Skip to main content

People with short-term memory, or people with brilliant long-term, who well remember the terrors?



Paul Krugman, at his blog, has just explained why austerity-favouring politicians in Britain might well get re-elected. He writes:

Well, you could blame the weakness of the opposition, which has done an absolutely terrible job of making its case. You could blame the fecklessness of the news media, which has gotten much wrong. But the truth is that what’s happening in British politics is what almost always happens, there and everywhere else: Voters have fairly short memories, and they judge economic policy not by long-term results but by recent growth. Over five years, the coalition’s record looks terrible. But over the past couple of quarters it looks pretty good, and that’s what matters politically.
This is the common sense understanding of how people work that liberals generally (always?) prefer, that they're basically good but have certain weaknesses that make them exploitable. He's wed to it, unfortunately, so that if it was only one quarter that looked pretty good, he'd of made the exact same argument. If it wasn't even that ... if there weren't any promising economic quarters but conservatives we're dangling goodies of some kind, like tax cuts, it would be amended slightly, but he'd in essence argue the same thing: These good people's weakness isn't their "fairly short memories," but their "sweet tooths" --  sadly ready to gobble down anything sweet-sounding given to them without thought of the long-term. The liberals role is to press and educate, get the news out, so that perhaps these instinctive tendencies in the populace can be abated by forcing them to do some hard recall, some temporary restraint and denial ... this too -- thank God! -- they're capable of. 

I think this common sense understanding of people is wrong, and, other than deMause, the only person I've heard argue that people actually know what they're getting when they vote in people that will ensure hard times, is the conservative historian John Lukacs. Lukacs had argued that people knew the kind of world Reagonomics was about to bring, they weren't fooled or conned or exploited, and that the people chose it because they knew it was required to breed character, something Lukacs believed it did as well (and also David Brooks: his new book is all about it). To him, it showed something impressive about them that they intrinsically preferred a "testing" environment to one always dispensing "candy." 

Lukacs is a very erudite nut, of course. It's de Mause who's got it right. At certain times, people vote in politicians who will ensure further suffering and growth-inhibition, because, without it, they will feel something worse: complete abandonment by their mothers, installed as alters in their right hemispheres. 

De Mause would argue the should-be-common-sense argument that voters actually well-remembered the five years of suffering, not the two quarters of economic improvement; and in fact are maybe about to vote back in conservatives in spite of the fact of recent economic improvement. In de Mause's view, the people aren't good but prey to unfortunate weaknesses, but rather people who rightly fear the feeling of apocalyptic abandonment they experience when they know they've still been enjoying themselves way too much, making life "selfishly" about themselves, rather than the group (the mother). In de Mause's view, people aren't those out of some quaint Irish village that are maybe prone to drinking too much and forgetting themselves, but rather those who've seen wicked terrors and can spot those who'll invite them back -- i.e true society-advancers -- progressives -- a mile away. He sees them as more "Grimm," and rightly. 

De Mause says that most children did not have parents who could be completely enthusiastic about their children's growth, and tended to punish them, abandon them, when they focused too much on their own needs rather than those of their own. He argues that most children conclude out of this experience, two things: one, self-attention and growth is bad, a sin; and two, that being vulnerable -- what they most felt like before being abandoned -- is itself a terrible, punishment-worthy crime. This they learn so hard it changes their brains -- "super ego" develops ... which to super-ego-almost-never-saying de Mause, is really internal perpetrator alters. If you renounce growth, you're not anywhere near as deserving as punishment. If the 60s and 70s had just continued on, it would have driven people mad. 


Not you or me, no -- but we were better loved. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe