Tyranny and fear of impotence

Virtue is happy to pay the price of limited power for the blessing of being together with other men; fear is the despair over the individual impotence of those who, for whatever reason, have refused to "act in concert"... Fear as a principle of action is in some sense a contradiction in terms, because fear is precisely despair over the impossibility of action. 

 Thus the common ground upon which lawlessness can be erected and from which fear springs is the impotence all men feel who are radically isolated. One man against all others does not experience equality of power among men, but only the overwhelming, combined power of all others against their own... Out of the conviction of one's own impotence and the fear of the power of all others comes the will to dominate, which is the will of the tyrant. 

 Just as virtue is love of the equality of power, so fear is actually the will to, or, in its perverted form, lust for power... Power itself in its true sense can never be possessed by one man alone; power comes, as it were, mysteriously into being whenever men act "in concert", and disappears, not less mysteriously, whenever man is all by himself. Tyranny, based on the essential impotence of all men who are alone, is the hubristic attempt to be like God, invested with power individually, in complete solitude. 

Hannah Arendt, On the nature of totalitarianism, in Essays in Understanding, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1994, pp. 336-338. 

Hannah Arendt comments here on the political theory of different forms of government (monarchy, republicanism and tyranny) formulated by Montesquieu (and "virtue" as love of the equality of power is his concept). But beyond political theory, this is one of the deepest insights into the nature of abusive relationships I have ever met... With a terrifying clarity this text makes the point: lawlessness that the one in control practices towards the weaker partner is the expression and consequence of his or her utter isolation beyond loneliness and despair over the impossibility of action. Sounds only too familiar. 

Can one deal with it, be it on a personal or on a political level? Can the destructive power of fear be reversed, healed, can a tyrant be reconnected to the Body in a meaningful way, so that the real power coming from participation, not from domination, is restored to him? Hannah Arendt leaves the question open, and personally, I have no clue. "Leave it alone" (= "emigrate")  has been the only advice I have ever received, and it does not aim to deal with the abusive partner but with the abused one. 

On the activity of understanding

What is important to me is to understand. For me, writing is a matter of seeking this understanding, part of the process of understanding… Certain things get formulated. If I had a good enough memory to really retain everything that I think, I doubt very much that I would have written anything – I know my own laziness. What is important to me is the thought process itself. As long  as I have succeeded in thinking something through, I am personally quite satisfied. If I then succeed in expressing my thought process adequately in writing, that satisfies me also…

You ask about the effects of my work on others. If I may wax ironical, that is a masculine question. Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand – in the same sense that I have understood – that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.

Hannah Arendt, “What Remains? Language remains”, in Essays in Understanding, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1993, p.3

This is an archetypal enneagram Five statement! They do not write, paint or found a new branch in psychology (like C.G. Jung, a notoriously Five personality too) to share knowledge  or vision out of philanthropy (in the literal sense, that of “love of humanity”) , like Twos do; nor do they express their thoughts and visions  to be original, special and appreciated, like Fours. Fives are interested in processes, articulations, relationships between things as such, they like connecting facts and weaving them into dynamic systems; they only use different means of expression insofar as they are of an added value to this process.

This explains why Fives do not aim to convince and do not mind disagreement – as long as they are satisfied with their thought process, fuelled by insatiable curiosity and often impressive erudition, as long as the picture they are busy at completing is complete in their mind, opinions of other people matter very little. This is not because Fives are such snobs (which occasionally they are, to be sure), nor because they find other peoples’ opinions insignificant – they are just too absorbed and exhausted by their thinking to worry about those opinions.

 



Thinking vs Rationality

"Oh nooooo! That's too intellectual!"

(from an offline discussion) 

Just a moment! People very often mix up thinking and rationality, reason and logic. That's why intellectuals are seen nowadays as cold-blooded creepy creatures playing with ideas in a rational and/or abstract way. The very word "intellectual" has become a kind of insult, and poor kids who happen to like thinking more than say, basket, are clearly heading for trouble... But thinking is much more than mere rationality, and is not at all necessarily abstract. 

The idea that reason equals rationality is a very Enlightenment one, and I think it is a tremendous impoverishment, a haemorrhage of meaning out of the word. Thinking is an attempt to engage with reality in a meaningful way. It is a method we (especially those for whom thinking is their main function - sorry I am into Jung again these days :) use to approach life. Thinking does "happen" in our brains, and it does use rationality, logic and abstraction as its instruments -- not always, nor universally: despite our Western education based mainly on rational reasoning, much of our thinking is  still intuitive, imaginative, even sensory, and Eastern cultures developed thinking based on entirely different assumptions than ours... But wherever efficient and authentic thinking takes place, it involves the entire person, body and soul, mind and heart, the whole human being standing in the midst of his or her experience to find out its meaning.