IV
AD MAJOREM GLORIAM . . .
1
The theoretical considerations outlined in previous chapters enable us to take a closer look at the human predicament.
From the dawn of civilization, there has never been a shortage of inspired reformers. Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers, Chinese sages, Indian mystics, Christian saints, French humanists, English utilitarians, German moralists, American pragmatists, Hindu pacifists, have denounced wars and violence and appealed to man's better nature, without success. As already suggested, the reason for this failure must be sought in the reformer's mistaken interpretation of the causes which compelled man to make such a disaster of his history, prevented him from learning the lessons of the past, and which now puts his survival in question. The basic fallacy consists in putting all the blame on man's selfishness, greed and alleged destructiveness; that is to say, on the self-assertive tendency of the individual. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as both the historical and psychological evidence indicate.
No historian would deny that the part played by crimes committed for personal motives is very small compared to the vast populations slaughtered in unselfish loyalty to a jealous god, king, country, or political system. The crimes of Caligula shrink to insignificance compared to the havoc wrought by Torquemada. The number of people killed by robbers, highwaymen, gangsters and other asocial elements is negligible compared to the masses cheerfully slain in the name of the true religion, the righteous cause. Heretics were tortured and burned alive not in anger but in sorrow, for the good of their immortal souls. The Russian and Chinese purges were represented as operations of social hygiene, to prepare mankind for the golden age of the classless society. The gas chambers and crematoria worked towards the advent of a different type of millennium. To say it once more: throughout hnman history, the ravages caused by excesses of individual self-assertion are quantitatively negligible compared to the numbers slain ad majorem gloriam out of a self-transcending devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith or political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill, but also to die for good, bad, or completely hare-brained causes. What can be a more valid proof for the reality of the urge towards self-transcendence?
Thus the historical record confronts us with the paradox that the tragedy of man originates not in his aggressiveness but in his devotion to transpersonal ideals; not in an excess of individual self-assertiveness but in a malfunction of the integrative tendencies in our species. I think it was Pascal who said: man is neither angel nor devil, but when he tries to act the angel he turns into a devil.
But how did this paradox arise?
2
Let us remember that in the basic polarity underlying all phenomena of life, the self-assertive tendency of a holon is the dynamic expression of its 'wholeness', the integrative tendency the expression of its 'partness', i.e., its subordination to a larger whole on the next higher level of the holarchy. In a well-balanced society both tendencies play a constructive part in maintaining the equilibrium. Thus a certain amount of self-assertiveness -- 'rugged individualism', ambition, competitiveness -- is indispensable in a dynamic society; without it there could be no social or cultural progress. John Donne's 'holy discontent' is an essential motivating force in the social reformer, the artist and thinker. Only when the balance is disturbed for one reason or another does the self-assertive tendency of the individual manifest its destructive potential and tend to assert itself to the detriment of society. Most civilizations, primitive or advanced, have been by and large quite successful in coping with such contingencies.
However, the vagaries of the integrative tendency, which in our view are mainly responsible for man's predicament, are less obvious and more complex. One pathogenic factor I have already alluded to: the human infant is subjected to a longer period of helplessness and total dependence on the adults who rear it than the young of any other species. This protracted experience may be at the root of the adult's ready submission to authority, and his quasi-hypnotic suggestibility by doctrines and ethical commandments -- his urge to belong, to identify himself with a group or its system of beliefs.
Freud taught that moral conscience -- the super-ego -- is the residue of identification with the parents, particularly with the father; that parts of their personalities and moral attitudes are 'introjected' -- quasi-cemented into the growing child's unconscious mental structure. One does not have to go that far, and accept that the mature adult's moral conscience is 'nothing but' the product of this psychic transplantation, to realize nevertheless that it plays an important part in the immature adult's psychic make-up -- and in our present context we are mainly concerned with emotionally immature adults, whose integrative tendency, 'the need to belong', manifests itself in infantile or otherwise aberrant ways.
We can distinguish three overlapping factors in these pathogenic manifestations of the integrative tendency: submission to the authority of a father-substitute; unqualified identification with a social group; uncritical acceptance of its belief-system. All three are reflected in the gory annals of our history.
The first has, since Freud, become such a commonplace that it needs only a brief mention. The leader who incorporates the father-image may be a saint or a demagogue, a sage or a maniac. What qualities make a leader does not concern us here, but obviously he must appeal to some common denominators in the masses under his sway, and the commonest of denominators is infantile submission to authority.
The leader-follower relationship can embrace a whole nation, as in the case of the Hitler cult; or a small sect of devotees; or be confined to a duet as in the hypnotic rapport, on the psychotherapist's couch, or in the Father Confessor's curtained box. The common element is the act of surrender.
When we turn to the second and third factors mentioned above -- the unqualified identification of an individual with a social group and its system of beliefs -- we again have a wide variety of social aggregations which can be designated as 'groups', and described in terms of 'group-mentality' or Massenpsychologie. But this branch of psychology tended to concentrate its attention on extreme forms of group behaviour such as the outbreaks of mass-hysteria in the Middle Ages, or Le Bon's classic studies of the behaviour of the heroic and murderous mobs unleashed by the French Revolution (which Freud and others took as their text). This tendency to focus attention on the dramatic manifestations of mass-psychology made them overlook the more general principles underlying group mentality and its dominant influence on human history, past and present. For one thing, a person need not be physically present in a crowd to be affected by the group-mind; emotive identification with a nation, Church or political movement can be quite effective without physical contact. One can be a victim of group-fanaticism even in the privacy of one's bathroom.
Nor does every group need a personal leader or 'father-figure' in whom authority is vested, as discussed under the previous heading. Religious and political movements need leaders to get under way; once established they still benefit from efficient leadership; but the primary need of a group, the factor which lends it cohesion as a social holon, is a credo, a shared system of beliefs, and the resulting code of behaviour. This may be represented by human authority, or by a symbol -- the totem or fetish which provides a mystic sense of union among the members of the tribe; by sacred icons as objects of worship; or the regimental flag to which soldiers in battle were supposed to hang on even at the price of their lives. The group-mind may be governed by the conviction that the group represents a Chosen Race whose ancestors made a special covenant with God; or a Master Race whose forebears were blond demi-gods; or whose Emperors were descended from the sun. Its credo may be based on the conviction that observance of certain rules and rites qualifies one for membership in a privileged elite in after-life; or that manual work qualifies one for membership in the elite class of history. Critical arguments have little impact on the group-mind, because identification with a group always involves a certain sacrifice
of the critical faculties of the individuals which constitute it, and an enhancement of their emotional potential by a kind of group-resonance or positive feedback.
Let me repeat that in the present theory the term 'group' is not confined to a crowd assembled in one place, but refers to any social holon, governed by a set code of rules (e.g., language, traditions, customs, beliefs, etc.) which defines its corporate identity, lends it cohesion and a 'social profile'. As an autonomous holon, it has its own pattern of functioning and is governed by its own code of conduct, which cannot be 'reduced' to the individual codes which govern the behaviour of its members when acting as autonomous individuals and not as parts of the group. The obvious example is the conscript who as an individual is forbidden to kill, as a disciplined member of his unit is in duty bound to do so.
Thus it is essential to distinguish between the rules which govern individual behaviour and those which guide the behaviour of the group as a whole.*
* In a paper on 'The Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct'
Professor F. A. von Hayek defines as his aim 'to distinguish between
the systems of rules of conduct which governs the behaviour of the
individual members of a group (or of the elements of any order)
and the order or pattern of actions which results from this for the
group as a whole . . . That [they] are not the same thing should
be obvious as soon as it is stated, although the two are in fact
frequently confused.' [1]
The group, then, is to be regarded as a quasi-autonomous holon, not simply as a sum of its individual parts; and its activities depend not only on the interactions of its parts, but also on the group's interactions, as a whole, with other social holons on a higher level of the hierarchy. These interactions will again reflect the polarity of the holon's self-assertive and integrative tendencies, oscillating between competition and/or cooperation with other groups. In a healthy social holarchy the two tendencies are in equilibrium; but when tensions arise, this or that social holon may tend to get over-stimulated and impose upon its rivals or usurp the role of the whole. History provides a never-ending list of such tensions, confrontations and conflicts.
Several factors responsible for this chronic disequilibrium have already been mentioned in earlier pages -- such as the unique range of diversity in our species with regard to racial characteristics and national temperament, or the divisive effect of the multiplicity of languages -- which, in their ensemble, have always made the disruptive forces in mankind prevail over the cohesive forces on a local or global scale. An even more important cause of trouble is that the code of conduct of a social holon includes not only the rules which govern the behaviour of its members, but also moral precepts and imperatives with a claim to universal validity. These imperatives carry a high emotional charge, and the group-mind tends to react violently to any threat -- real or imaginary -- to its cherished beliefs.
All that has been said points to the conclusion that in the group-mind the self-assertive tendencies are more dominant than on the level of the average individual; and that, by identifying himself with the group, the individual adopts a code of behaviour different from his personal code. The individual -- pace Lorenz -- is not a killer, the group is; and by identifying with it, the individual is transformed into a killer.
We shall see in a moment that this paradox can be observed not only on the battlefield or among lynching mobs, but also in austere psychological laboratories. Its paradoxical nature derives from the fact that the act of identification with the group is a self-transcending act, yet it reinforces the self-assertive tendencies of the group. Identification with the group is an act of devotion, of loving submission to the interests of the community, a partial or total surrender of personal identity and of the self-assertive tendencies of the individual. In our terminology, he relinquishes his 'wholeness' in favour of his 'partness' in a larger whole on a higher level of the holarchy. He becomes to some extent depersonalized, i.e., unself-ish in more than one sense. He may become indifferent to danger; he feels impelled to perform altruistic, even heroic actions to the point of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to behave with ruthless cruelty towards the enemy -- real or imagined -- of the group. But his brutality is impersonal and unselfish; it is exercised in the interest, or supposed interest of the whole; he is prepared not only to kill, but also to die in its name. Thus the self-assertive behaviour of the group is based on the self-transcending behaviour of its members; or to put it simply, the egotism of the group feeds on the altruism of its members.
The 'infernal dialectics' of this process is reflected on every level of the various social holarchies. Patriotism is the noble virtue of subordinating individual interests to the interests of the nation; yet it gives rise to chauvinism, the militant expression of those higher interests. Loyalty to the clan produces clannishness; esprit de corps blossoms into arrogant cliquishness; religious fervour into zealotry; the Sermon on the Mount into the Church militant.
Let us now turn to the experimental confirmation of our theoretical schema which has recently been provided, in a rather surprising manner, by the psychological laboratories in Yale and other universities.
3
The series of highly original experiments, which I propose to describe in some detail, were started by Dr Stanley Milgram at the Psychology Department in Yale University, and repeated by various experimental laboratories in Germany, Italy, Australia and South Africa. The purpose of the experiments was to discover the limits of the average person's obedience to authority, when ordered to inflict severe pain on an innocent victim in the interests of a noble cause. Authority was represented by a figure of professional appearance in a laboratory coat; I shall call him the Prof. The noble cause was Education; more precisely, the experiment was purportedly designed to provide answers to the problem whether punishing the pupil for his mistakes had a positive effect on the learning process. It involved three people: the Prof, who was in charge of the proceedings; the learner or victim; and the experimental subject, who was asked by the Prof to act as teacher and to punish the learner each time he gave the wrong reply. Punishment was by electric shocks of growing severity, administered by the 'teacher' on the Prof's orders. The 'learner' or victim was strapped into a kind of electric chair, with an electrode attached to his wrist. The 'teacher' was seated in front of an impressive shock-generator which had a key-board of thirty switches, ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts (i.e., a 15 volt increment from one switch to the next). There were also verbal inscriptions on the machine ranging from
SLIGHT SHOCK to INTENSE SHOCK to DANGER -- SEVERE SHOCK.
In fact the whole gruesome set-up was based on make-believe. The 'victim' was an actor hired by the Prof. The shock-generator was a dummy. Only the 'teacher', at whom the experiment was aimed, believed in the reality of the shocks he was ordered to administer, and of the shrieks of pain and cries for mercy uttered by the 'victim'.
The 'teachers' -- i.e., the real subjects of the experiment -- were volunteers from all walks of life between the ages of twenty and fifty, who came to the Yale laboratory attracted by newspaper advertisements to participate in 'a scientific study of memory and learning' (they were paid a modest four dollars per hour). Typical subjects were postal clerks, high-school teachers, salesmen, engineers and manual labourers. Altogether, more than a thousand volunteers were tested in Yale alone.
The basic procedure of the experiment was as follows. The 'pupil' was given to read a long list of paired words, e.g., blue box -- nice day -- wild duck -- etc. Then, in the 'examination' he was given one test-word, for instance, 'blue', with four alternative answers, e.g., ink, box, sky, lamp, and had to indicate which was the correct answer. The 'teacher' was instructed by the Prof to administer a shock each time the pupil gave a wrong response, and moreover 'to move one level higher on the shock-generator each time the learner gives the wrong answer.
To make sure that the 'teacher' was aware
of what he was doing, the actor who played the role of the victim uttered complaints which increased in stridency according to the voltage, from 'mild grunts' starting at 75 volts, in a crescendo, until at 150 volts the victim cried out 'Get me out of here! I won't be in the experiment any more! I refuse to go on.' (Remember that the 'teacher' believed that the victim too was a volunteer.) 'At 315 volts, after a violent scream, the victim reaffirmed vehemently that he was no longer a participant. He provided no answers, but screamed in agony whenever a shock was administered. After 330 volts he was not heard from. . . .' Yet the Prof instructed the subject to treat no answer as a wrong answer and to continue to increase the shock level according to schedule. After three shocks of 450 volts he called off the experiment.
How many people, in an average population, do you think would obey the command to carry on with the task of torturing the victim to the limit of 450 volts? The answer seems to be a foregone conclusion: perhaps one in a thousand, a pathological sadist. Before starting his experiments, Milgram actually asked a group of psychiatrists to predict the outcome. 'With remarkable similarity they predicted that virtually all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter.' The consensus of the thirty-nine psychiatrists who answered the questionnaire was that 'most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts (i.e., when the victim asks for the first time to be released). They expected that only 4% would reach 300 volts, and that only a pathological fringe of about one in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board.' [2]
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