I recently read a book about the last days in Hitler’s Bunker, and followed it up by watching endless newsreels and documentaries about the Nazis. To slowly wean myself from this topic, I then watched every single instalment of ‘Ein Herz und eine Seele’, a 1970s German sit-com featuring a pocket-sized wanna-be Adolf cum domestic dictator called Ekel Alfred.
I actually knew/know quite a number of Ekel Alfred’s, both male and female. Why are there so many individuals in everyday contexts who believe they have the right to bully, belittle, and exploit those around them? All those little daily acts of nastiness that squash the spirit and undermine self esteem – what good can they possibly do, to the receiver and the perpetrator?
People subject to such treatment either rebel and leave, or accept it and get used to it. Having been trained by the domestic dictator at home to accept being treated without respect, they find nothing unusual in receiving the same treatment at work. Or anywhere else. From anyone else.
Today at lunchtime I read an interview with a very clever investment banker. He had the most amazing arguments, which were difficult to refute. But he was deeply unconvincing – his actions spoke louder than his arguments, however fine crafted. This reminded me of times when I was young and inexperienced in arguing. I was talked to for hours on end by adults who were trying to convince me of something. Often I could not refute them, only felt vaguely that they were wrong. In those days all I had to defend myself against their superior skills of rhetoric and knowledge was an innate stubbornness, a dogged determination to hold onto my beliefs until I was able to change them for a reason I could understand – not because I was browbeaten into it.
Democracy depends on people thinking things out for themselves. Not to be browbeaten by superior argumentation, not to be blinded by science, not to be confused by rhetorical devices. Democracy depends on people stubbornly defending their stupidity, insisting on having things explained clearly, and then being given the time to figure it out for themselves.
Just because others may be more intelligent, or richer, or powerful, doesn’t mean they have the right to force the rest of us to suspend our own judgement and just follow orders. Suspending our own judgement and following orders leads to dictatorship, whatever setting one chooses to examine. However benign a dictatorship, it will have one malign outcome: That the people will cease to think for themselves, and become accustomed to just following orders. Not just benign orders, but all orders. They will fall prey to any demagogue, no matter how bad his arguments – because they have lost the ability to evaluate such arguments. And that may lead to horrific consequences for all of us, whatever our station in life. Perhaps during that last night in his bunker even Hitler might have agreed with this - he was only in his mid-50s when he died, as were most of the people in power then.
Ultimately all those big and small dictators, whatever their setting, are neurotics who deal with their psychological problems by dumping them on the rest of us, rather than facing them head on and resolving them.
Personally I have more respect for people who struggle year after year with their psychological burdens, often dumped in their minds by neurotic parents too cowardly to face them. People who get depressed and drag themselves out of it again without anyone noticing, who get angry and scream only when they are alone, who feel scared and pray to a God they don’t believe in, who are hurt and cry alone in their bed, who go to pieces and put themselves back together any old way and end up looking awful – in short, people who refuse to make others suffer because of their pain.
