Sooraj Mathew Pittappillil

Any analysis of dictatorial propensities drives me back to a thought provoking short poem by the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, The Scarecrow. The anatomy of fear is beautifully narrated there:

Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in this lonely field.”

And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it.”

Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have known that joy.”

Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.”

Indeed, the joy of scaring is the rightful share of blockheads. All the dictators of history have given testimony to it. Rather than being just a corollary of in judiciousness, dictatorial mind is a complex product of stupidity and insecurity. As the American philosopher Martha C Nussbaum rightly puts it; this age witnesses a ‘Monarchy of Fear.’ However, it is not an overnight crisis. It is perennially wedded to the mankind. It is in this context that the question on Deleuze and Guattari who wrote “everybody wants to be a fascist” draws consideration.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are primarily known in the philosophical circles for their contribution to post structuralism. They called the overarching, centric and binding explanations, traditionally used in philosophical analyses (such explanations are called “metanarratives” in the postmodern glossary) “arborescence” (tree-like paradigm) and proposed a rhizomatic (potato-like) paradigm instead. Thus they achieved a licit and warranted space for the analysis of non-metanarratives. This same chemistry is found in their analysis of the Anti-Oedipus too. No matter whether it is in the macro politics or in the micro politics (at personal and societal level), the desire for power is the most robust intoxicant ever known in the history. Dictatorial gene is a telling factor in the algorithm of Homo Sapiens!

Nevertheless, I am interested in the still more impressive explanations given to the same by the Israeli writer Yuval Noah Harari. In his sensational book “Sapiens,” he traces this gene as evolutionary garbage of Homo Sapiens, owing to the hasty-jump from the middle of the food chain to its zenith (ca. 100,000 years ago). Whereas most of the apex predators of this planet are majestic creatures, thanks to the self confidence they acquired through millions of years’ evolution, Sapiens would fare more like a banana republic dictator! Having so recently been just a prey to the blind forces and cruelties of nature, Sapiens turns out murderous at planetary dimensions, even with insufficient provocations. Everywhere it is visible. Man feels challenged and threatened even at small-scale irking. This is the naïve blueprint of the dictatorial gene.

Even the Church authorities are not immune to it. Dictatorial traits are mostly visible within the Church in the disproportionate enthusiasm to emphasize the dogma or liturgy and to liquidate the differences of opinion. They become scared of critical reasoning and apply the Procrustean tools to establish uniformity. In my career as a teacher of philosophy, I have come across alarming instances of encountering bigots who bluntly deny the utility of philosophical training in our theological formation. I do not find such approaches accidental either. They bear unmistakable markers on their sleeves that aim at hijacking the analytic reasoning and supplanting it with a frenzied passion for archaic languages, meaningless rites and clumsy vestments. Thus, the common layman feels alienated from the whole scenario, usurped by a Mandrake who dominates the space with an apocryphal abracadabra and an awesome appearance. In an age in which the distances diminish and spaces become ever more accessible, they choose the other way around. In short, they dream of an age that bids farewell to ‘whys’ and nurtures ‘Amens’ instead. A theology divorced from ‘whys’ is cancerous and it begets dictatorship exponentially.