The Harried Mystic

As I gaze at the state of our country in this time of tortured transition to a new Administration, I am again astonished ( though I shouldn’t be at this point) by the lockstep manner in which Trump supporters persistently praise their man. They slip without hesitation it would appear into the narrative of victimization. Spiritual maturity is marked not by subservience but by informed choices into the service of the greater good.

Truly surreal is the seeming high regard for a man who is unquestionably a malignant narcissist. This is demonstrated even when these fans of the “ Donald” are confined to what could well be their death beds from Covid 19. How tragic to see one woman recently interviewed on the evening news, who may well be destined for a ventilator, still denying that Covid-19 is real while expressing her heartfelt and misplaced thanks to Trump for great care that she is receiving. Genuine spiritual practice yields ever heightened discernment of the spirits: a capacity to see separate the charlatans and false prophets from the real thing.

These are bizarre times but they are also times that resemble many other times throughout recorded history. Of late, I have been fascinated by the power of ideology, propaganda, and conspiracy theories to pull the veil over people’s eyes. It is helpful to look to the science that seeks to explain the psychology of these phenomena.

First, I return to the master, Plato, who so wisely opined about these things. The Allegory of the Cave did so succinctly. Recalling it:

We imagine prisoners shackled in place without freedom to move their bodies or heads so that their gaze is fixed on a cave wall. Behind them is a fire and a raised walkway with people holding puppets with screens obscuring their own shadows. The prisoners, therefore, can only see the movement of the puppet shadows. They hear voices which they understandably attribute to the shadow figures on the wall. From the prisoners perspective, the movement and sounds of shadows is the only reality.

Plato continues, imagine one prisoner is released and brought out of the cave. The blinding light and vistas would be terrifying. He rejects them and seeks the comfort of the “ truth” he knows – the wall of shadows. As Plato advances his allegory, said prisoner is forced out of the cave, eventually adjusts to the bright light and sees the Sun. In time, he realizes the superior truth of what it is that projects the images he once regarded as sacrosanct. He feels pity for his brothers and sisters, but realizes too that they would want to kill him for forcing them away from the simpler “truth” to which they are accustomed.

I think of this allegory often. Those who see farther and more clearly, and who inquire more deeply, cultivate a love of learning. They cultivate a devotion less for any one act of understanding but, instead, the process of learning, unlearning and relearning. All is hypothesis awaiting the next better test. They come to value the principle of falsifiability ( looking for proof that they are wrong!). This is the essence of intellectual humility. It is also the diametric opposite of our natural tendency to seek confirmation of the truth of our own way of seeing and thinking.

Everything is a simulation of the greater real for the awakened heart. The more the spiritual adepts learn, the more they realize that they don’t understand. Every answer opens more questions. The questions themselves in fact become more significant than the answers. This is a far cry from dressing oneself up in a wardrobe of simple ideas and narratives to cast the real in our own image and thereby think we’ve “ tamed it” and render it more manageable.

Staring at the Sun means accepting the truth of randomness and the difference between ideas and the real. Perpetual students embrace uncertainty and accept their persistent ignorance as an invitation to dig deeper and ask ever better questions. I call this prayerful scholarship.

What is the basis then for the allure of conspiracy theories?

According to Psychologist Jade Wu, there are three components to the attraction of propaganda and conspiracy theories : (1) the need to reduce complexity and uncertainty; (2) the need to feel safe and in control: and (3) the need for a good self image ( e.g., better to think that a conspiracy was afoot in losing one’s job than to face the growing irrelevancy of the skills we have perhaps amassed over a lifetime).

Donald Trump, like other would-be and accomplished despots and autocrats, are manipulators of these needs for simplification. Plato’s allegory is, at its core, about the importance of education. Trump appoints Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education to dismantle the educational infrastructure. In fact, Trump has systematically replaces competence with incompetence across the board ( an agenda that continues even in these last days of his agenda of chaos). He is a destroyer of norms and structures ( maligned as the “ deep state”) and appointing those who become the fawning apparatchik ( unthinking bureaucrats acting as a loyal arm of his power plays).

It is instructive to see what the Trump voters have in common overall. According to Pew Research statistics:

“ Voters who identify with the Democratic Party or lean toward it are much more likely than their Republican counterparts to have a college degree (41% vs. 30%). In 1996, the reverse was true: 27% of GOP voters had a college degree, compared with 22% of Democratic voters.”

Rural America went resoundingly for Trump by comparison to urban and suburban areas of the country. There is a strong anti-intellectual bent in our Nation and this is not news. It has been with us from the outset.

That said, what about those educated legislators and administrators who have so quickly joined Trump in parading one false puppet after another to cast distracting shadows against the cave wall for the prisoners to see?

Their motivations are purely Machiavellian.

The acolytes of Trump jettisoned the long-standing Republican ideals of smaller government and conservatism four years ago merely to secure a seat at the mad hatters table. Power is the active aphrodisiac that motivates them. Once Trump is gone they will toss him like so much unwanted old clothing ( while studiously avoiding saying anything too harsh that might inflame his base). They will recalibrate to weave a palatable propaganda designed to sate the appetites of those shackled in place with fixation on the parade of shadows that they engineer. They are the greater darkness with which this democracy must deal

What’s the antidote?

Well, it’s the same one that has always been most effective: education and modeling the love of learning. We need to play the long game and do all we can to cultivate genuine independent thinking and humility among our children and grandchildren. They will need to serve as the bearers of the light in the decades to come. After all, Georgia went blue this year in no small part because of the number of young people who came out to vote.

In this Season of the Hindu, Jain and Sheik celebration of Diwali, the celebration of light’s defeat over the darkness, my hope rests in those who are dedicated purveyors of the finer questions that cause us all to reassume the upright and freeing posture so that we can reacquire the horizon.

Happy Diwali!

© The Harried Mystic, 2020 and Br. Anton, TSSF. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.