RE: Iraq: Responses to Zimbardo

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Sat May 15 2004 - 20:14:41 PDT


Dear Victor and everybody--

Sorry for the delay -- the semester is coming to the end here at the
University of Delaware and my life is organized by this bureaucratic
construction of time embedded in the organization of specific "teaching"
activities. Smelling blood of grades, my students demand more guidance from
me despite the fact that I never have exams and always give my students As,
unless they force me to do otherwise by not submitting their papers (I give
them "incomplete" then). I'm a malicious grade inflator but my students do
seem to not believe me... :-) (Or maybe they really want to learn
something?! Knowing the system well, I'm afraid to think that it can be
true... If it were true, why does it always happen at the end of the
semester?!) They force me to work hard at the end of the semester but it is
OK with me (actually I like to be helpful to them). But this is a detour...

Victor, thanks a lot for your very interesting and informative reply! Wow,
your lecturer deducted politics from ethnicity and culture! How convenient!
But not very original. According to Benedict Anderson, for the last 200
years, nationalism is one of the predominate ideology in the world.

In the Soviet Union, political sclerosis and ideological realism was an
intended by-product of repressions. The big difference between generation of
my grandma, people who were born under czarism at the end of the 19th
century and who went through many wars and revolutions, and generation of my
parents, who were born under the socialist regime in the 1920s, was that my
grandma generation's political sclerosis was "tactical" while my parents
generation's political sclerosis was "strategic." "Tactical" political
sclerosis involved contextual forgetfulness that could be revealed in
inconsistencies that my grandma would accept and explain. "Strategic"
political sclerosis is full repression and denial that the dangerous (or
unpleasant) events ever happened even when the pragmatic necessity to forget
these events has long gone. "Strategic" political sclerosis involved
decontextual forgetfulness (actually it is more then forgetfulness but also
creating an alternative reality often known as "lying" but it is too
simplistic description). I see "strategic" political sclerosis as long-term
psychological trauma of totalitarianism like a post-traumatic stress
disorder caused by exposure to a war. The same is about "ideological
realism" (the phenomenon that Victor's lecturer seemed to refer).

After Khrushchev, in "my" generation, some people in the USSR developed
"internal immigration" and "internal debates with radio" to cope with
post-totalitarian reality (these phenomena were well described by dissidents
see Jim Wertsch's latest book).

What do you think?

Eugene
PS We are in full circle. Sometimes I feel that it is like karma: until you
address it through your deeds, you have to return to the problem again and
again and again...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oudeyis [mailto:victor@kfar-hanassi.org.il]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 3:38 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: Iraq: Responses to Zimbardo
>
> Gene,
> The lecturer explained the political dimensions of the events he
> described as functions of culturally induced disability to regard facts
> clearly. I've heard Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals describe each
> others partizanship in exactly the same manner.
>
> The complexity of these event sometime boggles the imagination. I
> recall reading that an American or British diplomat reported that less
> than
> a month after Kirov's murder (the ostensible excuse for Stalin's
> liquidation
> of all his "enemies" in the party, the army and soviet society in general)
> Moscow taxi drivers talked quite freely of Stalin's responsibilty for the
> murder. A propos the 1937 coup d'etat of Stalin, the reportage of
> Europeans
> and Americans - including John Dewey - concerning the Stalinist repression
> was firmly rejected and ignored by CP members in Europe and the US as
> Capitalist propaganda. This is not forgetfulness, rather it is as I
> wrote
> earlier, the choice of preferred interpretation under circumstances of
> intense social and political mobilization. I don't know how the Khruschev
> revelations effected the Russians, it had tremendous repercussions for CP
> members in Europe and the US; suicides, the fragmentation of circles of
> intimate friends, anomic cynicism, and so on. In my view the strength of
> this reaction to the Khruschev revelations surely indicates that the
> decision - and it is a decision - to interpret facts in one way or another
> is consciously taken and that the known alternatives are not forgotten,
> just
> repressed. Though I don't know your grandma, it makes a lot of sense to
> me
> that she was all too aware of the possibility that her 16 neighbors had
> been
> caught up in Stalin's Red Terror, but chose to think otherwise since the
> alternative could only result in the worst kind of anomic cynicism or
> active
> opposition to Stalin and her own destruction. This last century has seen
> far too many of these terrible choices, and there doesn't appear to be any
> respite from them in this century either.
> Highest regards,
> Victor
>
> By the way, it looks like we've closed the circle. Remember how this
> discussion started? On the question of life and survival under conditions
> of intense threat produced by extreme pressures for compliance in mass
> society; totalitarian or not.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Eugene Matusov" <ematusov@udel.edu>
> To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 5:37 PM
> Subject: RE: Iraq: Responses to Zimbardo
>
>
> > Dear Alisa--
> >
> > I did not mean any cultural phenomenon with regard not seeing the
> difference
> > between Truth and ideology but rather a totalitarian phenomenon (Victor,
> I
> > wonder if during the lecture you mentioned, the phenomenon was explained
> > from cultural versus political perspective or both). For example, my
> grandma
> > claimed that she did not know anything about Stalinist repressions until
> > Khrutsov revealed them at the end of 1950s. However, on another account
> she
> > told me that 16 neighbors "disappeared" from the communal apartment she
> > lived (in Moscow) at one night in 1937. I saw many times when older
> > generation completely suppressed their personal experiences and accepted
> > official propaganda in the Soviet Union (read Jim Wertsch's recent book
> on
> > remembering where he discusses this phenomenon). This suppression of the
> > truth by the official ideology/propaganda seemed a defensive mechanism
> to
> > cope with fear and to be caught by numerous spies that were around at
> that
> > terrible time (cf. Freud). Based on many stories of my Vietnamese
> friends
> > and literature about Vietnamese concentration camps, I have all
> suspicions
> > that Communist Vietnam was similar to Stalinist Soviet Union in this
> regard.
> > I was raised during Brezhnev's era of so-called "stagnation" when
> > repressions did not have mass character and were not so deadly, that is
> > probably why the phenomenon was not so strong in my generation...
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Eugene
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: eliza@pob.huji.ac.il [mailto:eliza@pob.huji.ac.il]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 11:02 AM
> > > To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > Subject: RE: Iraq: Responses to Zimbardo
> > >
> > > Victor wrote:
> > > > > In the mid '60s I attended a lecture on Vietnamese social
> psychology
> > > by an
> > > > > American Anthropologist working either for the DOD or the CIA. It
> was
> > > > > pure
> > > > > nonsense; something about how the people of VN were incapable of
> > > knowing
> > > > > the
> > > > > difference between Truth (what really happened) and their
> ideology.
> > >
> > > Eugene replied:
> > > > The lecture might be stupid CIA and DOD propaganda, but the
> phenomenon
> > > it
> > > > focused on was not. When I was in college in mid 70s we had a lot of
> > > > Vietnamese students. I made a few friends among them and they told
> me
> a
> > > lot
> > > > of stories that make no much difference between Vietnamese and
> Soviet
> > > > totalitarian socialist systems. You can read Soviet and Czech
> dissidents
> > > > describing and analyzing this phenomenon. I have first hand account
> of
> > > it
> > > > because older generations raised under Stalin were very much like
> that.
> > > >
> > > > I think we should be very careful avoiding demonizing one side and
> > > > glorifying another side. The gold rule is that there are no gold
> rules.
> > > > Local historical circumstances are very important and should be
> > > considered
> > > > holistically.
> > >
> > > 1. there is no such thing as the one objective truth - this belief has
> > > mislead
> > > many scientists (especially social scientists) before Ernst Mach
> (1838-
> > > 1916),
> > > Einstein, Whorf et al. discovered relativity. As Pyenson, L. & Sheets-
> > > Pyenson,
> > > S. (1999) [Servants of nature: A history of scientific institutions,
> > > enterprises and sensibilities, London: W.W. Norton & Co.] wrote:
> > > "Relativism
> > > emerged rather suddenly at the end of the nineteenth century, when
> > > European
> > > thinkers had been seeking the grail of absolute truth. (.) Once it
> became
> > > apparent that truth had countless facets, speculative thinkers changed
> to
> > > focus on critical epistemology: if they could not say what was forever
> > > true,
> > > they could establish how current notions of nature had developed." (p.
> > > 428)
> > > 2. From what I personally know about Oriental (i.e. Asian) Culture
> "facts"
> > > are
> > > not necessarily considered something tangible or "scientific". E.g. in
> > > Indian
> > > etc. culture "Karma" is seen as a fact of life like birth, death etc.
> So
> > > it
> > > doesn't surprise me that Western scientist would define Eastern
> mentality
> > > as 'not knowing the difference between truth and ideology'.
> > >
> > > Alisa L.
> > >
> > > -------------------------------------------------
> > > This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
> >
> >



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