Narrative Machines: Modern Myth, Revolution, and Propaganda by James Curcio

Author:James Curcio [Curcio, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Ideology, Propaganda, Politics, Mythology
ISBN: 9781472547811
Amazon: B075NSSYPV
Goodreads: 36256443
Publisher: Mythos Media
Published: 2017-09-13T23:00:00+00:00

Nature of the Beast

We can look outward at the social structures that support the growth of the authoritarian tendency in our own nature, the tendencies against which we should be vigilant if we don’t want to live under the yoke of such restriction. These types are supported not only by American or European monoculture, but also by the vast majority of state-cultures in recorded history. This is not merely a Western phenomenon, for surely we can look to the history of China or Japan and see the same pattern of power manifesting itself in some totalitarian manner. The will to power is not a provincial cultural peculiarity.

There are of course many ways to frame this narrative. One quintessential example is the debate between Hobbes and Rousseau. For Hobbes, man’s natural state is miserable, nasty and fearful; that is why, he has needed to found some institutions for self-protection. However, for Rousseau, this is not a valid argument because he firmly believes that man was much happier in his early natural state.

Hobbes’ Leviathan gives an essentially pessimistic view of human nature, often used by conservatives as the reason that the state needs to keep us in line. Hobbes felt that it was the purpose of a controlling state to protect man from himself, whereas Rousseau saw the state itself as the likely root of evil, and certainly the source of inequality. This is, in a nutshell, the argument about whether human nature is fundamentally “good” or “evil.” The idea of raising the mask of civility to find a beast underneath is not a new one. Rousseau criticized Hobbes for asserting that since man in the “state of nature . . . has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue.”

On the contrary, Rousseau holds that “uncorrupted morals” prevail in the “state of nature” and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge. (Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau).

This argument serves as the backdrop for nearly every revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the core ideological schism between America’s Right and Left.

Regardless of how we are raised or who we are, the truism goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The full quotation,

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

Yet if we open our history books, we’ll see that the future has never been a march in a single direction. Our ethics aren’t graven in the tablets of time.[53] This has significant repercussions for the social outcomes of science. In the 1970s Harry Harlow conceived of a horrific experiment, which he literally called “The Pit of Despair,” although its technical names was the “vertical chamber apparatus.” (Which is possibly even more ominous.)

He tortured rhesus macaque monkeys to determine if this would make them depressed.

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