September 07/08, 2023 -
Information Clearing House -
Corporate capitalism, defined by the
cult of the self and the ruthless
exploitation of the natural world and all
forms of life for profit, thrives on the
fostering of chronic psychological and
physical disorders. The diseases and
pathologies of despair — alienation, high
blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety,
depression, morbid obesity, mass shootings
(now
almost two per day on average), domestic
and sexual violence, drug overdoses (over
100,000 per year) and suicide (49,000
deaths in 2022) — are the consequences
of a deeply traumatized society.
The core traits of psychopaths —
superficial charm, grandiosity and
self-importance, a need for constant
stimulation, a penchant for lying,
deception, manipulation and the inability to
feel remorse or guilt — are celebrated. The
virtues of empathy, compassion and
self-sacrifice, are belittled, neglected and
crushed. The professions that sustain
community, such as teaching, manual labor,
the arts, journalism and nursing, are
underpaid and overworked. The professions
that exploit, such as those in high finance,
Big Pharma, Big Oil and information
technology, are lavished with prestige,
money and power.
“The fact that millions of people share
the same vices does not make these vices
virtues, the fact that they share so many
errors does not make the errors to be
truths, and the fact that millions of people
share the same forms of mental pathology
does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm
writes in The Sane Society.
The classic works on trauma by
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk,
Dr. Gabor Maté and
Dr. Judith Herman state bluntly that
what is accepted as normal behavior in a
corporate society is at war with basic human
needs and our psychological and physical
health. Huge segments of the American
public, especially the tens of millions of
people who have been discarded and
marginalized, endure chronic trauma. Barbara
Ehrenreich in “Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in
America” describes the life of the working
poor as one long “emergency.” This trauma
is as destructive to us personally as it is
socially and politically. It leaves us in a
state of dysphoria where confusion,
agitation, emptiness and loneliness define
our lives. Whole segments of American
society, especially the poor, have been
rendered superfluous and invisible. As Dr.
van der Kolk writes, “trauma is when we are
not seen and known.”
“Our culture teaches us to focus on our
personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level
we barely exist as individual organisms,”
Dr. van der Kolk notes.
Trauma numbs our capacity to feel. It
fractures our self. It disconnects us from
our bodies. It keeps us in a state of
hyperarousal. It makes us confuse our
desires, often artificially implanted by the
consumer society, with our needs.
Traumatized people view the world around
them as hostile and dangerous. They lack a
positive image of themselves and lose the
capacity to trust. Many replace intimacy and
love with sexual sadism, which is how we
became a pornified culture. Trauma creates
what the psychiatrist
Robert Jay Lifton calls a “counterfeit”
world defined by phantom enemies, lies and
dark conspiracies. It negates a sense of
purpose and a life of meaning.
Trauma, Dr. Herman
writes, “impels people both to withdraw
from close relationships and to seek them
desperately.” It induces feelings of shame,
guilt, and inferiority, she writes, “as well
as the need to avoid reminders of the trauma
that occurs in daily life. Trauma severely
compromises the capacity for intimacy.
Trauma can dramatically reduce focus to
extremely limited goals, often a matter of
hours or days.”
“If trauma entails a disconnection from
the self, then it makes sense to say that we
are being collectively flooded with
influences that both exploit and reinforce
trauma,” Dr. Maté
writes. “Work pressures, multitasking,
social media, news updates, multiplicities
of entertainment sources — these all induce
us to become lost in thoughts, frantic
activities, gadgets, meaningless
conversations. We are caught up in pursuits
of all kinds that draw us on, not because
they are necessary or inspiring or
uplifting, or because they enrich or add
meaning to our lives, but simply because
they obliterate the present.”
Trauma also drives many to flee into the
arms of those who are orchestrating the
abuse.
Systematic and repetitive trauma, whether
by a single abuser or a political system,
destroys personal autonomy. The perpetrator
becomes omnipotent. Resistance is accepted
as futile. “The goal of the perpetrator is
to instill in his victim not only fear of
death but also gratitude for being allowed
to live,” Dr. Herman writes. This trauma
lays the foundation for the most insidious
characteristic of all tyrannies, large and
small. Total control. Prolonged trauma
reduces its victims to a state of
psychological infantilism. It conditions
them to plead for their own enslavement.
“We are not content with negative
obedience, not even with the most abject
submission,” George Orwell
wrote of the ruling “Inner Party” in his
novel “1984.” “When finally you surrender to
us, it must be of your own free will. We do
not destroy the heretic because he resists
us; so long as he resists us we never
destroy him. We convert him, we capture his
inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil
and all illusion out of him; we bring him
over to our side, not in appearance, but
genuinely, heart and soul.”
Christian fascism, the subject of my book
“American
Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
America,” preys on this trauma. It
replicates systems of control common to all
tyrannies, including cults. Christian
fascists skillfully break down adherents,
severing them from their families and
communities. They manipulate their shame,
despair, feelings of worthlessness and guilt
- the byproducts of their trauma - to demand
total obedience to the church leadership,
who are almost always white and male. These
leaders, supposedly spokespeople for God,
cannot be questioned or criticized. The
connecting tissue among the disparate
militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists,
anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot
organizations, Second Amendment advocates,
neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that
stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 is not only
this Christian fascism but trauma.
“Totalitarian governments demand
confession and political conversion of their
victims,” Dr. Herman writes. “Slaveholders
demand gratitude from their slaves.
Religious cults demand ritualized sacrifices
as a sign of submission to the divine will
of the leader. Perpetrators of domestic
battery demand that their victims prove
complete obedience and loyalty by
sacrificing all other relationships. Sex
offenders demand that their victims find
sexual fulfillment in submission. Total
control over another person is the power
dynamic at the heart of pornography. The
erotic appeal of this fantasy to millions of
terrifyingly normal men fosters an immense
industry in which women and children are
abused, not in fantasy but in reality.”
Donald Trump is a perpetrator and savior.
He personifies the callous indifference of
patriarchy, wealth, privilege and power
towards the vulnerable, as well as the
promise that once his cultish followers
surrender to him they will be protected. He
inspires in equal measure fear and solace.
“People who embrace the small tyrannies
are much more susceptible to embracing the
large ones,” Dr. Herman told me. “When you
have a political party that embraces the
subordination of women, the subordination of
people of color, the subordination of gender
non-conforming people, and the subordination
of non-Christians, then it’s not a party
that embraces democracy. It’s a party that
is looking for a fascist leader and is going
to find one.”
In Dr. van der Kolk’s “The
Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in
the Healing of Trauma,” he opens with
stark statistics compiled by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention showing that
“one in five Americans was sexually molested
as a child; one in four was beaten by a
parent to the point of a mark being left on
their body; and one in three couples engages
in physical violence. A quarter of us grew
up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of
eight witnessed their mother being beaten or
hit.”
The endemic trauma in American society,
which is getting worse under the onslaught
of the gig economy, pronounced social
inequality, indiscriminate police violence,
the climate crisis and the seizure of the
political process and most institutions by
corporations and the ruling oligarchs, is
our most serious public health crisis. It
has grave individual, social and political
consequences.
“If trauma is truly a social problem,”
Dr. Herman in “Truth and Repair: How Trauma
Survivors Envision Justice”
writes, “then recovery cannot simply be
a private individual matter. The wounds of
trauma are not merely those caused by the
perception of violence and exploitation. The
actions or inactions of bystanders, all
those who are complicit in or who prefer not
to know about the abuse or who blame the
victims, often cause deeper wounds.” “Full
healing,” she adds, “because it originates
in a fundamental injustice, requires a full
hearing within the community to repair
through some measure of justice the trauma
survivors have endured.”
You can see my recent two-part interview
with Dr. Herman
here and
here.You can see my interview with Dr.
Maté
here.
“Recovery has to take place in
relationships,” Dr. Herman said in my
interview. “When people feel reconnected to
their communities and re-accepted in their
communities, then the shame is relieved and
the isolation is relieved, and that really
creates the platform for healing.”
The key is community. Not virtual
communities. But communities where we can
reconnect and see in our wounds the wounds
of others. It requires access, without
onerous medical bills, to mental health
professionals. It requires dismantling the
corporate structures of oppression. It
demands a new ethic, one that values empathy
and self-sacrifice. We must reject the
cynicism, indifference and cult of the self
that all tyrannies inculcate in those they
dominate to keep them passive. We must reach
out to our neighbors, especially those in
distress and those who are demonized. We
must uncouple from consumer society and turn
away from the allure of our cultural
narcissism.
The moral philosopher
Bernard Williams argues that resentment
and indignation are as important as empathy
and connection to solidify social bonds. It
is not only our own dignity we must protect,
but the dignity of others. These “shared
sentiments” he writes “bind people together
in a community of feeling.” Acts of
resistance around these “shared sentiments,”
this “community of feeling,” establish
ourselves as distinct, autonomous beings. We
may not defeat these tyrannies, but by
battling against them we free ourselves from
the grip of the small and large tyrannies
that deform American society.
