We have seen (Part I and Part II) that Václav Havel, in his 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless, defines “dictatorship” as something well beyond the classic, superficial image of a small group of people, usually military, who take over a country. The modern dictatorship is more of secular religion in the devotion and loyalty it demands from its subjects. As he puts it, this religion, this ideology “has a certain hypnotic charm” and those under its sway will not tolerate dissent.
“In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to the creation of … intricate and well-developed mechanisms for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population….”
“Of course, one pays dearly for this: … the price is abdication of one’s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.”
Havel then seeks to illustrate what he means by the above.
A grocery store owner opens his shop and dutifully places the sign that is required to be placed in all shop windows: “Workers of the world, unite!” But, why does he place it? Is it because he has invested time in deep studies of the philosophy and history of the concept behind the phrase and out of conviction he places the sign? Well, no. All stores have the sign, after all. It is quite uniform across the country.
What the grocer is really saying with his sign is “I, grocer, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.”
Of course, the grocer’s message is “directed above, to [his] superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects [him] from potential informers….”
What is the sign really saying?
“I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.” That statement would reflect the truth, but he would not only be embarrassed to post it, he would be placed in danger if he did so.
But the official sign allows the grocer to express his loyalty innocuously. After all, what’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?
“It hides him behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.”
“Ideology offers … the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier to part with “identity, dignity, and morality.” It enables people to deceive their conscience and “conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves.”
Havel used the illustration of a sign. Today he would use the illustration of any of the easily debunked shibboleths being mandated upon us and upon much of the world.
They are a veil.
How can one pierce that veil?
Can you say shibboleth? The phrase used by Havel to illustrate his point
I invite you to read Part I for background on this series of posts, whose title is taken from Václav Havel’s famous 1978 essay.
Havel valiantly attempts to define his terms, beginning with “dictatorship”. One who carefully reads the following extracts from the early paragraphs of his essay, will see he speaks to us today.
Because good writing speaks across generations.
From “The Power of the Powerless”
(all emphases are mine):
“Our system [speaking of Czechoslovakia, in 1978] is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term “dictatorship,” regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who take over the government of a given country by force; their power is wielded openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who established it. It is usually local in extent and significance, and regardless of the ideology it utilizes to grant itself legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the numbers and the armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to its existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped in this sense might appear and overthrow it.
“Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense; rather, it holds sway over a huge power bloc.… And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single, unifying framework throughout…. Not only is the dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured in the same way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling power), but each country has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the power center and totally subordinated to its interests….
“[This system] commands an incomparably … precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. It offers a ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part…. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth….“
As we shall see in future posts, Havel will go on to note that his observations most certainly apply to the United States.
In 1978, even the most obtuse could see that Americans were living in “an era when metaphysical and existential certainties” were in a state of crisis. I began my career in public accounting in that era and during “boot camp” [our tough, initial training] I was aghast at the blasphemy, profanity, and utter cynicism so evident in the speech and actions of many (thankfully, not all) of my professional contemporaries.
These were the crème de la crème of American society and it was ominous. Talking with a colleague there, I told him that I had been born in an American mining camp and my early childhood was amongst WWII veterans. I am certain that their mouths were not ivory soap clean when I was not around, but for sure, even in the club bar, where children were not banned in that era, I never heard even a smidgen of language such as I was hearing at this gathering of young professionals. Nor, as a child, did I ever sense a total disregard or disrespect for the Deity, as I was witnessing now.
Again, thankfully, “boot camp” experience was not a “100%” situation, but it was widespread enough for concern. So, when I heard Solzhenitsyn speak at Harvard and, especially, later when I read the speech, I hearkened back to my early professional career and understood his observations, although a good number of my contemporaries dismissed them.
But he and Havel, having lived and suffered through societies which had lost their liberties and who became subservient to established “power centers” most certainly saw many similarities in western societies, including the United States. They saw that a loss of belief in eternal verities will lead to abject submission and to assignment of transcendence to others, most likely the State; these are dispositions or inclinations which require “abdication of one’s own reason, conscience, and responsibility.”
Havel foresaw our disposition to a ready acquiescence to a ruling elite who would tell us what to do and when. Otherwise known as living within the murderous lie of totalitarianism. And to live under totalitarianism (whose definition Havel will continue to develop) requires living under a lie.
Mr. Shingler, the father of a childhood friend. I post his photo as an example of the men around whom my childhood friends and I grew up. They were not perfect men, in the sense that they had their sins and foibles. However, looking back, I can see they did their best to not harm the consciences of the children who saw them and were otherwise in their ambit. My father, left, at my little brother’s first birthday. He also reflected the ethos of “do no harm”, to the best of his ability. Havel, and also Solzhenitsyn, saw the loss of that ethos in America. By the time of this photo, many of the Americans with whom I grew up had already left El Pao along with their families.
Childhood memories are notoriously deceptive. I had a friend who painted his childhood with broad, black strokes. Gothic does not come close to describing his lurid remembrances. Years later, talking with other members of his family or with his friends, I came to see his memory wasn’t totally fair. From all appearances and recollections of others who had no reason to misrepresent, his childhood was not so terrible.
On the other hand, I’ve known someone, a decent fellow, whose recollections are of wonderful, funny, and happy times of childhood. Yet, in that case, I know, for a fact, having lived nearby and in “real time”, that all was not well. But his remembrances were of broad rose strokes and I certainly would not attempt to convince him otherwise.
I cannot objectively say where I fall in that spectrum but my recollections are happy and when talking with my mother and parents’ friends, as well as perusing old correspondence, it appears my memory is not far off the mark. Anecdotes are for the most part confirmed or, when modified, never beyond recognition.
One of those reminiscences is of my father and the Venezuelan cachicamo.
As brief background: when my father was a young man, before he went to Venezuela, he was a member of a team of agents who worked for the United States army. In those days, the early 40s, part of their training was on the Harvey Firestone (founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company) property in Miami Beach, Florida. About a decade later, the Firestone estate would serve as construction headquarters during the building of the famous Fontainebleau Hotel until the estate was torn down to make way for the hotel’s famous gardens and pool.
Early in the mornings, his fellow agents would see my father go out on the water where he’d start tossing jelly fish out of the way to make room for a morning swim. Henceforth, they called him “Tarzan”.
A few years later he worked for the Bethlehem Steel Company in Venezuela, first in Palúa for a few years and then El Pao for the rest of his career at the company. While in Palúa my father would sometimes dive off the ore bridge into the Orinoco River below. This was an astonishing feat not only to his fellow employees but to the many locals who’d gather along the shore to watch him. His “Tarzan” nickname was well earned.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I recall a trip with my father to the American Consulate in Puerto La Cruz, on the north coast of the country. This was, for me, an exciting drive, usually overnight, including a ferry crossing over the Orinoco River, endless miles on the Venezuelan Llanos, dizzying heights on the mountain ranges hugging the spectacular coastline, and astonishing views of some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
(Although Puerto La Cruz is in the state of Anzoátegui, it borders the state of Sucre and that is where many of my memories reside, principally due to that state’s magnificent beaches.)
About two hours after ferrying across the Orinoco, we saw a cachicamo scurrying across the highway. My father slammed on the brakes, pulled off the road, disembarked and ran after the critter. I remember a car whizzing past but not so fast that I could not discern its driver and passengers looking at my father, first in wonderment and then in howling laughter, which, of course, I could not hear.
He caught the creature and placed him in a box he had on the back seat floor. We continued on our journey. And heard loud scratching, which we at first assumed was that of the bored animal doodling the inside of the box. Then as a car passed us the driver blew his horn to catch our attention. As we looked over he signaled to our rear. We looked to find the cachicamo now against the back window scurrying back and forth. It had to have jumped up there only a second or two prior. We stopped, opened the door and shooed the beast out. We then inspected the damage his scratching had done. We had picked him up in the Llanos and kicked him out in the high mountains. Hope he did OK.
Back in El Pao, on another occasion, my father again jumped out of the car to catch another cachicamo. This time critter and human both slid, scratched, and rolled down a steep embankment at the foot of which my father grabbed the animal and carried it back up the jungle hill, slipping, sliding, falling, but not letting his prey escape.
The cachicamo, like the armadillo, has little hair and can weigh over 20 pounds and measure 5 feet long (see photo below). Whoever attempts to catch it must be very much aware of its long and devastating claws. (The Venezuela Cachicamo Gigante is another story altogether which will be for another day.) This large rodent eats ants, worms, larvae, and also meat. And, yes, folks eat it: they tell us it tastes like chicken, beef, rabbit, and pork. I’m not sure I understand how it can taste like all those meats, nor, at this remove, am I aiming to find out.
Mr. and Mrs. H, good friends of my parents had told my father that they would be happy to prepare any cachicamo he’d bring them. So he dutifully slaughtered the critter and took it up the hill to them and they made plans for dinner later that week.
For some reason I was up that night when my parents returned from their dinner at Mr. and Mrs. H’s home. As my father tossed his suit coat on the sofa, he said with a hint of exasperation, “Remind me to never again catch a cachicamo!” To which my mother replied, “Oh, sure. You’re a new man.”
The next morning I was regaled with the story.
As they drove up the hill to Mr. and Mrs. H’s home the night before, my father was in eager anticipation of the Venezuelan dish that the lady of the house was preparing from the game he had caught that week. They parked the car, walked up the front steps, and knocked. Mr. H exuberantly opened the door and, with great alacrity, ushered them in while endlessly chatting on how happy Mrs. H was in preparing and cooking that night’s pièce de résistance: Cachicamo on the Shell.
What Mr. H did not seem to notice was the stench that had greeted my progenitors when the front door had opened. “What is that smell?” they had both thought but could not ask out loud just then.
Mrs. H came out through the swinging kitchen door in high spirits and pulled them in to observe the final touches on that night’s cuisine. To their horror, they realized the fetid aroma originated from the cooking area.
But, again, they said nothing.
The stew of cachicamo, who by now was the object of silent maledictions from my mother, was placed, in all its glory, heaping hot, and in its shell, at the center of the table. And all were joyously served therefrom.
My father bravely ate his full dish. An act of courage and manliness which, after leaving, my mother rebuked: “If you knew that smell came from our main course, why on earth would you eat it so quickly and thereby give opportunity to be offered more?! Not even Tarzan eat so fast?”
“Oh, Charles! I can see you really like this! Here, have some more!” Mrs. H had exclaimed heartily and joyfully over my father’s courteous demurrals. But his “Oh, no thank you’s!” were too late: she slopped another heap of local color on his plate and he, having been taught since childhood to always eat what is served, dutifully and painfully ate the whole thing.
My parents’ theory, most reasonable, is that Mrs. H had neglected to have the shell properly boiled. Not to put too fine a point on this, the cachicamo being a rodent, the smell that greeted the visitors that night was that of a dead rat.
Many years have passed since that event. Even now, as I write this, I smile and even chuckle, holding the loud laughter in.
As a family, that became one of our favorite stories. I shared it with my youngest sons just three days ago as we drove to church. They too howled with laughter.
Thank you, father and mother, for a happy childhood.
Harvey S. Firestone (1868-1938). His Miami Beach estate, later the Fontainebleau, is in the background Fontainebleau Hotel today Cachicamo (very similar to the Texas armadillo) Bethlehem Steel port of Palúa. Camp housing in the foreground. Note the ore bridge to the right. As a young man, my father used to dive off that bridge to the astonishment of both his fellow employees and the locals. By the way, I confirmed this as a young adult by asking a number of folks in El Pao, San Félix, and Palúa. La Chalana (ferry). This is actually the ferry which used to cross the Caroní River from San Félix to Puerto Ordaz. I was unable to find a photo of the San Félix ferry crossing the Orinoco River for that era. But the setting was very similar to the above. This is the “chalana” currently in use in San Félix on the Orinoco. I am told that to get to it is a very difficult journey on a heavily deteriorated road full of holes and trash and sewage. Despite this, many still use this means to travel between the states of Bolivar and Monagas. One of the numerous beaches along the Sucre coastline (north coast of eastern Venezuela) My father and I on the Orinoco River bound for Puerto De Hierro, circa 1962. My father and his catch, a Sábalo. This species is found both in the coastal ocean waters as well as far inland on major rivers, such as the Orinoco. The Sábalo can grow up to 8 feet and weigh as much as 330 pounds.
In 1978, Václav Havel (1936-2011) wrote an essay, The Power of the Powerless, from which I take the title for this and later posts.
Havel was born into a wealthy family, and that made him an outcast when the Communists took over 12 years later. He eventually became president of Czechoslovakia (her last), and, after the country’s dissolution, was elected president of the new Czech Republic (her first). But he is best known, not as a politician, but as an essayist and thinker who alerts his readers and hearers as to the dangers of totalitarianism, whether in its Fascist, Communist, Tin Pot, “Post-Totalitarian”, or democratic manifestations. And, most importantly, he eloquently demonstrates that the way for a people to defeat the brutal despotism of unjust domination by political and military elites — be they “soft” or “hard”, “democratically elected” or “installed by force” — is to “live by the truth.”
Truth is universal, and “historical experience teaches us that any meaningful point of departure in an individual’s life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary, it must be potentially accessible to everyone.” By “everyone” he includes those doing the oppressing. His essay does not seek to proselytize religiously, but by “universality” he gives Christianity as an example. An example I wholly embrace.
The essay was written “hurriedly” (his word) but upon careful reading one marvels at his insights, clearly developed from a lifetime of social, economic, political, and religious oppression and upheaval. He is one of those rare intellectuals who not only earned the appellation but did not besmirch it with despicable, self-absorbed behavior and utter disregard for his neighbor.
Paul Johnson’s great book, The Intellectuals, details the lives of intellectuals who have had outsized, deleterious influence on the course of history, especially the 20th and 21st centuries. Men like Karl Marx and Jean-Paul Sartre, Cyril Connolly and Kenneth Tynan, and many others are examined and when one puts the book down, one wonders how people fell for these sordid characters whose fruit in their own lives surely portended evil for the rest of us. I wish Mr. Johnson had written a companion book on intellectuals who did lead admirable lives. Men like Václav Havel.
Open totalitarian regimes — Castro’s Cuba, Mao’s China, Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, Hitler’s Germany, and many others — “post-totalitarian” regimes — Eastern Europe in 1978 — democratic regimes — Western Europe and the Americas — and points between all have a “hard” tendency to concentrate power and exercise it over their peoples.
“This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of formation is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance.”
“Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to posses an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”
“Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as if they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
I invite you to re-read the foregoing three paragraphs and marvel with me that it was written in 1978 when Americans were offended at Alexander Solzhenitsyn for having pointed out similar thoughts at his Harvard address and was booed by the intellectuals there. The then First Lady sniffed, “He doesn’t understand Americans.” Even many “conservatives” were put off.
I was not one of them, although, I confess, I saw the issues he addressed as portending future evils. It was years later, upon re-reading the speech that I realized he saw them — correctly — as present evils. And today, their manifestation is such that only the most obtuse can honestly deny them.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Paul Johnson (B. 1928) The Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson In book form; also available online.
Professionals are taught never to use such phrases. At least I was trained thusly in my halcyon Arthur Andersen years when an oft-used expression was, “You can take the man out of Arthur Andersen but you cannot take Arthur Andersen out of the man.” As one progressed in the firm, one took on tasks easily characterized as “not my job” but one did not think in those terms. One tackled the assignment as best he or she could. And we learned along the way.
The late Elmer Kelton’s The Good Old Boys (1978), utters that phrase in a humble context which resonates with many of us. The novel is set in West Texas at the turn of the 20th century, 1906 to be precise. On the surface, it is a novel about a cowboy, Hewey Calloway, who appreciates people and places more than new contraptions and who struggles to understand the, to him, monomaniac interest of younger people in things like automobiles and big cities. Hewey is facing a rapidly dimming way of life and unwilling to step onto the newer way of doing things that was breaking on the horizon. Below the surface, the novel tells us that there is a Hewey in many of us.
Along the way, Kelton uses his novel to reflect upon some things that ought to never change. The phrase shows up in one of those scenes:
Cotton incredulously demanded, “Uncle Hewey, you mean all he asked you to do was to go over and ride on another street?”
“He didn’t ask me to. He told me I had to. There’s a difference.”
“If he’d asked you to, would you have done it?”
“Sure, I always try to get along with people.”
Cotton shook his head. “I don’t understand that at all.”
Hewey wasn’t sure how to explain it; it seemed so natural that no explanation ought to be necessary. “I’m a free-born American. I even been to war. I’d be a taxpayer, and proud to say it, if I owned anything to pay taxes on. I’ve got a right to ride down any street anywhere in this country that anybody else can. Somebody tells me I got to get off, and I do it, pretty soon I won’t have that right anymore.”
Cotton wasn’t satisfied. Hewey didn’t know how to satisfy him.
Wes Wheeler saw Hewey’s chagrin. He looked at Cotton. “Son, I’m a peace officer. It’s my job to enforce the law. I’m not allowed to make the law; that’s for somebody else to do. If I go to makin’ it, I can make it anything I want it to be. First thing you know I’ll use it to help me and my friends. I’ll use it to hurt people I don’t like. If that ever happens, I’m dangerous. That marshall up yonder, he was goin’ beyond his rightful authority. That makes him dangerous. You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”
I last visited Venezuela in 2005. Upon arrival I was informed that my paperwork was such that I would not be permitted to leave the country. Incredulously, I spoke to a fiery US embassy official who confirmed to me that another midnight decree had been recently issued by El Comandante and that I had been entangled by such. However, she was adamant that she would move heaven and earth to get me out. The details are for another day, but the point is that living under decrees or mandates is dangerous and tyrannical.
I have not been back to the country of my birth since, but it is not for a lack of desire.
And now, for over 20 months, has anyone noticed that we Americans have also been living under decrees and mandates? Are we not allowed to say so? I have written a major airline asking them why their employees keep telling us we must submit to “federal law” when no such law has been enacted, having been passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president. That would make it a “law”. What we have now, is a mandate. Or an order. Call it what you will, but it is not law.
Wes Wheeler’s comments are worth remembering as we ponder our situation: “It’s my job to enforce the law. I’m not allowed to make the law; that’s for somebody else to do. If I go to makin’ it, I can make it anything I want it to be. First thing you know I’ll use it to help me and my friends. I’ll use it to hurt people I don’t like. If that ever happens, I’m dangerous. … You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”
Mandates and liberty are not compatible.
Whether in Venezuela or here.
Elmer Kelton (1926-2009) The above quote has been attributed to others besides Twain, including Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is appropriate to today’s post: promulgating mandates and decrees, whether by mayors, governors, presidents, or comandantes, smacks of man playing God. And, as per Kelton, “You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”
