Holobionts against Totalitarianism

by Ugo Bardi

I read Jordan Peterson's book "12 rules for life" a few months ago, and I must say that I was not very impressed. I found it nice, but I saw many things that Peterson says as non-controversial, so I wondered why someone should bother to write them in a book. It must be because I live in a relatively different cultural climate. I can understand that it is not the same everywhere in the world. Anyway, the work by Peterson seemed to me not especially original, but never banal. 

Then, a few days ago, I stumbled into this interview by Cathy Newman on the TV station Channel 4 in the UK. Look, a 30 minutes clip usually is way beyond my capability to watch in full. But this one kept me glued to the screen the whole time. Try it yourself. It is an incredible drama playing. The interviewer, Newman, tries all the time to lead Peterson into a trap, to make him admit that he said something that he never said, to confess some unconfessable sin of his. 

I have seen it happen. It has happened to me. We you are questioned so aggressively and continuously, it is all too easy to lose your balance and then the slightest mistake will haunt you forever. But Peterson, here, is truly fantastic. He never loses a step. He never gets angry. He never fails to make his point. I mean, absolutely great. Do spend half an hour listening to this interview because it encapsulates most of what's wrong with our world. And, in particular, how poisonous the dialog can become when it falls into the hands of propaganda professionals (aka journalists). 

Here is an example of the conversation, at 24:35: 

CN. Under Mao, millions of people died, but there's no comparison between Mao and a trans activist. Why not? Because trans activists aren't killing millions of people, 

JP. the philosophy that's guiding their utterances is the same philosophy, the consequences are yet...

CN . You're saying that trans activists know it leads to the deaths of millions of people? 

JP. Well no. I'm saying that the philosophy that drives their utterances is the same philosophy that already has driven us to the deaths of millions.

CN. Okay, tell us how that philosophy is in any way comparable.

JP. Sure that's no problem. The first thing is that their philosophy presumes that group identity is paramount. That's the fundamental philosophy that drove the Soviet Union and Mao's China and it's the fundamental philosophy of the left-wing activists. It's identity politics doesn't matter who you are as an individual it matters who you are in terms of your group identity

You note the not-so-subtle techniques that Cathy Newman uses: "if you say that, then you mean this" -- with "this," for instance, condoning Mao Zedong's mass exterminations. It is usually done mentioning Hitler, but recently he seems to have slipped down the list of the bugaboos of history. In any case, it is a very easy trick, and it works almost all the time. Sometimes it spectacularly backfires, as in this case, but not everyone will understand the game being played.  

Indeed it is so easy to get trapped in the totalitarian vision of the world. This interview took place before the Covid pandemic, but somehow it prefigures it. The aggressive, continuous, obsessive, categorization of all manifestations of non-standard thought as dangerous forms of misinformation was exactly what Peterson was speaking against. No wonder that he is now involved in a sort of witch trial that might lead him to undergo forced re-educational training.  

In the end, I think the whole story is about holobionts. the holobiont philosophy is about recognizing diversity and valuing it. The totalitarian philosophy is to squash diversity and make it disappear. Ecosystems are not made of creatures that are all the same. Ecosystems thrive the more diversity they contain. They may compete, mostly they collaborate. If we lose our holobiont nature, we are doomed forever. 

Holobionts of all the world, unite against totalitarianism!

 

Image from the Genetic Literacy Project

This is taken from a discussion we had with the members of the mailing list "The Proud Holobionts" a couple of weeks ago. It is inspired by the chapter that I am preparing for the book "Life and the Construction of Reality" edited by Pierre Imbrogiano and David Skrbina. 

I keep finding hugely interesting things on the Web. Too many, and I am losing a lot of time following links that lead me to unexpected discoveries. But so is life and, just to make you suffer as much as I do, let me alert you about this paper by Harald Walach, researcher in the field of medicine and psychology. The post is a comment about Mattias Desmet's "The Psychology of Totalitarianism" -- another hugely interesting thing that I am trying to avoid reading because it would completely absorb me for days.

So, here is the link to Walach's paper

https://harald-walach.info/2022/10/17/a-middle-way-in-difficult-times/

The point that Walach makes does not look like it is related to Holobionts, but, in my opinion, it is. Read this, first, from the paper:

"The ideology of naturalism has become more and more widespread since the beginning of the Enlightenment and dominates the brains and hearts of many people, especially those in important positions in science, politics, business, the media, and perhaps even religions. It leads to people feeling more and more like isolated atoms in a world without meaning or purpose. This gives rise to fear. But this fear has no goal, it just lies there. In psychology, we speak of “free-floating fear”. It leads to frustration and aggression. If this is the case with a large number of people, then this fear will always look for a new object to direct itself towards Terrorists, Islamists, foreigners, climate catastrophe – or a pandemic.

"In such a situation, self-organization processes emerge that lead relatively quickly to new structures, new patterns, and new orders – the “new normal” – which then suddenly seem very logical. These self-organization processes seem to be so well coordinated that one cannot imagine them arising of their own accord. But they do in fact arise of their own accord. Towards the end of his book, Mattias Desmet presents a few striking examples from chaos theory that explain how such things work.

"And now something important happens: the formerly atomised individuals, each bobbing along in a meaningless and empty world, now suddenly feel a new sense of purpose. And above all: they feel new connectedness with others. All are united in fighting this new threat and something emerges that they have not felt for a long time: a sense of belonging, of connection, of solidarity with others.

This in turn leads to the in-group of believers, similar to the members of religious groups or political parties, feeling good internally and delimiting themselves externally: against the others, the pagans, the unbelievers, the sceptics and doubters. Their arguments, threats against the newly created world view, are thus devalued, no longer find a hearing, no longer penetrate the channels of reporting of the mainstream media, but have to look for side channels."

Walach (and Desmet) have a perfectly fundamental point. Atomized individuals seek "something" -- an idea, a religion, a leader, a master, something that gives meaning to their life. The result is often "totalitarianism" in the sense that the atomized individuals find themselves at home under an "umbrella" organization that rules them from above. If you have friends in the military, you may notice how many of them feel about that. They recognize the enormous defects and inefficiency of military organizations but, all the same, they feel comfortable with the idea of belonging to a tight group that gives them a purpose.

Walach proposes a solution. He says, "The solution is to speak. Words trigger hypnosis. Words can also release it. By speaking, writing, discussing, whether in public, at home or at work." It can't work with the true believers, but Walach doesn't suggest speaking to the hypnotized, but to that fraction of the population that's not completely dazed by the propaganda barrage they receive. But it is not easy, and you always risk pushing the lukewarm ones into the group of those burning with faith.

It may work, but I am not sure about that. Walach and Desmet may have identified the problem, but that doesn't mean that the solution is good. The way I see this matter is that totalitarian structures are "vertical." That is, a true totalitarian organization is one in which you only communicate with those above you, and those below you, but not with those at the same level. Because of this structure, whatever comes from the top diffuses down, and is not subjected to discussion. You know that it is bad: it means that the mistakes made at the top cannot be corrected -- there is just no mechanism for the bottom layers to influence the top layers. If there is, it is very weak and easily perverted, just like our election. But it is a structure that makes you feel safe, so you accept it. 

So, if we want to change the vertical structure we must propose a different form of organization that can provide some of the same benefits, without being so rigid and inflexible as the typical hierarchical pyramid. So, what if we were to propose the holobiont as the social structure that avoids totalitarianism? If you are part of a holobiont, you don't have a master. Holobionts are non-hierarchical networks mainly based on local interactions among nodes (e.g. people). Typically they are smaller than hierarchic networks and tend to form higher order holobionts forming fractal structure. Mutual holobiontic interactions are based on self-respect and they have harmony as their purpose. It is a horizontal kind of network. 

A holobiont may be slower to react than a hierarchical structure because the signal that comes from an outside perturbation needs to diffuse from node to node, and that takes time. But it is more flexible and I believe it can avoid the terrible mistakes that pyramidal structures are known to do. 

Could that be the way to avoid totalitarianism? I am not sure, but I think it is at least a promising idea. And, in any case, the push toward localism and relocalization is evident everywhere. We still have to learn how to make large hierarchical organizations, and maybe the best idea is just to avoid building them! 

Onward, fellow holobionts!