Emancipation from the Systems of Control

Based on "Nordic Ideology" by Hanzi Freinacht

I’m reading “The Listening Society” and “Nordic Ideology” by Hanzi Freinacht¹ at the moment. I’ve written a lot of (draft?) blog posts starting with this sentence, so I’m not sure if this is news to you.²

The books centre around developmental theory.³ They have a lot of spicy takes on things like cognitive complexity,⁴ spiritual depth, cultural codes⁵ etc.

(I’m already feeling the pull to explain EVERYTHING, so let’s do a narrowing down statement next.)

One thing I found particularly interesting is the notion of different cultural stages of control. I feel drawn to write about this because I have a feeling that a lot of people might be stuck in control structures without realizing it.

Emancipating my readers? Presumptuous, but let’s give it a shot.

Stages of Control

The book presents four stages of control, cultural paradigms that follow one after the other. Over time the control gets subtler and encompasses more areas of life, enabling new levels of societal development. You are most likely stuck being controlled by one/some of these stages without realizing it.

We’ll be using the echo principle to analyze each level. There are two sides to each control dynamic, enforcers and victims. But, armed with the echo principle, we know that these sides co-reinforce each other. If you control others in a given control dynamic, you are more likely to also get controlled by that dynamic.

Stage 1: Fear

The first stage of control is based on fear. Fear-based control resides at the level of physical safety. This stage centres around threats and violence. Societies based on this system use corporal punishment to enforce behaviour, with enforcers cutting off hands if people steal.

This stage doesn’t scale very well, seeing as it only works when there’s enforcement nearby.⁶ There’s also a limited enforcement capacity, which in turn limits the domain of control.⁷ You can’t behead everyone burping in public or publicly lash litterers.⁸ Fear-based control is usually limited to things like murder, violent crime and property crime.⁹

The two co-reinforcing sides to the fear dynamic are:

• Controlling with hatred, aggression, rage, threats and violence

• Being controlled by fear, terror

You might be affected by this control dynamic if:

1. You live in fear

2. You control others using hatred, aggression, rage, threats and/or violence. In this case, you are likely fearing this as well, even if you aren’t in touch with this fear.

3. You believe others live in fear (classical projection)

4. You see a lot of hatred, aggression, rage, threats and/or violence in the behaviour of others¹⁰

Stage 2: Guilt

The second stage of control is based on guilt. Guilt-based control resides at the level of community, fitting in with society. This stage centres around honour codes, ethics, and morals. Societies based on this stage of control use abstract notions of rightness/wrongness and pureness/impureness to enforce behaviour, with priests telling people that they will go to hell if they steal.

This stage is internalized, which reduces the need for enforcers. You don’t need to constantly monitor and control people, instead, you let a priest condition them to control themselves. This increases the enforcement capacity by delegating the work to the people getting enforced. Increased enforcement capacity leads to an increase in the domain of control, growing it to include things like treating others nicely.

Let me quote from a book that is all about guilt-based control:

“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31)

This kind of commandment only works if people are controlled by internal factors. Imagine being a ruler and commanding everyone to love each other or you’ll kill them. Very unpractical to put an enforcer in every household.

The two co-reinforcing sides to the guilt dynamic are:

• Controlling with judgement, blame, moralizing

• Being controlled by guilt, neuroticism

You might be affected by this control dynamic if:

1. You feel guilty a lot, even when you haven’t hurt anyone.

2. You control others using judgement, blame and/or moralizing.¹¹ If you control others using guilt, you are likely to get controlled by guilt yourself.

3. You believe others feel guilty (classical projection)

4. You see a lot of judgement, blame and/or moralizing in the behaviour of others.¹²

Stage 3: Shame

The third stage of control is based on shame. Shame-based control resides at the level of the in-group, being liked by your peers. This stage centres around politeness, civilized behaviour, and respect. Societies based on this stage of control use social norms to enforce behaviour.¹³

Note that guilt/shame-based societies still use violence to enforce crime. As societies progress through later stages, remnants of the previous stages are left, even as the new paradigm takes the central stage. As such, I’m pretty sure most of my readers are more limited by social norms than police threatening violence.¹⁴

This stage is yet again more efficient than the previous one. To sustain fear, you need enforcers. To sustain guilt, you need priests. Shame is more distributed, something people force upon each other. And without shame-based control, our modern society wouldn’t function very well. People are interacting in close proximity and at scales that require things like personal hygiene, respecting personal space and not shouting offensive stuff at people.¹⁵

But the shame paradigm has a lot of downsides as well. Advertisers use shame in their messaging, in an attempt to control people. Shame and norms are slow to move, keeping old prejudices alive. And we tend to feel a lot of shame when it’s not really needed, such as when we have sex. I mean, no need for personal space there right?

The two co-reinforcing sides to the shame dynamic are:

• Controlling with contempt, disgust, disdain and/or ridicule

• Being controlled by shame and/or embarrassment

You might be affected by this control dynamic if:

1. You often feel shame, even when you haven’t hurt/bothered anyone else.

2. You control others using contempt, disgust, disdain and/or ridicule. If you control others by making them feel ashamed, you are likely to get controlled by shame yourself.

3. You believe others feel ashamed (classical projection)

4. You see a lot of contempt, disgust, disdain and/or ridicule in the behaviour of others.¹⁶

Stage 4: Jante

(The section title is named “Jante” after “Jantelagen”, the Swedish version of the “tall poppy syndrome”)

The fourth stage of control centres around avoiding the envy¹⁷ of others. Jante-based control operates at the level of self-actualization. Cultures operating at this level use envy, insincere criticism and subtle sabotage to enforce behaviour.

As societies develop and most people get their physical needs met, new kinds of inequality arise. In the most progressive countries, people are way more affected by social inequality rather than monetary inequality.¹⁸

Here I want to note two things in order to avoid misunderstandings:

1. Monetary inequality affects social inequality (and vice versa).

2. Social inequality is painful and causes a lot of suffering. Humans need physical contact, emotional support and strong connections. I have had fewer social connections in periods, especially in conjunction with moving cities, and I know how painful it can be. Being in a state of 0 social connections must suck a lot.

When societies get developed enough, self-actualization is held in high regard. This causes new tensions to arise, and success to become taboo. A lot of people suffer from feelings of envy (often expressed as righteous anger), and a deep insecurity about themselves. People start fixating on their own status, cultivating a carefully hidden shameful inner narcissism.

In the public sphere, accusations of ego and narcissism become commonplace. Even remarkably successful people self-diminish in order to be accepted, with most famous people and politicians adopting a laid-back self-deprecating stance.

At this stage of control, power gets ambiguous, and the mannerisms from the shame-culture are discarded. Gaudy expressions of wealth are passé, and expensive designer clothes are sold pre-ripped.¹⁹ The ambiguity and self-preserving implicitness of this entire dynamic makes it very hard to handle, slipping by like a shadow in your peripheral vision.

The two co-reinforcing sides to the shame dynamic are:

• Controlling with envy, jealousy, subtle sabotage and/or insincere critiscism

• Being controlled by reacting with self-sabotage, inner resistance and/or nascissism.

You might be affected by this control dynamic if:

1. You often get stuck, not achieving things because of inner resistance. You stress about success and prestige. You get anxious about what other people think of you.

2. You feel righteous anger towards successful people you don’t know.²⁰ You want your friends to succeed, but a little bit less than you do. You react poorly to newcomers that bring up ideas for discussion. You find yourself complaining about how narcissistic people are nowadays.

3. You believe others feel awkward sharing successes²¹ (classical projection)

4. You see a lot of subtle power play and status games in the behaviour of others. Note that humans in general do this A LOT²², so this isn’t as strong of a proxy as the other points.

Emancipation?

I recommend using the echo principle to figure out in what way you reinforce the things you struggle with. I occasionally struggle with shame, which means I should be very careful with ridiculing others, even when I’m tempted to.²³

It can be hard to figure out all the interlocking parts of the psychological domino chain implied by the echo principle. The good news is that you don’t have to do it on your own. Being radically honest allows you to talk about these things with others, or blog about them in public. And if that’s too much for you right now, you can always write about things in private journals.²⁴

Going out of your normal way of being allows you to gain new insights, as patterns appear. Just remember to write them down so they don’t get lost.

And once you have started figuring out how your personal co-reinforcing control patterns look, you can start getting out. Stop doing the things that keep you locked in²⁵, and start challenging yourself by doing things that you find difficult.

I’ve been working a lot with both shame and jante. I’ve been training away my shame response by being radically honest, taking nude swims in lakes, and singing while walking on populated forest paths. And the whole expressing attraction thing.

I’ve been working on jante by explicitly saying “I got an impulse to brag right now. May I?” and then meta-communicating about what the bragging dynamic feels like. It’s usually a bit meh, not as alive as doing the things themselves.

Well then. Best of luck with the emancipation.

Todiloo~

1. pseudonym/persona for sociologist Daniel Görtz and theory artist Emil Ejner Friis, if you care. I guess you don’t.

2. The book is a sequel to “The Listening Society”, and it’s a bit of a package deal, hard to explain without giving a ton of context, which hasn’t stopped me this far. The truth is that I feel uncertain about having the ability to represent the ideas coherently, and a strong urge not to mess them up. But here we go! (or is this another post stuck in the eternal draft?)

3. That society and people pass through different stages of development, and about the importance of enabling this process.

4. Based on the well-established ”Model of hierarchical complexity”

5. These are like operating systems for people. If you compare a present-day 25-year-old and a 25-year-old in the middle ages, you will find marked differences in their metaphysical assumptions, way of acting inh the world etc.

Since we can’t do footnote in footnote I’ll define metaphysics in line. Your metaphysics is how you think about yourself, the world, and the relationship between yourself and the world.

Do you think of yourself as a ghastly blob bopping around behind your eyes (separate from the world)? Are you a meat machine whose atomic arrangements produce actions? Are you part of the great global spiritual oneness, an aspect of god?

Oh god, this is another blog post, isn’t it?

6. Or, as stated in the book “no spear, no fear” :D

7. Domain of control= what things are controlled.

8. Even though it’s tempting

9. Property crimes include things like theft, burglary, intellectual property violations, piracy etc. These are always punished harshly, sometimes even more harshly than violent crimes. Which is whack. I guess that’s what happens when you draft legal systems based on the needs of nobility, landlords etc.

10. This might be an accurate interpretation, in which case I recommend switching social circles. This might also be a trapped prior.

11. “Oh, what have you done now? Dragged your messy feet on the floor I just cleaned? Don’t you care about me?”

12. Again, this might be an accurate interpretation, in which case I recommend switching social circles. This might also be a trapped prior.

13. I was tempted to write “frowning upon people that steal”, but I’ll leave the stage template and write something else. Wiehoo.

14. This might not be true if I have more adventurous readers. But for the big part of the population I’m fairly sure this holds.

15. A minority of the population is like this, and it can be annoying. Imagine if it was a majority. Society would collapse. Hmmm…

16. Again, this might be an accurate interpretation, in which case I recommend switching social circles. This might also be a trapped prior.

17. For more info, please regard this seminal work featuring contrapoints:

18. Salary becomes more about feeling appreciated than about making sure you get your basic physical needs met. This isn’t true for everyone, of course, and being unable to handle sudden expenses is of course very stressful. But for a big chunk of the population, the consequences of their socioeconomic situation are highly social/prestige in nature.

19. Though differentiable from poor people's clothing if you have the correct discernment. I guess. I don’t have a clue, but this would make more sense. Or maybe it’s a high form of countersignalling?

20. Fuck Kim Kardashian?

21. The narcissism accusation seems to be dependent on the moral outrage directed at people that can take joy in their achievements. Surely they must have a disorder that explains why they don’t feel as inhibited as I do?

22. For more reading, see impro or chimpanzee politics.

23. I made fun of a person yesterday. Long story, lots of built-up irritation.

24. Much less fun though

25. Old habits die hard, easier said than done. You will slip back again and again, but it’s just about keeping at it. (While not judging yourself for failing, rather keeping track of why you’re doing what you do.)