258. System power and self-indoctrination

In the preceding item in this blog I discussed a position of liberal communitarianism, where I recognized the problem of getting imprisoned by indoctrination in a community.

                               
Foucault opened my eyes to how institutional environments (prisons, medical clinics, insane asylums) and social arrangements (sexuality, scientific disciplines) can condition those involved to take for granted what happens, to accept what goes on as normal or even the way it should be, even if they are in fact victims of it. I mentioned this earlier in this blog, in items 50, 159, and 244. In his later philosophy, Foucault moved from coercive arrangements to ways of forming oneself. There, he seemed to move from a system perspective to a perspective of bilateral interaction between individuals. Towards the end of his life Foucault offered the notion of ‘shaping one’s life as a work of art’.

How can one escape from institutional power? In item 244 I offered a linguistic analysis, connecting with Žižek’s analysis of the ‘symbolic order’. Here I take an approach from my analysis of cognitive development as a construction of mental structures by assimilation and accommodation.

Institutional power arises more widely than in the more or less closed and coercive environments discussed by Foucault, in what earlier in this blog I called ‘system tragedy’. I used the case of banking as an example. Not only people who suffer from perverse institutional power but also those who implement it or direct it are caught in the system, against their preference or conscience, in ‘prisoner’s dilemma’s’.

In some of the environments studied by Foucault people are more or less locked in, with little or no alternative (prisons, asylums). Elsewhere (scientific communities, banks) the lock-in is more voluntary. In all cases, what seems to be going on is something like self-indoctrination. It is not so much that people are told or pressured to think in a certain way but develop it themselves by assimilating the practice in which they live, and accommodating to it. Cognitive dissonance may also play a role: blinding oneself to the negative not to feel guilty about accommodating.

What way out? In his discussion of ‘technologies of the self’, Foucault recognized that in human relations power is inevitable and can be positive, in creating options and opportunities, but one should avoid the negative power of domination, coercion, in both the submission to it and the practice of it, taking freedom for counter-power or exit. From the present perspective of self-indoctrination in a social system, I would add that one should always maintain windows on outside views and practices, as a source of variety, an opportunity to differ from inside doctrine, a basis for saying ‘no’ to the system.

For bankers that should be relatively easy: listen to your customers and to criticism from society. For inmates of prisons or asylums it is a different story. I wonder: could the function of gang formation and mutual violence in prisons be their way of saying no, of maintaining some basis of their own for escaping full accommodation to the system?

And what about practices on the internet? It appears that people voluntarily lock themselves up in virtual communities of agreement, even on the most absurd, fabricated claims to truth, thus shielding themselves from disagreement, from saying ‘no’, thus indoctrinating themselves and robbing themselves of sources of authenticity. 

Refusing to be locked up in the closure of a community requires an act of social or civic courage, with the risk of losing social legitimacy and getting isolated and ostracised, becoming an outsider. But there is a compensating joy at crafting authenticity, taking responsibility for developing one’s self. Indeed, perhaps like creating one’s life as a work of art, as Foucault said.