… The Vatican set ‘Western Civilization’ in stone. After well over a thousand years, we’re only just now beginning to try to think - and live - outside the puzzle box. It’s as hard as it is to do because it wasn’t just “religion” or “worship” that was set in stone: the basis of European political systems (including ours), business, logic, diplomacy, philosophy, and science were all SET during that same period.
I recently had the pleasure of reading Cantor’s
Civilization of the Middle Ages. It contained an ecclesiastical history that was surprisingly touch-and-go well into the twelfth century. In fact one of his more engaging theses was that from the mid-eleventh on (and forgiving the notch cut by the Black Death) things have been on a general ascendant up to this day. I will need to reread; I grow interested in history fairly late in life. I am contemplating buying a set of Gibbon. Many wonderful, old, and imposingly physical books to be had for not much scratch. E-books do not smell right.
For the ones who are really trying to see deeply into the torrent of events, who really want to stop the acceleration of corruption in its tracks, and put guardrails in place to prevent such things in the future, it’s a huge temptation to give in to Panglossian best-of-all-possible-worlds *despair* that this is indeed things actually happening for the best, “so relax and enjoy it”, or to ‘hakuna matata’ ourselves into deep distraction, ‘having faith’ that things will work out on their own anyway
I believe myself to be fairly unaffected by the panglossian premise — or its diametric opposite. I think the Epicureans struck a nice balance: enjoy life’s pleasures — within balance to life’s drudgeries.
THE BIGGEST RISK being taken by the Overthrow Party Is an increase in cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance breaks illusion when the break between belief and experience collide…and typically most effective when it strikes personally. Given the revelations beginning to pour out about MAGA, it’s nefarious cast of charachters/bad actors, and the plots driving it all behind the scenes, we are beginning to see more and more people experience that break…but it won’t work on everyone. There will always be some who will burrow further into protective fantasyland, and double down - triple down, even - do virtually ANYTHING to avoid having to LOOK at what they’ve been part of, the things they’ve helped happen (it is *why* we have such massively effective (and successful) distraction industries (streaming video, video games (all sorts), film, music, drugs, alcohol, sex, QVC, gambling, conspiracy theorizing) devoted to impelling the sociopolitical passivity of the citizenry by ever-new distraction methods & fantasies of ‘enough money for THAT new house, new car, hot new “investment”, new look, new vacation, new spouse, new drug, new kink, new fashion, etc.
I think we get to the real meat of the matter. I will work backward: you list a number of “addictive” behaviors, every one of which coopts our neurology of reward. Different personalities have different levels of effort needed to muster and implement the act of sustained will needed to get unaddicted.
Here I am grateful for having inherited some of my dad’s iron. (One day he said “I will stop smoking.” He did.) I have recently grabbed two escape-motivated spirals by the horns, and am contemplating a third with great ambivalence: cutting out carby foods. That’ll be harder because it uses a necessary drive.
The thing I am steering toward is that it is a very tentative hypothesis of mine that mastering such destructive drives (where necessary, with the support of Sundry Addicts Anonymous) makes it possible to tackle cognitive dissonance as well. I spoke of a Stockholm syndrome. This can be met with some combination of community/loved-ones support, and applying a level of opposed will that is formidable but generally not heroic. (It is of course necessary to leave enabling communities, be it your church, your drinking buddies or your fellow shoppers.)
Ultimately the only discipline is self-discipline. However, choosing one’s community prudently during the transition time helps a lot.
You put your finger directly on the beating artery I spoke of earlier. The churches value faith above reason, with some fascinating aberrations like the Jesuits. This promotes tolerating, then embracing cognitive dissonance, all the while the warm bath of congregational enablement gently soothes away rational reservations. Without making this another of my counterreligious jeremiads,
deprogramming cognitive dissonance can be, I now believe, positively engaged by a sufficiently self-motivated individual using the addiction-survivor toolset. Let’s say that my own research is ongoing.
However it’s been the historical rule that eventually, enough pressure will crack any nut…and a lot of the MAGA-Jesus-Hitler types have already had their nuts cracked & that’s how they ended up there.
On a more cautionary note, old Egypt held out for almost three millennia. Rome had a few centuries of glory. We are at the quarter-millennium mark, and living in interesting times. The only thing of which I am certain is that the republic will emerge changed, if at all. I hope it is in a a direction of greater cognitive health, even as we lose the éminences grises of the greatest generation to that implacable taskmistress.