First you surrender. You give up your right to your choices. Instead, you give over your power. The leader makes choices for you. You trust and obey. It’s a simple arrangement as far as it goes.
And because your obedience proves you are good, you think others should obey too.
From there, it’s just a short step to coercion. You feel perfectly right forcing everyone else to salute your idea, and conform to your rules.
Before long, you’ve granted your poison idea the rights of a god. You no longer question, or think for yourself. You merely respond and obey.
When I was young – perhaps age 10 – an adult I trusted beat me several times. Real beatings. Physical beatings. The kind that leave welts and bruises. That draw blood.
The wounds on my skin healed in days. They left no visible scars. The emotional wounds – though 50 years old – still hobbled my heart and my memory.
I suffered abuse in my body and soul.
The person who beat me was bigger than me. Older. Stronger and faster. I had no reasonable chance to escape, no way to defend myself. So I took it. What else could I do?
I trusted this person far more than myself. And because of my trust I believed that I only got what I deserved. (Though what I had done was unclear.)
I believed that coarse lie almost 40 years later
In broad terms, the person who beat me wasn’t beating a boy, just an object.
When the anger took hold of them, I meant no more than a book or a table, no more than a bottle or scrap of loose paper.
Had they vented their anger on a table instead, I wouldn’t carry these scars decades later.
There’s a principle here: treat people like people, don’t treat them as objects.
Yet our culture today is awash in ideas that are brutally blind to that truth. Anti-human ideas, they treat people as objects.
Ideas don’t care about people as people. Ideas just want to survive. They are toxic, inhuman, murderous killers.
These ideas require a host to survive. The lack power to survive on their own. A written idea in a book unread book is an idea without life, without power. But give that idea space inside a mind, and it can take over the world.
People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.
• Carl Jung
If ideas need a host to survive, then the rules that apply to biological hosts are the same rules for hosts of ideas.
An idea that enhances the life of the host is a symbiant. It makes life better for both.
Some ideas are better called parasites though. They take from the host without their permission and threaten the life they’re attached to.
Each one of us is a potential host for ideas. In fact, it not be possible for humans to live without hosting ideas. The question is, “what sort of ideas am I host to?”
Is Your Idea Benign, Malignant or Tyrannical?
Some ideas are benign, and some are malignant, even fatal. How can we know which is which?
What are the qualities of a benign idea? For starters, it won’t threaten the life of its host. It doesn’t remove agency, or require them to change their behavior.
An example:
“Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and brings gifts to children on Christmas Eve.”
This idea is symbiotic. Neither host nor idea are harmed by the relationship. At the worst, it is neutral for both.
Some ideas though – like cancer – are malignant.
Any idea that compels you to give up control of your own life is malignant.
Malignant ideas are parasitic. They feed on your energy and give you back nothing. Nothing of value, that is. If you are possessed by malignant ideas long enough, they’ll eventually kill you.
That’s the bad news. But the good news is great: The moment you realize that you alone are responsible for your own life, the malignant idea will release you and never come back.
You might be possessed by a malignant idea. This is why you must hear other views.
When you freely consider a new point of view, it can help you to see if you’re trapped. It can help you to free yourself from the grip of a malignant idea.
Malignant ideas can often become little tyrants if allowed to take root and mature.
The National Socialists idea in the 30’s was malignant: “Jews are why everything’s wrong in the world.” Then it grew – from a merely malignant idea – to a tyrant, thirsty for blood.
It happens like this.
First you surrender. You give up your right to your choices. Instead, you give over your power. The leader makes choices for you. You trust and obey. It’s a simple arrangement as far as it goes.
And because your obedience proves you are good, you think others should obey too.
From there, it’s just a short step to coercion. You feel perfectly right forcing everyone else to salute your idea, and conform to your rules.
Before long, you’ve granted your poison idea the rights of a god. You no longer question, or think for yourself. You merely respond and obey.
Consider the Nazis: It began with a “merely” repugnant idea. Half the world was consumed when it ended. That malignant, horrendous, destructive idea cost millions of lives.
Millions of innocent lives.
Now comes this equally stupid idea, an idea which is no less pernicious:
“Since my feelings are the paramount thing in this world, all those who hurts me must pay. Those who upset my emotional peace must be silenced.”
It seems adolescent, but this truth bears repeating:
Malignant ideas – when left unprotested – can turn into bloodthirsty tyrants.