On Futurism

I am trying to detach from writing about politics.  I find it distressing and futile.   What I write is not as eloquent as many liberal voices, and I believe that persuasion is hopeless.  In particular, writing about Donald Trump is useless.  I have thought that I have some specific ideas based on my personal and professional experiences that might add to the discussion, but there is no discussion, no dialectic, only entrenchment.

I am reading Mein Kampf, and I am stunned to see that Trump's tactics use Hitler's propaganda techniques as his playbook.  I am reading Madeleine Albright's book, Fascism, and have discovered that Hitler learned those techniques from Mussolini.  Insulting those taken in by those techniques is worse than useless.

I have thought about trying to correct liberals who refer to Trump as stupid or mentally ill.  Speaking as a career clinical psychologist, I am certain that he is neither.  He is intellectually lazy, and morally bereft, but he is very bright and can read and write.  As communication, his tweets are phenomenally effective for his purpose.

Many who think as I do say repeatedly that the current situation is unprecedented and unbelievable, but it is not.  It is a real sociological phenomenon.  There are reasons it is happening, and certain things have to change for that reality to change.  I have concluded many times that the stage is set for significant change ... but maybe not.  Our current political schism did not start with Trump.  He merely engaged those forces with the skills and techniques learned from Mussolini and Hitler.

I hope to back out and take a broader view, accepting that society is as it is.  I have learned that there is an academic discipline and a science of how to change society for the better.  The first step of that science is to eliminate preconceptions and objectively analyze social facts.

In my training as a psychologist, not just as a therapist but with an understanding of the underlying science, I learned that psychology is not just an art or a talent.  Effective techniques can be assessed by experiment.  Some things work and some do not, and that can be empirically proven.  A prime example is Applied Behavior Analysis, a discipline that has been of great help to those working with cognitive impairments such as autism.

My dissertation research regarded a social psychology theory called Objective Self-Awareness.  The main point of the theory was that people will change their behavior when provided with clear feedback reflecting social disapproval, not lecturing or chastising, but simply and honestly showing.  Some early studies videotaped drunks coming into jails.  Later, in court hearings after they were sober, they were shown the videotapes.  Instead of denial and repression, they were emotionally impacted by the naked truth of how they looked when booked into the jail.  Another study demonstrated that college students cheated less if sitting with a mirror just in front of them.

My study was with behaviorally disordered juveniles.  I conducted group therapy with them, with a hidden video camera.  They were often very disruptive and aggressive.  The following day, I met with them individually, played the videotape, and simply asked them to talk about what they saw on the tape.  Many covered their eyes in embarrassment, and the study demonstrated significant behavioral improvement.

There is a similar scientifically based approach to societal change.  Throughout my career working in prisons, I was involved in numerous studies of how to restructure corrections with a goal of improving effectiveness.  I argued against the still-common approach of retribution and debasement and for a clear-eyed analysis and study of a huge and costly social problem.

Emile Durkheim

My approach overlapped with the discipline of sociology, and the father of scientific sociology is Emile Durkheim.  He is probably most famous for his analysis of social conditions that lead to suicide.  He demonstrated that there are socially based reasons for suicide.  It is not purely a weakness of the individual.  One important concept was that of anomi, the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community. A large number of people feel they have no place in society.  The United States is experiencing an epidemic of suicide, as well as depression and anxiety, and that feeling of uselessness is a core problem.

I returned to reading Durkheim because of a puzzling thought I have been having about the interaction of religion and politics. I was having trouble understanding why devoted Christians continue to support such an immoral president. Members of a small church in Alabama stated that, “I believe God put him there.” Also, "Love thy neighbor meant 'love thy American neighbor.'”
Durkheim's final and most masterful work is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. He argued that there is a deep and innate need in human society for faith, a need that is stronger than rational consistency and science.  Religion develops organically in the most primitive civilizations and is elaborated and refined as civilizations become more complex.  An ordered and supportive religion is helpful to people.  However, religion is on the decline, and many people can find no suitable substitute for that support.

I began this line of reading after a relative of mine contacted me to talk.  I knew her as a beautiful, bright little girl but had very little contact with her over many years.  In the meantime, she had problems with drug addiction, went to prison, and currently has a very unstable living situation, as well as severe health problems.  She said that a church group might help her financially to move to a more stable living situation.  She was planning that night to be baptized, and she hoped that those changes might set her on a better path.

I had met thousands of people in similar circumstances in prison.  She, like most people who end up in prison, had not been able to find a path forward for her life.  She has never been a criminal in the sense most people conceive of when thinking of prison inmates.  Imprisonment did not help her problems, it handicapped her further.  I'm not sure how to encourage her.  Like her, I hope this will help.

I believe in a Star Trek future.  At the time of James Kirk, Earth society had united and grown past war and poverty, but then along came the Klingons to present bigger challenges.  The League of Nations and the United Nations were the first attempts to achieve a stable world civilization.  Perhaps those efforts have helped, but there is clearly a long road ahead.  My question is how to get there from here.

That is the subject matter of the study of futurism.  Al Gore notably pursued those ideas, but there is little discourse or serious study of how to achieve such goals.  There is a sizable literature of the subject of Utopias, my favorite being H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia.  Emile Durkheim laid out the groundwork for scientific study, but theoretical sociologists are few and far between.

America's form of capitalism has created a huge number of socially surplus people who feel they have no purpose, and that number will only grow with automation and artificial intelligence.  Support from the primary family unit is disintegrating.  Religion does not do what it once did to hold people together.

Donald Trump will come and go.  He truly aggravates me, but I will try to spend more of my mental energy on ways to address the real problem, how to improve society.