The core problem in the move to a sustainable society is the way we organise our social and economic systems. Within these systems people with authoritarian views tend to occupy positions of authority - this simple correlation hides a diffuse problem.
The difficulty comes when we realise that Authoritarians (both the leaders and the followers) think differently to the rest of us. The authoritarian personality of followers makes them susceptible to manipulation by authoritarian leaders, many of whom also display psychopathy (lack of empathy, need to control, manipulative).
The authoritarian mindset is highly compartmentalised, rationalises away its decisions, ‘drives through life’ (Altemeyer) single-mindedly, and is tough-minded and not open to change. It is the mindset of fear and resistance (see this article shows some reasons for conservative resistance to psychological research into high RWA’s). Try explaining deep ecology and complex systems thinking to an authoritarian and they won’t know what you mean, they simply cannot think in the integrated wholistic ways necessary to the ideas arising from parallel processes and emergent properties. They are not good at making decisions other than those concerned with the acquisition of greater certainty and hence greater power within the political system - that is their key decision-making experience and context. Hence all local and global decisions made by these people are made through the language of power - and the (often explicit) use of violence which keeps the cultural PTSD at levels which induce plenty of children, and turn many adults, into being good RWA followers.
Continues below with parts of a post I made on http://www.endgame.org.uk/
The key to the hacking IMHO is the RWA (Altemeyer), the Right Wing Authoritarian mind, a condition that overlaps to some extent with psychopathy. It is the mind of fear, the driver of Civ and it is also by its function the main driver of anxiety, stress, and the cultural PTSD which now pervades our aggressed and threatened world.
Authoritarian followers and leaders (the latter tend to be closer to psychopaths than the former) do a subtle communication between each other but it is far from unhackable. RWA’s tend to be less flexible in thinking, too rule constrained and compartmentalised. The ability to consider (”con” meaning together) ideas and their fuzzy inter-relationships is more difficult for high RWA’s. They think differently to most of us. If the term ‘dim and reactionary’ ever had an appropriate use it is for RWA’s. RWA leaders tend to be smart manipulative controlling and intuitive to attempts to subvert their power, but they are still fixed in their thinking and unable to function when forced to defend their ‘arguments’. Argument for a high RWA is probably something that usually comes with an implicit threat attached, occasionally an explicit threat attached, and sometimes the threat transforms into action, but always divisive defensive resistant and dogmatic, often devious and deceitful.
High RWA’s tend to arrogate dogmatically rather than decide consensually. Their social decision-making skills (i.e. fixed thinking combined with arrogance) are probably low and yet because the RWA leader and follower dynamic keeps them in power they can afford to make bad decisions. The bad decisions of our political and business ‘leaders’ (or should that be autocrats?) are only one of the problems that high RWA’s and psychopaths cause. However, the dynamic that unites the RWA leader and follower is brittle (too much fixed and rule-bound thinking?)
Break into the Authoritarian’s communication system (not too difficult; no this is not Terrorism - we are talking about minds not computers) and hack the code, then the hierarchy cannot function. RWA is the personality trait associated with anti-nature, anti-feminine, and everything to do with Civ and centralised control that has happened ever since the masculine principle coincided with (or maybe resulted from) agriculture and the opportunity to dominate, and to practice dominating, and to evolve human traits for dominating.
Until now. Now the code which RWA leaders communicate their messages to followers - their partners in maintaining the hierarchical system - is most refined in the media. Its the stuff of exasperated progressives everywhere - the hidden manipulations which calm the agitated masses, the Soma, the Hitler process. Hidden manipulations that are only hidden to RWA followers, to the rest of us the mechanisms are quite clear, a clear target.
It would appear possible to develop ways, maybe using Lackoff’s reframing technique among other ideas, in order to hack the Hitler process and disrupt the culture of obedience that the hierarchy depends upon. The hierarchy could be disrupted perhaps by dehypnotising the RWA followers - and if enough progressive people practiced some simple routines with high RWAs (perhaps a more sophisticated version of trade union organising process) then the hierarchical power structure could be limited or caused to retract. An opportunity then occurs for the hierarchical power to transform into a more distributed panarchy/rhizome structure.
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