Cool summary, psycho-biography of the DemocRat Party, really, like a nutshell version of Erik Erikson's "Young Man Luther," except Luther wasn't a liar. (Were he alive, Erikson might make a trilogy out of his Luther and Gandhi psycho-biographies by writing "Young Man Biden":) In Identity and the Life Cycle, Erikson describes ritualization of individual and social life as “an agreed-upon interplay between at least two persons who repeat it at meaningful intervals and in recurring contexts.” The DemocRat Party's leadership, it would seem, ritualizes deceit and dishonesty among its rising politicos, making a political truism out of Kiekegaard's assertion, "Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts."
Erikson's psychological insight into ritualization and the individual is a useful psychological construct for looking at group behavior, as in Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, and a useful political construct for looking at group behavior, as in Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.
And, sadly, it's not just theory, it's true, it really happens. The lies of individuals become ritualized and then politicized and then socialized. See Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, particularly sections describing the legal/bureaucratic framework establishing the camps and the purges and show trials deployed to enforce the serial falsehood and dishonesty requisite to compulsory unreality.
We see it all, now, in America, the ritualization of individual lies as the necessary first step toward normalizing dishonesty by institutionalizing the political benefits of mass perjury and the social advantages of mendacity.
A friend just sent me this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vn_PSJsl0LQ
Cool summary, psycho-biography of the DemocRat Party, really, like a nutshell version of Erik Erikson's "Young Man Luther," except Luther wasn't a liar. (Were he alive, Erikson might make a trilogy out of his Luther and Gandhi psycho-biographies by writing "Young Man Biden":) In Identity and the Life Cycle, Erikson describes ritualization of individual and social life as “an agreed-upon interplay between at least two persons who repeat it at meaningful intervals and in recurring contexts.” The DemocRat Party's leadership, it would seem, ritualizes deceit and dishonesty among its rising politicos, making a political truism out of Kiekegaard's assertion, "Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts."
Erikson's psychological insight into ritualization and the individual is a useful psychological construct for looking at group behavior, as in Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, and a useful political construct for looking at group behavior, as in Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.
And, sadly, it's not just theory, it's true, it really happens. The lies of individuals become ritualized and then politicized and then socialized. See Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, particularly sections describing the legal/bureaucratic framework establishing the camps and the purges and show trials deployed to enforce the serial falsehood and dishonesty requisite to compulsory unreality.
We see it all, now, in America, the ritualization of individual lies as the necessary first step toward normalizing dishonesty by institutionalizing the political benefits of mass perjury and the social advantages of mendacity.