believe whatever was most pleasant or useful to believe.

People are often very unwilling to consider their own personal foibles as being in any way similar in nature to the more serious problems in other people's personalities. There is also something of a tendency for people to suddenly decide that they were "wrong" about an issue when it becomes challenging to maintain it.

The conclusion I've come to is that true introspection requires practice and instruction, and sometimes even an external bar to measure oneself against. It's also not the same as the sort of naval gazing that tends to be promoted by many self-help books or some types of psychiatry.

Both of those books are incredible, thanks for reminding me of how relevant they still are OP. They had a huge impact on me.

I also read 'Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler' by Margarete Buber-Neumann, which demonstrates how two seemingly contrary ideologies instigated the same repression of freedoms for the 'others' in their societies. And how quickly and arbitrarily those groups were decided and targeted. Chilling.

That's a brilliant quote. I've not read Sozhenitysn but have a copy of The Good Soldier Svyeck somewhere.

Those are brilliant and timely quotes, thank you Freespeecher.

How apt that our current freedom (in lockdown here) is because so many could not "rein themselves in" when schools shut down.

Freedom and responsibility are two sides of a coin- if you want one, you got to take the other.
But, that's not cool to say is it.

As for the evil in every human heart.... that's very true. And rejecting the possibility of that evil within ourselves is the root of othering.
I'm a bit worried about the way that I have heard (relatively) sane people refer to the current pandemic as the Chinese virus à la Trump. As if nice white European people aren't capable of starting pandemics.

Another one thanking you for those quotes Freespeecher. I was reading it at the same time as they were reporting Lord Sumption’s speech on policing by consent on the news. I have been wondering about how so many police forces have attempted to counteract past reputations for homophobia or racism. TheIr public face has become more carefully presented but they do less day to day interaction with the public so some officers (or more probably community support officers) have lost that skill at dealing with the public.

A lot of virtue signalling does away for the need for introspection as one just needs to spout the approved view. I think Solzhenitsyn and a book about the Stasi should be added to my Lock Down Reading list, along with Naomi Klein from another thread today.

I think it's as simple as people getting high on righteousness.
They're so caught up in the adrenaline kick of fighting the good fight that they don't stop to consider that they might be the aggressors and not the defenders.

And a lot of books added to my reading list. Thanks all.

First remove the beam from your own eye, then you will be able to see to remove the speck from your brother’s eye...

Interesting quotes also in the context of today's situation ..freedoms vs responsibility for example

@Freespeecher - Your quotes, and Solzhenitsyn's stance - is very similar to Jung's in "The Undiscovered Self". This is one my my favourite quotes from the book, which is along similar lines:

Separation from his instinctual nature inevitably plunges man into the conflict between conscious and unconscious, ... a split that becomes pathological the moment his consciousness is no longer able to neglect or suppress his instinctual side. The accumulation of individuals who have got into this critical state starts off a mass movement purporting to be the champion of the suppressed. In accordance with the prevailing tendency of consciousness to seek the source of all ills in the outside world, the cry goes up for political and social changes which, it is supposed, would automatically solve the much deeper problem of split personality. ... What then happens is a simple reversal: the underside comes to the top and the shadow takes the place of the light ... . All this is unavoidable, because the root of the evil is untouched and merely the counterposition has come to light.

Published in 1957.

Oh, that is a nice bit of writing, BertiesLanding,

BertiesLanding

Thankyou - I really don't know much about Jung. I've seen some of his ideas mentioned elsewhere and need to find out more about them. I think I saw a 'Jung for Dummies' (honestly) in the library and may start with that.

To go back to one of the quotes:

'Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others... A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice'.

My reading of that in the current climate is that sometimes you get a group / community who find themselves in a strong position where they are able to achieve more of their aims without compromise than would normally be the case. It's like going to the market and starting off with a high offer expecting to have to haggle and being astonished to find the other person agrees to your offer. Obvious parallels with a lot of politicians whos should know better falling over themselves to give TRAs what they are asking for despite there being clear clashes of rights with those of women.

Anyway, Solzhenitsyn says it shouldn't be a matter of the needs / desires of one group / community prevailing over those of others and, instead, even if we find ourselves in such a position of power we should favour a solution that favours the wider society as a whole rather than victory for the group.

But the question is, will we manage to hold ourselves back? In the future, some group / community we belong to will also find ourselves in the driver's seat due to the conditions at the time and the test will be whether the focus remains on 'moral justice' as opposed to pushing for as much as possible while the going's good (if only because of the inevitable pushback / reversal when the pendulum swings).

He's such a clear thinker and writer and it still rings true today, despite him having written it in the fifties and sixties (though I suppose he had a lot of time on his hands for both thinking and writing. Oh well, when life gives you lemons...).

Thank you, @Freespeecher and @Goosefoot

Essentially, the core of Jung's work is about taking responsibility for oneself first, above everything, one of the prime tasks of which is to learn to understand the Shadow: everything we believe/swear/say that we are not.

In other words, our work is to own our darkness. It's a highly personal form of activism, because, as Jung says, much of what we call activism is actually just the Shadow playing out: we march and rally to avoid a confrontation with ourselves.

Usually, those who have spent a lot of time confronting themselves are different kinds of activists - or their activism looks different. Sometimes, when we start embracing the totality of who we are - dark and light/unknown and known - those things we took arms against don't seem as important any more. Sometimes they do, though. Moreso.

"I'd rather be whole than good." - Jung

But the question is, will we manage to hold ourselves back? In the future, some group / community we belong to will also find ourselves in the driver's seat due to the conditions at the time and the test will be whether the focus remains on 'moral justice' as opposed to pushing for as much as possible while the going's good - Indeed!

I read The Gulag Archipelago a very long time ago.

Not so relevant to this thread, but my favourite part is when the two men talk about work, craftsmanship and ‘the last inch’.
He invented flow and mindfulness way before any of the YouTubers did.

Anyway, Solzhenitsyn says it shouldn't be a matter of the needs / desires of one group / community prevailing over those of others and, instead, even if we find ourselves in such a position of power we should favour a solution that favours the wider society as a whole rather than victory for the group.

This is interesting I think, it suggests to me that any inteest group, be it for trans people, women, the disabled, workers, artists, whatever - they cannot simply advocate for the interests of their group. Not only do people need to accept that those interests will be balanced by society against those of others, they need to put their own interests within that larger context themselves and act on the larger context.

This puts all kinds of advocacy and activism in quite a different light. One of the problems many people have identified with activism is the tendency to want to place your group as disadvantaged and therefor able to make demands against other groups, to have amoral claim to simply think about the needs of one's own interest group. But if it's true that integration has to also happen at the individual level, in terms of the self, and it involves self-control and contextualisation at it's very heart, that whole approach is called into question. Even oppressed groups cannot make demands without consideration of others.

This jives with my own observations of what works and what causes problems, but it would be a big change to the way many activists and interest groups work.

A very good (and not too immediate) example of two interest groups at odds with each other concerns the Tube.

For people with poor or no sight, having the doors beeping to let them know when it is safe to get on or off is a good thing. For people with poor hearing, it is sometimes agonisingly painful to have the doors beeping. And for regular commuters, having the doors beeping loudly at every stop every day is now found to damage their hearing.

So should the doors beep or not?

even if we find ourselves in such a position of power we should favour a solution that favours the wider society as a whole rather than victory for the group

I think that this is a fundamental political divide that doesn't fall along party lines as obviously as you might assume. You'd expect Labour to end up on the needs of the collective over the needs of the individual side, right? But they quite manifestly do not, not any more. I'm very much on the left, but have encountered both the community comes first and individual comes first mindset at all points on the political spectrum. Like authoritarian versus libertarian, it's kind of its own political axis, different from left/right.

One thing that's come out of the current pandemic for me is a clear realization that people aren't always who you thought they were and that how you assumed they'd react isn't necessarily how they will. I think crisis makes people's inherent traits more obvious, both the good and the bad ones.

Also in terms of getting a grip on a lot of things going on at the moment both The Gulag Archipelago and Wild Swans are invaluable reading. Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it, etc.