An Out-Take From Politics and The Occult
Posted by Gary Lachman at 12:07, 06 Feb 2011
On the problem of egalitarianism and ‘higher types’
In his last years the great humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow became troubled by the political implications of his psychology of “self-actualization.” Among other ideas, this entailed a concept of being “fully human,” which suggested that, in Maslow’s uncomfortable phrase, “some people are more ‘human’ than others”. Maslow wrote that “the problem of the ‘biological elite’ has inescapably confronted me in my efforts to build a theory of the good society.” By the “biological elite” Maslow meant “self-actualizing” men and women, individuals who, for one reason or another, “actualise” their potential, and, as result of this, experience a greater degree of psychological health than those who do not, evidence for this being the repeated recurrence of “peak experiences,” moments of an almost mystical sense of happiness and fulfilment. What sets “self-actualizers” apart from less psychologically healthy people – everyone from psychopaths to the merely discontented and neurotic – was, Maslow concluded, some innate, biological disposition, something, that is, inside them. To be sure, social and economic conditions can help or hinder one’s “actualisation.” But as Maslow points out, many of the “self-actualizers” he studied came from deprived backgrounds, and made real their potentials, in spite of adverse conditions. (In fact, in some cases, difficult conditions may even be a spur to “self-actualization.”) Maslow envisioned a time “when there is no longer social injustice to serve as an alibi or excuse for one’s own biological inadequacies” and when there “might well be a great increase of […] malicious envy of those who are more successful in their achievements.”
Thinking of ways to “protect the biologically gifted from the almost inevitable malice of the biologically non-gifted,” Maslow suggested something like a new “priestly class to which is given less monetary reward and fewer privileges or luxuries than the average members of the overall population,” given that “self-actualizers” are less interested in material rewards than in the “metagratifications” or “intrinsic values” of “advancing beauty, excellence, justice or truth.”
Maslow’s vision of a kind of Brahmin caste of “self-actualizers,” uninterested in the kind of material gratification that most people desire, and oriented toward more “spiritual” concerns, is a recurring fantasy in the world of occult politics. It’s the basis for Hermann Hesse’s monumental novel The Glass Bead Game, in which, in some unspecified future, a society of philosophers, artists and other “gifted” individuals form a cultural elite, set apart from the masses. In the 1920s, in a book called The Art of Being Ruled, the British painter and novelist Wyndham Lewis, a writer not usually associated with anything even vaguely occult, suggested essentially the same arrangement as Maslow. Lewis argued that with the rise of democracy and egalitarianism, cultural values were increasingly being levelled and that mediocrity was becoming the norm, something we experience today as “dumbing down.” One result of this is that the intellectuals considered the average person a “yahoo” – from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels - and the ordinary man saw the artist as some sort of freak. To safeguard high cultural values, and to maintain social order, Lewis argued that society should be split into two classes. Instead of the old, inequitable chasm between the “haves” and the “have-nots” – in which a small group of people get to do the things that most of the others want to do too – there would be “something like a biological separating-out of the chaff from the grain,” the “chaff” being the person motivated by material desires and entertainments, the “grain” being the philosopher or artist – or, in Maslow’s term, the “self-actualizer.” See Abraham Maslow “Humanistic Biology: Elitist Implications of the Concept of ‘Full-Humanness’” in Future Visions: The Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow, ed. Edward Hoffman (Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, 1996)
The reader will note that this is among Maslow’s unpublished works, suggesting that he was aware of the difficulty in discussing such inflammatory issues, especially at the time he wrote it, in 1968, when notions of what we call “political correctness” were first taking root. Today, although biological and evolutionary psychology are established disciplines, the difficulty in airing any doubts about the dictums of egalitarianism remain, and indeed, have only increased. About another paper, on the “failure” of liberalism, Maslow’s editor Hoffman remarks that it showed Maslow “slowing moving toward a stance that today would be most closely associated with neoconservatism.” (p. 160). That Maslow was also fond of the work of the novelist Ayn Rand, an outspoken advocate of capitalism and a critic of the welfare state, highlights the complexities of “spiritual politics.” Maslow was one of the major figures associated with the Esalen Institute, the famous West Coast counter-culture “think tank,” whose ethos was as far removed from Ayn Rand’s as possible, and whose lack of intellectual rigour eventually led Maslow to reject its approach. (See the Afterword to my Dedalus Book of the 1960s: Turn Off Your Mind (2010) where I tell the story of Maslow’s encounter with the Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls.) Self-motivation, personal responsibility and self-discipline – character traits of Maslow’s “self-actualizers” - have much in common with the “rugged individualism” associated with the heroes of Rand’s novels, and which was under attack in the 1960s and 70s by a variety of ‘alternative’ schools of thought, from the New Left to feminists.
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12 April 2007
22 min 34 sec
The Morning of the Magicians was published in 1960 by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. Along with Fort's seminal Book of the Damned, this book is probably one of the most influential works for every subsequent generation of esoteric researchers. The book is so convoluted and bold in scope that, like an onion, you need to peel it many times in order to get to the subtle core.
It was in this book that I first discovered the speculation of a race of super men that would be physically and intellectually as above from the "common man", as H. Sapiens had been to his contemporary cousin the Neanderthal. These super-men would live concealed from the rest of humanity, communicating through codes left in trivial magazine ads and newsletters --a concept that was interestingly captured for the plot of "A Beautiful Mind".
Now Bergier and Pauwels didn't write their speculations out of some deluded notion of a master race. A survivor of a concentration camp, Bergier had experienced "in the flesh" the dangers of such toxic fantasies. However, their studies in secret societies and advanced ancient civilizations had forced them to entertain the possibility that mankind's successors might be living among us RIGHT NOW in anonimity.
Reading through the accounts of several abduction "experiencers", one gets the feeling that these people live in constant fear of one day being hunted down by a frenzy mob, like the witches of old accused of communing with unholy entities.
PS: As for Rand's fiction, one can experience the futility of such libertarian elitist societies by playing the ground-breaking video-game Bioshock ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
_______________
@red_pill_junkie
7 September 2010
29 weeks 13 hours
I write at length about Pauwels and Bergier, the X-Men, and mutants in general in the context of the 1960s counterculture in my book Turn Off Your Mind. You might like to check it out. http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Off-Your-Mind...
As for Ayn Rand, like Maslow, I read some of her fiction - The Fountainhead and some other works - and enjoyed it, although I have no interest in Objectivism and disagree with her on quite a few points. But it is curious, is it not, that Maslow, a doyen of Esalen, should find value in the work of someone so diametrically opposed to the 60s ethos? If nothing else, it shows how difficult and complex a terrain the politically occult landscape offers.
Gary Lachman
http://garylachman.co.uk
12 April 2007
22 min 34 sec
Thanks for pointing me out to your book. It really looks like I should grab a copy on my next Amazon purchase :)
I think you're right that the counterculture and some other movements like the New Age are plagued with many elements that can be pretty controversial if taken at face value.
Let's examine for instance Tolkien and the Middle-Earth mythos, who were very popular and influential during the 1960s —or so I've been told ;)
Now, LOTR is one of my favorite books of all time, but it would be foolish to dismiss the fact that there's an underlying obsession with "blood-lines" and "higher races" that would seem almost racist if taken out of context —although obviously the whole point of the story is showing the fallacy of such notions!
And I'm sure that if our TDG member epgrondine were reading this, he would be eager to add a few highlights about the elitist background of Blavatsky's Teoshophist philosophy —better luck next time, ep ;)
As for me, I don't find terribly insulting the possibility of human beings with enhanced psychic abilities, just as I don't find trouble sleeping at night when I think that the world is full of Picassos, Mozarts or Einsteins; I'm still reminded that sometimes a strong natural ability can even become a disadvantage, rather than an asset —like Robert Redford in the movie "The Way We Were" :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
_______________
@red_pill_junkie
22 November 2004
3 days 6 hours
Also there is the obsession with figuring out which of the myriad of details provided in the story is relevant, and coming to the conclusion that they all are.
Instead of realizing that they are part of a snow job.
----
We are the cat.
23 October 2006
2 weeks 3 days
Hi RPJ,
Generally, the apparat I use for working with belief systems involving re-incarnation is that of WKC Guthrie in his "Orpheus and Greek Religion", a must read in my view if you are working with belief systems involving re-incarnation. I will not type all of the relevant passages out here.
Adapted to a Marxist framework for industrial societies, re-incarnation is the religion of lumpen proles.
Which likely explains why Nazism was so attractive in post World War 1 Germany, and the growth of the "occult" industry of today.
What is funny is to watch the self made claims for superiority, and the underlying insecurities used by various con-men to manipulate their victims.
What is sad is to watch the results.
I will add that oftentimes people simply don't understand why you are doing what you are doing.
(As you have seen from the typos and grammatical errors, I can function well for a few minutes each day, and I've taken some of them to write this.)
Generally, I tend to view the doctrine of re-incarnation as the confusion that sometimes results from experiences of telepathy over time.
The doctrine usually has evil results.
E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
21 January 2005
7 hours 27 min
It's interesting contemplating how this notion of "higher types" or a "biological elite" might be compared with the Indic notion of a caste system, whereby certain individuals--specifically "Brahmins"--occupy the respective niche in society appropriate to their given talents/karma/inheritance....
--Ray Grasse
5 June 2008
1 year 49 weeks
To safeguard high cultural values, and to maintain social order, Lewis argued that society should be split into two classes. Instead of the old, inequitable chasm between the “haves” and the “have-nots” – in which a small group of people get to do the things that most of the others want to do too – there would be “something like a biological separating-out of the chaff from the grain,” the “chaff” being the person motivated by material desires and entertainments, the “grain” being the philosopher or artist – or, in Maslow’s term, the “self-actualizer.”
Perhaps nature is doing this for us - in the much hyped context of 2012. I'm intrigued by ideas of a splitting of timelines, where like-minded folks might (either gradually or abruptly) enter different realities.
22 November 2004
3 days 6 hours
Morlocks and Eloi, anyone?
----
We are the cat.
12 April 2007
22 min 34 sec
That was something Mike Jay touched upon with his latest essay for the Darklore anthology.
In any case the "branching" starts from the moment people are in access of certain privileges or not. Like technology for instance; in Bangladesh having a heart condition can almost certainly mean a death sentence by the time you turn 50, whereas in London a senior citizen can make use of technology to bypass his physical limitations and extend his life another 15-20 years.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
_______________
@red_pill_junkie
7 September 2010
29 weeks 13 hours
First off, hello Ray. Good to hear from you.
I write about Tolkien too in Turn Off Your Mind, in the context of the 60s counterculuture. One of the odd things regarding the Lord of the Rings is that in the early 70s, it was picked up by some neo-fascist, 'traditionalist' groups in Italy, who had some link - I think - with Julius Evola. On the other side of the coin, Tolkien shared pop iconographic space with Aleister Crowley, at least so far as Led Zeppelin were concerned. Tolkien himself hated the hippies and probably didn't care for the neo-fascista either, but his inoffensive hobbits being associated with far-right politics and libertarian occultism is another example of the odd combinations that turn up in occult politics.
With Maslow, we have to remember that he isn't talking about a privileged class, but a type of person. For him, it's what's inside the person, not any outside advantage, that counts; it's quite conceivable that someone who was physically handicapped could be a better actualizer than someone who was physically healthy but 'spiritually' or inwardly 'dead'. Generally, Maslow's 'self-actualisers' tend to be loners or are at least comfortable with being on their own. They are the last people to join a group or form a 'society of self-actualizers', or some sort of elite - they are too busy actualizing themselves to be bothered. And if you look at the preface to the Penguin 1970 edition of his Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, you'll see that the self-actualizing person is almost axiomatically involved in working toward the self-actualizing society. Maslow writes:
"The empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also our most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation...and it also becomes clearer and clearer that the best 'helpers' are the most fully human persons." (One hopes that what just happened in Egypt is an example of a society's self-actualizing in action.)
Maslow goes on to talk about the "bodhisattvic" path"of "integration" "self-improvement" and "social zeal". It's interesting in this context to mention Theosophy. I'm researching a book on Madame Blavatsky now, and having read a great deal by and about her, I see little evidence of any elitism in her philosophy. On the contrary, her main aim in disseminating the ancient wisdom is to form a Brotherhood of Humanity, a Universal Fraternity. This idea has roots in both Freemasonry and the Enlightenment. HPB was a progressive, liberating, anti-authoritarian thinker - if an often excessively hectoring one - and her political ideas are the furthest from any fascist notions. She was also passionate about the plight of the oppressed, whether it was Hindus in India, blacks in the States, or other minorities she encountered on her travels. It is a kind of revelation to see how much she, and much of the occultism of that time, was a fellow traveller at least with movements for and ideas about human freedom, from the state, the church, and materialist science. It's all very progressive.
Gary Lachman
http://garylachman.co.uk
23 October 2006
2 weeks 3 days
Hi Gary -
Before you start to work on trying to figure out Blavatsky, you better start with reading the biography of Augustus and Alice LePlongeon.
Another separate path lies through George Star White and Manley P. Hall.
E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
18 September 2007
3 min 15 sec
The accelerating phenomenon of wealth concentration and consolidation which has been peaking in the last deacade means that the fondest fantasies of a super privileged elite with exclusive access to the best centers of learning has been well under way already. Scholarship students at elite universities have in the face of economically stressed endowments been giving way to students who simply have the money to attend. Meritocracy in politics and government continues giving way to nepotism. As a result, the relatively minute in number of "haves" at the top of the current economic food chain have come to mistake exclusivity for merit. We have what by outward appearances is a super class of "self actualizers" but it is the actualization which comes simply from economic advantage. This is at the heart of the growing intellectual and even artistic and scientific debasement. We have what are merely the trappings of a super class without any real talent therein. The financial ponzi schemes of the last decade are a perfect metaphor for a ruling class that is essentially hollow and which reveres style and outward appearances over substance.
This has become a make believe society.