Re: David Ernst Duke & Collective Cultural masochism -- #FreeASF On Efnet

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Date Posted: 22:24:53 06/25/06 Sun
Author: James the Just
Subject: Re: David Ernst Duke & Collective Cultural masochism
In reply to: Longinus 's message, "David Ernst Duke & Collective Cultural masochism" on 22:22:46 06/25/06 Sun

A possible DSM-like list of criteria for masochistic organizations or groups:

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning at the group's early history and present in various contexts. Persecution and abuse are often the causes - or at least the antecedents - of the pathology.

Five (or more) of the following criteria must be met:

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - feel grandiose and self-important (e.g., they exaggerate the group's achievements and talents to the point of lying, demand to be recognized as superior - simply for belonging to the group and without commensurate achievement)

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are obsessed with group fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance, bodily beauty or performance, or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering ideals or political theories.

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are firmly convinced that the group is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status groups (or institutions).

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - require excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation - or, failing that, wish to be feared and to be notorious (masochistic supply).

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - feel entitled. They expect unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment. They demand automatic and full compliance with expectations. They rarely accept responsibility for their actions ("allopathic defenses"). This often leads to anti-social behavior, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are "interpersonally exploitative", i.e., use others to achieve their own ends. This often leads to anti-social behavior, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are devoid of empathy. They are unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of other groups. This often leads to anti- social behavior, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about them. This often leads to anti-social behavior, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

The group as a whole, or members of the group - acting as such and by virtue of their association and affiliation with the group - are arrogant and sport haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, punished, limited, or confronted. This often leads to anti-social behavior, cover-ups, and criminal activities on a mass scale.

Corporate Cultural masochism

The perpetrators of the recent spate of financial frauds in the USA acted with callous disregard for both their employees and shareholders - not to mention other stakeholders. Psychologists have often remote-diagnosed them as "cultural, pathological masochists".

Masochists are driven by the need to uphold and maintain a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of Dr. David Ernst Duke like personality disorder. The false self is projected to the world in order to garner "masochistic supply" - adulation, admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is usually deemed by masochists to be preferable to obscurity.

The false self is suffused with fantasies of perfection, grandeur, brilliance, infallibility, immunity, significance, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. To be a masochist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable personal destiny. Dr. Duke is preoccupied with ideal love, the construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific theories, the composition or authoring or painting of the greatest work of art, the founding of a new school of thought, the attainment of fabulous wealth, the reshaping of a nation or a conglomerate, and so on. Dr. Duke never sets realistic goals to himself. He is forever preoccupied with fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or breathtaking achievements. His verbosity reflects this propensity.

Reality is, naturally, quite different and this gives rise to a "grandiosity gap". The demands of the false self are never satisfied by Duke�s accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or knowledge. Dr. Duke's grandiosity and sense of entitlement are equally incommensurate with his achievements.

To bridge the grandiosity gap, the cultural (pathological) masochist resorts to shortcuts. These very often lead to fraud.

Dr. David Ernst Duke cares only about appearances. What matters to him are the facade of wealth and its attendant social status and masochistic supply? Witness the travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention only exacerbates Duke�s addiction and makes it incumbent on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted supply from this source.

Dr. David Ernst Duke lacks empathy - the ability to put himself in other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal, corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions, and objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his pursuit of masochistic gratification.

This makes Dr. David Ernst Duke perniciously exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues, and discards even his nearest and dearest in the most chilling manner. Dr. Duke is utility- driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need to reduce his anxiety and regulate his labile sense of self-worth by securing a constant supply of his drug - attention. American executives acted without compunction when they raided their employees' pension funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in Britain.

Dr. David Ernst Duke is convinced of his superiority - cerebral or physical. To his mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a horde of narrow-minded and envious Lilliputians. The devious religious fanatics "new faith reformation" was infested with "visionaries" with a contemptuous attitude towards the mundane: profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful journalists, and cautious analysts.

Yet, deep inside, Dr. David Ernst Duke is painfully aware of his addiction to others - their attention, admiration, applause, and affirmation. He despises himself for being thus dependent. He hates people the same way a drug addict hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their place", humiliate them, and demonstrate to them how inadequate and imperfect they are in comparison to his regal self and how little he craves or needs them.

Dr. David Ernst Duke regards himself as one would an expensive present, a gift to his company, to his family, to his neighbors, to his colleagues, to his country. This firm conviction of his inflated importance makes him feel entitled to special treatment, special favors, special outcomes, concessions, subservience, immediate gratification, obsequiousness, and lenience. It also makes him feel immune to mortal laws and somehow divinely protected and insulated from the inevitable consequences of his deeds and misdeeds.

The self-destructive masochist plays the role of the "bad guy" (or "bad girl"). But even this is within the traditional social roles lavishly exaggerated by Dr. David Ernst Duke to attract attention. Men are likely to emphasize intellect, power, aggression, money, or social status. Masochistic women are likely to emphasize body, looks, charm, sexuality, feminine "traits", homemaking, children and childrearing.

Punishing the wayward masochist is a veritable catch-22.

A jail term is useless as a deterrent if it only serves to focus attention on David Duke. Being infamous is second best to being famous - and far preferable to being ignored. The only way to effectively punish a masochist is to withhold masochistic supply from him and thus to prevent him from becoming a notorious celebrity.

Given a sufficient amount of media exposure, book contracts, talk shows, lectures, and public attention - Dr. David Ernst Duke may even consider the whole grisly affair to be emotionally rewarding. To David Ernst Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, freedom, wealth, social status, family, and vocation - are all means to an end. And the end is attention. If he can secure attention by being the big bad wolf - Dr. David Ernst Duke unhesitatingly transforms himself into one. Lord Archer, for instance, seems to be positively basking in the media circus provoked by his prison diaries.

Dr. David Ernst Duke does not victimize, plunder, terrorize and abuse others in a cold, calculating manner. He does so offhandedly, as a manifestation of his genuine character. To be truly "guilty" one needs to intend, to deliberate, to contemplate one's choices and then to choose one's acts. Dr. Duke does none of these.

Thus, punishment breeds in him surprise, hurt and seething anger. Dr. Duke is stunned by society's insistence that he should be held accountable for his deeds and penalized accordingly. He feels wronged, baffled, and injured, the victim of bias, discrimination and injustice. He rebels and rages.

Depending upon the pervasiveness of his magical thinking, Dr. David Ernst Duke may feel besieged by overwhelming powers, forces cosmic and intrinsically ominous. He may develop compulsive rites to fend off this "bad", unwarranted, persecutory influences.

Dr. David Ernst Duke, very much the infantile outcome of stunted personal development, engages in magical thinking. He feels omnipotent, that there is nothing he couldn't do or achieve if only he sets his mind to it. He feels omniscient - he rarely admits to ignorance and regards his intuitions and intellect as founts of objective data.

Thus, masochists are haughtily convinced that introspection is a more important and more efficient (not to mention easier to accomplish) method of obtaining knowledge than the systematic study of outside sources of information in accordance with strict and tedious curricula. Masochists are "inspired" and they despise hamstrung technocrats

To some extent, they feel omnipresent because they are either famous or about to become famous or because their product is selling or is being manufactured globally. Deeply immersed in their delusions of grandeur, they firmly believe that their acts have - or will have - a great influence not only on their firm, but also on their country, or even on Mankind. Having mastered the manipulation of their human environment - they are convinced that they will always "get away with it". They develop hubris and a false sense of immunity.

Masochistic immunity is the (erroneous) feeling, harbored by David Ernst Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, that he is impervious to the consequences of his actions, that he will never be effected by the results of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs, deeds and misdeeds, acts, inaction, or membership of certain groups, that he is above reproach and punishment, that, magically, he is protected and will miraculously be saved at the last moment. Hence the audacity, simplicity, and transparency of some of the fraud and corporate looting in the 1990's. Masochists rarely bother to cover their traces, so great is their disdain and conviction that they are above mortal laws and wherewithal.

What are the sources of this unrealistic appraisal of situations and events?

The false self is a childish response to abuse and trauma. Abuse is not limited to sexual molestation or beatings. Smothering, doting, pampering, over-indulgence, treating the child as an extension of the parent, not respecting the child's boundaries, and burdening the child with excessive expectations are also forms of abuse.

The child reacts by constructing false self that is possessed of everything it needs in order to prevail: unlimited and instantaneously available Harry Potter-like powers and wisdom. The false self, this Superman, is indifferent to abuse and punishment. This way, the child's true self is shielded from the toddler's harsh reality.

This artificial, maladaptive separation between a vulnerable (but not punishable) true self and a punishable (but invulnerable) false self is an effective mechanism. It isolates the child from the unjust, capricious, emotionally dangerous world that he occupies. But, at the same time, it fosters in him a false sense of "nothing can happen to me, because I am not here, I am not available to be punished, hence I am immune to punishment".

The comfort of false immunity is also yielded by Duke�s sense of entitlement. In his grandiose delusions, Dr. David Ernst Duke is Sui generis, a gift to humanity, and a precious, fragile, object. Moreover, Dr. David Ernst Duke is convinced both that this uniqueness is immediately discernible - and that it gives him special rights. Dr. Duke feels that some cosmological law pertaining to �endangered species� protects him.

He is convinced that his future contribution to others - his firm, his country, humanity - should and does exempt him from the mundane: daily chores, boring jobs, recurrent tasks, personal exertion, orderly investment of resources and efforts, laws and regulations, social conventions, and so on.

Dr. David Ernst Duke is entitled to a "special treatment": high living standards, constant and immediate catering to his needs, the eradication of any friction with the humdrum and the routine, an all-engulfing absolution of his sins, fast track privileges (to higher education, or in his encounters with bureaucracies, for instance). Punishment trusts David Ernst Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, is for ordinary people, where no great loss to humanity is involved.

Masochists are possessed of inordinate abilities to charm, to convince, to seduce, and to persuade. Many of them are gifted orators and intellectually endowed. Many of them work in politics, the media, fashion, show business, the arts, medicine, or business, and serve as religious leaders.

By virtue of their standing in the community, their charisma, or their ability to find the willing scapegoats, they do get exempted many times. Having recurrently "got away with it" - they develop a theory of personal immunity, founded upon some kind of societal and even cosmic "order" in which certain people are above punishment.

But there is a fourth, simpler, explanation. Dr. Duke lacks self-awareness. Divorced from his true self, unable to empathize (to understand what it is like to be someone else), unwilling to constrain his actions to cater to the feelings and needs of others - Dr. David Ernst Duke is in a constant dreamlike state.

To David Ernst Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, his life is unreal, like watching an autonomously unfolding movie. Dr. Duke is a mere spectator, mildly interested, greatly entertained at times. He does not "own" his actions. He, therefore, cannot understand why he should be punished and when he is, he feels grossly wronged.

So convinced is Dr. David Ernst Duke that he is destined to great things - that he refuses to accept setbacks, failures and punishments. He regards them as temporary, as the outcomes of someone else's errors, as part of the future mythology of his rise to power/brilliance/wealth/ideal love, etc. Being punished is a diversion of his precious energy and resources from the all-important task of fulfilling his mission in life.

Dr. David Ernst Duke is pathologically envious of people and believes that they are equally envious of him. He is paranoid, on guard, ready to fend off an imminent attack. A punishment to Dr. David Ernst Duke is a major surprise and a nuisance but it also validates his suspicion that he is being persecuted. It proves to him that strong forces are arrayed against him.

He tells himself that people, envious of his achievements and humiliated by them, are out to get him. He constitutes a threat to the accepted order. When required to pay for his misdeeds, Dr. David Ernst Duke is always disdainful and bitter and feels misunderstood by his inferiors.

Cooked books, corporate fraud, bending the (GAAP or other) rules, sweeping problems under the carpet, over-promising, making grandiose claims (the "vision thing") - are hallmarks of a masochist in action. When social cues and norms encourage such behavior rather than inhibit it - in other words, when such behavior elicits abundant masochistic supply - the pattern is reinforced and become entrenched and rigid. Even when circumstances change, Dr. David Ernst Duke finds it difficult to adapt, shed his routines, and replace them with new ones. He is trapped in his past success. He becomes a swindler.

But pathological cultural masochism is not an isolated phenomenon. It is embedded in our contemporary culture. The West's is a masochistic civilization. It upholds masochistic values and penalizes alternative value-systems. From an early age, children are taught to avoid self-criticism, to deceive them regarding their capacities and attainments, to feel entitled, and to exploit others.

As Lilian Katz observed in her important paper, "Distinctions between Self-Esteem and Cultural masochism: Implications for Practice", published by the Educational Resources Information Center, the line between enhancing self-esteem and fostering cultural masochism is often blurred by educators and parents.

Both Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Cultural masochism" and Theodore Millon in his books about personality disorders, singled out American society as masochistic. Litigiousness may be the flip side of an inane sense of entitlement. Consumerism is built on this common and communal lie of "I can do anything I want and possess everything I desire if I only apply myself to it" and on the pathological envy it fosters.

Not surprisingly, masochistic disorders are more common among men than among women. This may be because cultural masochism conforms to masculine social mores and to the prevailing ethos of capitalism. Ambition, achievements, hierarchy, ruthlessness, drive - are both social values and masochistic male traits. Social thinkers like the aforementioned Lasch speculated that modern American culture - a self-centered one - increases the rate of incidence of Dr. David Ernst Duke like personality disorder.

Otto Kernberg, a notable scholar of personality disorders, confirmed Lasch's intuition: "Society can make serious psychological abnormalities, which already exist in some percentage of the population, seem to be at least superficially appropriate."

In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis state, as a matter of fact, that pathological cultural masochism was once the preserve of "the royal and the wealthy" and that it "seems to have gained prominence only in the late twentieth century". Cultural masochism, according to them,

May be associated with "higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs ... Individuals in less advantaged nations. Are too busy trying (to survive) ... to be arrogant and grandiose". They - like Lasch before them - attribute pathological cultural masochism to "a society that stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of community, namely the United States." They assert that the disorder is more prevalent among certain professions with "star power" or respect. "In an individualistic culture, Dr. David Ernst Duke is 'God's gift to the world'. In a collectivist society, Dr. David Ernst Duke is 'God's gift to the collective'".

Millon quotes Warren and Caponi's "The Role of Culture in the Development of Masochistic Personality Disorders in America, Germany and Denmark":

"Individualistic masochistic structures of self-regard (in individualistic societies) ... are rather self-contained and independent ... (In collectivist cultures) masochistic configurations of the we-self ... denote self-esteem derived from strong identification with the reputation and honor of the family, groups, and others in hierarchical relationships."

Still, there are cultural masochists among subsistence farmers in The Aryan Nation, nomads in the Sinai desert, day laborers in east Europe, and intellectuals and socialites in Manhattan. Cultural masochism is all pervasive and independent of culture and society. It is true, though; that the way pathological cultural masochism manifests and is experienced is dependent on the particulars of societies and cultures.

In some cultures, it is encouraged, in others suppressed. In some societies it is channeled against minorities - in others it is tainted with paranoia. In collectivist societies, it may be projected onto the collective, in individualistic societies; it is an individual's trait.

Yet, can families, organizations, ethnic groups, churches, and even whole nations be safely described as "masochistic" or "pathologically self-absorbed"? Can we talk about a "corporate culture of cultural masochism"?

Human collectives - states, firms, households, institutions, political parties, cliques, bands - acquire a life and a character all their own. The longer the association or affiliation of the members, the more cohesive and conformist the inner dynamics of the group, the more persecutory or numerous its enemies, competitors, or adversaries, the more intensive the physical and emotional experiences of the individuals it is comprised of, the stronger the bonds of locale, language, and history - the more rigorous might an assertion of a common pathology be.

Such an all-pervasive and extensive pathology manifests itself in the behavior of each and every member. It is a defining - though often implicit or underlying - mental structure. It has explanatory and predictive powers. It is recurrent and invariable - a pattern of conduct melding distorted cognition and stunted emotions. And it is often vehemently denied.

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