I wanted to comment on a nicely written recent essay by Ted Dace called Literally Insane. The essay revolves around the idea how technology, specifically the technology of the written word, has been taken too literal by way of an overly analytical mind that has abandoned its wiser intuition, along with potential negative impacts writing can have when first introduced to a naive audience who allows their critical mind to become appropriated by the perceived authority granted to the written word.
My area of contention in his writing though, if you want to call it that, has to do with largely with the omission of citing the role of centralized power in creating overly analytical minds through the division of labor and being under the thumb of a long history of authoritarian empires and regimes. Where it’s not so much the propaganda of the written word alone that has misled people rather an amalgam of using of language combined with power. And primarily I wanted to comment on the way social hierarchies empowers do-gooder opportunists to supposedly solve the social ills of the world in ways that are convenient to the ruling powers that be.
Whether it be politicians or clergy who take a potential social benefit or a perceived sin and transmute that into something truly horrifying; turning what seemingly was once a good idea into authoritarian doctrine. Something like the bible for instance doesn’t become weaponized unless some authority promotes it. Or Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No to drugs campaign, which likely ruined far more lives than the drugs it was trying to prevent people from taking.
Dace states in his piece: “For today’s pathological literalists, known as evangelicals, to follow the example set by Jesus in the gospels can only mean giving away all your possessions and living as a mendicant. Since we cannot be expected to actually do this, clearly we’re not meant to take Jesus at his word and in fact, quite the opposite, we should follow the capitalist path of exploiting others in order to get rich. This was the mindset of the people – with a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other – who exterminated Native Americans and enslaved Africans.”
I liked this line, “the bible in the one hand and a gun in the other.” It’s a nagging old problem. Using some presently accepted authority as justification to commit violence against perceived sinners for personal gain is largely the same issues we have now. The terrorists, the drug dealers, whatever new crusade that can be launched to accumulate power under its auspices by ostensible do-gooders. Wherever power has accumulated there will be people in that power structure with a latent inner desire to to exploit the trending sin of the day for personal gain.
I’d argue that the old as time intellectual imperialism, essentially equating to ego spun out of control insisting that it knows everything and everyone should think the same way, it must simplify and reduce dissenting opinions to remain viably true. None of this is of course possible unless there are centralized hierarchical systems of social power already installed. And in some cases people who might even be genuinely well meaning and have the means to start an organized movement soon finds that movement has gone wildly out of hand. It comes off the rails when they begin taking the literal and applying it in blanket fashion. Even with things in modernity like combating misogyny and racism have now turned into something more insidious; identity politics. The punishments vary, but the idea still the same.
And Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed made note the effect of oppressed people who when given a channel to power will often turn into oppressors themselves, and many dissidents didn’t really believe in the causes they were fighting for rather only saw them as a conduit to power where they become as bad if not worse than the initial oppressor.
A portion of today’s evangelicals are literally bringing their guns to church in the US in acts of ego solidarity. And the movement of the day prompting this action is idolatry worshiping the guns themselves, and perhaps worshiping the violence the guns represent. A mindset that’s emblematic of the inner beliefs, as above so below, choosing to message their inner violent ideas with the intellectual backing of a deity. Their desire is more domination and ownership for people like them, it speaks to the idea that arguments should be won with the unquestioning authority of the truth of consequences from bullets. Gun ownership is framed as protection, a right/rite, even something that should be compulsory according to some. I do believe that they believe in their guns now more than they believe in their god, the religious fervor of the moment doesn’t seem to have any real ties to spirituality but is again an excuse to wield power out of the contrived sins of an American god they have entirely invented.
For those who subscribe wholesale to the power structures of organized religion plus a nation state the authority structure is complete, backed by written word from the constitution and the religious text of choice, along with the selfish inclinations of do-gooder demagogues, the frame of prescribed belief becomes absolute. There’s no room here left for independent thought. This is the zenith of the egotistical do-gooder, who have condensed life down to rote action for the masses, understanding is at a minimum as the flock live their lives based on what other’s have told them, little authenticity remains in this space, merely an acceptance of prescribed intellectual servility.
