INSTITUTIONAL DENIAL ABOUT THE DARK SIDE OF LAW SCHOOL

[hitanerve]

It is always fascinating for the outsider to read of the preparation of innocent young men and women to participate in routinized institutionalized violence, which is -- after all -- the essence of law school training. The system requires, first, the dehumanization of the self; then, by natural extension, the dehumanization of everyone else. This is the key to survival in a world where lives must be disposed of as cheaply and quickly as possible.

It was Freud who first described the marriage between sensuality and organized violence -- e.g., the law school thinking way. "Libido" refers not only to the sexual drive, but to all aggressive acts. In his dual instinct theory, Freud stated that libido and aggression come under broader biological principles Eros (love) and Thanatos (death and self-destruction). More recent psychological theorists suggest that war -- including a nation's insatiable hunger for military power and the passion for armaments -- arises from a deep-seated fear of death, a fear that is, naturally, basic to the human condition. This death fear creates the paradoxical situation where institutionalized murder (war, capital punishment, "right to bear arms," mob violence, legitimized military statism) grows out of something known as "radical pain."

According to this theory, there are three types of pain:

- Physical pain (old age, sickness, and dying);
- Emotional pain (being away from a loved one, being forced to be with people one hates); and
- Radical pain (knowledge -- or fear of knowledge -- of the intransigence of life, and one's own inevitable move towards chaos and entropy).

In other words, the lunacy of a Hitler or a Pol Pot (or even America's own militarists) grows out of an unacknowledged and unrecognized terror of the inevitable, the most inevitable fact of life. Namely, death.

This is the post that drove budlaw nuts! LOL!

[obb.]

Me too would have gone nuts

[AriannaHufington]

youyou's posts are amazing! I am saving this thread and printing it out as well!

[i]

youyou's posts are amazing! I am saving this thread and printing it out as well!

You better do it fast, cuz I heard this thread is being targeted for elimination ..

[giddyamericana]

The most interesting and most promising aspect of the book is perhaps Ritzer's analysis of the extent to which the rationality of the system imposed by McDonaldization spawns irrational tendencies. For example, the replacement of human by nonhuman technology can be unbeneficial. The worker or the employee is often forced to learn new technologies, master new techniques, keep up with upgraded software, figure out new functions, and memorize new numbers -- all of which means that business often has to pay high prices in order to operate efficiently. In addition, the types of jobs that ensue from the McDonaldization of society are jobs that require almost no skill or thinking from the worker. Whether it be a student serving food at McDonald's or a checker scanning barcodes at a supermarket, there is an increasing dependence upon and subordination to the machine: "Perhaps the ultimate irrationality of McDonaldization is the possibility that people could come to lose control over the system--that it could some day come to control them. Already, these rational systems control many aspects of people's lives."

In the rationalized settings imposed by McDonaldization people be-have not as human beings but as functions of the system. A McDonaldized society is not just a panoptic society a la Foucault -- that is, a society that is structured around quasi-utilitarian principles and based on self-policing -- but also a dehumanizing society: "though it at least appears that people still control them, these rational systems can spin beyond the control of even those who occupy the highest positions within those systems." Because red tape can render bureaucracies increasingly inefficient and unpredictable, individuals become both confused and counterproductive. The anger and frustration generated by the inadequacies of nonhuman technologies can even lead people to undercut or sabotage the operation of such technologies.

The Situationists saw this revolution coming long ago. The French philosophical movement that inspired the 1968 Paris riots predicted what might happen to a society driven by consumer capitalism. The Situationists intuited how hard it would be to hang on to one's core self in a "society of spectacle," a world of manufactured desires and manipulated emotions. Guy Debord, the leader of the Situationist movement, said: "Revolution is not showing life to people, but making them live." This instinct to be free and unfettered is hard-wired into each one of us. It's a drive as strong as sex or hunger, an irresistible force that, once harnessed, is almost impossible to stop.

[yupppie]

... "society of spectacle," a world of manufactured desires and manipulated emotions ...

os6ama is the answer

[libor]

I remember it so well when I started law school how each and every day when I'd get out of the building I'd feel like I had returned to life again and how I wanted to kiss each and everyone on the train, on the street, it was just like everybody was a good person that deserved to be kissed ... I had never ever felt like that before, it was just like even the-black-dude-clearly-and-unequivocally-a-thug was a good person -- that is how disgusting, despicable was everyone inside that building where I had chosen to spend three years of my life!

The hell students go through during law school creates in them a false sense of guilt which may well turn people into criminals. Of the defense mechanisms, psychoanalysts have put forward displacement as their number one choice for explaining crime. A few criminologists have explored the others, most notably, reaction formation, but the list remains largely unexhausted because, essentially, the ideas are untestable. In Displacement, both Id and Superego are so strong and Ego is so weak that person settles for second best or any available substitute (something better than nothing). In Reaction-Formation both Id and Superego are so strong that person does the opposite of both, sometimes identifying with aggressors.

In telling Freud about their early youth, particularly before puberty, people who have afterwards often become very respectable have informed him of forbidden actions which they committed at that time. Analytic work brought the surprising discovery that such deeds were done principally because they were forbidden, and because their execution was accompanied by mental relief for their doer. His sense of guilt was at least attached to something. These people might be described as criminals from a sense of guilt. The criminal has done wrong in order to make sense of "an oppressive feeling of guilt of which he did not know the origin" (See Freud's "Criminals from a sense of guilt," 1916)

[coordinated tie]

Wow, libor, a very interesting perspective!

[critical mass]

Your username is also very interesting, tie!

[cashback]

In 1943 A.H. Maslow listed the basic components of a generic "authoritarian personality"

Maslow was an idiot. He stated that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower needs have to be satisfied before higher needs can be attended to. It is debatable that needs fulfillment occurs in as linear a fashion as Maslow presents (or that Maslows needs structure is entirely accurate). Also, higher needs tend to be more complex and vague in what qualifies as need satisfaction.

Physiological Needs: Maslow speculates that without satisfying basic needs (food, shelter, health) one cannot achieve higher levels of development. This generally makes sense, but the history of starving artists and successful artists who tanked after they became wealthy is important to note.

Safety Needs: Maslow speculates that without enviromental stability (security, safety, consistency), you can't progress to higher levels of development. Neuroscience research would appear to support this, as higher stress contributes to higher cortisol levels, which impair memory and thinking functions. However, low stress can also lead to obesity and cardiac degeneration. The lazier and weaker you become, the more stressful the most minimal tasks and stimuli become.

Love Needs: Maslow speculates that discontentment in your connections with others stalls development. Whether the resolution of love needs comes through good relationships and/or learning to be more internally fulfilled is a question Maslow does not answer. But history would suggest many advanced minds had few relationships so this stage would seem to be more about resolving internal perceptions than as a call for measuring/achieving happiness by quality of external relationships.

Esteem Needs: Maslow speculates that until you develop a good skill set (talent, trade, expertise that you excel at) you will be unable to develop further as an individual (much less reliably support yourself financially). This could mean being a good musician, painter, doctor, carpenter, etc. On some level this stage also requires getting over the need to be appreciated for that skill, internally and/or externally. Even if you develop a skill, you still might be hung up on the need to have other people validate you or you might internally doubt yourself. Then again, you might not be appreciated, or appreciate yourself because your skills are still too undeveloped.

Self-Actualization: Maslow speculates that individual development is the pinnacle of existence, this means pursuing a career/life that really fits who you are and want to be internally (not based on external and societal expectations). The self actualized person is free from superficial concerns and is internally honest. This is unfortunately a never realizable ideal.