But I’m Dr Jekyll

Sometimes in conversations where the topic is that of some horrific, brutal, and/or cruel act, someone will declare that “it just shows the inhumanity of people,” or words to that effect. Statements such as this suggest that our human nature is basically nasty and brutish. It is a dismal verdict for the human race.

Statements like this one are tantamount to justifying the brutal acts; in fact, these statements come very close to defending them, on the basis that brutality is simply the base nature of the human race.

This miserable view of humanity’s innateness is akin to characterising humanity as Mr Hyde in the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.¹  Stevenson’s horror story, published in 1886, follows two characters (Jekyll and Hyde) through London streets and houses with one of them (Dr Jekyll) being of upright and gentlemanly manner, and the other (Edward Hyde) a murderer and person of low morals. As the story progresses, the reader comes to realise that the two are one-and-the-same. An elixir transforms the one into the other.

Yet, if the person pronouncing this morbid baseness is questioned about their own character, most are likely to say something like, ‘But I’m Dr Jekyll.’ The innate wickedness just attributed to the whole human species is rejected as not applying to them.

Both of course – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – are found in all of us. Thinking of oneself as a Dr Jekyll and not as Mr Hyde is an easy way to absolve oneself of any guilt, or participation in any of the atrocities of the world.

Stevenson was well aware of this tendency and its effect. In the final chapter of The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – titled Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case – Henry Jekyll maintains that,

‘It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.’

“And thus his conscience slumbered” is an illuminating sentence. It tells us that if we can attribute nastiness to some other and not ourselves then we can slumber on in innocence and ignore the brutality that occurs in the world.

It was this slumber and innocence that Nazi war criminals claimed at the Nuremberg trials. Many argued that they were simply doing their job. Hannah Arendt, who wrote much about totalitarianism and Nazism attended some of those trials.

In particular Arendt attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an official in the Schutzstaffel (the SS) and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. She wrote a book - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (published in 1963) – outlining her observations and analysis of Eichmann and others.

What Arendt found to be truly terrifying about Eichmann was that he was not psychopathic, he was a common man. Almost anyone could have become a war criminal. But Arendt does not offer this up as justification for Eichmann’s actions. She does not excuse him. He still had choice, even in a totalitarian state. The consequences of making that choice are political, she said, even if the person is powerless in that state.

Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about just such situations fifty years before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

Reading The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde one hundred and forty years after its first publication there are at least two major lessons we can take from it.

1. All of us can find a Dr Jekyll and a Mr Hyde inside us.
2. We must not allow our conscience to slumber.

 

Notes:

1. Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p 60. Penguin Books, London, 2002. First published 1886.

Neighbour Jones

In 1913 a comic strip named Keeping up with the Joneses made its first appearance in newspapers in the USA. The strip depicted the McGinis family who were constantly trying to keep pace with the wealth, possessions, and status of their neighbours, the Joneses. Significantly, the Joneses were never shown in the strip, remaining inconspicuous.

The phrase – keeping up with the Joneses – became a catchy idiom throughout much of the westernised world. The Joneses became the standard that everyone should aspire to. If the Joneses bought a new television, then the McGinis family bought the same model.

The comic strip ended in 1940, but following the end of WW2 the phrase signified the rampant explosion of consumerism that characterised the 1950s.

This was deliberate. The economist, Victor Lebow, in 1955, wrote:

‘The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. …We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.’¹

As the century moved on, consumerism became conspicuous consumption. As consumption rose the probability of increased dissatisfaction also rose if the Joneses were unable to be kept up with.

It wasn’t simply a case of consuming more though. In order to consume more, individuals and families had to gain more purchasing power; they had to work more, invest more, gain more education, and be seen more. For all that to happen they had to move.

They moved to cities. Between 1950 and 2020 the number of people living in urban areas rose from 20% to 55% of the world's population. That is an absolute increase from 500 million people in 1950 to 4.3 billion in 2020. A staggering increase.

The size of cities has grown ominously also. The largest city in the world in 1950 was New York with a population of approximately 12 million. In 2020 the largest city was Tokyo with a population of more than three times that – around 37 million.

The pressure to keep up with the Joneses in conjunction with increased urbanisation has had a devastating effect on the mental health and wellbeing of many people. Stress levels in particular have risen dramatically since WW2. So much so that stress is being labelled as the “health epidemic of the 21^st century.”

Our nervous system is actually composed of two systems that work conversely to each other. What is known as our sympathetic nervous system triggers our “fight or flight” response, and we experience a higher heart rate, dilated pupils, and focussed attention. Fight or flight is a stressful time. All through our evolutionary journey this stress was needed at times, but usually short lived. It could be labelled as acute stress.

Once the fight or flight event had passed and the acute stress was over, our parasympathetic nervous system took over and slowed heart rates, constricted pupils, and allowed our bodies to return to homeostasis (a state of equilibrium throughout the body.) These two systems worked well together for well over 95% of our species time on Earth.

Sadly though, the last few decades have seen stress levels become chronic, meaning that stress remains for a long period of time without abating. Our sympathetic nervous system remains on high alert, we become constantly, and continuously, subject to high levels of stress. Our parasympathetic nervous system has no opportunity to return us to that equilibrium point of rest and recuperation.

The main contributor, worldwide, to chronic stress is work. No longer are we human beings, we have become human doings. We have become constantly busy.

Chronic stress is implicated in a number of diseases and illnesses, amongst them: hypertension, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, anxiety, autoimmune diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease. Makes you wonder why, as a culture, we put up with it, doesn’t it?

Keeping up with the Joneses, urban living and its associated stressors (light, air, water, and noise pollution) have combined to outstrip our capacity to adapt.

There appears to be no lessening of these trends either. If anything, they are worsening. No longer is keeping up with the Joneses sufficient, nowadays the mantra seems to be get ahead of the Joneses. There is no end in sight to urbanisation. Noise and light pollution are becoming unhealthier as each year passes.

To make matters even graver, those factors that are impacting our human stress in harmful ways are also stressing the natural world severely. The oceans, the forests, wild animals and plants, waterways, and the air are all showing signs of being unable to cope with the stress we are placing upon them. The Earth herself is showing signs of chronic stress.

Sadly, the loss of natural ecosystems steadily undermines and deprives us of the very features that we require for our health and function. For the past 200,000 – 300,000 years humans co-emerged and co-existed with all other life forms and non-life forms upon this planet. Our health and our ability to survive are one and the same as the health of the planet as a whole.

The simple message to us from nature would seem to be: slow down, rest, recuperate, get rid of stuff, forget about the Joneses.

In fact, remember that in the original cartoon strip, the McGinis family were shown, but the Jones family were never seen.

The Joneses are a phantom. Stop trying to keep up with a phantom.

Notes:

1. Journal of Retailing, Spring 1955

Totalitarianism Is Totalitarianism Is Totalitarianism

Recently I watched the film/doco Orwell: 2+2=5 which doesn’t stop at simply documenting Orwell’s life or his novels (the two most famous being 1984 and Animal Farm.) The film illustrates that the recent rise of totalitarianism in a number of countries are instances of exactly what Orwell was warning about in the writing of his novels. In discussing this film one person commented that there are a degrees of totalitarianism.

That comment reminded me of the 1913 poem by Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily.

One of the lines in that poem is widely known and frequently cited. It reads,

‘A rose is a rose is a rose.

So too, I thought, is totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism is totalitarianism is totalitarianism.

There are no degrees. Just as murder is murder, totalitarianism is totalitarianism.

Okay, okay, I hear the retort. What about murder in the first degree, and murder in the second degree? What distinguishes one from the other? First-degree murder is pre-meditated, intentional and deliberate. Second-degree murder is unplanned, but still intentional. Second-degree murders are often those committed in the “heat of passion.” Both are murder.

Does such distinction apply to totalitarianism?

It would be hard to argue that totalitarianism is unplanned or that it occurs in a moment of heated passion.

But, what is totalitarianism? The term itself was coined in the early 1920s to describe Italian fascism under Mussolini. The word totalitarian derives from the Italian totalità meaning totally with the suffix arian being a reference to the word authoritarian. So, in essence, totalitarianism is total authoritarianism. It is a word of dominance, oppression, and tyranny. As a political ideology it has been studied many times by philosophers, political theorists, historians, and others. The most common features that these studies attribute to totalitarianism include:

• Centralised government and control of the State.
• A dictatorial approach.
• Requirement of subservience to the State.
• Use of State terrorism.
• State control of mass communication and monopoly of the media.
• Display of an overbearing arrogance to others, especially those deemed to be enemies of the State.
• A one-party State.
• A charismatic dictator who holds power for powers sake.

Not all these characteristics need be present to qualify a system as totalitarian. Absence of one or two of these does not make a system a second-degree or third-degree totalitarian one.

There are no degrees of totalitarianism.

One of those who undertook a lot of research into totalitarianism was Hannah Arendt. She noted that totalitarianism, and its charismatic leader, provided people with a simplistic and comforting worldview about complex social issues.

Another writer was Wilhelm Reich who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism in 1932 just as Hitler was coming to power and then updated it in 1944. Reich suggested that fascism arose out of patriarchal systems already existing in society. Patriarchy, Reich theorised, prepared children to obey and revere a harsh and dominant leader.

By fusing these two theories (Arendt’s comforting worldview, and Reich’s patriarchal roots) George Orwell composed his two classic novels: Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 in 1949.

It would seem that Orwell’s warnings went unheeded, for totalitarianism seems to have been given a kick-start again in many parts of the world.

We cannot and must not allow totalitarianism to take root. If it does, it must be uprooted.

I began this blogpiece with a reference to a poem about roses. I will finish with another well-known quotation related to roses. This time from William Shakespeare and his play Romeo and Juliet:

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Applying this to totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism by any other name would smell as repugnant.

Reflecting On Refraction

A couple of days ago I was sitting at my favourite café early in the morning with a freshly brewed hot coffee in front of me. A light shower of rain began to fall. Within a minute or so a rainbow formed its arch across the sky. When I looked downwards at the creek that flows beside the café, I could see the rainbow reflected in the waters. (see photo)

The rainbow and its reflection in the water was a beautiful sight.

I was moved to reflect.

I recalled from my school days learning about the physics of how a rainbow is formed. Light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed into its constituent colours by the drops of rain. Most people know the colours of the rainbow from the initials: ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the classic seven colours of the rainbow. Most of us know that the section of the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light is made up of many more colours than these seven. It is though, these seven that we classically associate with a rainbow.

I reflected further.

The rainbow is a pleasing metaphor for life and its myriad forms. Individual lives do not exist in isolation. No matter what animal or plant you can think of in nature, it does not exist without interacting with other animals and plants around it. Together, all the various plants and animals combine in almost unimaginable complexity to co-create whole eco-systems.

Each eco-system supports and sustains all the plants and animals within it. Each plant and animal supports and sustains the eco-system.

We humans are part of these complex eco-systems. We are not isolated beings. Without the eco-systems we are part of we could not exist. We are like one of the colours of the rainbow.

Try to imagine a rainbow without one of its colours. Suppose the colour blue was missing. It would no longer be a rainbow, would it?

Sadly, much of humanity is acting (metaphorically) as if one or more of the colours of the rainbow do not matter. Species (and even genera) of plants and animals are being made extinct as an insane rate.

My reflection continued on.

If light is passed through a prism the entire visible spectrum of colours appears on the other side of the prism. The unity of light (what we call white light) is refracted and dispersed by the prism, and we see the diversity of colour contained in that unity. Unity creates diversity.

Now place another prism after the first prism. But invert it. Now pass the white light through the first prism and then the colour spectrum through the second. What happens?

The colour spectrum is returned to white light. Diversity creates unity.

It is a metaphor worth reflecting upon often, because it can be very easy to forget that everything in the world is co-created by everything else. Nothing arises or exists completely on its own. Nothing is independent of other things, although it may be unique (i.e. it may be the unique colour red in our metaphor).

Next time you see a rainbow think and reflect upon the diversity of life and how that creates the wondrous unity that life is.