When ideology becomes reality itself

And the importance of living the truth

Dear O’Brien,

I deeply appreciated your last letter about pseudo-reality as the instrument to entrap the people in a totalitarian system. It reminded me of the writings of Váckav Havel and his understanding of how ideology (and the symbols and rituals that are the outward expression or reminders of the ideology) can become the pseudo-reality itself, capturing the power rather than serving it. Initially the ideology is subordinate to the interests of the structure, and naturally it departs from reality, becomes its own pseudo-reality with it’s unique rituals, language, and automatised ways of being in the world.

In the early stages of totalitarianism reality can shine a light on the lie and such corrections do some damage to the formation of the pseudo-reality. But persistence with the language, the rituals, the symbols, whatever mechanisms are being utilised to condition the human heart and mind, eventually removed any effective contact with reality. Once this has persisted for a time the

ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coherence. As this aspect grows in importance, and as it gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on certain levels (chiefly inside the power structure) may have even greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The significance of phenomena no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result: rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power begins to serve ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people, and not the other way around. (Havel, 2018, pp. 24-25)

In our current situation I’m not sure just how much the ideology has become reality (even for the architects of the ideology) and thus the recipient of power. I suspect our “safety culture” is an ideology that now seems to have become part of our reality and manifesting as a power hungry dictator. It is not actual reality - the world is not nearly as dangerous as safety culture preaches - but has established itself as so¹.

The power given to the ideology as reality becomes like an impersonal machine - not one driven by any particular group of people but an autonomous machine on its own autonomous mission - to keep us “safe” (even if that means killing us - the contradiction no doubt lost to the machine). This could also explain why well-meaning people, caught in such an alternative reality, can operate as they do with a clear conscience (i.e. injecting patients, seeing them immediately injured, and without skipping a beat be absolutely certain the injection has nothing to do with the injury and ascribes the causality to some rare condition). Similarly the same pseudo-reality enables government officials to do incredible damage to economies and the mental health of the population and still go home and sleep in peace “knowing” they are saving their community from a grave evil.

WHAT’S THE ANSWER?

What is one to do in this unreal automatism? Even if you worked your way into a significant place in the power hierarchy you are ejected if found not to be a true believer - just like a foreign entity is destroyed by the immune system. How to change such a status quo? According to Havel it is for individuals to live within the truth - “every free expression of life indirectly threatens the post-totalitarian² system politically, including forms of expression, to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential political significance, not to mention explosive power.” Living within the truth is not constrained to political expression but to any and everything that is true and in direct contrast with the façade of the pseudo-reality lie.

Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime’s representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. (Havel, 2018, pp. 43-44)

So the answer, my dear O’Brien, is to live within the truth. In every conversation, blog, subscription, comment, responsibility, we should express the truth. Yes, you may be expelled from the power structure, but there is a parallel community of truth-tellers in which you will find a place. The society is becoming increasingly demoralised, and the solution to a moral crisis is to be personally moral. Personal morality and the fortitude to live in the truth is the only real power you have over the system. But given a large enough collective engagement against the demoralisation, against the big lie, the unreality, the more likely the façade will collapse and a life in actual reality will be possible for the masses³.

Kind regards,

Winston Smith

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Havel, V. (2018). The Power of the Powerless. Vintage.

1. It has been shocking to me when it comes to medical professionals how this is playing out. Here’s a case in point…

How an experienced medical professional deals with evidence that goes against his belief system

2. Here Havel does not imply that “post-” means the system is no longer totalitarian. But rather the totalitarianism is fundamentally different from classical dictatorship as we would commonly understand it. The automatisation of an ideology, drawing power for it’s own sake, where individuals are but cogs in the machine, is what Havel is making reference to when he says post-totalitarian.

3. A reality now desperately needed given insights such as this…

No free lunch