Race, religion and reason

Without question, if Aristotle were to come to Whitefish he would proclaim it the ideal town. Goodness of ethos and form, beauty of psyche and breakfast diners would cause him to reject the stale metropolis of Athens and he would move here immediately.

So it really doesn’t make sense to think of white supremacists marching with loaded weapons down Central Avenue. The phrase clash of cultures comes to mind.

At first I thought, “Why Whitefish?” But a more important question is “Why racial supremacy?” Though having heard mention of one such supremacist in Whitefish, I had never been inclined to give much thought to white supremacists, and I only recently learned of the out-of-state supremacist group covered in the news. But during the past month, friends in Whitefish have ruminated briefly on a tentatively scheduled supremacist march. This was during some of our weekly lunch meetings as we warmed up for more serious discussion of G.K. Chesterton in the conference room of Coco Enterprises. A local businessman commented to me on his inability to figure out what the march was all about. He seemed baffled, saying he has never heard anyone espousing the ideas advocated by these would-be marchers. I told him I didn’t get it either. That’s when it seemed pertinent to put my psychiatrist’s perspective into words.

Bad feelings sometimes cause bad ideas and vice versa. Bad ideas can harm society. When a person’s psychological reaction is not what they would want it to be, the natural response is to use what Freud called defense mechanisms. Most people have heard of common defense mechanisms such as denial and projection. These kinds of reactions to feelings and situations are the mind’s way of coping with the interaction of internal and external stressors. In some cases the defenses can make things worse.

Defense mechanisms are categorized according to how well they can help the person adapt. For example, denial — the nullification of external reality — is considered to have very low adaptive value, while asceticism is listed among the highest.

So what might a psychiatrist think about race-based supremacy movements? First, I should clarify that my intelligence source in Whitefish — who has a much higher clearance level than mine — has confirmed that the Whitefish individual and the out-of-state group are unaffiliated. Second, as a psychiatrist whose morals originate above me from the highest clearance level of all, I’m compelled to speak charitably of other people. So I will avoid doing the opposite.

Nobody is beyond the reach of psychiatric injury. And when I see potentially maladaptive elements in a particular ideology, my physician’s impulse is to look for a remedy. The philosophy of “European superiority” advocated by some race-based supremacy groups seems wrong both morally and intellectually. According to these groups, advances in science and technology are attributable to race and explain the success of Western civilization. This seems to encapsulate the philosophy of their movement. But their analysis is highly deficient. So here I will attempt to encapsulate the psychology which seems to inspire their philosophy.

Although I don’t know the particular thoughts or feelings of any individuals involved in these movements or mentioned in this article, I can comment generally on the psychology of associated ideas. My psychological statements are directed at ideology, not at the thoughts or feelings of individuals.

Just as psychological defenses can be ranked according to usefulness, the components of a society are ordered in terms of their impact on people and culture. For the purposes of this article, we shall examine two categories of societal components: the first involves objects and mechanism; the second, people and relationships. The question for the average person is: Which of the two categories has the deeper influence on your daily experience? Is it things like the way your car handles, the presence of grocery stores or access to technology? Or, on the other hand, are you more influenced by interactions with colleagues, conversations with your boss, and maybe a wet kiss on the cheek from your wife?

Some will say it’s the machines that get us to the job site each day and back home again at night. That technology and the comforts it brings is what keeps the wheels of society rolling and ultimately allows for things like peaceful transitions in political processes. But I would counter that there is something other than the mechanism of desktop computers, something beyond the complex routing of electrical circuits to our refrigerators that explains the success of our society.

My assertion here is that the valuing of individual persons and of the relationships between them is not only the glue that holds society together — it is the bedrock supporting us as we build machines and establish communities to pursue our basic liberties.

To claim the value of our society comes from advances in science and technology is truly a failure to understand society. This illustrates the core intellectual error of the Eurocentric movement. Like the progenitors of past similar ideologies, race-based supremacist ideas seem to be derived at least partly from those of Nietzsche and other nihilistic philosophers. Freud’s colleague, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who himself spent time imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, wisely asserted that nihilism does not lead to success but to destruction: “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.” (From “The Doctor and the Soul.”)

That the Holocaust with all its horror and bloodshed was the antithesis of everything good in our culture is not a difficult case to make.

The ideology of race-based supremacy comes from a very complicated psychology. Here I will try to simplify it. In my view, this psychology is derived from the most immature and maladaptive defenses — those falling in the narcissistic category — including denial, distortion and projection. Distortion is a mental re-forming of reality to fit internal needs. Projection is a response to unwanted feelings as though they were occurring externally. All three of these defense mechanisms can be identified in supremacist ideology as follows: denial of the intrinsic and universal value of all races; distortion of the fact that human value is not derivable from race into a belief that it is; projection of unwanted, immature internal feelings onto people of other races.

The race-based supremacy groups advance a philosophical system which assails the principle of universal human value and inevitably leads to animosity between groups. They advocate for a mentality that looks inward, in service to self. From what I’ve seen, there is a glaring absence of universal regard for service to others in the race-based supremacy movements. They give a false explanation for how society succeeds.

Meanwhile, if you were to make a list of what is in fact good about society, freedom would top the list. The first civilization in all of human history to bring an end to slavery on moral grounds is the very one criticized most for having also committed the sin of slavery. The moral system which ended slavery includes the principle that all people have intrinsic value and that the best recognition of that value is to allow certain freedoms. Citizens fought and died to end the terrible blight of slavery. Western freedoms such as life, liberty, civil rights, the women’s vote and others were not politically recognized all at once — not at the final discharge of a Yorktown cannon, nor with the last scratch of a patriot’s feather quill pen upon the founding documents — rather, recognition of the liberties belonging to individuals began many centuries prior to the American Revolution, and they have continued to be written into statute for long after.

That such freedoms should be recognized by the government is a principle inspired by an acknowledgment of their transcendent nature. Western society has been instilled with the collective agreement that people have universal, intrinsic value. Related to this, most people realize — without having to learn it from psychiatry — that self-sacrifice for the purpose of serving others is the highest form of morality.

I will close with an example of human regard for others. I think the most precious form of human expression comes from the voices of children. I visited a gathering of young children recently. An 8-year-old who was there asked me about “those people who hate black people.” She went on, “Maybe if I ask them, what if you were black and we didn’t want to do nice things for you, wouldn’t that make you feel bad?” The girl’s voice sang with enthusiasm.

If anything can fetch tears of joy from your eyes it’s the words of a child — loving thoughts from an innocent heart, fueling the minds of tomorrow so they can continue to produce communities like Whitefish, Montana — in the eternal pursuit of our highest values.

Joseph Boyle, of Whitefish, is a psychiatrist at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.