Capitalistic Trauma Trance

"It's the economy, stupid."

Why is economic growth such an effective killer argument when it comes to climate protection measures? 

A simple explanation would say: this is due to the propaganda used to represent the lobbying interests of companies that would see their profits dwindle if they had to change their ways of production. We would not have to be impressed by this. It is part of the business world that production has to modernize on an ongoing basis, and if modernization now consists of producing in a climate-friendly way, then that is simply the task that the company has to face up to.

What often happens, however, is that the ecological debate stops there and climate measures are shot down because economic growth would be jeopardized, jobs would be lost, the economy would shrink, everyone would be worse off, and finally everything would collapse.

The Clinton slogan: "it's the economy, stupid," could be translated this way: It's all about the economy, and if you don't understand that, you're a fool. Or: The economy is the most important area around which everything else revolves and must revolve. Or: The economy affects people most directly and most effectively, and everything else is secondary.

The Trauma of Capitalism

The fact that we understand such slogans and consider them as plausible and correct is related to the collective trauma caused by capitalism. The economy is a subfield in any human society, but since the introduction of the capitalist economic system, this subfield has taken over the central position. This leading role has been deeply engraved in our consciousness. It is integrated into all educational and training processes and is drummed into children and young people from an early age. They are supposed to be made fit "for life" in schools, i.e., they are supposed to be able to exist in the economy and build an "existence." Capitalism has thus succeeded in making human existence dependent on economic success: If we don't make it in the economy, we lose our existence.

What has happened here? Of course, people always knew that their survival depended on having enough to eat and a safe place to stay. But they also knew that they could never do it alone, instead that they could only succeed if everyone stuck together. 

In the early days, our ancestors could and had to provide themselves in their communities for everything that was necessary for survival. Especially since the Neolithic revolution, the economy has become increasingly complex due to the progressive division of labor. A system of interdependencies emerged, which was then intensified by the capitalist system with its principles of profit maximization and competition. Whereas in the Middle Ages it was regulated how much a craftsman could earn, under capitalism the one who produced the cheapest and most efficiently was supposed to outdo the other competitors. A relatively balanced system of mutual dependencies, in which social balance plays an important role, becomes a system of competition according to the motto: everyone against everyone. Whoever fights too little goes down. You perish before I perish. Existential fear provides the underlying drive for economic action and is implanted in every participant in the economy. 

As I have proposed elsewhere, capitalism is a fear-driven system that imposes a chronic stress burden on everyone. The hidden ideology of this system suggests that survival is permanently precarious. One can never try hard enough to finally be safe from going under. People are forced to "voluntarily" inflict violence on themselves, not at gunpoint, but with the fear of survival implanted. 

The Capitalistic Trance

From a purely logical point of view, the environmental problem that mankind has maneuvered itself into takes precedence over the economic problems. For on a planet that can no longer be inhabited, no economy can be run either. The economy would therefore have to do everything in its power to avert this global threat, and for this it would need the compelling guidelines from politics. But because in capitalist thinking, short-term gain is always better than a long-term perspective, the representatives of the economy drum out their slogans about the primacy of the economy and its growth, no matter what other costs this causes and what problems arise from it in the longer term. Because the general public, or the state, is liable for damages resulting from economic processes; these need not concern the representatives of the economy. 

But why is politics not in a position to prescribe to the economy the framework conditions that are necessary so that the environmental catastrophe can be averted? Apparently, like most people, it is just as much under the pressure exerted by survival anxiety, the driving force of capitalism. Collective traumas lead to collective dissociations, and dissociations lead to trance states. As soon as there is talk of threats to the economy, most politicians enter a trance state in which they forget everything else they are responsible for. 

For most, waking up from this entranced state apparently only occurs when experiences occur that are so powerful that they can no longer be ignored. Disappearing glaciers or abnormally hot summers are unpleasant experiences, but we can live with them. A storm that knocks down your house or a flood that washes away everything you own can no longer be so easily ignored. 

The danger is that, just as climatic conditions and all the phenomena dependent on them change, we slowly adapt to the changed circumstances and therefore delay everything that would be necessary in terms of new laws and new habits of behavior. We behave like the frogs in the glass of water that is slowly heated, and we do not notice the misery we are in until we are already scalded. (By the way, the story with the frogs is a fake, frogs are not that stupid, they jump out of the water as soon as it gets too hot for them).

We have a choice: the trauma trance, driven by capitalist fear of survival, or waking up, driven by the will to survive and by responsibility for humanity and the planet.

The Role of Collective Trauma in the Actual War

Cause for horror

Every war is cruel and inhuman. The war that broke out these days is, beyond the inhumanity associated with any war, a cause for horror and dismay for all those who believe in the power of peace and non-violent conflict resolution and who hoped that in the millennia of civilizational progress the primitive law of the strongest would be overcome. It is cause for disillusionment about the power that individuals, supported by compliant elites and enthroned by manipulation and dictatorial tricks, can bear violence in the 21st century. The Russian autocrat has unleashed an aggressive war of aggression against his "brother nation," driven by sheer greed for power and by a nationalist ideology with a contorted view of history. 

We feel thrown back to the 18th or 19th century, where wars were started when a neighbouring state was weak and one's own army was well equipped. Potentates put their troops on the march to expand their own power realm and increase their historical glory. These were gruesome wars, but they mostly affected the civilian population only marginally. Unlike today, almost every war of aggression in those days resulted in coalitions in which the relevant great powers pursued their interests. Another difference was that wars were fought on battlefields, not in major cities.

The Russian aggression of February 24, 2022, was possible because it was clear that the West did not want to interfere militarily. The European continent has two world wars behind it and intensive learning and reappraisal processes have taken place in many countries. The horrors of the wars have left deep scars on souls and led many people to believe that international conflicts must be resolved nonviolently, without the sacrifice of human lives. The threshold for entering into warlike actions is high in functioning democracies, because it is probably impossible in any country to mobilize majorities for a war of aggression. 

But how do democracies deal with dictatorships in which wars can be waged without regard for their own populations? The response options are limited to economic sanctions and moral ostracism. The situation is reminiscent of that before World War II, in which the dictatorship in Germany took advantage of the dithering of the English and French democracies to invade Czechoslovakia, first in the so-called Sudeten territories, including guarantees for the integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia, only to occupy it six months later. Dictators have an advantage in action over more discussion oriented democracies. They have the disadvantage that the decisions that are made are driven by the emotions of individuals who are highly prone to error.

Sooner or later (more likely over the long haul), the model of Western democracies is so attractive that more and more people living under different conditions will aspire to it. One component of the current war lies in the dictators' fear of this attraction, which would go to their own heads. Putin wants to dictate to Ukraine what form of life and government the country "wants" to have, so that he can, in a sense, create a buffer zone against the democratic bacilli coming from the West, for which there is much fertile ground in Russia as well. 

Shameful Finding

We must experience the present state of humanity, that is, of the community of people, as shameful. How can it be possible that a long-term ruler with his military machinery starts a war of aggression in the 21st century and nobody can put a stop to this outrage? Unfortunately, we are still a long way from a world order in which states are deprived of their monopoly on the use of force. There is no world police force that can arrest individual state perpetrators of violence and take away their means of violence. Individual states function only because of the internal monopoly of power among the forces of order. How can a world function if there are no forces of order responsible for the whole world to stop such inhumane aberrations?

Collective Traumas and their Devastating Effects

Putin has named the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine as the aim of this war. Everyone knows that Ukraine is not ruled by Nazis and is no potential military threat for highly armed Russia. So these are propaganda lies. At the same time, it becomes clear what historical trauma is behind the aggression. Putin has pointed out that he avoided a mistake made by his predecessor Stalin, namely naively believing in World War II that Russia would not be attacked by Nazi Germany. Then, when German troops unexpectedly invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and inflicted defeat after defeat on the Russian army, the shock was great and could be dealt with only slowly after the situation turned in favour of the Soviet army starting in late 1942 and finally Germany was defeated in 1945.

The collective trauma has obviously not been overcome, and Putin sees himself as the executor of a victim-perpetrator reversal. He finds the Nazi opponents in Ukraine and wants to eradicate the "Nazis" there before they can become dangerous to the Russian fatherland. Moreover, the Ukrainian "brother people" are to be saved from wickedness of their leaders. 

But the Ukrainians suffer from an even earlier trauma, the Holodomor between 1931 and 1933, which can be considered as genocide. About 3.5 million Ukrainians fell victim to the Soviet agricultural policy with the collectivization of agriculture. About 10% of the population was exposed to starvation at that time. In addition, there were extensive "purges", i.e. the execution or internment of artists, teachers, scientists and intellectuals, as well as lower and middle party cadres. Historian Gerhard Simon writes: "For Stalin, the Holodomor was not only an instrument to discipline the peasants, but also to destroy once and for all in Ukraine all dreams of autonomy or even independence." (Source here) 

These events dug a deep hole in the collective Ukrainian soul. This was also one of the reasons why many Ukrainians joined the invading German soldiers in WW2, fought for them and also assisted in mass murders of Jews, albeit instigated by the German Nazis. This turn of events in turn resulted in the hatred of many Russians for Ukrainians. 

Putin has Studied his Hitler

Here also lies a root of today's Russian propaganda, which accuses the democratically elected government of Ukraine of Nazism and uses this insinuation as a pretext for forcibly invading the country, invented and presumably fed by an unreflective and unprocessed history. The Nazis, who invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 out of greed for power, are to be punished and avenged in Ukraine - with tricks copied from the Nazis: Using fake news to feign Ukrainian attacks in order to have a justification for attacking. So Putin has learned his Hitler: Assume that the victim of your aggressiveness is under attack, if necessary staged, then you have the right to destroy the state with your superior military machinery. Of course, Putin uses a propaganda trick because there would be no signs or reasons why Ukraine should attack Russia.

Even the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, which the Russians have taken up, is justified by an apparently deep-seated fear of external aggression - not surprising for a country that has been invaded from the West several times in history. This time, however, the tables are turned and the aggression goes from Russia to the south and west.

We don't know if Putin really believes what he is talking about, in any case his propaganda serves the dark stains of the Russian soul that characterize the thinking and feeling of many of his compatriots, who have little idea of history and its complexity and of the effect of collective traumas. In addition, Russia's own population has long been inundated with false news and manipulative propaganda. Dictators need stupid people as followers and also count on their stupidity; that is part of their impudence. 

Disillusionment

The sobering insight is: we have to change our ways and scale back our expectations of humanity's progress in reason. A world order based on the principles of non-violence, characterized by freedom and self-determination, can only exist to the extent that it is shared and respected by all concerned. It is enough for a ruler or a regime not to share these principles, but to subordinate them to its own striving for power, to undermine their validity and their effectiveness. In the long run, nonviolence will triumph over violence, but with infinite casualties. In the short term, Russia's arbitrary unilateral aggression means that the arms spiral must continue to go upward around the world and that we continue to need a balance of terror to prevent global nuclear war from breaking out.

In the combat zones in Ukraine, not only people are dying and not only material goods are being destroyed, but the order of values that mankind has painstakingly acquired and fought for over centuries is being attacked. The opportunity, however, lies in making ourselves aware of these values and in representing and defending them with commitment. We must not allow the level of humanity we have achieved to be thrown overboard by potentates flexing their muscles with the pathos of smear dictators and projecting their destroyed inner selves into brutal destruction in the outside world.

Collective processing of historical traumas is an indispensable basis for making it impossible for autocrats to play the piano of unprocessed collective emotions and to channel these energies in aggressive directions.