As anticipated in the government’s schedule, Euro 2016, the Olympics, and the August sun were enough to relegate social issues to the background. It is clear that idealists and the outraged have lost a battle. Nuit Debout may have fizzled out, but should we consider the occupations of public spaces and spring protests as another futile effort? The answer depends on our ability to learn and return stronger in the autumn, and to be more aware when it’s time to elect a new leader.
There is at least one thing this major social movement, punctuated by the physical violence of the CRS and the moral violence of the 49-3, has taught us: there exists in France a system of social domination so powerful and self-assured that its representatives no longer even pretend to care about democracy.
Anyone is free to believe that the most harmful person to our country is named Mohamed and drives refrigerated trucks, or that he is named Manuel and is driving France into the abyss. For an avoidable massacre on the Promenade des Anglais, how many avoidable deaths occur in the beds of our underfunded hospitals?
Unmasking
From Juncker to Valls, including Hollande and Sarkozy, the indifference of the dominant political classes towards the inequalities generated by ultra-liberal logic is more evident than ever. These reforms, led by a socialist government elected to implement the opposite policy, prove that this indifference is not a matter of political color but is rooted in the very structures of the Fifth Republic.
Even the speeches of a brilliant polymath like Frédéric Lordon remain on the periphery of certain crucial questions. The will of the citizen is hindered by a structural problem, certainly, but before being implemented by institutions, any policy is first decided by individuals. Thus, to the institutional structures cherished by Lordon, we must add the psychological or cultural structures once dear to Foucault and Lévi-Strauss.
Since a politician like Manuel Valls’s policies clearly do not rely on popular will or what he forgot to learn in his History degree, they likely stem from personal motivations and influences that we need to better understand.
Unfortunately, as unique as he may be, the Prime Minister is just one embodiment of the malady that afflicts our society from the top. He is a product of his time—a highly successful one, but replaceable. Cut off his head, and a hundred more will grow. The problem lies not with the individuals themselves but with the system that shapes and selects them.
To inscribe the struggle for democracy and social justice in the long term, beyond football and weather contingencies, beyond the constant media noise, it is essential to understand the psychological dynamics of the dominant class.
“He who knows his enemy as he knows himself will not be defeated in a hundred battles. He who knows himself but not the enemy will win one and lose one. He who knows neither his enemy nor himself is always in danger.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Are the Gauls still indomitable?
Social dominance is a phenomenon that emerges spontaneously through competition among individuals of the same species. This competition is inevitable when living conditions and resources deteriorate, and humans are certainly no exception. It is a natural principle that has always structured human societies and deeply shaped how our brains and bodies function. In humans, the thirst for dominance persists well beyond the satisfaction of biological needs, hence the ancient proverb “man is a wolf to man.”
However, dominance hierarchies are never irreversible. As Étienne de la Boétie wrote in his timeless Discourse on Voluntary Servitude nearly five centuries ago, they exist only as long as men tolerate being kept in subordination. Contemporary primatologists like Bernstein and Rowell echo this, considering that a dominance relationship is established only when an individual or group of individuals ceases to defend their rights or pursue their aspirations after being “defeated” by another individual or group.
In other words, the psychological dynamics at work in the middle and lower classes play an equally important role in maintaining the status quo we deplore. Although their symptoms differ, Manuel and Mohamed are together victims of the same alienating and deadly logic: that of dominance and subordination, which must be distinguished from other hierarchical constructions like prestige or leadership.
The Desire for Dominance and Its Justification
Today, a professor at Harvard, Jim Sidanius initiated a resurgence of research on social dominance in humans in the early 2000s. In his most cited work, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression, he describes how human societies are structured around the problem of dominance—how the behaviors and beliefs of those who reinforce or seek to legitimize dominance interact with those who seek to combat and deconstruct it. His conclusions are partly based on the analysis of the SDO scale (Social Dominance Orientation), which measures the propensity to justify social inequalities and desire a stable hierarchical order. Respondents indicate their agreement (from 1, not at all, to 7, completely) with about fifteen statements such as:
- Some people are simply inferior to others.
- To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on others.
- The country would be better off if we cared less about social inequalities.
- It is probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and others are at the bottom.
- Lower groups should stay in their place.
Etc., etc. (PDF)
During my own research on social hierarchies and the brain (PDF), I was stunned by the results of young French and Swiss students on this questionnaire and by the extremely high scores observed in some. My naivety took a hit, my optimism too, and this awareness led to many readings and reflections.
Historically, the SDO scale is akin to the ” F scale” developed in 1947 by philosopher Theodor Adorno to measure the aspiration to fascism in Western societies. While the F scale is no longer widely used today, scientific literature on SDO expands each year (about 6000 articles refer to it).
A Clinical Picture Mixing Racism, Sexism, Lack of Empathy, and Environmental Indifference
Firstly, individuals scoring high on the SDO scale are on average more racist and sexist than others (PDF). The link between SDO and racism persists among individuals from minority ethnicities, just as the link between SDO and sexism persists among women. Thus, even though white men generally score higher (the so-called invariance hypothesis; PDF), the psychological mechanisms of dominance are active in all members of our society.
Additionally, Sandra Duarte, Michel Dambrun, and Serge Guimond—French researchers specializing in SDO—have shown that the relationship between legitimizing social hierarchies and sexist or racist prejudices persists even when analyses are adjusted for left-right political positioning (PDF). In other words, the tool captures a phenomenon that transcends our traditional political categories.
More interestingly, individuals with high SDO also tend to experience less empathy, defined as “the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and perceive what they feel.” This is particularly true when the other belongs to a different social group (an exogroup; PDF). Since the absence of empathy and SDO mutually reinforce over time (PDF), one cannot help but think of the consequences of Manuel Valls’s recent remarks that ” explaining jihadism is already excusing it.”
Finally, it has recently been demonstrated that those who legitimize dominance relations between individuals and groups are also more likely to legitimize human dominance over other living species. This is evidenced by a large study from 2013 showing that SDO clearly correlates with numerous “environmental attitudes”: individuals or populations scoring high on this scale are less likely to believe in human-caused climate change and promote a more utilitarian relationship with nature. If Donald Trump knows something about this, the socialists governing us are no less responsible, as evidenced by the death of Rémi Fraisse at the Sievens dam or their obstinacy in the Notre-Dame-des-Landes case.
The “Legitimizing Myths”
The effects mentioned here are not exhaustive, but they help us understand why sexism, racism, lack of empathy, and environmental indifference often go hand in hand: there is an underlying belief in all these attitudes that social inequalities and dominance relations are natural or even desirable. These are known as legitimizing myths.
Today, the most powerful of these myths is probably that of meritocracy, which stipulates that the dominant “deserve” their position of power and the advantages that come with it, notwithstanding the disintegration of social mobility. But there are others, more insidious, such as adherence to social Darwinism (the idea that society will improve if the strongest have power), the naturalization of social hierarchies (the idea that some are genetically programmed to dominate and others to obey), or cultural representations like “religiosity is a more primitive attitude than atheism,” “egalitarianism is a utopia,” “true democracy is impossible in the current world,” “people are stupid,” etc., etc.
At the societal level and in the long term, the frequency and intensity of high SDO signs among our leaders should alert us to the very low ideological and intellectual diversity of the political class. This uniformity results primarily from the endogamy within the ruling classes (see Ghettos du Gotha, by Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon; PDF). Unfortunately, in the absence of a revolution renewing the entire political class, only republican education and evolving mentalities can combat this vicious circle.
What to Do?
To move forward, we must first stop turning away from politics because current politicians no longer represent us. As philosopher Herbert Marcuse writes, “the ability to freely elect masters does not abolish either masters or slaves,” but abstaining from voting and dismissing this issue that concerns us all leaves the way open for the most mediocre masters and embraces kakistocracy.
Raising awareness of the importance of environmental and developmental factors that reinforce existing social hierarchies and/or facilitate social submission is also crucial. A study in France demonstrated the link between SDO and belief in genetic determinism of behavior, while understanding basic sociological principles can reduce scores (PDF). To fill these gaps, reading books by Jared Diamond such as Guns, Germs, and Steel (Pulitzer Prize 1998) or the shorter and magnificent essay by Henri Laborit Praise of Flight, which was also adapted into a film in Alain Resnais’s My American Uncle (watch for free on YouTube), is highly recommended.
The psychological mechanisms that allow brash individuals like Manuel Valls to seduce France are actually at work in each of us. Among them, Leon Festinger’s famous ” cognitive dissonance“—whereby our beliefs adjust a posteriori to the actions we take—features prominently. To grasp the essence of this idea, a concrete example can be useful.
A deserving and well-intentioned graduate of a prestigious school enters a large company. After cutting his teeth on a few unimportant projects, he quickly climbs the ladder and soon finds himself forced to make decisions contrary to his initial value system, whether to keep his job or advance his career. Laying off productive elements, speculating on raw materials, avoiding corporate taxes, etc.: so many decisions that—while delighting his shareholders—undoubtedly exacerbate the social inequalities he might have denounced in high school.
This tension—or dissonance—between our values and behaviors results in a certain mental and emotional discomfort that calls for either modifying the behaviors in question (e.g., resigning) or modifying the values causing the guilt and discomfort. We frequently observe a shift in attitude toward social hierarchy, somewhere between ages 25 and 40, such that once-condemned dominance relationships are gradually considered legitimate and natural. There is a reversal in the relationship between belief and action that few individuals are willing to acknowledge, although the phenomenon is universally recognized by psychologists and applies equally to those who rise in political, academic, or financial spheres.
Of course, this transition is not without doubts, but being usually accompanied by a refocusing of the social reference group, it generally comes to fruition. The lure of gain and desire for material comfort also play a crucial role, compensating for submission to the system as a whole.
Fighting for a fairer society thus requires the courage to argue with those who contribute to injustice without necessarily realizing it. And then it requires the intelligence to reconcile. If we want to prevent the inner conflicts caused by hierarchical success from systematically resolving by increased legitimization of existing dominance relations, it is essential to maintain communication with those whose fingers are caught in the gears.