Get Your Smart On
Notes from today's talk on _What Is Totalitarianism? Understanding Hannah Arendt Now_
As a group, we attended a panel and discussion hosted by the Library of America billed as follows:
*“The rise of totalitarian governments,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the central event of our world.” In her masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt linked the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, seeing them as twin manifestations of a terrifying new political system that sought absolute control over all aspects of life. How does this book, which probed the psychology and pathology of the twentieth century, take on new relevance in today’s political landscape?
Join celebrated scholars David Bromwich, Seyla Benhabib, Roger Berkowitz, and Thomas Wild, editor of LOA’s new expanded and annotated edition of Arendt’s great work, for a riveting conversation about the causes, means, and ends of totalitarian regimes and the difficult, sometimes excruciating choices faced by those who live under them.*
Underscoring that this text does not offer a theory of totalitarianism, Seyla Benhabib helpfully outlined six characteristics of totalitarian regimes:
Totalitarianism should be distinguished from fascism, dictatorships (more common), and generally authoritarian regimes. What distinguishes totalitarianism is the desire to control every aspect of the population’s life, even their private lives and innermost thoughts. The good news is that total control is not possible, can never be completed, so its control is not sustainable. The bad news is that fascism can turn into the more brutal totalitarianism, so it can get worser.
Action (purposeful) vs. Behavior: Purposeful action is acting in accordance and the our own personal judgement and projects, and this is what totalitarianism wants to do away with. They want to reduce action to just behaviors that can be predicted and controlled. To do away with an internal, private process, human conscience. Therefore, a form of resistance is simply not behaving as expected and, as much as possible, in ways that are in non-support of the regime.
The point of collecting our data is to be able to better predict our behaviors, first for the interest of businesses that need us to consume their products; and second, in the interests of political forces seeking to control a population. The problem is that they only have access to external behaviors that they can measure, not our internal processes. So, be unpredictable, be very very unpredictable. Spontaneity is resistance.
Someone on the panel (sorry, didn’t note who it was) observed that totalitarianism cannot take place in a small town where people know each other — it is a product of mass societies where we don’t know our neighbors, and may even fear them (we are taught to fear our neighbors). Ergo, a way to resist is to get to know your neighbors, and have private relationships.
Privacy is key and a necessary component of connecting to others and being able to hold onto our own conscience. Online privacy-first tools are a must, and we need to start using them regularly.
Loneliness, Isolation, and Solitude: totalitarianism can only take hold in a society where people are disconnected from each other, isolated. Loneliness is understood as a form of world-less-ness, to be uprooted, to not have a place in the world. Isolation is defined as the inability to act together. Solitude, on the other hand, is positive; it is a space in which you can be safe with your own thoughts. This is the privacy necessary to being able to have a conscience, and to act with purpose.
We have a Philosophy Publics Unplugged live scheduled for tomorrow at 1pm EST tomorrow, Wednesday March 12th. We can discuss any of these points, or any others you caught, during that time. See you then! 🌊
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