I'm not sure that Judas has written e.g. Gandhi's biography.
But every great man indeed tends to get disciples, who are less critical of him than the great man himself tries to teach them to be. This phenomenon is, of course, no basis for the dismissal of what the great man has to say.
It certainly applies e.g. to Gandhi, that many have an irrationally high opinion of him. One can win elections in the largest democracy on the planet, to a large extent on the perceived merit of being related to him.
And despite this irrationality that Gandhi generates in some, he had exceptionally good stuff to say.
(Do not err to infer much from the fact that I used the term "great man" in my earlier comment. Just a matter of making my comments in the terminology previously introduced.)
The Random Wilde is a recurring Amor Mundi feature -- sometimes I get out of the habit of posting it, but it always returns. I post Wildean aphorisms and quotations that make me chuckle, sometimes because they seem to comment on other things happening in the world, sometimes because they are so perpendicular to things happening in the world, sometimes because they manage to capture complex insights in their pithy paradoxes, sometimes because I find them provocative without sympathizing with them particularly, and so on. You would be very well advised to read a dozen or so of them at least before commenting, though, else you risk missing the spirit of the thing entirely and producing the unloveliest most deadly-dull kind of kitsch imaginable.
Yes, there is the risk of me misinterpreting what you saw in this particular aphorism.
Similarly, there is the risk of you misinterpreting what were the senses of the aphorism I actually grasped, before finding it worth commenting on how the aphorism e.g. relates to Gandhi.
Chapter 9, "The Perfect 'Borderpath': Chairman Mao" pp. 216 et seq.
Mao [Zedong] was the most Machiavellian leader of the many Machiavellian leaders of the twentieth century. For three decades, he held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population. As historian R. J. Rummel writes: 'For perspective on Mao's most bloody rule, all wars [worldwide] 1900-1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000 -- including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all those wars. He also killed nearly four times as many as are thought to have died in **four hundred years** of the African slave trade, from capture to sale in Arab, Oriental, or New World markets.
Therefore it is perhaps surprising to find that psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists of the time, and even today, rarely make serious efforts to address the possibility of serious mental illness in motivating Mao's behavior. But MIT political scientist Lucian Pye, who published an early biography of Mao in 1976, the year of Mao's death, provides a lucid explanation for the reticence: '[B]ecause I knew that I was already going out onto thin ice by psychologically interpreting the near-sacred Mao, I decided that it would not be prudent, indeed that it would be counter-productive, to use any technical terminology. Therefore, I did not go public in announcing that Mao Zedong was probably a narcissist with a borderline personality, a combination that is not rare. I suspect that if I had stated that this was the case, it would have brought many people's blood to the boiling point. . .
One of the three key dimensional traits of borderline personality disorder is cognitive-perceptual impairment. Mao appears to have displayed dramatic symptoms of this trait. During the Great Leap Forward, from 1958 to 1960, Mao implemented a policy that diverted all human resources into industry rather than agriculture in a misguided and disastrous attempt to catch up with the industrialized West. During the Great Leap, tens of millions of workers were diverted to produce one commodity -- steel -- in inefficient backyard production facilities. It is estimated that some thirty million died as a result of the ensuing famine -- some peasants were reduced to eating each other's children to avoid eating their own. Mao's general reaction to the devastating effects of his policies was to pretend that they weren't happening. His staff, all too aware of what could happen to them if they revealed the truth, served to insulate him even further. But the situation deteriorated so drastically that the truth could not be hidden. Dr. Li [Zhisui, Mao's personal physician,] describes the insider's perspective on Mao's reactions.
'Mao . . . seemed psychologically incapable of confronting the effects of the famine. When I told him that edema and hepatitis were everywhere, he accused me of inventing trouble. "You physicians have nothing better to do than scare people," he snapped. "You're just out looking for disease. If no one were sick, you'd all be unemployed." . . . I thought Mao was ruthless to close his eyes to the illness that was everywhere around him. But I allowed him his illusions and never mentioned the subject again, behaving in his presence as though hunger and disease had miraculously disappeared.'
Dr. Li notes: 'Mao was loath to admit his mistakes. His was a life with no regrets . . . I am convinced Mao never really believed he had done anything wrong.' . . .
As Dr. Li notes, 'To this day, ruthless though he was, I believe Mao launched the Great Leap Forward to bring good to China. . . . The twentieth century was marching forward and Mao was stuck in the nineteenth, unable to lead his country. Now he was in retreat, trying to figure out what to do. Tragically, the cognitive equipment Mao was using to do his 'figuring' with was -- **different**.
Control and the Purges
One oft-noted characteristic of those with subclinical borderline personality disorder is their extraordinary need for control. This trait was typical of Mao, who had to be in control of every situation -- from decisions at the highest reaches of political power to the most mundane details of his everyday life. Nothing that occurred within Zhongnanhai, the former royal garden within the grounds of the old Forbidden City, where Mao lived and worked, happened without Mao's consent, not even the clothing chosen for his wife to wear. Mao expected to be consulted on virtually every major -- and minor -- decision in China.
Mao's controlling efforts were carried to the ultimate in the form of his purges. . .
One of Mao's favored mechanisms for eliciting purge victims was to urge people to speak out, pledging there would be no retribution. The worst of these deathly false promises occurred in April of 1956, when Mao called for intellectual debate under the slogan 'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.' Naive intellectuals, encouraged by signs of liberalization, climbed aboard and began criticizing the party. Privately, Mao told party cadres, 'This is not setting an ambush for the enemy, but rather letting them fall into the snare of their own accord.' After allowing several months of seeming freedom, Mao cracked down. Quotas ranging between 1 and 10 percent were set of intellectuals to be persecuted and purged. Mao bragged that one province, Hunan, 'denounced 100,000, arrested 10,000, and killed 1,000. The other provinces did the same. So our problems were solved.'
. . .
Ability to Charm
Mao also deliberately chose an influential American journalist, Edgar Snow, who wrote for the _Saturday Evening Post_ and _New York Herald-Tribune_, to charm. . . the Western world. Snow swallowed Mao's fabrications wholesale, calling Mao and other party leaders 'direct, frank, simple, undevious.' Mao's journalistic charm campaign had long-term payoffs for both Snow and Mao. Other prominent figures joined Snow in praising Mao and his regime. Harvard professor John K. Fairbank 'returned from a visit to China and remarked: "The Maoist revolution is on the whole the best thing that has happened to the Chinese people in centuries." Feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir excused Mao's murderous regime by arguing that "the power [he] exercises is no more dictatorial than, say, Roosevelt's was." Jean-Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir's consort, celebrated Mao's "revolutionary violence," declaring it to be "profoundly moral."'
But Mao and the Communists' ability to fool the press extended further, in unexpected ways. Because the Nationalists had a much freer press, where frank complaint and discussion could take place, the Nationalists' own atrocities and blunders were magnified in people's minds. The contrast with the carefully controlled positive press coming from the Communist camp allowed many people to come to the conclusion that the Communists were the lesser of two evils. Nationalist captain Hsu Chen provides one example of an individual who had witnessed the terrors of Communist rule beforehand, becoming strongly anticommunist as a result. Coming home to Ningbo, near Shanghai, he found that people were in denial and did not want to hear his views: 'I talked to every visitor, til my tongue dried up and my lips cracked . . . I told about the heartless and bestial deeds of the Communist bandits. . . . But I was unable to wake them up from their dreams, but rather aroused their aversion.'
Narcissism
Narcissism is frequently seen in both borderline and antisocial personality disorders. Mao's narcissism, however, was so extraordinary that it bordered on religion -- he had near-mystical faith in his own role as leader. 'He never doubted that his leadership, and only his leadership, would save and transform China. . . . He shared the popular perception that he was the country's messiah.' Mao's personality cult, which he strongly encouraged behind the scenes, began to emerge in the 1940s. The new preample to the Constitution of the Communist Party was ultimately written to affirm that '[t]he Chinese Communist Party takes Mao Zedong's thought . . . as the guide for all its work, and opposes all dogmatic or empiricist deviations.' As Mao himself said: 'The question is not whether or not there should be a cult of the individual, but rather whether or not the individual concerned represents the truth. If he does, then he should be worshipped.'
It's difficult for someone with a Western upbringing to understand how completely a national personality cult can overtake people's minds. In Mao's China, toddlers chanted, 'We are all Chairman Mao's good little children.' Mao wasn't venerated -- he was indeed worshipped: 'The "Little Red Book" of his aphorisms was ascribed the power to work miracles. Chinese newspapers reported how medical workers armed with it had cured the blind and the deaf; how a paralytic, relying on Mao Zedong Thought, had recovered the use of his limbs; how on another occasion, Mao Zedong Thought had raised a man from the dead.'
Unusual insight into Mao's brand of narcissism comes from a set of commentaries he wrote while in his mid-twenties: 'I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's actions has to be benefitting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others. . . . People like me want to . . . satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course, there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me.' [Sounds just like Ayn Rand! ;->]
Reading Mao's own words gives insight into an earlier issue. If Machiavellianism is most closely related to borderline personality disorder of all the personality disorders, why is the correlation only a 0.40 instead of close to a perfect 1.0? The answer lies in the wording of some of the questions on the Mach-IV test. By looking at Mao's own thoughts as he described them in his commentaries, it's clear that Mao -- that most Machiavellian of all men -- would have answered the question, 'One should take action only when sure it is morally right,' for example, with the seemingly low-Mach 'strongly agree.' Mao's commentaries clearly stated his feeling that his own moral codes were the most valuable. Given his profound narcissism, we can reasonably assume Mao felt morally justified in doing whatever he wanted.
Remember the 'wisdom of crowds,' and the value of using different framing lenses to come to the optimal solution to complex problems? By stifling dissent and ensuring all eyes were turned only to him for all decisions, Mao effectively made a hundred-million-fold cut in the effectiveness of planning and governing in revolutionary China. It's no wonder the Chinese economy stuttered into reverse.
. . .
Did Mao Believe in Communism?
Mao's early willingness to ride whatever horse would allow him power and his later ebb and flow of political ideology make his actual belief in conventionally defined communism unlikely. Psychiatrist Jerrold Post astutely notes:
'It is hard to identify the narcissistic personality with any consistent beliefs about the world because his beliefs tend to shift. More than any other personality type, what the narcissistic personality says should be viewed as "calculated for effect." The only central and stable belief of the narcissist is the centrality of the self. What is good for him is good for his country.
The conscience of the narcissist is dominated by self-interest. Unlike the sociopath, who is without an internal beacon, without an internalized body of scruples and principles, the narcissist does indeed have a conscience, but it is a flexible conscience. He sincerely believes himself to be highly principled and scrupulous, but can change positions and commitments rapidly as "circumstances change." The sincerity of beliefs is communicated, so that the unwary may be completely persuaded of the trustworthiness of the narcissist; and indeed **at that moment**, he is. The righteous indignation with which he stands in judgment of the moral failure of others often stands in striking contrast to his own self-concerned behavior, which seems hypocritical to the outside observer.'
. . .
Endgame and Aftermath
[V]irtually every borderline, psychopathic, and narcissistic tendency in [Mao's] arsenal proved useful: Mao's supernal gaslighting abilities were used to throw his opponents into disarray; his sadism and vindictiveness shocked his opponents to silence; his black-and-white thinking kept people scrambling to prove themselves as being on Mao's good side; while his explosive temper became a key tool for manipulation. Projection kept the spotlight off him when the problems he created beame too widely known to suppress. Eventually, his narcissism would lead the great bulk of the population to worship him. . .
In a capitalist economic structure, Mao might have made his way to the top of a business enterprise. There, like a surprising number of managers today, he would have run roughshod over colleagues and subordinates while devising unreasonable programs even as he took out anyone who objected. . . If he had chosen democratic politics, his dictatorial style and ease with corruption, coupled with his modicum of idealism, might have emulated Louisiana's political 'Kingfish,' Huey Long, whom President Roosevelt himself labelled one of the most dangerous men in America. Mao's worst traits would have likely been kept in check, and possibly even exposed. An American-born Mao would have had to worry about a judicial system not entirely under his control and an open society that, although far from perfect, provided for some degree of illumination and accountability. Mao might also have had to worry about appeasing political constituents -- spending time deflecting reporters and pesky law enforcement officers, and, if he became a major public figure, misdirecting reporters from _Time_, the _Drudge Report_, and gossip magazines. The higher he might have climbed, the more obvious any illegal activities could become -- a pattern of suspicious deaths, for example, would inevitably have begun attracting attention. (Though cutthroat, American CEO types have been able to dispatch their adversaries without actually murdering them.)
. . .
[But,] the unfettered political structure of the Communist Party allowed Mao to give full play to every Machiavellian trait in his disordered psyche, feeding his innate sexual, sadistic, and narcissistic proclivities while allowing him to rise to the top. Once at the top, he could write and rewrite rules for his own personal benefit. This in turn provided him with vast powers to implement his dysfunctional pet projects and to give full vent to his paranoid ideas, exposing millions to the consequences of his pathologies.
But today, Mao's personal characteristics and his active role in the deaths of millions have been suppressed in China through the self-serving dictates of his successors. The benevolent image he cunningly portrayed to his people lives on: his portrait still dominates Tianamen Square in Beijing and the shrine containing his corpse is an object of pilgrimage. Mao's photos are used as charms by street vendors and as icons in the homes of peasants. 'I can't pin down why it is I worship Chairman Mao so much,' taxi driver Ma Junjing says. 'But if the Chairman were alive today and called on us youth to go to war, I'd be the first to register.'
> [Aleksei Riikonen wrote:] > > > Do not err to infer. . . > > > > Yes, there is the risk of me misinterpreting. . . > > > > Similarly, there is the risk of you misinterpreting. . . > > God, you're smart.
Well, let's give Aleksei a **bit** of a break here -- he's not a native speaker of English, after all, and neither of us (that's an **exclusive** us, 'me' rather than 've' in Quenya ;-> ) would get very far trying to carry on this conversation in Finnish.
Doesn't get him **entirely** off the hook, though, I'm afraid. ;->
> Remember the 'wisdom of crowds,' and the value of using different > framing lenses to come to the optimal solution to complex problems? > By stifling dissent and ensuring all eyes were turned only to him > for all decisions, Mao effectively made a hundred-million-fold > cut in the effectiveness of planning and governing in revolutionary > China.
She's alluding here to a book (which I haven't read):
_The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations_ by James Surowiecki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
This is a book, according to the Wikipedia article, "about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, [the author] argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. . .
[It] relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood. . .
Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed investors in a stock market bubble. . . According to Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:
Diversity of opinion Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.
Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently. . . [H]e says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw.
Too homogenous Surowiecki stresses the need for diversity within a crowd to ensure enough variance in approach, thought process, and private information.
Too centralized The Columbia shuttle disaster, which he blames on a hierarchical NASA management bureaucracy that was totally closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.
Too divided The U.S. Intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001 attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible by another. Surowiecki's argument is that crowds (of intelligence analysts in this case) work best when they choose for themselves what to work on and what information they need. (He cites the SARS-virus isolation as an example in which the free flow of data enabled laboratories around the world to coordinate research without a central point of control.)
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA have created a Wikipedia style information sharing network called Intellipedia that will help the free flow of information to prevent such failures again.
Too imitative Where choices are visible and made in sequence, an "information cascade" can form in which only the first few decision makers gain anything by contemplating the choices available: once this has happened it is more efficient for everyone else to simply copy those around them.
Too emotional Emotional factors, such as a feeling of belonging, can lead to peer pressure, herd instinct, and in extreme cases collective hysteria.
-----------------------------------------------
Cf. a provocative thread on the Extropians' from a few years ago:
Random?
ReplyDeleteThe devil you say!
I'm not sure that Judas has written e.g. Gandhi's biography.
ReplyDeleteBut every great man indeed tends to get disciples, who are less critical of him than the great man himself tries to teach them to be. This phenomenon is, of course, no basis for the dismissal of what the great man has to say.
rolls eyes
ReplyDeleteCare to elaborate?
ReplyDeleteIt certainly applies e.g. to Gandhi, that many have an irrationally high opinion of him. One can win elections in the largest democracy on the planet, to a large extent on the perceived merit of being related to him.
And despite this irrationality that Gandhi generates in some, he had exceptionally good stuff to say.
(Do not err to infer much from the fact that I used the term "great man" in my earlier comment. Just a matter of making my comments in the terminology previously introduced.)
Care to elaborate?
ReplyDeleteThe Random Wilde is a recurring Amor Mundi feature -- sometimes I get out of the habit of posting it, but it always returns. I post Wildean aphorisms and quotations that make me chuckle, sometimes because they seem to comment on other things happening in the world, sometimes because they are so perpendicular to things happening in the world, sometimes because they manage to capture complex insights in their pithy paradoxes, sometimes because I find them provocative without sympathizing with them particularly, and so on. You would be very well advised to read a dozen or so of them at least before commenting, though, else you risk missing the spirit of the thing entirely and producing the unloveliest most deadly-dull kind of kitsch imaginable.
Yes, there is the risk of me misinterpreting what you saw in this particular aphorism.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, there is the risk of you misinterpreting what were the senses of the aphorism I actually grasped, before finding it worth commenting on how the aphorism e.g. relates to Gandhi.
God, you're smart.
ReplyDeleteFrom _Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed,
ReplyDeleteand My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend_ by Barbara Oakley
http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Genes-Hitler-Mothers-Boyfriend/dp/159102580X
Chapter 9, "The Perfect 'Borderpath': Chairman Mao"
pp. 216 et seq.
Mao [Zedong] was the most Machiavellian leader of the
many Machiavellian leaders of the twentieth century.
For three decades, he held absolute power over the lives
of one-quarter of the world's population. As historian
R. J. Rummel writes: 'For perspective on Mao's most bloody
rule, all wars [worldwide] 1900-1987 cost in combat dead
34,021,000 -- including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and
the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered
over twice as many as were killed in combat in all those
wars. He also killed nearly four times as many as are
thought to have died in **four hundred years** of the
African slave trade, from capture to sale in Arab, Oriental,
or New World markets.
Therefore it is perhaps surprising to find that psychologists,
psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists of the time, and even
today, rarely make serious efforts to address the possibility
of serious mental illness in motivating Mao's behavior. But
MIT political scientist Lucian Pye, who published an early
biography of Mao in 1976, the year of Mao's death, provides
a lucid explanation for the reticence: '[B]ecause I knew that
I was already going out onto thin ice by psychologically
interpreting the near-sacred Mao, I decided that it would not
be prudent, indeed that it would be counter-productive, to use
any technical terminology. Therefore, I did not go public
in announcing that Mao Zedong was probably a narcissist with
a borderline personality, a combination that is not rare.
I suspect that if I had stated that this was the case, it would
have brought many people's blood to the boiling point. . .
One of the three key dimensional traits of borderline personality
disorder is cognitive-perceptual impairment. Mao appears to have
displayed dramatic symptoms of this trait. During the Great
Leap Forward, from 1958 to 1960, Mao implemented a policy that
diverted all human resources into industry rather than agriculture
in a misguided and disastrous attempt to catch up with the
industrialized West. During the Great Leap, tens of millions
of workers were diverted to produce one commodity -- steel --
in inefficient backyard production facilities. It is estimated
that some thirty million died as a result of the ensuing famine --
some peasants were reduced to eating each other's children to
avoid eating their own. Mao's general reaction to the devastating
effects of his policies was to pretend that they weren't happening.
His staff, all too aware of what could happen to them if they
revealed the truth, served to insulate him even further. But the
situation deteriorated so drastically that the truth could not
be hidden. Dr. Li [Zhisui, Mao's personal physician,] describes
the insider's perspective on Mao's reactions.
'Mao . . . seemed psychologically incapable of confronting the effects
of the famine. When I told him that edema and hepatitis were
everywhere, he accused me of inventing trouble. "You physicians
have nothing better to do than scare people," he snapped. "You're
just out looking for disease. If no one were sick, you'd all
be unemployed." . . . I thought Mao was ruthless to close his eyes
to the illness that was everywhere around him. But I allowed him
his illusions and never mentioned the subject again, behaving
in his presence as though hunger and disease had miraculously
disappeared.'
Dr. Li notes: 'Mao was loath to admit his mistakes. His was a life
with no regrets . . . I am convinced Mao never really believed
he had done anything wrong.' . . .
As Dr. Li notes, 'To this day, ruthless though he was, I believe
Mao launched the Great Leap Forward to bring good to China. . . .
The twentieth century was marching forward and Mao was stuck
in the nineteenth, unable to lead his country. Now he was in
retreat, trying to figure out what to do. Tragically, the
cognitive equipment Mao was using to do his 'figuring' with was --
**different**.
Control and the Purges
One oft-noted characteristic of those with subclinical borderline
personality disorder is their extraordinary need for control.
This trait was typical of Mao, who had to be in control of every
situation -- from decisions at the highest reaches of political
power to the most mundane details of his everyday life. Nothing
that occurred within Zhongnanhai, the former royal garden within
the grounds of the old Forbidden City, where Mao lived and worked,
happened without Mao's consent, not even the clothing chosen
for his wife to wear. Mao expected to be consulted on virtually
every major -- and minor -- decision in China.
Mao's controlling efforts were carried to the ultimate in the form
of his purges. . .
One of Mao's favored mechanisms for eliciting purge victims was
to urge people to speak out, pledging there would be no retribution.
The worst of these deathly false promises occurred in April of 1956,
when Mao called for intellectual debate under the slogan
'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought
contend.' Naive intellectuals, encouraged by signs of liberalization,
climbed aboard and began criticizing the party. Privately, Mao
told party cadres, 'This is not setting an ambush for the enemy,
but rather letting them fall into the snare of their own accord.'
After allowing several months of seeming freedom, Mao cracked down.
Quotas ranging between 1 and 10 percent were set of intellectuals
to be persecuted and purged. Mao bragged that one province, Hunan,
'denounced 100,000, arrested 10,000, and killed 1,000. The other
provinces did the same. So our problems were solved.'
. . .
Ability to Charm
Mao also deliberately chose an influential American journalist,
Edgar Snow, who wrote for the _Saturday Evening Post_ and _New York
Herald-Tribune_, to charm. . . the Western world. Snow swallowed
Mao's fabrications wholesale, calling Mao and other party leaders
'direct, frank, simple, undevious.' Mao's journalistic charm
campaign had long-term payoffs for both Snow and Mao. Other prominent
figures joined Snow in praising Mao and his regime. Harvard professor
John K. Fairbank 'returned from a visit to China and remarked:
"The Maoist revolution is on the whole the best thing that has
happened to the Chinese people in centuries." Feminist philosopher
Simone de Beauvoir excused Mao's murderous regime by arguing that
"the power [he] exercises is no more dictatorial than, say,
Roosevelt's was." Jean-Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir's consort, celebrated
Mao's "revolutionary violence," declaring it to be "profoundly moral."'
But Mao and the Communists' ability to fool the press extended further,
in unexpected ways. Because the Nationalists had a much freer
press, where frank complaint and discussion could take place, the
Nationalists' own atrocities and blunders were magnified in people's
minds. The contrast with the carefully controlled positive press
coming from the Communist camp allowed many people to come to the
conclusion that the Communists were the lesser of two evils.
Nationalist captain Hsu Chen provides one example of an individual
who had witnessed the terrors of Communist rule beforehand, becoming
strongly anticommunist as a result. Coming home to Ningbo, near
Shanghai, he found that people were in denial and did not want to
hear his views: 'I talked to every visitor, til my tongue dried up
and my lips cracked . . . I told about the heartless and bestial
deeds of the Communist bandits. . . . But I was unable to wake
them up from their dreams, but rather aroused their aversion.'
Narcissism
Narcissism is frequently seen in both borderline and antisocial
personality disorders. Mao's narcissism, however, was so extraordinary
that it bordered on religion -- he had near-mystical faith in his
own role as leader. 'He never doubted that his leadership, and
only his leadership, would save and transform China. . . . He shared
the popular perception that he was the country's messiah.'
Mao's personality cult, which he strongly encouraged behind the
scenes, began to emerge in the 1940s. The new preample to the
Constitution of the Communist Party was ultimately written to affirm
that '[t]he Chinese Communist Party takes Mao Zedong's thought . . .
as the guide for all its work, and opposes all dogmatic or
empiricist deviations.' As Mao himself said: 'The question is
not whether or not there should be a cult of the individual, but
rather whether or not the individual concerned represents
the truth. If he does, then he should be worshipped.'
It's difficult for someone with a Western upbringing to understand
how completely a national personality cult can overtake people's
minds. In Mao's China, toddlers chanted, 'We are all Chairman
Mao's good little children.' Mao wasn't venerated -- he was indeed
worshipped: 'The "Little Red Book" of his aphorisms was ascribed
the power to work miracles. Chinese newspapers reported how
medical workers armed with it had cured the blind and the deaf;
how a paralytic, relying on Mao Zedong Thought, had recovered
the use of his limbs; how on another occasion, Mao Zedong Thought
had raised a man from the dead.'
Unusual insight into Mao's brand of narcissism comes from a set
of commentaries he wrote while in his mid-twenties: 'I do not
agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's actions
has to be benefitting others. Morality does not have to be
defined in relation to others. . . . People like me want to . . .
satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically
have the most valuable moral codes. Of course, there are
people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for
me.' [Sounds just like Ayn Rand! ;->]
Reading Mao's own words gives insight into an earlier issue. If
Machiavellianism is most closely related to borderline personality
disorder of all the personality disorders, why is the
correlation only a 0.40 instead of close to a perfect 1.0? The
answer lies in the wording of some of the questions on the Mach-IV
test. By looking at Mao's own thoughts as he described them in
his commentaries, it's clear that Mao -- that most Machiavellian
of all men -- would have answered the question, 'One should take
action only when sure it is morally right,' for example, with
the seemingly low-Mach 'strongly agree.' Mao's commentaries
clearly stated his feeling that his own moral codes were the most
valuable. Given his profound narcissism, we can reasonably
assume Mao felt morally justified in doing whatever he wanted.
Remember the 'wisdom of crowds,' and the value of using different
framing lenses to come to the optimal solution to complex problems?
By stifling dissent and ensuring all eyes were turned only to him
for all decisions, Mao effectively made a hundred-million-fold
cut in the effectiveness of planning and governing in revolutionary
China. It's no wonder the Chinese economy stuttered into reverse.
. . .
Did Mao Believe in Communism?
Mao's early willingness to ride whatever horse would allow him
power and his later ebb and flow of political ideology make his
actual belief in conventionally defined communism unlikely.
Psychiatrist Jerrold Post astutely notes:
'It is hard to identify the narcissistic personality with any
consistent beliefs about the world because his beliefs tend to
shift. More than any other personality type, what the narcissistic
personality says should be viewed as "calculated for effect."
The only central and stable belief of the narcissist is the
centrality of the self. What is good for him is good for his
country.
The conscience of the narcissist is dominated by self-interest.
Unlike the sociopath, who is without an internal beacon, without
an internalized body of scruples and principles, the narcissist
does indeed have a conscience, but it is a flexible conscience.
He sincerely believes himself to be highly principled and
scrupulous, but can change positions and commitments rapidly
as "circumstances change." The sincerity of beliefs is communicated,
so that the unwary may be completely persuaded of the trustworthiness
of the narcissist; and indeed **at that moment**, he is. The
righteous indignation with which he stands in judgment of the
moral failure of others often stands in striking contrast to his
own self-concerned behavior, which seems hypocritical to the
outside observer.'
. . .
Endgame and Aftermath
[V]irtually every borderline, psychopathic, and narcissistic tendency
in [Mao's] arsenal proved useful: Mao's supernal gaslighting abilities
were used to throw his opponents into disarray; his sadism and
vindictiveness shocked his opponents to silence; his black-and-white
thinking kept people scrambling to prove themselves as being on
Mao's good side; while his explosive temper became a key tool
for manipulation. Projection kept the spotlight off him when
the problems he created beame too widely known to suppress.
Eventually, his narcissism would lead the great bulk of the
population to worship him. . .
In a capitalist economic structure, Mao might have made his way to
the top of a business enterprise. There, like a surprising
number of managers today, he would have run roughshod over
colleagues and subordinates while devising unreasonable programs
even as he took out anyone who objected. . . If he had chosen
democratic politics, his dictatorial style and ease with corruption,
coupled with his modicum of idealism, might have emulated
Louisiana's political 'Kingfish,' Huey Long, whom President
Roosevelt himself labelled one of the most dangerous men in
America. Mao's worst traits would have likely been kept in check,
and possibly even exposed. An American-born Mao would have had
to worry about a judicial system not entirely under his control
and an open society that, although far from perfect, provided
for some degree of illumination and accountability. Mao might
also have had to worry about appeasing political constituents --
spending time deflecting reporters and pesky law enforcement
officers, and, if he became a major public figure, misdirecting
reporters from _Time_, the _Drudge Report_, and gossip magazines.
The higher he might have climbed, the more obvious any illegal
activities could become -- a pattern of suspicious deaths,
for example, would inevitably have begun attracting attention.
(Though cutthroat, American CEO types have been able to dispatch
their adversaries without actually murdering them.)
. . .
[But,] the unfettered political structure of the Communist Party
allowed Mao to give full play to every Machiavellian trait in
his disordered psyche, feeding his innate sexual, sadistic, and
narcissistic proclivities while allowing him to rise to the top.
Once at the top, he could write and rewrite rules for his
own personal benefit. This in turn provided him with vast powers
to implement his dysfunctional pet projects and to give full
vent to his paranoid ideas, exposing millions to the consequences
of his pathologies.
But today, Mao's personal characteristics and his active role in
the deaths of millions have been suppressed in China through the
self-serving dictates of his successors. The benevolent image
he cunningly portrayed to his people lives on: his portrait still
dominates Tianamen Square in Beijing and the shrine containing
his corpse is an object of pilgrimage. Mao's photos are used as
charms by street vendors and as icons in the homes of peasants.
'I can't pin down why it is I worship Chairman Mao so much,'
taxi driver Ma Junjing says. 'But if the Chairman were alive
today and called on us youth to go to war, I'd be the first to
register.'
Dale wrote:
ReplyDelete> [Aleksei Riikonen wrote:]
>
> > Do not err to infer. . .
> >
> > Yes, there is the risk of me misinterpreting. . .
> >
> > Similarly, there is the risk of you misinterpreting. . .
>
> God, you're smart.
Well, let's give Aleksei a **bit** of a break here --
he's not a native speaker of English, after all, and neither of
us (that's an **exclusive** us, 'me' rather than 've'
in Quenya ;-> ) would get very far trying to carry on this conversation
in Finnish.
Doesn't get him **entirely** off the hook, though, I'm
afraid. ;->
Barbara Oakley wrote (quoted above):
ReplyDelete> Remember the 'wisdom of crowds,' and the value of using different
> framing lenses to come to the optimal solution to complex problems?
> By stifling dissent and ensuring all eyes were turned only to him
> for all decisions, Mao effectively made a hundred-million-fold
> cut in the effectiveness of planning and governing in revolutionary
> China.
She's alluding here to a book (which I haven't read):
_The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the
Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies,
Societies and Nations_ by James Surowiecki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
This is a book, according to the Wikipedia article,
"about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in
decisions that, [the author] argues, are often better than could have been
made by any single member of the group. . .
[It] relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding
individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally
understood. . .
Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed
investors in a stock market bubble. . . According to Surowiecki,
these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:
Diversity of opinion
Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric
interpretation of the known facts.
Independence
People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization
People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation
Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.
Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the
crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations
their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another)
the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and
began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently. . .
[H]e says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform
is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw.
Too homogenous
Surowiecki stresses the need for diversity within a crowd to ensure enough
variance in approach, thought process, and private information.
Too centralized
The Columbia shuttle disaster, which he blames on a hierarchical NASA management
bureaucracy that was totally closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.
Too divided
The U.S. Intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001
attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible
by another. Surowiecki's argument is that crowds (of intelligence analysts
in this case) work best when they choose for themselves what to work on and what
information they need. (He cites the SARS-virus isolation as an example in
which the free flow of data enabled laboratories around the world to coordinate
research without a central point of control.)
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA have created
a Wikipedia style information sharing network called Intellipedia that will
help the free flow of information to prevent such failures again.
Too imitative
Where choices are visible and made in sequence, an "information cascade"
can form in which only the first few decision makers gain anything by
contemplating the choices available: once this has happened it is more
efficient for everyone else to simply copy those around them.
Too emotional
Emotional factors, such as a feeling of belonging, can lead to peer
pressure, herd instinct, and in extreme cases collective hysteria.
-----------------------------------------------
Cf. a provocative thread on the Extropians' from a few years ago:
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-April/005790.html
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-April/005888.html
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-April/005911.html
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-April/005930.html