HCJ4: Totalitarianism

The lecture focused on 3 aspects of Totalitarianism: How it can happen, the language used to control the population and the personal responsibility that people have in these regimes.

How can it happen?

One of the first Totalitarian regimes was Plato's republic, it was against the state having limted power and that there should be any sort of social contract theory.

After nearly 100 years of peace after the French Revolution, huge atrocities took place in countries that were considered to be civilised such as China, Russia and the philosophical powerhouse that was Germany. Society was supposed to be cultured and sophisticated and past terror would never be repeated, but people that thought that were clearly wrong.

The real kick-start for these regimes was the imperial nature of the 19th century, one example is the British Empire, it controlled around 1/4 of the Earth's total land mass by the early 1920s. The Nazis were influenced by the actions undertaken in the empires, some of those served as inspiration for the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, including the camps of General Kitchener in the Boer War.

The key features of a Totalitarian regime: Ideology, a dynamic/charismatic leader, control of individuality and some form of inforcement (msot likely violent). "Everything in the state, nothing outside the state" - Mussolini.

Hannah Arendt wrote about the Totalitarian regimes of the 20th century in her book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. She said that the ideology of the regimes gives them "the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present and a reliable prediction of the future". For HA, the first mvoe of the Nazis was to stop the Jews from being free. She was shocked by the actions of the modern day Totalitarian states and said that they were nothing like those in the 19th century. She also highlights that civilisation is fragile.


Control language and control minds

George Orwell was horrified by how much leaders could control their own population with language. A key quote from 1984 relating to language is "Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

If a Totalitarian leader can control the language in their regime, he can control his people's thoughts. Therefore, mind control is possible if you can control language. A leader can abolish certain words and phrases and essentially make their own 'super-language', this was done in Soviet Russia to a degree. The main idea of controlling language is to control people's thoughts and even their actions, therefore destroying individuality.


What is my personal responsibility?

We looked at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who was in charge of the transport for the Jews going to the concentration camps. Although he didn't kill anyone directly, his actions ultimatley led to millions of Jews being murdered. He was put on trial for what he did was sentenced to death.

This raises the question of how much responsibility a Totalitarian leader has. Take Soviet Russia as an example. Although Stalin never killed anyone directly, he ordered KGB officers to kill millions of Russians during the time known as the Purges (or Terror). It was his actions that led to his people being killed, but there is the argument that he had no personal responsibility as he didn't actually shoot or torture anyone. This can also relate to people under the control of Totalitarian regimes, if someone was to do nothing to stop the actions of Stalin, does that person have any responsibility for what happened?

Coming back to Eichmann, Hannah Arendt was shocked to see someone like Eichmann - a seemingly boring man who spoke in cliches and had no characteristics to suggest that he could commit such unspeakable acts. HA called it the "benality of evil". She thought that Eichmann's worst crime was not thinking before doing what he did and simply following orders. Eichmann followed Kant's Catergorical Imperative: 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.'

Satre said that if we just follow along and don't make a choice, then we are living in bad faith. We msut make a personal judgement rather than following the law when making decisions.

HCJ4 - Seminar 4 (inc. Seminar Paper on Existentialism)

Due to WINOL covering the Eastleigh by-election, the seminars were doubled up and seminar 4 covered Existentialism/Albert Camus' book 'The Stranger' as well as Economics inc Keynes and the book 'The New Industrial State'.


Existentialism/'The Stranger'

This is my seminar paper on 'The Stranger'.


The book highlights many existentialist ideas such as there being no higher power to guide people in life. It also looks at how society is unnatural because it can shape our views. Another important existentialist idea is that choice is key. We have the ability to choose to do what we want to do and when we want to do it.

The first chapter of ‘The Stranger’ deals with the death of a character simply known as Maman, who is Meursault’s (the main character) mother. It is obvious that her death doesn’t seem to matter to him, this is shown when he says “Maman died yesterday. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know”. Meursault doesn’t express any sort of emotion when he hears about the death of his mother, which is a trait continued later on in the book. He only seems to be concerned with the timing of her death, not the fact that she is dead. You could say that this quote highlights an idea that Nietzsche advocated - human existence is meaningless. Maybe Meursault’s viewpoint is that ‘we are all going to die’ so it doesn’t matter that Maman has died as she was going to die anyway.

Kierkegaard said we should accept that death is both unpredictable and inevitable, as many people struggle to grasp the idea that they will one day die. He blames society for our attitude towards death, society seems to deny death and this makes it harder for people to accept death and move on when it suddenly affects them.

Meursault’s detachment from any sort of emotion is highlighted again at Maman’s vigil. Meursault can’t understand why the women are crying because as far as he is concerned, Maman’s death shouldn’t matter to anyone because she is dead. Meursault takes the existentialist viewpoint that we should simply accept death. In prison he accepts the fact that he is going to die and doesn’t seem to mind that he will be executed because as he has previously stated, death is inevitable. He says “I’d never really been about to regret anything. I was always preoccupied by what was about to happen, today or tomorrow”. The future is the most important dimension for existentialists. Our most important decision is the next one we make.

Meursault doesn’t grieve for his mother the day after her funeral. He goes about what we believe is his normal Sunday routine - going swimming, seeing Marie and watching a film. At the end of chapter two, Meursault says “It occurred to me that one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed”. This is a clear example of him not really caring about Maman’s death and that he has accepted what has happened and already moved on.

Meursault’s lack of emotion is once again shown when he kills the Arab. He doesn’t have any regret for the murder as he doesn’t seem to dwell on past events and is only concerned with the present and the immediate future. Heidegger said that if we dwell on past events, we will only feel guilt.

Meursault murdering the Arab also shows that death is meaningless and unjustified. Meursault affirms his belief that this is the case when he reads a story in a newspaper about a man whose mum and sister killed him because they thought he was a rich guest to their hostel. Meursault also sees that there is no rational order to the world.

Another Nietzschean idea that comes up in the book is ‘God is dead’. Meursault might be behaving in the way he is because he doesn’t believe in a higher power, so he doesn’t have to please anyone as many religious people think they do.

Meursault’s only show of emotion is at his mother’s funeral. Her good friend Perez is flagging behind the main group and Meursault seems to feel sorry for him. There is a stark contrast between their reactions to Maman’s death. Perez is really hurt by her death, whereas Meursault sees it as meaningless that anyone is sad that she died. This again relates to the ideas advocated by Nietzsche and other nihilists - life is meaningless and the existence of the world is also meaningless.

Heidegger talked about ‘facticity’. A person’s facticity is made up of all of the events that have previously occurred in their life. Heidegger said that if someone was to use their facticity as an excuse for things that they have done (e.g. someone using their bad upbringing as an excuse for committing crime) then he is a ‘das man’. Being a ‘das man’ also means that you would let what people think you should do affect what you do.

Throughout the book, Meursault proves that he is not a ‘das man’ because he makes choices. He chooses not to show any emotion at his mother’s vigil and makes the choice to shoot the Arab. Meursault would be expected to cry after finding out that his mother has died and would be expected to not shoot to Arab as he has withdrew his knife, but he chooses to go against what society would expect him to do, as he is his own man and no one can make decisions for him.

Meursault in turn shows that he has ‘transcendence’. This means that he reacts to his facticity by making decisions. Not based on what other people would do or expect him to do, but based on his own morality, this is another existentialist idea.

Meursault’s ability to make a decision also relates to Franz Fanon and Nietzsche’s desire for people to ‘do something’. They would want existing political/social structures to be destroyed so that future improvement can take place, this can only be done if people make choices.

It is clear that Meursault is an outsider to society. This could be because he looks at the physical aspects of a situation, rather than the emotional or mental ones. A quote late on in the book that highlights this is when Meursault says that the prosecutor “announced that I had no place in a society whose fundamental rules I ignored”.

This goes back to the point I made that existentialists say that society questions people who don’t follow the conventions and unwritten rules in society. This is shown when the prosecutor tells the jury what Meursault did the day after Maman’s funeral, probably in an attempt to make the jury see Meursault as a bad person. This is despite the fact that what he did on that Sunday should have no bearing on the jury’s decision. After all, Meursault has as much choice and free will as any of the members of the jury.

Despite existentialists believing that we are in control of the decisions we make, Meursault has no control at one point during the book. After the first part of his trial, Meursault is taken back to prison and then back to court in a short space of time. You could say that he is in control though, because he chose to kill the Arab and he would have known that that decision would have led to him being on trial. During the trial, Meursault asks why he is actually there, because he knows he is guilty.

The way that Meursault reacts in certain situations could be considered inhuman or even similar to the way that a ‘psychopath’ would react, but that is only because certain things have been ingrained in me. This is something that existentialists are firmly against and say that we must make our own judgements on the situations we are faced with using our own internal morality and no one else’s.

 

 

Notes from seminar

 

Schopenhauer said that life is meaningless and that we should just kill ourselves. We must find something to avoid our hellish existence, this can be alcohol or drugs, but also something like music - which is the most pure form of intoxication! These fixes are only short term though.

 

Humans are motivated by their own wants and desires, this is known as the will.

 

Existentialists believe that stuff exists without having any inherent meaning. If we strip away everything we end up with a blank canvas, but we can 'paint on it' and make the world what we want it to be. Make the world 'our own'.

 

The world is full of meanings, but we put meanings on the world.

 

In The Stranger, Meursault decides what is important and what is not. He doesn't care about the past as it is just that - the past. We can't do anything to change what has happened before. If you regret not doing something when you had the chance and spend the next few weeks regretting it, you should then be looking back to a point in history before you were born. You have no way of changing what happened before you were born, so why should you think about it? As the Oasis song 'The Masterplan' goes, "Everything that's been has past". Do what Noel Gallagher says - don't think about the past, you can't change it.

 

If we do think about the past, we are living in 'bad faith', according to Jean-Paul Satre.

 

 

 

Keynes/'The New Industrial State/other Economics stuff

 

The book 'The New Industrial State' advocates the need for a managed society, whereby the state controls corporations and the production of goods as well as providing services. Galbraith (the writer of NIS) said that too much control from the state is bad.

 

John Keynes advocated an economic system whereby money is pumped continuously being printed. Nowadays it is called 'quanatative easing'. It is essentially just printing money in order for the economy to 'pick up'. The main problem is that this new money goes to the banks, not the general public, so it doesn't get spent.

 

It could be argued that Keynes was a socialist as he wanted to print more money and give it to the less well off people in society and not richer people. He doesn't want to do it for moral reasons or be a modern day Robin Hood, but simply because poorer people spend money on things like cigarettes and alcohol (another Oasis reference), this in turn boosts the economy and those who sell and produce the goods being bought.

 

If you give a man £100 he'll spend it, not save it. Rich people are more inclined to save it (giving it to the banks).

 

The government taxes rich people higher because the government needs to get back the money that rich people stow away.

 

Another example of Keynesian economics at work nowadays is when 'NEETs' (Not in Education Employment Training) have to go to classes that keep them off the streets. They get money for going to these. This seems pointless at first glance, but by giving them money, the government knows that the NEETs will spend that money because they are poor. In the true spirit of Keynesianism, not just one person is employed to give the NEETs their money, because by paying more and more people to hand out the money, the government is in turn putting more money into the economy because it knows that the employee will go and spend their wages, just like the NEETs.

 

Hayek took an opposite view to Keynes and Galbraith. He wanted a completely free and open market. He was loved by the right wing especially Margaret Thatcher, who wanted a smaller state and less state intervention.

 

This leads me to wonder if governments of the future will become smaller and smaller so that everything run by the state at the moment is privatised. This is slowly taking place in education, while there are many private schools, more and more 'free schools' are popping up. Will the government privatise the whole of primary and secondary education in the near future?

 

 

 

 

WINOL critical relections week 5-8

Week 5

I filmed Eastleigh’s game on Saturday and everything went well at the match in terms of filming.

Editing the clips wasn’t really a problem, although after watching the package back a few times I can see that I need to check the lengths of each clip when editing so that it all flows better.

The biggest problem I had this week was my voiceover. In general, my voice sounds fine on the package, but I had a problem with scripting. I had a clip that was 25 seconds long (due to a series of chances for Eastleigh) and I had to script my voice over to match what was happening on the pitch and not have long gaps between me speaking. I spent quite a while working on the section, but wasn’t totally happy with it. Eventually, me and the sports editor came to the decision to cut out the clip all together, which was probably the best thing to do.

The sports editor charged me with promoting Sportsweek in order to get 1000 views by the end of the semester, if not each week. I put the link to Sportsweek on the forums of the teams we cover, various non-league Facebook pages and Tweeting the link to sports journos.

In future weeks, I will put a link up on the forums of the home and away teams featured in the games we cover as well as other appropriate forums, making it almost like a routine on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Week 6

I co-hosted Sportsweek radio on Tuesday and I felt that everything went well.

I then filmed Eastleigh’s game on Tuesday night, with a fellow sports reporter doing 2^nd camera for me. The footage that he got made the package look a lot better than previous packages with only one camera, I was glad that Jack came along for another reason, the last few clips on the memory card I used in my camera corrupted, so I couldn’t use them. One of the clips was Eastleigh’s 2^nd goal and a contentious offside decision. Jack’s footage meant that I was able to show the two incidents.

I finished the package at 4pm despite being under pressure to get it done by that time (because Sportsweek is usually edited together by 4, although this week it was online at 6. Last week’s SW received nearly 600 views, so the promotional work really helped.

Week 7

This week I went to Eastleigh’s game on Saturday. I wanted to have more than 1 camera at the game but I was unable to find anyone to do it. All of the other members of the sports team were busy and none of the first years that I know who want to help do some filming were available, so I only took 1 camera to the game. The previous package I produced had a reverse angle camera which made the VT look much better than the ones I had done before.

The editing of the package went well and I had no real issues with scripting.

Week 8

On the Monday I was given the role of temporary sports editor as the usual editor could not be in that day. At the news meeting I knew that we had 4 packages lined up for Sportsweek and I was reasonably happy with what I had to work with, I had some time on Monday to get organised as I didn’t have a game at Eastleigh until Tuesday night. A technical wizard from the multimedia team helped me find a solution to the problem that we had previously been having in getting the sport for the bulletin into the correct aspect ratio (4:3).

I went to Eastleigh’s game on Tuesday night and got someone to do 2^nd camera. The filming went well and I finished the bulletin version of the package quite early and tehn got the Sportsweek version done soon after. I was praised by Angus for the bulletin package, he said that the pacing and content of the script was good but that I need to slow down my actual voiceover.

Despite there only being 3 packages on Sportsweek I think the programme looked quite good and it has 678 views so far (15^th March at 11:55). I believe this was mainly due to the Guillem Balague interview.

Eastleigh vs Boreham Wood highlights 12/3/13

My 7th package for WINOL as a Sports Reporter

Eastleigh vs Eastbourne Borough highlights 2/3/13

My 6th package for WINOL as a Sports Reporter

Eastleigh vs Havant and Waterlooville highlights 26/2/13

My 5th package for WINOL as a Sports Reporter

HCJ4: Bureaucracy and the New Industrial State

Weber and Bureaucracy

Max Weber wrote about bureaucracy and the people in charge of bureaucratic organisations become powerful. He said that someone in a traditional role of authority (parents, teachers), people with some sort of higher/legal authority (judges, politicians) or someone with enough charisma for people to follow them and what they say (Stalin, Lenin, Hitler etc).

According to Weber, bureaucracy has led humanity to lose the skills we used to have e.g. architecture and music. People in bureaucratic societies are are just a very small cog inside an extremely large wheel. We can't get away from bureaucracy, we live and die in a bureaucratic world, this includes hospitals and schools.


John Keynes

Keynes' economic model involved printing more money so that the economy would grow. This doesn't work in the long term because if people keep spending money, the producers of the goods keep having to produce in high amounts and sometimes this can lead to them being unable to keep up with demand. This could result in a lack of supply and too much demand.

Capitalism nearly ended during the Great Depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but World War 2 made unemployment rates drop as men were employed as soldiers and women were employed to help build weaponry as well as helping out with the general war effort. In 1932 21% of the US population was unemployed and a year after WW2 began, 14% of the population was unemployed and that figure dropped to 4% in 1942.

Keynes was attacked by those on the far-left (Maoists, feminists and the green movement) and far-right, who said that his ideas would lead to racial integration  and a loss of national identity.

Hayek criticised Keynes as well, he said that we should go back to a free market system and have less state control of the economy.


JK Galbraith - New Industrial State

There is a bureaucratic power structure, which is ruled by a technocratic elite (scientists, economic planners and propagandists).

The activity of a few large corporations controls 2/3 of all economic activity, many of the leaders of these corporations have high levels of charisma (Rupert Murdoch). These people are just cogs in a machine. There is no aim to the system, it is nihilistic and can be violent.