Posted on 07/29/2006 6:22:28 AM PDT by Harrius Magnus
The American Left as "crisis cult"
Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin proposes an interesting framework for understanding the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American Left at his very interesting website One Cosmos. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic anthropologist Weston LaBarre, he posits that the left has become a “crisis cult” such as are found in societies whose bedrock assumptions break down in the face of the superior strength of foreign cultures impinging on their territory.
Probably the most famous of the crisis cults are the cargo cults which developed in Melanesia.
The Cargo Cults believe that manufactured western goods (‘cargo’) have been created by ancestral spirits and intended for Melanesian people. White people, however, have unfairly gained control of these objects. Cargo cults thus focus on overcoming what they perceive as undue ‘white’ influences by conducting rituals similar to the white behavior they have observed, presuming that the ancestors will at last recognize their own and this activity will make cargo come. Thus a characteristic feature of Cargo Cults is the belief that spiritual agents will at some future time give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.
The crisis cult LaBarre wrote most about were the Ghost Dancers among Native Americans in the 19th century
when American Indians were facing the complete dissolution of their way of life—loss of their hunting territories, near extinction of the once vast buffalo herds, a series of disastrous military defeats, multiple droughts, and new and fatal diseases. The Ghost Dance was a fantasied solution to all their problems, involving the widespread idea that “a new skin would slide over the old earth, covering up the whites and all their works, and bringing upon it new trees and plants, great buffalo herds, the ghosts of the dead, and the great departed warriors and chiefs.” This utopia would come about if only each person in all the tribes danced the elaborate Ghost Dance.
Godwin explains:
...progressives are having to cope with a catastrophic collapse of their world and all of its comforting myths. As each myth crumbles in succession, they become increasingly frantic in papering over reality with the downright strange beliefs of their progressive crisis cult.
Thus come delusional assertions: Bush is an idiot despite degrees from Yale and Harvard; Republicans are questioning the patriotism of Democrats; the monitoring of international phone calls signals the onset of totalitarianism; and (my favorite) Air American founder Sheldon Drobny’s assertion that Karl Rove is behind the anti-Semitic posts at Daily Kos.
I think it is almost unquestionable that the Left’s belief systems have proven incongruent with the real world. Communism didn’t work and only survives as a pretext for despotism in North Korea and China. Welfare is a trap, and poor people’s lot in America has improved since access to it was term-limited. Higher taxes on “the rich” depress economic growth and throw people out of work. The list could go on.
With their gods having failed them, leftists have turned to cant, ritual, and hysterical repetition of their golden oldie playlist of slogans. And most of all, to demoinization of their opponents. It is fairly primitive, and often comic, with tinges of tragedy.
Metaphors are an effective way to understand such bizarre behavior. The more the merrier.
Hat tip: Larwyn
Thomas Lifson 7 27 06
Sorry but it is still too general to help me.
From the subject line I presumed the article focused on the left's long tendency to promote and use rolling "crisis" topics to invoke their political agenda.
School shooting > immediate calls for gun control.
Hot summer > it's America's fault and global warming, must ratify "Kyoto".
Terrorists launch rockets into Israel > Bush's fault, need the United Nations.
During the previous administration, the WH coordinated message with their allies in the MSM, and this became almost a soviet-style propaganda operation.
Good explanation of the Leftwing-Moonbat BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) psychology!
I was only looking for something to me help understand your posts, I don't really want to start studying Rousseau.
A couple of examples of groups on the right that embrace Romanticism would probably help me to figure out enough for use as it relates to this thread.
Ayn Rand is one. Pat Buchanan could be classified as another. Robert Heinlein would be a third. Although their philosophies are different in many ways their outlooks are the same in that they are Romantics.
BTW you should study Rousseau.
Now I get it, but the only philosopher that has ever triggered an interest in me, was when I came across Thomas Reid in my 1903 set of Americana encyclopedias.
I think philosophy would have been different for me if the professors had introduced me to Reid, instead of trying to explain why a dumb ass like Nietzsche was so brilliant.
For philosophers I enjoy Locke, Smith and Hume, to list the top three. But one of the things I found important is not to hero worship. They were a bunch of very clever guys with interesting ideas some which I even agree with. :)
But perfect they were not nor do the best of them claim to be.
As far as questioning patriotism goes, the Left is most certainly not in support of the America that actually is, the one they fill up entire days inventing accusations and condemnatory rhetoric for. Their "patriotism" consists of an admiration for an America that exists only in their minds. When they say they are "progressives," that's what they think they are progressing toward. In fact they're crawling after an ever-receding mirage and it is the rest of us who they blame for it.
I'm clearly not the guy to discuss philosophy with, but here is a link on Reid, I would be surprised if he doesn't at least get some agreement from you (since you hate Romanticism).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/
If they're pets, they're damn dangerous pets, kind of like the story I read a year ago about a guy's "pet" cobra that bit him while he was feeding it.
If they're pets, they're damn dangerous pets,
_________________-
Only if they are taken seriously. Liberals should NEVER be taken seriously.
bump
Great post...
bttt
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