Leftist Psychology - Oversocialization

You can find the other essays in this series here: Equality, Tabula rasa, Neoteny, Status, Science

In the last two essays on leftist psychology, the key point has been to show how common leftist beliefs are covers for deep-seated feelings of resentment and inferiority.  Though these beliefs may seem benign on a superficial level, it has been my aim to show how they are used as weapons against those that the left hates. Underlining this style of reasoning is the assumption that the left is primarily motivated by resentment, and that leftist ideology is about playing out revenge fantasies. It is trivial to see how this reasoning applies to the various client groups that the left courts the favor of, such as non-whites, women and sexual deviants. It is not as easy, however, to see how it applies to some of the most fanatic adherents of the left – affluent white liberals. Let us therefore begin by listing a few sources of resentment that may apply to affluent white liberals, in order to see that what has been said so far about the mindset of the left is still applicable to this group of people.

• Client group overlap. Some affluent whites are women or sexual deviants.

• Striver resentment. Someone from a lower class or rural background fails to fit in with his peers, becomes resentful on account of this rejection and then seeks to become a credentialed urbanite desk worker so he can feel superior to those who spurned him. We see here an explanation for the left’s hatred of “flyover country”.

• Ugliness.

• Social ineptitude.

• Mental illness.

• Bullying.

• Inherent pettiness or malice. Some are simply born with a tendency towards ill-feeling.

Now, one should be careful not to view every problem as a nail merely because one has a neat hammer. There are many factors at play behind how the left functions, and not all who adhere to it do so for the same reasons. Therefore, I would like to expand the methodology used so far by looking at factors other than resentment that drive the left. This is interesting in no small part because it helps to explain the differences between the two primary factions of the left, which can be termed the radicals and the liberals. The radicals are your Critical Race Theorists, gender ideologues, Cultural Marxists, communists, Antifa and similar groupings. The liberals are your Blue Empire loyalists, Bidenites, urbanite strivers, the careerists and bureaucrats of the occupational class. Naturally, the two groupings share common goals and sentiments, and there is a great deal of overlap between them, but they still present as two different factions, and we can therefore assume a difference in the psychological needs which motivate their actions.

This brings us to the topic of this essay, which will try to describe the psychology of some of those in the left who are not primarily motivated by resentment (as the radicals are), but by an inability to think and act contrary to the institutional paradigm (that is, the liberals).

Every society exerts a kind of pressure on its members to conform to the standards of social life. This process is called socialization. Under normal circumstances, this process allows individuals to adjust to society by finding socially appropriate ways of acting out their will and fulfilling their wants and desires. However, when the pressure to conform is too great – such as in societies with a high degree of institutionalization, regimentation and control – people react in one of two ways. The first is that they fail to properly socialize and begin developing forms of social dysfunction, such as isolation or criminality. Such individuals are undersocialized. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have individuals who instead devote excessive amounts of their psychological resources towards conforming to societal demands. Such individuals tend to be successful and well-adjusted to their society, but the price they pay is that they sacrifice large parts of themselves, essentially becoming hyperspecialized at social conformity. Such individuals are oversocialized.

The primary way that oversocialization presents itself is as an inability to think or act outside of social or institutional expectations. It functions in a sense as a psychological straitjacket. While the expectations of society and the societal institutions are frequently clothed in terms of morality or decorum, they are always predicated first and foremost on obedience and control. Therefore, the goal of these expectations is to restrain behaviors that threaten the predictable and orderly functioning of bureaucratic systems. That is, they tend to limit violence, aggression, hostility, sexuality, self-determination, rule-breaking, open displays of volatile emotions such as anger or despair, intoxication and any erratic, defiant or eccentric behavior. The “model citizen” is therefore conflict-averse, pacifistic, agreeable, passive, sexless, predictable, standardized and obedient, with an emotional life dominated by either a flaccid and vapid sense of contentment or gnawing anxiety. It is this mold that the oversocialized individual devotes the greater part of his psychological energy to fit into.

The perceptive reader will notice that the suppressed behaviors are generally of a vital, wild or primal nature while the premiated behaviors are docile, neutered and mechanistic. This does not imply that the primal drives are lacking in the oversocialized, but rather that they are completely subsumed into his carefully curated conformity and only given an institutionally acceptable expression. Since the primary directive of highly institutional societies is to maintain obedience and control, the only acceptable outlet for the primal drives is where they aid in doing so. Thus, the oversocialized will express extreme aggression against those that “threaten our democracy”; will act out malice through the vicarious cruelty of state repression; will commit violence through directing police or managerial force against rule-breakers (the Karen); will express their will to power by becoming hall monitors for the regime; and will loudly and aggressively protest in favor of policies that the regime wants to implement. The oversocialized will play at rebellion by obeying the regime, will champion free expression by buying the latest product and will fight for change that increases the totality of state repression. In this way, the defiant or vital impulses are made to serve the continuation and expansion of the system rather than simply being suppressed.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss in detail the mechanisms which cause oversocialization, but a general outline can still be given. The process of oversocializing an individual begins in early childhood with public schooling aimed at standardizing individual behavior into an institutionally acceptable form. This process is then continued throughout adolescence and young adulthood by more schooling in high school and college, before culminating in the labor camp existence of work life. Parallel to schooling, individuals are further socialized by having to deal with bureaucratic red tape, policies, and laws. A vast media landscape composed almost completely of curated propaganda and marketing encourages a small number of predictable and standardized behaviors, thoughts and feelings. This process of socialization is even further encouraged through systems of Pavlovian conditioning which provide punishment and reward, frequently by providing or preventing career options and financial opportunities. The result of this process is an individual that can be programmed through television, newspapers, celebrities and media personalities into coordinated mass action, seemingly without self-awareness and with an uncanny conformity. It should be noted that women seem particularly susceptible to social pressure, and so are more easily oversocialized than men, which accounts for the much-maligned AWFL. When men are oversocialized, they either show a conspicuous lack of masculinity or engage in purely performative forms of faux-masculinity.

Because oversocialized patterns of behavior are actively rewarded, many oversocialized individuals tend to become quite successful. As noted before, however, there is a price to be paid for this. Many natural human behaviors are suppressed to some degree, and this blunting of the instincts make the oversocialized incapable of functioning outside of the controlled environment of modern liberal bourgeois society. This can take various shapes, such as a childlike naivety or a completely deluded understanding of the world. An example would be the natural human tendency to notice racial differences and to show a preference for one’s own race. The oversocialized will have a marked inability to identify different ethnic groups, notice patterns in their behavior and cannot function as a cohesive in-group. A lack of understanding of how violence works would be another example of a stunted instinctual behavior, and the oversocialized generally display a complete lack of force capital or capacity for violence. Many will respond to violence against them by freezing in place, unable to even process what is happening.

Due to the suppression of many instinctive human behaviors, the oversocialized individual succeeds in his hyperconformity only at the cost of excessive inner tension. The inner animal still seeks to assert itself, but is held back by the conditioning. This tension usually takes the form of neuroticism. Status anxiety, a desperate need to “save the world”, excessive concerns about being a “good person”, guilt over one’s “privileges” and a tendency to moral hysteria are all common ways that this neuroticism manifests itself. These behaviors are all central to the self-image and understanding of the oversocialized affluent white liberal. And since the oversocialized lack the power to break their conditioning, they must rely on institutionally acceptable channels to dissipate this inner tension. This accounts for the aggressive political drive of the affluent white liberal, and their dedication towards activism which serves only to further the interests of the regime. This is the arrogance of the liberal which makes him believe that he is on the “right side of history”. In truth, however, he is only acting out the logical consequences of his programming.

Understanding oversocialization, we are left with the question of whether or not it is possible to break the conditioning of the oversocialized. To answer that question, we must understand the difference between socialization and oversocialization. This difference can be easily understood through the metaphor of a steel rod. Apply force to the rod and it bends – when the force is removed, the rod returns to its original shape. This is called elastic deformation. But apply a greater amount of force, an amount in excess of the elastic strength of the rod, and it will not return to its original shape. Instead, it maintains its bent shape even when the force is removed, a phenomenon called plastic deformation. If the rod is to return to its original straight shape, a new force must be applied to bend it back into shape. In this metaphor, oversocialization is the plastic deformation of the psyche caused by excessive social pressure. They are in a sense bent out of shape. Without an outside force to counteract the conditioning, the oversocialized cannot break through it. They are powerless to break their own conditioning.

So what is this outside force which can break the conditioning? Counter-narratives, in the broadest sense. Anything which helps to undermine the narratives, truths, imagery and world-feeling of the system, but especially anything which helps people to re-learn the primal behaviors that they have suppressed. Breaking the conditioning involves some level of rewilding of the human spirit, which in the present state of things can involve something as simple as teaching people to be human again. It is in this process of reawakening the human spirit that we find the role of the dissident right, broadly understood. The act of redpilling, for instance, involves precisely this, the bringing forth of dirty and bloody truths that liberal society would rather forget. This running of counter-narratives serves three functions in regards to oversocialization. The first is that it provides a countering force which saves some from being oversocialized in the first place; the second is that it inoculates people to regime conditioning; and the third is that it can break the conditioning of those already oversocialized. However, since the social pressure to conform is so great, not everyone can be saved. Some are so connected to the systems of control that they cannot break free from them; others are so invested in them that breaking free would break their minds. Finally, we must entertain the possibility that some among us are beginning to adapt in an evolutionary sense to the pressures of modern life. Perhaps some are simply born with a natural docility which makes them especially susceptible to oversocialization. We must entertain the idea that mankind is becoming a domesticated species.

Thankfully, saving everyone is not a requirement. We need only awaken those that can be awakened. It is enough for dissidents to tirelessly chip away at the Iron Prison, and strike at those mental chains that enslave the minds of millions.