Contempt + Gratitude | Hannah Arendt on the Roots of Totalitarianism
As I mentioned in my last installment, Hannah Arendt saw firsthand the rise of totalitarian fascism in her home country of Germany. She saw that the lack of appreciation for what one has, which includes intangibles such as one’s culture, one’s history, the cultural and physical institutions that one has inherited (and so, one often takes for granted), and so on, provide the soil within which totalitarian revolution and control can take root:
“Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: ‘Things must change—no matter how. Anything is better than what we have.’ Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it they articulate it, and by articulating it they make the people somehow love it, admire it, feel at one with it. It does not even have to be a majority. The only condition is that the masses do not interfere. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Once enough people are convinced that the current situation is unacceptable, they are more easily susceptible to the utopian visions that are sold to them by the people who have been peddling dissatisfaction. The problem, of course, is that these utopian visions will never be able to “solve” the problems that are at the root of the human condition: sickness, unhappiness, and death are part of the human condition that humans will never be able to completely solve, and the utopian dreams that our transhumanist technocrats are selling to us are destined to fail and, depending on how much power we give them, they will fail in truly catastrophic ways.
So…what can we do with this knowledge? Many writers have pointed out the incredible importance, for human flourishing, of gratitude. Rather than focusing on what is wrong with our lives, and with the world around us, we should always begin with what is right. We can be grateful for our health, our family, our friendships, our educational and professional opportunities, etc. Even if some of these areas might be less-than-ideal, we should ask ourselves if they could be worse? The answer is almost always a resounding “yes!”
Finally, there are certainly things that we can do to address problems in the world. I am not suggesting that we return to a completely primitive way of life. I do advocate for the reacquisition of wisdom and balance in our individual and community life. Most of the modern world lacks wisdom and balance, it lacks an appreciation for the good things of the past, it lacks an understanding of human limits, it doesn’t know what true human flourishing looks like, and it immediately assumes that new scientific and technological advances are good things.
So, gratitude for the blessings that we have and a healthy skepticism towards revolutionary changes (especially in the realm of technology) are good places to begin to push back against the creeping totalitarianism that many of us are encountering.
I hope you enjoyed this initial foray into the work of Hannah Arendt…as always, stay tuned for more by subscribing and downloading The How Did We Get Here? Reading List…and I will see you soon!