Evil abstraction: the psychology of totalitarianism

[Jim Cross]

... only trying to point out that there is an argument to be had.

I can now certainly see that there is a different spin to be put on this tragedy, one of them being that player Z and his cohorts knew exactly what player P and his cohorts could be capable of, if player P's buttons were pushed in just a certain way, and how that was quite likely to play out, and what the costly consequences would be. And sure enough player P walked right into the trap, giving the opposing war mongers just the rationale they needed to justify installing their state-of-the-art weaponry in the region, while coming across as the good guys jumping to the rescue in fighting the evil-doers, rather than the provocateurs—all seeming like a dangerous high-stakes poker game being played by the respective players, with human lives as the chips. One still finds it very difficult to parse out where precisely the more or lesser evil lies, given that a case can be made that none of the players can be fully absolved of culpability. If one is looking for wise choices, it seems pretty much like a choice between coke zero and orange crush ... choose your poison.

Shu,

Everybody does it. Everybody is evil. Both sides are wrong.

I guess it is all just part of the spiritual evolution of those people who were fortunate enough to be killed.

[Soul_of_Shu]

... only trying to point out that there is an argument to be had.

I can now certainly see that there is a different spin to be put on this tragedy, one of them being that player Z and his cohorts knew exactly what player P and his cohorts could be capable of, if player P's buttons were pushed in just a certain way, and how that was quite likely to play out, and what the costly consequences would be. And sure enough player P walked right into the trap, giving the opposing war mongers just the rationale they needed to justify installing their state-of-the-art weaponry in the region, while coming across as the good guys jumping to the rescue in fighting the evil-doers, rather than the provocateurs—all seeming like a dangerous high-stakes poker game being played by the respective players, with human lives as the chips. One still finds it very difficult to parse out where precisely the more or lesser evil lies, given that a case can be made that none of the players can be fully absolved of culpability. If one is looking for wise choices, it seems pretty much like a choice between coke zero and orange crush ... choose your poison.

Shu,

Everybody does it. Everybody is evil. Both sides are wrong.

I guess it is all just part of the spiritual evolution of those people who were fortunate enough to be killed.

I can only suggest that everyone, if not overtly evil, is capable of evil. I confess that I am, since I've known the personification of 'evil', and suffered greatly at its hands, eventually responding likewise by taking out my rage on some other poor soul. And no doubt there is no army on earth that doesn't have members capable of committing atrocities if given the opportunity, having become hardened to horrific sights such as some brother-in-arms' head being blown off. So I shudder to think what I could have been capable of as a young man in a similar scenario, given what cruelty I was capable of when not having ever been near a war zone. The journey into the heart of darkness is far easier than most care to contemplate.

[Eugene I.]

Are you familiar with Robert Pirsig's four levels of morality (physical, biological, social, intellectual)? (It's covered in his book Lila.) Its thesis is that what may be good on one level may not be good on a higher level. Debating who is good or bad on a social level will differ from what is good or bad on the intellectual or biological level. So to answer your question, on a social level (where one considers how societies will prosper or not), I think the Russian invasion is justified, and that the Ukrainians are the more likely culprits in the various events that the Western media call massacres (e.g. the Kramatorsk missile was probably Ukrainian). Why do I think these things? Because I have exposed myself to the pro-Russian POV, and consider it more socially defensible than the anti-Russian POV.

Scot, myself being ethnic Russian I read and listen to a lot of sources from both sides (Russian official media included), because I honestly want to understand the rationales, theories, political and psychological motivations on both sides of the conflict. In addition to the military war in Ukraine, in Russia there is a civil war of minds going on between people supporting both sides with roughly 50-50 split between pro- and anti-Putin POV (by the way, the "80% support for the war in Russia according to the official surveys" is simply not true, you need to live among the people to know the real distribution of opinions).

So, my first point is that in the reality of such societal split in Russia, the terms "pro-Russian" and "anti-Russian" that you are using are invalid, because it depends on which side of the Russian population split you look from. Russians on the anti-Putin side consider themselves as true patriots and consider Putin and his supporters as the traitors of Russia, so for them "pro-Russian" means exactly anti-Putin and anti-war. And for the supporters of Putin it is exactly the opposite. So, I would suggest to use the terms "pro- or anti-Putin POV" rather than "pro- or anti-Russian POV"

Regarding the war, my personal take is that this conflict lies in the dominion of mass societal and political powers and belief systems associated with them where all sides have plenty of their own wrongs, as well as their own justifications and relative truths. But if I would pick a side, I would still pick the side of the liberal democracy (which is Ukraine and the Western alliance) in spite of being very sober about its own flaws. As Churchill once said (and I agree with him): "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" My own position is closer to the "realistic liberalism" of John J. Mearsheimer which I hope will eventually become more adopted in the Western politics.

[ScottRoberts]

Good for you to step up and acknowledge you support the invasion.

If you read what I said, I do not "support" any war. I merely said that if there is such a thing as a "just war", then in my opinion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine qualifies.

Following your advice, the next time I see a man attacking a woman and child I'll be sure to get the attacker's point of view before making any judgment.

Another ridiculous analogy to avoid doing your homework. How about your next analogy reflect that the supposed "victim" has been shelling its own populace for the last eight years. Let's say the woman has been beating the child, and the man attacks the woman to make her stop.

[Eugene I.]

Re my previous post, when I said "But if I would pick a side, I would still pick the side of the liberal democracy (which is Ukraine and the Western alliance) in spite of being very sober about its own flaws.", I meant that it's my personal choice, and I did not mean that it's necessarily the right choice for Russia. And that is why I left Russia 25 yrs ago because I clearly saw that liberal democracy in Russia is just not going to happen during my lifetime (and there were other personal reasons to leave of course).

Another ridiculous analogy to avoid doing your homework. How about your next analogy reflect that the supposed "victim" has been shelling its own populace for the last eight years. Let's say the woman has been beating the child, and the man attacks the woman to make her stop.

I would suggest not to stick to political propaganda cliches here. The conflict in Donbass is far more complicated that just "who is shelling whom", it is an ethnic conflict very similar to Kosovo, Karabakh and like which are typically very difficult to resolve peacefully, even though all parties still need to make all attempts to achieve a peaceful resolution.

But is was still a fault of Putin's government that turned that ethnic unease into a military conflict in Donbass in 2014 by supporting separatists with heavy offensive weapons and supplies. Putin definitely had an agenda of escalating this local conflict to use it later as a justification for starting a war in Ukraine (which he planned since 2008). But once the local war in Donbass started, then it quickly escalated with both sides committing atrocities. I can give you a link to a youtube video where the former head of Donbass separatist "ministry of defense" Girkin-Srelkov literally said "Ukrainians called us to go to the fields and openly fight with them, but that would be insane because we were weaker than them on the military side, so we had to shoot them with artillery from urban sites" (which means using civilians as a shield). So for Ukrainians to fight back was to shell back to urban sites. Who is right in such combat? Both sides are equally wrong.

[ScottRoberts]

In addition to the military war in Ukraine, in Russia there is a civil war of minds going on between people supporting both sides with roughly 50-50 split between pro- and anti-Putin POV (by the way, the "80% support for the war in Russia according to the official surveys" is simply not true, you need to live among the people to know the real distribution of opinions).

It could be that the pollsters in Russia are falsifying their results, But then, how can any of us know what the true results are? Where do you get the 50-50 split from? I would just point out that if you live "among the people" in a US blue state, and there were no accurate polls, would you have a good idea of the national distribution of opinions? Or wouldn't there be a difference if the people you live among are mostly professionals, or mostly working class?

So, my first point is that in the reality of such societal split in Russia, the terms "pro-Russian" and "anti-Russian" that you are using are invalid, because it depends on which side of the Russian population split you look from. Russians on the anti-Putin side consider themselves as true patriots and consider Putin and his supporters as the traitors of Russia, so for them "pro-Russian" means exactly anti-Putin and anti-war. And for the supporters of Putin it is exactly the opposite. So, I would suggest to use the terms "pro- or anti-Putin POV" rather than "pro- or anti-Russian POV"

When I say I am pro-Russian, I am referring to acts of the Russian government and military. Much as during the Vietnam war one could be anti-American, even though about half of the American populace was (eventually) against the war. To say I am pro-Putin, on the other hand, would be to reinforce the attempt of western media to make it all about Putin, calling him insane and so forth.

Regarding the war, my personal take is that this conflict lies in the dominion of mass societal and political powers and belief systems associated with them where all sides have plenty of their own wrongs, as well as their own justifications and relative truths. But if I would pick a side, I would still pick the side of the liberal democracy (which is Ukraine and the Western alliance) in spite of being very sober about its own flaws. As Churchill once said (and I agree with him): "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" My own position is closer to the "realistic liberalism" of John J. Mearsheimer which I hope will eventually become more adopted in the Western politics.

My name for what you call "liberal democracy" is corporatocracy, or in the case of Ukraine, oligarchy. In any case, if I were Russian, I suspect I would pick the side that protects my country from NATO, knowing that behind the armed forces of NATO lie the corporate forces eager to take my country's resources for themselves. Even if it means I can no longer eat at McDonald's.

[AshvinP]

I can now certainly see that there is a different spin to be put on this tragedy, one of them being that player Z and his cohorts knew exactly what player P and his cohorts could be capable of, if player P's buttons were pushed in just a certain way, and how that was quite likely to play out, and what the costly consequences would be. And sure enough player P walked right into the trap, giving the opposing war mongers just the rationale they needed to justify installing their state-of-the-art weaponry in the region, while coming across as the good guys jumping to the rescue in fighting the evil-doers, rather than the provocateurs—all seeming like a dangerous high-stakes poker game being played by the respective players, with human lives as the chips. One still finds it very difficult to parse out where precisely the more or lesser evil lies, given that a case can be made that none of the players can be fully absolved of culpability. If one is looking for wise choices, it seems pretty much like a choice between coke zero and orange crush ... choose your poison.

Shu,

Everybody does it. Everybody is evil. Both sides are wrong.

I guess it is all just part of the spiritual evolution of those people who were fortunate enough to be killed.

I can only suggest that everyone, if not overtly evil, is capable of evil. I confess that I am, since I've known the personification of 'evil', and suffered greatly at its hands, eventually responding likewise by taking out my rage on some other poor soul. And no doubt there is no army on earth that doesn't have members capable of committing atrocities if given the opportunity, having become hardened to horrific sights such as some brother-in-arms' head being blown off. So I shudder to think what I could have been capable of as a young man in a similar scenario, given what cruelty I was capable of when not having ever been near a war zone. The journey into the heart of darkness is far easier than most care to contemplate.

Very well said! There is a certain Wisdom expressed by people who have plunged into these soul-depths (and I am not claiming to have done so), which is clearly missing from those abstractly speculate on them. Some people will write books on Jung's metaphysics, for ex., but fail to take his actual insights on the human psyche - that each individual is a microcosm of the Macrocosm - seriously.

"It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good…

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil."
- Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipalego

[ScottRoberts]

I would suggest not to stick to political propaganda cliches here. The conflict in Donbass is far more complicated that just "who is shelling whom", it is an ethnic conflict very similar to Kosovo, Karabakh and like which are typically very difficult to resolve peacefully, even though all parties still need to make all attempts to achieve a peaceful resolution.

But is was still a fault of Putin's government that turned that ethnic unease into a military conflict in Donbass in 2014 by supporting separatists with heavy offensive weapons and supplies.

Or the military conflict might have been avoided if the Ukrainian government had implemented the Minsk accords which it had signed up to do.

[Eugene I.]

I would suggest not to stick to political propaganda cliches here. The conflict in Donbass is far more complicated that just "who is shelling whom", it is an ethnic conflict very similar to Kosovo, Karabakh and like which are typically very difficult to resolve peacefully, even though all parties still need to make all attempts to achieve a peaceful resolution.

But is was still a fault of Putin's government that turned that ethnic unease into a military conflict in Donbass in 2014 by supporting separatists with heavy offensive weapons and supplies.

Or the military conflict might have been avoided if the Ukrainian government had implemented the Minsk accords which it had signed up to do.

Ture, but Minsk agreement happened way after the actual war in Donbass started and Russia flooded separatists with weapons. And Donbass separatists broke the Minsk agreement as many times as Ukrainians, provoking Ukrainians to respond. Once a militarized ethnic conflict starts, it is very difficult to reach peace. Look at the Karabach conflict going on for more than 30 years. And just to remind, when a similar ethnic conflict started in Chechnya, Putin's army shelled the whole Grozniy city to the dust (even though it was mostly populated with ethnic Russians). So the point is to look at the origins of the Donbass war: it was Putin's government that fueled it in the first place by supplying the separatists with heavy weapons and artillery. Putin's propaganda says that the fighters in Donbass were "Donbass and Russian civil volunteers", but excuse me, where would "civil volunteers" get an artillery from?

[Eugene I.]

It could be that the pollsters in Russia are falsifying their results, But then, how can any of us know what the true results are? Where do you get the 50-50 split from? I would just point out that if you live "among the people" in a US blue state, and there were no accurate polls, would you have a good idea of the national distribution of opinions? Or wouldn't there be a difference if the people you live among are mostly professionals, or mostly working class?

You are exactly right, it much depends on the region where you conduct the polls. The population in Russia is very politically polarized very similar to US, and the opinion split varies widely from region to region. My assessment is based on the information my friends give me, which they in turn have from talking to their friends and co-workers in Russia, but that is only representative of Moscow region. On the other hand, you should not trust the results of the polls in a state where any opinion against the government policy is criminalized. Would you expect people in North Korea openly expressing an opinion opposing the government? Of course they would never said that for the fear of being persecuted. So, in fact we can not know for sure what the "true results are", but at least I have a "sampling point" from my Russian friends.

My name for what you call "liberal democracy" is corporatocracy, or in the case of Ukraine, oligarchy. In any case, if I were Russian, I suspect I would pick the side that protects my country from NATO, knowing that behind the armed forces of NATO lie the corporate forces eager to take my country's resources for themselves. Even if it means I can no longer eat at McDonald's.

Ukraine is a very corrupted society, there is no question about that. In fact, it's even more corrupted than Russia. Ukrainians will certainly have to deal with that if/when they win the war. Yet Ukraine is a democracy and has tools to deal with corruption, even though it may take a long time. But, as opposed to Ukraine, Russia is an oligarchical non-democratic government capitalism with corruption deeply buried in the whole governmental and social structure and mentality. So, sure, you can call "liberal democracy" as "corporatocracy", I have no problem with that, but my personal choice between corporatocracy and corrupted autocratic oligarchy would still be the former. If there would be a choice between paradise and corporatocracy, I would of course prefer paradise, but unfortunately we do not live in paradise on Earth. I actually over my life lived in socialist USSR, oligarchical post-USSR Russia and corporatocratic US/Canada, and, being a realist, I definitely prefer the latter, but again, it is only my own personal choice.

Now, you view on the situation "if I were Russian" is very valid, it is in fact how many people in Russia also look at the issue of Ukraine joining NATO. Here is a good discussion on that topic for anyone interested. I think this argument was used many times, but here it is again: imagine Mexico going into a military alliance with China and agreeing to put some Chinese military facilities on the US border. How would US react to that? I'm sure US would say "no way, it's just not going to happen" and use all means, including military, to prevent that from happening. Same scenario actually happened during the Cuba missile crisis. On the other hand, if we look at the same situation from "if I would be Mexican" POV (or Ukrainian for that matter), the view would be very different. Why would not Mexico or Ukraine, being sovereign states, have their own right to decide which country to associate with? There is no easy solution to this problem. But I agree with the position of Chinese government on the Ukraine conflict: "we understand Russia's safety concerns related to the expansion of NATO, but we believe that the sides have to resort to diplomatic solutions and stop any military confrontation." I do believe that NATO countries need to be more realistic and flexible in considering Russia's safety concerns regarding Ukraine joining NATO. As Putin complained to Macron: "The West completely ignored Russia's safety concerns".

However, NATO expansion is by far not the only and not the main reason for Russia's invasion in Ukraine, it's is rather one of the justifications. The more fundamental reason was given in the ARTICLE BY VLADIMIR PUTIN ”ON THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF RUSSIANS AND UKRAINIANS“ where he insists that Ukraine is not and has never been a sovereign country and sovereign nation and it has always been part of Russia. Putin sees his role to restore the lost unity even if it has to involve military means. This is similar to China-Taiwan issue, but with the difference that the formation of Ukraine as a sovereign state was a result of the Belovezh Accords and was recognized by all countries in the world. But apart from the problem of contradicting with Belovezh Accords, the problem with Putin's view is that it is simply not true. Ukrainians is a nation different from Russians with their own mentality, language, history and culture, albeit close to Russian, but certainly still distinct. They had periods in history when they were part of Russian Empire, as well as periods when they were separate. And so, Ukrainians as a nation have their own view on their own national identity and national destiny, which is very different from Putin's. And, being a sovereign nation, they have all rights to have such own view and hold to it. This is not to say that Ukraine is free from their own problems and wrongdoings. In fact, anti-Russian views and extremist nationalism is quite common in the Western Ukraine, as well as corruption and oligarchocracy. But it's not Russia's business to interfere to fix these problems by means of military invasion. Russia still does have right to protect the rights of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, but it has to do that only by non-violent and non-military means.

One thing that Putin fails to understand is very simple. He wants to create the "Russian World" as an alliance of countries/nations under the umbrella of Russia as a superpower and a pole in the world's geopolitics. But he fails to understand that the right way to do that is the voluntary way by making the alliance with Russia for other countries to be attractive from economic, socio-philosophical and political point of view. You cannot force sovereign countries into an alliance by military invasion or by bullying/threatening. Nobody wants to deal with a government that cannot be trusted and cannot provide and safety guarantees. Same actually applies to the US foreign policy.