Aardige longread over de parallellen tussen Rome en de VS op gebied van de opkomst van autoritair/dictatoriaal gedrag:
Thrones Wreathed in Shadow: Tacitus and the Psychology of AuthoritarianismTacitus was once the most politically and morally influential of all ancient historians. Yet today Tacitus is ignored by most readers of history. His denseness of detail, the unremitting bleakness of his vision, and his seeming resistance to general theorizing make his work seem less immediately appealing than the anthropology of Herodotus or the compelling political philosophy of Thucydides.
It is time to bring Tacitus and the vibrant intellectual tradition that he inspired out of the shadows. Indeed, in an era in which the recrudescence of great-power rivalry has increasingly taken on ideological undertones, the Roman statesman’s rich commentary on the grim and stultifying nature of autocratic rule is more timely now than ever. Indeed, amid an intensifying battle over competing systems of government, the raw accusatory power that quietly ripples through Tacitus’ oeuvre constitutes a formidable force in liberal democracy’s intellectual arsenal.
Having served under several emperors, eventually reaching the rank of consul under Nerva, the Roman scholar-practitioner’s reflections serve not only as a lugubrious reminder of the gloom of a life shorn of genuine freedom but also as a warning against succumbing to complacency in the face of democratic corrosion within our own societies.
“Remedies are more tardy in their operations than diseases, and as bodies slowly increase, but quickly perish, so it is easier to crush men’s spirits and their enthusiasm than to revive them; indeed there comes over us an attachment to the very enforced inactivity, and the idleness hated at first is finally loved.”
– Publius Cornelius Tacitus, The Life of Cnaeus Julius Agricola, 3.
Het stuk gaat niet alleen over de parallellen, maar ook over hoe moeilijk het is om te overleven en je eigen waardigheid te behouden in een dictatoriaal regime en hoe moeilijk het is als een autoritair regime zich eenmaal gevestigd heeft om eraan te ontsnappen.
Shame, guilt, a lingering sense of powerlessness, and self-loathing: These are all emotions common to individuals living under tyranny. And, for all his literary brilliance and psychological acumen, Tacitus is no exception to this rule. In The Annals, when the historian describes the soul of a tyrant such as Tiberius, which he poetically envisions as crisscrossed with deep “lacerations” and “wounds,” he projects this state of invisible scarification onto Roman society as a whole. Indeed, the historian’s genius lies in his demonstration of how authoritarianism is, first and foremost, a collective malady — one that infects almost everyone, from the maniacal tyrant to the stolid local official, anonymous informer, or jeering spectator at the local theater. As Tacitus notes in a moving passage of The Annals, “the ties of our common humanity had been dissolved by the force of terror; and the rising surge of brutality drove compassion away.”
In an almost irredeemably corrupt political environment where fear, opportunism, and violence run rampant, the line between the oppressor and the oppressed becomes increasingly hard to discern over time as citizens weld themselves — and their bleeding conscience — to the state in a desperate bid for survival. As Joshua Yaffe notes in his masterful recent exposition of tortuous moral compromises in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, relativism and “whataboutism” often become a final mental refuge for those seeking to make sense of their own spiritual degeneration.
Een land kan verleid worden om op het pad te gaan van autoritaire dictatuur (of een van de moderne vormen zoals Rusland's eufemistische "managed democracy"), maar collectief gezien is het netto resultaat altijd zeer negatief en destructief.
Het is om die redenen dat mensen altijd waarschuwen, maar die boodschap komt vaak niet aan omdat mensen het simpelweg niet willen of kunnen geloven dat zoiets überhaupt nog mogelijk is. Kijk je echter objectief naar de staat van Amerika, dan is het beeld schokkend.
"When I am weaker than you I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles"- Frank Herbert
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Post-Tacitus individualisme. Hot in Big Tech net als in Big Finance.
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