Is Thinking Dangerous? | Hannah Arendt on Thinking as Subversion
Where does totalitarianism begin? This is the question that Hannah Arendt wanted to answer, and the following quote from her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, provides us with at least one place to begin to answer this question:
“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”
~ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
It is likely that the danger posed by the Bolsheviks in the early 20th century was regarded by many Russians as a conspiracy theory: yes, perhaps their ideas were bad, but they were a tiny minority in Russia: within a population of over 70 million, total Bolshevik membership was only 8,400 in 1905, 13,000 in 1906, and 46,100 in 1907. I mention this because it suggests what a tiny, but focused and well-funded revolutionary group is ultimately capable of.
The Bolsheviks were only able to be successful because the Russian population had already been prepared for revolution. There was widespread discontent, some of which was understandable, and a great deal of which had been manufactured for decades prior by leftists in the intellectual class.
As Arendt points out, the goal of totalitarian education is to destroy society’s capacity to form convictions. For the ruling class, conviction is a luxury that most of society is not afforded, as Arendt puts it, “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous” (Thinking). If society is not encouraged to think, what is society encouraged to do? Arendt argues that “under conditions of tyranny, it is far easier to act than to think. Thinking is a lonely and uncharted activity, whose results are unpredictable and cannot be measured or tested” (The Origins of Totalitarianism).
When one has been taught to lack conviction, to act rather than to think, and when one has been convinced that it’s not possible to discern truth from falsity or good from evil, all that’s left is to act on whatever the totalitarian state tells us is the “good.” One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state is this conviction that whatever the state and its totalitarian ruler say is true; as Arendt writes, “The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error” (The Origins of Totalitarianism).
What is Arendt’s solution to this situation? In The Human Condition, she writes, “What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.” Increasingly, we are encouraged to act on whatever injustices (real or simply perceived) we see online. We are often presented with a disturbing video that causes us to react in disgust, and to jump to an emotional conclusion about what is happening in the video, without actually knowing the context and reality. This also happens with new conspiracy theories that crop up. If a conspiracy theory fits our preconceived idea of how the world works (our confirmation bias), then we are much more likely to accept it as one more “data point” that solidifies our position.
As I’ve said before, there are certainly true “conspiracy theories,” the problem is that if we accept all conspiracy theories that confirm our biases, then we will end up believing a bunch of things that are not actually true, and the falsehoods that we have accepted will end up undermining the actually true things that we believe. If we want to affect the world in a positive way, then we need to become more discerning in the ways in which we interact with new ideas.
What is the great danger of not learning to discern between truth and falsehood? Arendt makes the point that “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil” (The Life of the Mind). This happens because, lacking conviction and the ability to discern between good and evil, truth and falsehood, people allow themselves to be manipulated by the zeitgeist, and by the powers that be.
OK…that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed our latest 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!