Neurosis

Irrational Authority Produces Emotionally And Intellectually Crippled Followers

By  | 

Irrational authority doesn’t just need emotionally and intellectually crippled followers, it also produces emotionally and intellectually crippled followers through the systematic, purposeful poisoning of hearts and minds towards objectively healthy, productive, life furthering entities.

The necessity to poison hearts and minds becomes obvious when we see that in order to amass and maintain power and control irrational authority must set itself up as moral which means it must convince its followers that all who oppose it are immoral. This is the great trick, to use all the tools at its disposal to create an alternate narrative, a false reality for its followers to inhabit in which objectively unhealthy norms and values are called virtues while objectively healthy norms and values are called vices.

What effect does this subversion of truth and morality, this inversion of norms and values, have on the people subjected to it? Unresolvable inner conflicts are born within their psyches, conflicts between what they know at the deepest levels of their beings to be true and natural and the untrue, unnatural ways of thinking, feeling, and being in the world sanctioned by irrational authority. The result is neurosis and with it a deterioration of the capacity for self-reflection, reason, and critical thinking.

This state of affairs makes followers even more vulnerable to the schemings of irrational authority since to compel behavior it only need package its commands in a way that serves to smooth over the felt inner conflict, in a way that helps to justify various rationalizations that were, ironically, taken in the first place to smooth over the conflict produced by unethical, unnatural demands. In this sad state of affairs followers of irrational authority come to fear and despise those entities that could set them free from their suffering while they place on a pedestal those entities responsible for their suffering.

Related posts:

  1. Parenting And Dealing With Disobedience Many parents of young children here in the West instinctively view obedience as a virtue and disobedience as a vice. This is because at the unconscious level the parental relationship reinforcers the pleasant feeling of being godlike, of being the ultimate source of authority and power. Disobedience from the child can therefore create an irrational, […]...
  2. The Rise of Authoritarianism Times of uncertainty are the fertile soil in which the seed of authoritarianism sprouts, grows, and flourishes. In the midst of social upheaval, where traditional norms and values have begun to unravel, where the long taken for granted social order seems to be disintegrating, existential anxiety skyrockets and irrational, destructive underlying drives and motivations which […]...
  3. Irrational Authority and Off-Limits Subjects Whether we’re talking about the patriarch of a nuclear family, a politician in a society, or any authority figure anywhere else on the human spectrum, one of the fastest ways to discern whether the entity in question wields rational authority or irrational authority is to determine whether there are any subjects of conversation considered off-limits. […]...
  4. Irrational Authority Where rational authority is open to questioning and criticism from its followers irrational authority brooks no such dissent. Irrational authority sets up obedience as the highest virtue and disobedience as an unforgivable sin. It uses all the psychological tools in the belt to reinforce the idea that any questioning, criticism, and especially disobedience are off […]...
  5. Ambivalence Around Cultural Norms And Values Ambivalence occurs any time we hold simultaneous, contradictory thoughts or feelings about the same thing. The result is painful psychic conflict, a sort of confused hostility and resentment that most of us end up directing towards some external entity when in actuality it’s our own problem to sort out. That psychic pain will never go […]...
  6. What To Do If You Believe You Are Being Treated Unfairly If you believe you are being treated unfairly by someone and don’t know how to handle the discomfort then your own response to the situation will likely be destructive. You might silently stew, letting your resentment and hostility and stress build up within you, in which case your destructiveness will be pointed directly towards your […]...
  7. Parenting And Control A powerful psychological motivation to produce and raise offspring, even though it’s not always consciously recognized, is the immortality project. Childrearing provides the unique opportunity not only to insure the continued survival of one’s own DNA but also to implant certain norms, values, and taboos for living, to pass on certain ways of being. It […]...
  8. Do Not Punish Your Partner By punishing your partner we mean enacting all those conscious and sometimes unconscious changes in typical patterns of behavior that cause your significant other psychological, emotional, or physical distress. Depending on the couple, a punishment may seem rather small objectively speaking, like a short word or talking less than normal but the essential psychological factor […]...
  9. The Need For Validation The need for validation is one of the most powerful motivating forces in human life. It’s not always enough to know yourself that you’re doing a good job, that you’re a good person making good decisions. You want that confirmation from the social environment. But of course not all validation is created equal. What you […]...
  10. Freedom And Tabus Often what we really believe we must do or can’t do is actually something that we choose to do or won’t do. We become trapped in prisons of our own making without realizing it. We remain in an unwanted situation, or make choices that are bad for our growth and well-being and the growth and […]...
  11. The Meaning Of Conflict Most of us operate under the basic assumption that when people offer up their viewpoints they’re seeking our agreement. That’s because when most of us offer up our own viewpoints that’s exactly what we’re doing, we’re seeking agreement. Dissension can be negatively reinforcing. At the unspoken existential level agreement from our fellows equals validation and […]...
  12. Healthy Community Versus Unhealthy Community Belonging to a community is perhaps the most deeply entrenched human psychological need. Being a part of rather than apart from mitigates the painful anxiety cued off by existential isolation. Existential isolation is our birthright as sentient organisms encased in separate skins with individual thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings only ever immediately accessible to […]...
  13. Super Ego If you observe parents in our society trying to do a good job parenting very young children you might notice that they constantly remind their kids to say please when they’re asking for something. These kids are at the ideal age for the instillation of norms and values, they accept just about everything from their […]...
  14. Student-Teacher Relationship In any type of learning situation you need to do your due diligence before entering into the relationship, regardless of whether your role will be that of student or teacher. We take the student-teacher situation to mean any and all relationships where one person, endowed with authority in an area based on real or perceived […]...
  15. Super Ego Formation In Action I was riding on the bus in the back section near a girl around eight years old on the way to school when a teacher from that school got on the bus, spied her out, and said “Hey, don’t I know you?” before sitting down next to her. Over the course of the next few […]...
  16. Authority Working definitions of authority are essential for being able to cut below the surface and answer difficult questions like when authority is appropriate, who should wield it, what the true motivations are for holding it, and most importantly when to fight against it. Erich Fromm delineates between two types of authority, which he calls rational […]...
  17. Authority And Rebellion Almost everybody identifies with and roots for the rebel alliance in Star Wars but many of these same people subtly or brutally crush any and all attempts of those around them to rebel against whatever little authority they have managed to amass in their own lives. Rebellion against entrenched structures of power is usually good and just […]...
  18. Resistance To Authority “Human History began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.” – Erich Fromm In our culture we find that resistance to authority is often classified as pathological, as a criteria for dysfunction. This should be no surprise when we consider that psychology […]...
  19. Relationship Between Leaders And Followers The relationship between leaders and followers is always and everywhere about the transfer of existential responsibility. At the rational surface it may seem that the leader is free while the follower is unfree but at the irrational psychological level the reverse is true in that the leader, in return for subservience and the glory of […]...
  20. Destructive Leaders Produce Destructive Followers Gods, parents, and leaders of all stripes share the same privileged psychological position in the minds of the people under their sway. This all starts in the primary relationship where the primary caregiver really is, for all intents and purposes, a god. The primary caregiver is the giver of life and sustenance, the wise counselor […]...
Related Items