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by Costica Bradatan December 13, 2022 from AEON Website
Photo by Richard Kalvar/Magnum
- even intoxicating - to lose yourself to a crowd.
That is why we
need contrarians
'Just look at academia,
that vast herd
of sheep-like individualists.' (1923-2015)
Whether you are in Rio de Janeiro or Bangkok, New Delhi or New York City, your animal instinct tells you that it is safer to venture as part of a herd than on your own.
Fear brings us closer together...
The evidence is not just anecdotal.
When we are herding, neuroimaging experiments show increased activation in the amygdale area of the brain, where fear and other negative emotions are processed.
While you may feel vulnerable and exposed on your own, being part of the herd gives you a distinct sense of protection. You know in your guts that, in the midst of others, the risk of being hit by a car is lower because it is somehow distributed among the group's members.
The more of them, the
lower the risk. There is safety in numbers. And so much more than
mere safety...
The same person who, on his own, wouldn't 'hurt a fly' will not hesitate to set a government building on fire or rob a liquor store when part of an angry mass. The most mild-mannered of us can make the meanest comments as part of an online mob.
A herd can do wonders of psychological transformation in its individual members:
Once caught up in the maelstrom, it is extremely difficult to hold back:
Any act of lynching, ancient or modern, literal or on social media, displays this feature.
The herd can also give its members a disproportionate sense of personal worth.
No matter how empty or miserable their individual existence may otherwise be, belonging to a certain group makes them feel accepted and recognized - even respected.
There is no hole in one's personal life, no matter how big, that one's intense devotion to one's tribe cannot fill, no trauma that it does not seem to heal.
That's why cults and gangs, fringe organizations or sects hold such an extraordinary appeal:
A crowd can be
therapeutic in the same way in which a highly toxic substance can
have curative powers.
These are all instinctive reactions.
No matter how much rationalization we do, they are the insidious working of biology in us.
That's how we've survived, after all.
A long evolutionary history has conditioned us to herd, as a quick glance at our closest animal relatives can confirm.
The primatologist Frans de Waal, who has studied the social and political behavior of apes for decades, concludes in his book Mama's Last Hug (2018) that primates are 'made to be social' - and 'the same applies to us.' Living in groups is 'our main survival strategy'.
We may not all be involved in cults, fringe organizations or populist politics, but we are all wired for herding. We herd all the time: when we make war as when we make peace, when we celebrate and when we mourn, we herd at work and on vacation.
The herd is not out there
somewhere, but we carry it within us. The herd is deeply seated in
our mind.
Because of our herding behavior, then, we stand a better chance to survive as members of a group than on our own. The trouble starts when we decide to use our mind against our biology.
As when we employ our
thinking not pragmatically, to make our existence in the world
easier and more comfortable in some respect or another, but
contemplatively, to see our situation in its naked condition, from
the outside.
bordering on the religious in the way a society relates to its
established
knowledge...
This kind of radical thinking can be done only in the absence of the herd's influence in its many forms: societal pressure, political partisanship, ideological bias, religious indoctrination, media-induced fads and fashions, intellectual mimetism, or any other -isms, for that matter. Such extraneous factors tend to lead us astray, when not blinding us altogether.
That's why most of the
time we don't produce new, genuine knowledge, but only recycle the
established (herd-sanctioned and herd-pleasing) knowledge on which
our society relies.
There is something bordering on the religious in the way a society relates to its established knowledge. Not only does it treasure it at its institutional core - textbooks, encyclopedias, academies, archives, museums - thereby making sure it's handled with utmost respect.
It never stops glorifying and sanctifying it, to the point where it turns it into a religion.
And for good reason:
Indeed, this unique concoction - a combination of pious lies and convenient half-truths, useful prejudices and self-flattering banalities - is what gives that society its specific cultural physiognomy and, ultimately, its sense of identity.
By celebrating its
established knowledge, that community celebrates itself. Which, for
the sociologist Émile Durkheim, is the very definition of
religion.
This is, he writes, an 'act of affirmation like reading aloud from the Scriptures or going to church.' Since a society can't live and function without rituals (sacred or profane, explicit or disguised), its established knowledge needs to be celebrated - ritualistically, loudly, and with all due reverence - in front of the gathered community.
From this perspective, scholars don't get together to share some new insights and groundbreaking theories, but to perform a Sunday service of sorts whereby they reassure their society, and themselves, that the societal glue is in good hands.
The purpose of the ritual,
It is not surprising that, on such occasions, scholars - as befitting the priestly caste that they are - sport a special kind of dress, medieval regalia or some other wizard's robes.
Think only of the peculiar uniform (l'habit vert) and the little funny sword (l'épée d'académicien) that the members of the Institut de France wear when they gather for the public performance of their priesthood.
Woe to those who dare
make fun of the pompous affair.
Equally significant, the herd put him to death for doing so. Socrates' two-folded story illustrates, like few others, what radical thinking typically involves: eccentricity and defiance, courage and even arrogance, on the one hand, and suspicion and resistance, resentment and eventually revenge, on the other.
A daring act of nonconformity to society's demands, followed promptly by a bloody societal response - that's how philosophizing was born in the West.
And this trauma of birth has never really left philosophy: any subsequent re-enactment of the Socratic daring would reactivate, to some extent or another, the societal hostility.
The more defiant the
philosopher's nonconformity, the blunter the society's response.
What Gide says about the 'great artist' applies to the great philosopher, too.
The ability to 'swim against the current' should be seen as an absolute prerequisite for the thinking profession. A thinker will make no difference unless she goes against what her society treasures and celebrates as established knowledge, and exposes the substantial herding involved, not only in its making, but also in the rituals of its preservation and sanctification.
This usually means an open confrontation with the priestly caste in charge of preserving the established knowledge, followed by the thinker's marginalization, excommunication and ostracisation.
To the extent that she manages to do all of this, she will have pulled the herd out of her mind and shrugged off the claims that her society, openly or more insidiously, places on her thinking.
The philosopher may be
utterly alone at this stage, scar-covered and almost defeated, yet
her thinking is clearer and more profound than ever for it has freed
itself from the herd's bondage.
their ties with their tribe, nothing prevents them from seeing things
as they are...
Socrates' contrarian baton was passed on to a series of philosophical mavericks, as colorful as they there were daring:
In one way or another, openly or in a more guarded manner, they all went against the herd-thinking of their times, leaving a trail of intellectual heresy, bold insights, and often social scandal.
Through what they did, such figures have kept the thinking alive in a world where everything, thinking included, tends to fall into patterns and routines, and eventually atrophy and die as a result. We are so made, apparently, that we need to have a thorn in the flesh to stay spiritually awake and intellectually alive.
The contrarian
thinkers gladly oblige to provide us the necessary discomfort.
It is the 'eccentrics', he suggests, who keep the world running through their generous supply of bold perspectives, fresh insights and new ideas.
The more eccentrics there are, the better the moral and intellectual state of the world:
It is this redeeming 'eccentricity' that contrarians possess in abundance.
The novelty and sharpness of their thinking come in large part from their determination to stay outside the circle that any group, explicitly or tacitly, draws in the sand to define itself.
Left out as they are, contrarians are not only in a good position to observe how herding, marginalization and exclusion work, but they no longer have anything to lose by articulating and broadcasting their heretical views.
They are what 'public intellectuals' should ideally be - uncompromising 'critics of society' - and what, in practice, very few of them are.
It's the vigor of their dissent, the force of their language, and the seriousness of their commitment - their 'quality of opposition', in Gide's words - that turn them into such formidable figures.
That, incidentally, is
also what distinguishes genuine contrarians from mere provocateurs,
for whom challenging the establishment is not a matter of
intellectual duty and inner conviction, but above all a form of
attention-seeking and a histrionic compulsion to entertain.
Contrarians don't care for fads and fashions, authorities and hierarchies, and have little patience for the rituals of the establishment. Since they have cut off their ties with their tribe, nothing prevents them from seeing things as they are.
Their dissent doesn't only free them, it gives them new eyes.
Outstandingly learned as he may have been already, Spinoza's philosophical formation was complete only when he was formally expelled from his community.
The unusually harsh herem ('Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in…') helped young Baruch become the Spinoza we know today.
The violent expulsion from the safety of their community, and into an unknown and cold world, amounts to a new birth for the contrarians.
Thanks to the traumatic
act, they have now come into full existence.
Since even our most lively and spontaneous acts sooner or later succumb to patterns and routine, it is the establishment that prevails in the long run, even if sometimes it has to make tactical retreats and adjustments in the process.
As the embodiment of a
community's herd-sanctioned thinking, the intellectual establishment
is victor by default. Its confrontation with the contrarians,
though, is a sight to behold.
Not that it cannot afford to tolerate dissent but, like any form of organized power, it needs to project self-assurance, steadfastness and invincibility. Indeed, the rituals of marginalization, exclusion and scapegoating are meant to bring the community tighter together - and rally it around its centre of power.
By violently expelling the undesirables, the group reassures itself both of its righteousness and of its strength. The leaders of Amsterdam's Portuguese Synagogue who excommunicated Spinoza were harsh for a reason.
If, for all their best efforts, the exclusion fails and the dissenters' voices continue to be heard (from the neighboring city, from abroad, or even from beyond the grave), the establishment will pretend to ignore them: that which hasn't received our stamp of approval is of no real value.
Finally, when it becomes clear that even that does not work, the establishment takes its most drastic measure, one that rarely fails: it embraces the contrarians' discourse and renders them mainstream.
If Kierkegaard proves to be too hard to get rid of or ignore, let's terminate him by digesting his thinking in a textbook format, and then teaching it to bored undergraduates.
No genuine thinking can stand that. If you can't suppress Nietzsche, you can do something even more damaging to him: turn him into a field of academic study. What doesn't kill me makes me more ridiculous.
That Nietzsche himself
anticipated the move does not make the blow any less lethal.
the work of jargon that the academic herd finally defeats
the
contrarians...
It turns them into an -ism.
Rarely has revenge been sweeter. No sooner did Spinoza die than Spinozism was born. Should Nietzsche miraculously come back to life today, he would die again, of shame and embarrassment, to see how we 'problematise' his insights in our Nietzsche courses, seminars and conferences.
Walter Benjamin's habilitation thesis was deemed unsatisfactory by the University of Frankfurt, which denied him access to a teaching career.
Today, there are few universities where Benjamin's work - his habilitation thesis included - is not subjected to mind-numbing 'problematisation'.
While he was alive,
Emil Cioran waged merciless war against universities. He thought
them to be a public danger - 'the death of the spirit'. Academics
have just started 'problematising' him. The establishment always
wins.
For it is primarily through the work of jargon that the academic herd finally defeats the contrarians.
Nothing can stand its corrosion; nothing remains the same. Everything that used to be irreducibly personal, colorful and weird in the contrarians' writings is now reduced to an impersonal common denominator.
Jargon brings everyone in
line, makes no discrimination, shows no favoritism - and no mercy.
It's equality gone crazy.
You take this canned version of their thinking into your mouth to taste, and you feel nothing.
No matter how savory and flavorful and wholesome the contrarians are in themselves, and how different from each other, they now taste more or less the same - the unfailing sameness of processed thought.
You look for some traces of their unique spirit in what's been written about them - peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertations, college textbooks and whatnot - but you look in vain:
The system has swallowed
them up, masticated them thoroughly, and then spat them out. The
contrarians are now safe for public consumption. And utterly
defeated.
Afraid to be left out, exposed and vulnerable, we would do anything to be where the pack is most dense. Whether we are in London or Los Angeles, in Paris or Beijing, we always seek to melt into the academic herd - as if this were the most natural thing for a scholar to do.
Our survival instinct tells us that it is safer to go with the herd, and not against it - indeed, to be at the centre of it, rather than at its margins.
We use a fancy term for
it, 'networking', though that will fool no one: it's an instinctive
reaction, the barely disguised expression of the drive to survive.
In our heart of hearts, we know that, for anyone who aspires to genuine knowledge - to see things as they are - this political game is a recipe to failure, but that does not worry us too much.
When your main aspiration
is to stay at the herd's centre, you do whatever the herd's
conventions tell you to do - reputation or no reputation.
not to keep our herding in check,
but to better
satisfy its demands...
In retrospect, though, Mill's time looks like the most contrarian of ages.
The year 1859, when On Liberty was published, was also when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species came out, as well as Karl Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Nietzsche had begun his studies at Schulpforta the year before and was ready to make a splash.
Kierkegaard had been dead for only four years, and his ideas just started having an impact (The Point of View of My Work as an Author was published in 1859, too).
Dostoevsky had just been released from his compulsory military service, which came with his prison sentence - his brilliant literary career all ahead of him.
If Mill's intellectual
generation was in 'danger' for lack of eccentrics, ours must be
beyond redemption.
Thinking, which was supposed to give us detachment from the working of the survival instinct, has now become indistinguishable from herding itself. We pursue knowledge not to keep our herding in check, but to better satisfy its demands.
And to increase our power over others.
Indeed, since it is in the nature of academic power to be maintained through a combination of ruthlessness and moralization, we engage in abject behavior even as we preach virtue with might and main. Bullying and grandstanding.
We sign open letters asking for the dismissal of some of our colleagues, conduct character assassination campaigns on social media against others, and subject still others to intense 'struggle sessions' - all in the name of some superior morality and noble politics.
We are not just any kind of mob.
We are an impossible thing:
We are seriously sick, and it is little consolation that the condition from which we suffer (chronic gregaritis) seems to have become the norm; a disease is no less serious just because almost everyone has it.
In Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), Charles Mackay observes that people,
If we are ever to recover our wits, it is crucial that we learn how to unherd.
We may be hard-wired for
herding, and our survival may be due to it, but we can become
spiritually whole only away from the crowd. Biology and spirit
belong to opposite realms.
It is from contrarians and dissenters and other pariahs that we can learn the craft of unherding, and yet they are few and far between.
And, if that was not bad enough, even if we managed to get hold of them, their cure will be precarious, uncertain and unlasting.
For, again, in the grand
scheme of things, it is the establishment that prevails.
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