I think I finally make sense of what is irksome about the position in which everyone else is suckered by ideology except one's self. It simply dismisses things that aren't properly understood by considering those who believe something different passively, as mere objects of manipulation whilst ones self is somehow above and beyond the same determinations.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdfAnother implication of this transition was noted somewhat earlier, by Marx in the third of his Theses on Feuerbacb . It is clear that the Enlightenment's mechanistic account of human action included both a thesis about the predictability of human behavior and a thesis about the appropriate ways to manipulate human behavior. As an observer, if I know the relevant laws governing the behavior of others, I can whenever I observe that the antecedent conditions have been fulfilled predict the outcome. As an agent, if I know these laws, I can whenever I can contrive the fulfilment of the same antecedent conditions produce the outcome. What Marx understood was that such an agent is forced to regard his own actions quite differently from the behavior of those whom he is manipulating. For the behavior of the manipulated is being contrived in accordance with his intentions, reasons and purposes; intentions, reasons and purposes which he is treating, at least while he is engaged in such manipulation, as exempt from the laws which govern the behavior of the manipulated. To them he stands at least for the moment as the chemist does to the samples of potassium chloride and sodium nitrate with which he experiments; but in the chemical changes which the chemist or the technologist of human behavior brings about the chemist or the technologist must see exemplified not only the laws which govern such changes but the imprinting of his own will on nature or society. And that imprinting he will treat, as Marx saw, as the expression of his own rational autonomy and not the mere outcome of antecedent conditions.
- p. 84-5
Basically, you yourself are a subject whilst commies are objects, mere dupes although interestingly enough in this framing, there are puppet masters who seem to be considered on the level of one's self, with reasons, intentions, and purposes which they can enact such broad control.
Such a characterization wouldn't be limited to 'cults' but to any group which seems to share similar beliefs. But even that outlook is impoverished and abstract as it cannot see conflict within a group such that they hold different views and aren't fully identified with the official position. It'd be like thinking that someone who works for a company fully identifies with the purpose and written policies of a company as opposed to merely conforms to it in part of earning a wage.
The concerning part of this view is that in seeing others as mere objects of manipulation who are simply stupid dogmatic followers who can't think for themselves or even have the capacity for such is that one views such persons as objects for one's manipulation.
This is what lead to the criticism of psychotherapy parentalism of the expert as automatically all-knowing.
http://davidhjacobsphd.com/why-is-change-so-difficult/‘Resistance’ is an evaluation from the outside, from the therapist’s side, not from the client’s side (a 3rd person term, not a 1st person term; as such, resistance called be called a ‘deformation professionelle’, a French term suggesting that a distortion has been produced by the professional’s framework of thought). From the client’s side nothing that makes sense, is desirable, and is unthreatening in any way is ever resisted. The therapist can never lose sight of the fact that his/her own evaluation of how threatening something is is a strictly external, onlooker perspective. To bring this point into focus, it may help to think of something that deeply frightens you but does not frighten a specific other person that you know nearly as much as it frightens you (if you can’t think of anything you really should try harder). I make this point because it is too easy from an onlooker perspective to minimize the severity of someone else’s fear. From the client’s side there are compelling reasons not to change (it is the client that has ‘skin in the game’).
This suggests as difficulty in being able to properly adopt the position of another critically enough to understand them. There is simply an impasse and part of that impasse is that one simply views others in such a negative light, they're simply stupid, evil, wrong and so on.
I worry this might reflects instead a dogmatism because there seems to be little more than characterization of everyone who thinks differently in terms of their object-ness. It should be no surprise that one views such objects so poorly because they do not seem to register as humans who think at all, more like automatons. This tendency itself seems to be due to a kind of incomprehensibility for why someone would think the way they think and do what they do. But the very capacity to empathize with anothers position is what is essentially lacking and thus one resorts to an explanation based in that lack of understanding. Everyone who doesn't see the way things I do is an idiot who can't see, and then follows an unpersuasive approach that is antagonistic and hostile lacking respect that finds only disrespect from those who feel attacked and simply react rather than think themselves.
But there is some truth to the object-ness of many people who absolve themselves of freedom and responsbility for their own lives, adopting a childish dependence...
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2015-11.dir/pdflWFn_ejqBT.pdfIt is sometimes so convenient to perceive someone else as a role, a function, an illness, a character, a job title, a type, and so on, rather than as a personality. If this tendency to “escape from freedom,” to escape from a personality-based existence is a common human weakness, in the clinic of alcoholism and drug addictions (which in the 1990s was almost completely occupied by the coding method), this tendency is especially strong. Volitional impairment is one of thee most important symptoms of the flattening of the personality from substance abuse. This tendency is what the coding method exploits. An alcoholic patient who is too tired or does not wish to fight his addiction is so attracted to the notion that he may allow himself in this treatment to simply turn into an object that the doctor will manipulate at will, that he is willing to do anything, as long as it does not require any of his volitional efforts, his human participation, his freedom. It is worth recalling that a slave, strictly speaking, is an object, so in Latin they are even referred to by the same word, res.
But this isn't simply a given and must be properly inferred rather than assumed from lack of understanding of other people. In much the same way people react to Trump getting voted in with the same airs of everyone else is an idiot. There is no thought here, it is simply dismissal. Playing the same game of outrage because in some sense there is a satisfaction in the inadequate explanation and the superiority it can give ones self over the 'sheeple'.
And this tendency to always posit some nefarious entity which somehow exists beyond any perception seems concerning that it simply replaces one fixation with another. It's supposed skepticism allows it to lapse into another dogmatism.
http://criticaltheorylibrary.blogspot.com/2011/02/slavoj-zizek-key-ideas.htmlParadoxically, then, Zizek argues that the typical postmodern subject is one who displays an otright cynicism towards official institutions, yet at the same time believes in the existence of conspirancies and an unseen Other pulling the strings. This apparently contradictory coupling of cynicism and belief is strictly correlative to the demise of the big Other. Its disappearance causes us to construct an Other of the Other in order to escape the unbearable freedom its loss encumbers us with. Conversely, there is no need to take the big Other seriously if we believe in an Other of the Other. We therefore display cynicism and belief in equal and sinceres measures.
Again, an effort to not feel like one is duped by things no longer believed in, but still, in fact, believing in things in much the same way as before. The apparent cynicism doesn't save one's self from dogmatic belief.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
- By ingliz
- By wat0n
- By Tainari88