We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (attributed)
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by a world of enemies – „one against all“ – that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common (hu)mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
Hanna Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Last week in Europe, we had a total eclipse of the sun. A rare event in Western Europe, last seen in 1999 and next to be broadly witnessed here in 2081. This eclipse was watched by thousands who travelled to the path of totality from all around the globe. I was lucky to be part of this experience. It was my second total eclipse experience in just over two years.
The wonder and awe in which I have since found myself has had me reflecting on totality and totalitarianism, and how, by cultivating our connectedness to the entirety of Creation, we can protect ourselves from the worst excesses of human dysfunction, depravity, and manipulation, both inner and outer.
The 20th century German philosopher and academic, Hannah Arendt, describes in her 1951 analysis, „The Origins of Totalitarianism“ a system that aims to make humans completely unnecessary, and therefore totally manipulable in a political system established and maintained by a tiny minority. Through a process of eliminating legal rights, destroying moral conscience, and replacing individuality with total conformity, this regime aims for absolute control over the individual.
This work emerged in the shadows of the worst excesses of human debasement, namely the crimes against humanity committed in the Concentration Camps of Europe and beyond in the 1930’s and 40’s. What made these unique is that they mark the threshold to the post-modern epoch.
Post modernity is defined as that phase in human evolution in which we had eventually developed the destructive technology which could be deployed to end the existence of humanity on our beautiful planet. It was inaugurated by the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945.
In her book, Arendt notes that, by stoking tribal nationalism, any nation of people can be persuaded that it is surrounded by „a world of enemies“. This paranoid state then makes way for the ideology that states that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with and better than all others, thereby excluding the very possibility of a common family of humankind, a sisterhood and brotherhood of all humans, indeed of Creation as a divine whole.
For such a ploy to succeed, the innate human sense of community (among peoples) and belonging (to the wider sphere of the natural world) needs to be smashed.
In the words of Hannah Arendt: „What we call isolation in the political sphere, is called loneliness in the sphere of social intercourse. Isolation and loneliness are not the same…. While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying – by isolating men – their political capacities. But totalitarian domination, as a form of government, is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of isolation, – of not belonging to the world at all – which is the most radical and desperate experience of man.“
Another aspect of such a totalitarian model is the Leader. This has had such an impact on the German culture in which I live that the word „Führer“ is taboo in almost every facet of discourse, even to this day. In business circles the workaround is „Führungskraft“ or der „Führende/r“. In political circles we speak of „Vorsitzender“ (the one who sits up front) or „Generalsekretär“. We almost never use the word „Führer“.
Arendt writes: „The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility: he can never admit an error…..The propaganda effect of infallibility, the striking success of posing as a mere interpreting agent of predictable forces, has encouraged in totalitarian dictators the habit of announcing their political intentions in the form of prophecy….Mass leaders in power have one concern which overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.“
Every totalitarian leader has a bunch of hangers-on, or groupies. This is called „the mob“.
Arendt describes the mob as: „…primarily a group in which the residue of all classes is represented. This makes it so easy to mistake the mob for the people, which also comprises all strata of society. While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for the „strong man“, the „great leader.“ For the mob hates society from which it is excluded, as well as Parliament where it is not represented.“
As far as truth is concerned, relativism become the main tool for the erosion of our „sense of reality“.
„To the aversion of the intellectual elite for official historiography, to its conviction that history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots, must be added the terrible, demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, that man may be free to change his own past at will, and that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition.“
„Not Stalin’s and Hitler’s skill in the art of lying but the fact that they were able to organize the masses into a collective unit to back up their lies with impressive magnificence, exerted the fascination. Simple forgeries from the viewpoint of scholarship appeared to receive the sanction of history itself when the whole marching reality of the movements stood behind them and pretended to draw from them the necessary inspiration for action.“
Then Arendt moves on to the role of racism in the decay of human structures, indeed the Human Condition.
She notes: „Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization. When Russians have become Slavs, when Frenchmen have assumed the role of commanders of a „force noire“, when Englishmen have turned into „white men,“ as already for a disastrous spell all Germans became Aryans, then this change will itself signify the end of Western man. For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.“
Finally on the possibilities available to us – contraction or expansion, destruction or creation, inclusion or exclusion, healing or decaying, attachment or non-attachment, choosing between fear or love, Arendt notes that the totalitarian regime is always out to destroy, because – the ideology goes – only in destroying something do we really take possession of it.
Though regimes may come and go, the danger persists since: „Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.“
Seventy-five years on, does any of this ring a bell? Indeed, I thought so!
Then comes an event such as last week’s eclipse.
Drawn by some voice deep within, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world converge on the narrow strip of totality – from the Arctic ice in northernmost Siberia to the Balearic Islands of the Western Mediterranean – to experience, first-hand, the indescribable, perhaps even the absurd.
We know that such astronomical occurrences have fascinated humans since the dawn of time and some of us are powerless when it comes to resisting their call. The day was spent in conversations with people young and old, from all five continents, who had come alone, with friends, many even with young children.
These conversations were struck up effortlessly as if we were all already old friends. The sense of community was both palpable and infectious.
That is the point. When we humans step back and regard the Big Picture, totalitarianism doesn’t stand a chance. The best antidote to isolation is the sense of belonging we experience as we all gaze westwards to see the eclipsed star on the western horizon and, soon afterwards, the crescent apparently plunges into the ocean.
No words are exchanged. Instead, grunts of incredulity, peals of laughter, and tears of joy can be heard far and wide. We all seem to have reverted to the preverbal wonder of the toddler. What a beautiful experience!
We may not know exactly which place we have in the overall scheme of things, yet we do know that we belong. Our thirst for „be-longing“ is finally quenched. The long search has finally come to an end. We are now home.
From such an experience, there is no going back. Like astronauts who return from outer space, we can never perceive the world as a collection of fragments again. In the eyes of the stranger before me, I see my own.
We return home and carry the message. In such energy, the forces of totalitarianism have no chance. The antidote is plurality: people, in their differences, acting together, exploring without prejudice, partaking of our shared Universe, and beginning something new. Nothing is over while people are still free to begin afresh.
And that is exactly how it should be.
