On Human-Centric Ethical Development
Plus more from The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Reading Quotes
Hi all!
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted our meeting notes - mostly it’s been a time constraint, which will hopefully improve soon. The older I get the more I’m aware that time is utterly incompressible, and the more interesting things I get into, the less I can afford to have entropic habits - yet those are the most difficult to give up. I still think that humanity will suffer a huge leap forward as soon as someone invents a sleep-replacement pill (with minimal unwanted effects).
In any case, we’ve had a productive last few meetings. We covered a lot of ground, moving on past Critical Thinking and into Ethical Development, “I will always focus on becoming a better person.” We discussed the difference between ethics and morality, and I will ask other members of our group to contribute notes and thoughts if they choose to do so, but I thought it was interesting to discuss how local economies, health concerns, and cultivation of food sources contributes to what is considered “moral”, and how commingling of cultures affects understanding of morality.
“Ethical Development” can have a few meanings. It could mean development according to your “ethos” (“character” in Greek); it could mean development of a moral system of values (“ethics”); it could also mean development of your “ethos.” Each aspect ought to be considered separately and then put together to form the entirety of the concept holistically. Let’s say that “Ethical Development” is you, in 3D - Development of Ethos, Development with Ethos, and Development of Ethics.
Whether Ethics or Ethos, the central part of the concept is Character. The word “character” has an interesting etymology that provides insight into the concept. The word comes from Greek and means “engraving,” “cutting,” or “marking in furrows.” Leaving a mark, in other words. Things that build “character” leave their mark. They’re probably not pleasant, to have left a mark. Character can be personal, or it can relate to groups - villages, cities, regions, nations go through similar troubles and build similar character as they carry the marks of their experience.
The personal becomes the shared. We are individuals, suffering common human experiences such as loss, hunger, pain, sorrow - and we’re also doing that as a group. We can relate to one another in similar ways because of the marks those experiences leave on us and give us the character that we have.
Developing according to your “ethos” - character - means having integrity; it means that you are acting with authenticity to yourself and not violating the marks that experience has left on you. Epigenetics is an interesting area to consider when thinking about character. Epigenetics leaves previous generations’ literal marks on you, meaning you inherit character from your ancestors and the groups they were part of.
Development of a moral system of values (“ethics”) brings discernment and critical thinking into your understanding of the world around you to create a framework for considering what is right, and what is wrong. In a religious environment, the ethical system is created by divinity; in a human-centric world view, divinity is unnecessary; right and wrong aren’t driven by immutable divine decrees but instead by humanist principles that focus on empathy, reason, humility, earth, and so on.
The development of your character is the process of bettering yourself. It means being mindful of what marks have been engraved on you by your experiences and those of your ancestors, how those marks affect your inner parts, and how, in turn, you affect the world without. Simply existing in time, unexamined, is not “ethical development.” Mindfulness is a prerequisite.
I think what we’ve covered here provides a reasonable model for human-centric Ethical Development and gives us a good answer as to what it means to strive to be a better person.
Reading Review
“The Mass Psychology of Fascism” continues to delve into the mindset of industrial worker. In particular, there is a detailed discussion of whether the worker would easier identify with individuals in their own class and adopt revolutionary (that is, progressive) ideas, or whether they would adopt more middle-class tendencies towards fascism and identify with reactionary (“conservative”) ideologies.
Reich postulates that even though it was the progressive ideas that created better working conditions, safety, and a moderate amount of leisure time for the industrial worker, paradoxically, these newly found higher living standards drove the worker to closer to identifying with middle-class and the culture thereof. When the economic crisis hit, the worker was therefore likelier to respond in middle-class fashion - that is, in a reactionary/fascist way.
Reading Quotes
(This collection includes notes from earlier readings that haven’t been covered in the newsletters)
Pages 62 through 65 deal with blood and soil laws that required a certain structure in passing small farms down generations with blood purity laws requiring that only “true” Germans can own farms. This isn't strictly applicable now in the US, however, it does explain why Hitler's focus on a certain family structure was closely aligned with agriculture, as most small agricultural productions depended on families with large numbers of children to work the farm (free labor).
Quote: the interweaving of individualistic production and authoritarian family in the middle classes is one of the sources of the fascist ideology of the "family with many children." p65
The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.
And the sentiment is not complicated, but very simple in all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; Love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never have this way and have that way, never partially, was that kind of thing (MEIN KAMPF, P 183). page 67
And the lower middle-class influence, the women develop an attitude of resignation which covers up repressed sexual Rebellion; the son develop, in addition to submissive attitude towards authority, a strong identification with the Father which later becomes identification with any kind of authority. Page 67
This compulsive suppression of sexuality provides mysticism, of whatever kind, with its energy and also with some of its contents. Page 68
The above paragraph has some insights into the success of Q Anon And its ridiculous theories about child sex trade, and into the GOP fixation on the transgender folks.
The core of the family tie is the mother fixation. The subjective, emotional core of the ideas of homeland and nation are ideas of mother and family. The mother is the homeland of the child, as the family is its "nation in miniature" . Thus one understands why the National Socialist Goebbels took the following as a motto for his Ten Commandments, in the National Socialist Volkskalender calendar for 1932: "the Homeland is the mother of your life, don't ever forget it." Page 69-70
Nationalist feeling is the direct continuation of family attachments and, like the latter, is based on the unconscious, deeply anchored mother fixation. This cannot be explained biologically. For this mother fixation itself is a social product. The attachment to the mother would be replaced by puberty by other attachments, for example, by natural sexual relationships, even if were not made permanent by the general suppression of natural love life. Only this socially caused perturbation makes it the basis for nationalist feeling in the adult and makes it a reactionary social force. Page 70
But the fact should not be overlooked that fascism, ideologically, is the Revolt of a deathly sick society, sick sexually as well as economically. It is the revolt against the painful and forceful Tendencies of revolutionary thinking in the direction of sexual as well as economic freedom. The very thought of this Freedom makes the reactionary individual tremble with fear. Page 71
Even more important, however, is the identification of the mass individual with the Fuhrer. The more helpless the individual was made by his upbringing, the most strongly does he identify himself with the Fuhrer, the more does the infantile helplessness take the form of the feeling one with the Fuhrer. This tendency to identification is the psychological basis of national narcissism, that is, of a self-confidence based on identification with the "greatness of the nation." The reactionary middle class individual believes he discovers himself in the Fuhrer, in their authoritarian state. Page 74
The industrial workers of England, America, Scandinavia, and Germany took on more and more a middle-class character. In order to understand the manner in which fascism penetrates the workers' stratum one has to follow this process in its various stages from formal democracy to openly fascist dictatorship. P77
Fascism penetrates the working class "by means of direct economic corruption, and the so-called workers aristocracy by means of material corruption as well as ideological influence. German fascism unscrupulously promised everything to everybody." Page 77
Fascism promises the abolition of classes, that is, doing away with one's being a proletarian; in this matter, it appeals to the social inferiority feeling of the manual worker. P80
In the late capitalism, however, things became different. The workers movement had made certain gains such a shorter hours, the right to vote, social security, etc. This meant, on the one hand, a strengthening of the working class. At the same time it had an opposite effect: the raising of the living standards led to structural adaptation to the middle classes. In times of prosperity this middle class adaptation was intensified; in an ensuing economic crisis, it acted as an inhibition of a further development of revolutionary feeling. Page 82
Disillusionment in social democracy must, in the presence of a conflict between pauperization and conservative thinking, lead into the fascist camp if there are no effective revolutionary organizations. P82
* Chapter 3, the race Theory
It would be useless to try to reach a fascist, convince this he is of the superiority of the German race, with arguments, if for no other reason because he does not operate with arguments but with irrational feelings. P88