Refuse to Be Demoralized

One of the great mysteries of my work as a psychotherapist and coach is why so many people act in ways that cause them unnecessary suffering and don’t do what it takes to live their best lives.

We certainly know what we should do and it is very easy to give someone else advice(go to the gym! quit smoking! go to school!) but we seem to have a hard time doing it ourselves.

Apparently, about 67% of people who sign up for the gym never go.

Not only is the cause mysterious, but so, too, is the cure. People are easily motivated into self-destructive behaviors (shall I list them? drugs, alchohol, online gambling, doom scrolling, internet porn, etc.). But to get them to do something that will help them feel great about themselves, have peace of mind, find fulfillment and make the world a better place? That’s not so easy.

Endless tales have spoken of human frailty in this regard. This is nothing new. Read Pinocchio.* Are we just weak, lazy, venal, neurotic, hopeless? That’s too simple of an answer.

In trying to figure out the why and the how, I am reminded of a statement by Charlie Munger, the partner of Warren Buffett who said, anytime there is a big effect, there are multiple causes.

In this post, I won’t go through all the hypotheses on this question, all or many of which probably contribute to the truth.

I will only highlight one contributing cause that I believe is particularly salient in this moment.

A word that we can use to define the state that keeps a person stuck is “demoralization.” Here’s what a demoralized person looks like. . .

Harry feels horrible about himself. He is convinced he is a screw-up. In my business, we call this shame. This leads him to fear that no matter what he does he will fail, so he avoids trying. This proves the point. He uses bad habits to avoid, like the ones mentioned above, numbing himself rather than facing the challenges of life. This makes him feel worse about himself. He is convinced nothing will work out for him, and the world is against him, so why bother trying. He could develop some kind of skill, but that would take learning, and convinced he can’t learn and that he’ll fail, he watches internet porn instead. When he’s finished, he feels like his brain is rotting. He eats some crap, lays in his bed, and is completely - demoralized.

We may look at this and say he is doing this to himself. But what if there were systemic forces that contributed to his demoralization?

Though I said I would focus on one contributing cause, I’ll add a related one. Capitalism. Capitalism profits off of human weakness, or our susceptibility to develop habits and addictions. Whether we are talking about tobacco, alcohol, sugar, or pain killers, corporations have profited mightily from our dopamine craving brains irrespective of the harm and death caused by these substances. There are incentives to take advantage of these human tendencies in order to make profits.

But the one I want to focus on at the moment is the idea of a “demoralization” process.

What if there are systemic forces that are very powerful right now that “profit” from the demoralization of the masses? If we look at what was implied in the writings of Sun Tzu in his classic, The Art of War, written 2500 years ago, he claimed that the conquering of a people would be most successful if it didn’t require battles and death. The plan was to conquer a people through psychological means, that is, to break their will, or demoralize them.

The Soviets codified this plan to undermine the United States. So let’s take a look at the system they created in order to accomplish this. Much of this comes from the writings of a KGB operative who defected. As this was written forty years ago, and it seems so pertinent today, one could make a good argument that this appears rather believable.

The goal of the Soviets was to dupe the masses into doing things to their own disadvantage. The phrase that has been possibly attributed to Lenin to describe what he was trying to create was “useful idiots.”

To achieve the desired effect, the first goal is to make idiots out of normal people and DIVIDE them, before turning the people into a homogenized mass of useful and
united idiots. This is the means of manipulating people into inaction and submission. Inaction and submission are pretty good descriptions of the demoralization syndrome I described above.

Here are some of the systemic techniques for achieving this:

1.Cover with ridicule all of the valid traditions in the country.
2. Implicate the leaders in criminal affairs and turn them over to
the scorn of their populace at the right time;
3. Disrupt the work of the government by every means;
4. Accept the aid of the lowest and most despicable individuals in this plan.
5. Spread disunity and dispute among the citizens.

6. Be generous with promises and rewards to collaborators and
accomplices.

7. Corrupt the young. Make them superficial and enfeebled.
8. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on
controversial issues of no importance.
9. Destroy people's faith in their national leaders by holding the
latter up for contempt, ridicule and disgrace.
10. Always preach democracy, but seize power as fast and as
ruthlessly as possible.
11. By encouraging government extravagances, destroy its credit,
produce years of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.
12. Cause breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety,
self-restraint, faith in the pledged word.

Sound familiar? Need I provide examples for everyone of these that have been happening in our country for many years?

It is clear that there is a human potential for shame, avoidance, bad habits, negativity, incuriousity, and self-neglect. I see it all the time. But these potentialities can be exacerbated and amplified by those in power in order to control. If you can disempower through demoralization, you don’t have to fight to win.

It may be that what feels like a personal failing may be impacted by these systemic techniques in order to disempower, cause inaction, and foster submission.

Call me no conspiracy theorist. I won’t conflate proximity or correlation with cause. Human stuckness has been around for thousands of years, and as I said, what I am calling the demoralization syndrome, which has gone by many other names, I’m sure has many causes. But we also know that in the most prosperous nation in the world, we have higher levels of despair than ever.

Is it chicken or egg? Are those in power taking advantage of our pre-existing demoralization or have they been creating it? I’ll contend the conditions were ripe, we were already there, and then these techniques have been used, and are increasingly used to deepen and worsen our demoralization. The danger is that those who are capable of resisting are increasingly demoralized.

So, when I work every day to get people unstuck, it is not simply for them to have better lives. It is to save the world from the plutocrats and kleptocrats who want to have all the power and money for themselves.

I get it. There’s alot of shit going on in the world right now that can bring you down.

Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get demoralized.

Remember the words of John Lennon in his great song Working Class Hero.

Best,

Dr. B

*Pinocchio has determined he is not going to the land of endless candy and will go to school instead. His friends convince him otherwise. He goes to the land of endless candy again, and gets turned into a donkey again. It happens over and over.