We are often surprised: how do people who do not differ in intelligence, ingenuity or moral and volitional qualities end up in high positions? And there is nothing strange here: the law of negative selection came into play in their case.
Inferiority complex
In search of an answer to the question of why people who can hardly be called the "conscience of the nation" come to power, let us turn to psychology. According to Sigmund Freud, the desire to rule is one of the types of neurotic insanity arising from a feeling of helplessness and fear of the outside world. Moreover, the Austrian psychoanalyst claims that a powerful person needs a victim, which he finds in a subordinate, forming a sadomasochistic couple with him.
Alfred Adler writes that at the heart of the desire for power lies such a pathological phenomenon as an "inferiority complex." The human psyche, getting rid of traumatic experiences, for example, constant humiliation, triggers the mechanism of overcompensation, which is expressed in the obsessive need to have superiority over others.
However, according to Adler, such a desire is often unsatisfied, and a person who has attained power begins to project all his complexes onto others, giving rise to new problems.
Another classic, Erich Fromm, noted that “psychologically, the thirst for power is rooted not in strength, but in weakness. It shows the inability of the individual to withstand alone and live by his own strength. The greater the desire for power, the more the individual's dependence on others is manifested."
Promotional video:
Natural selection
Darwin's theory of "natural selection", applicable in biology, successfully characterizes the model of the social system of our society. The main task in a highly competitive environment is to survive. Sometimes at any cost. In this case, the moral aspects that hinder the individual's adaptability to new conditions fade into the background, and often even turn into rudiments.
The sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, who was the first to use the term "negative selection", associates the breakdown of the personality of people striving for power with the loss of "sensual culture." In his opinion, "the need for pleasure disturbs the mental and moral balance so much that the mind and nervous system of many people cannot withstand the enormous stress."
Degradation can be resisted only with strong convictions and moral principles. But if a person does not have a moral yardstick, there are no ideas about rights and norms, then what can keep him from neglecting the interests of others? “Nothing but desires and lust,” Sorokin replies.
On hook
Modern sociologists, investigating the phenomenon of “negative selection” of power, come to the conclusion that this is not so much degradation as an artificially conducted personnel policy, which was successfully tested by the special services in its time. In the practice of special services, the method of putting an agent on the hook has been used for a long time, when the latter is presented with compromising evidence, and with it the methods of manipulation.
In politics, the place of an agent is taken by a corrupt official or a businessman with a criminal past. The presence of incriminating evidence makes him manageable and obedient. It is hardly possible to speak about the moral or professional qualities of such a "leader". Even more indicative in this respect are the puppet governments that came to power after the “color” revolutions.
To make the downline worse
“Negative selection” was deliberately carried out by many rulers, and behind them by lower officials in the realities of the supreme power. The task is to weaken the lower hierarchy. By this, the officials tried to kill two birds with one stone: to be in an advantageous position in comparison with careless subordinates and to eliminate possible competitors in the struggle for a place in the sun.
According to Dmitry Sedov of the Strategic Culture Foundation, these processes are characteristic of many totalitarian management systems, including the Soviet one.
The spirit of collectivism
Despite the fact that individual goals come to the fore in negative selection, it is more of a collectivist phenomenon. The one who has reached power is no longer so much the master of his personal interests as a hostage of the system that promoted him. With the dominance of liberal values in society, the collectivism of "negative selection" manifests itself weakly, but under the conditions of totalitarianism, it is fully revealed.
According to Pitirim Sorokin, "in periods of acute social cataclysms, the most adapted are not the best, but the average, capable of merging with the mass in its instinctive motives and impulses not distilled by reason." Such conditions favor the emergence of a dictator who, faced with the choice between rejection of moral principles or a political fiasco, prefers the former.
Lust for power
According to the Nobel laureate in economics Friedrich Hayek, the main slogan of any totalitarian regime is “the end justifies the means”. He identifies three criteria, subject to which a dictator can be successfully realized:
1. The more educated and intelligent the people are, the more difficult it is to achieve unanimity from them. Consequently, the dictator must seek support in the strata of the population with a low moral and intellectual level and, if possible, impose primitive instincts and tastes on the widest possible strata of the masses.
2. It is better to seek support among gullible and obedient people - those who are ready to accept any value system. State your views often and loudly.
3. It is easier for people to unite on the basis of a negative rather than a positive program, therefore it is necessary to constantly appeal to human nature.
One of the American economists, assessing the possibility of being in power by people who are disgusted with the power itself, pessimistically noted that the likelihood of this is approximately equal to the probability that a person known for his kindness will get a job as a plantation overseer.