Dogma as Colonization
The use of dogma - meaning “a settled opinion, a principle as being firmly established” - is one of the foundational instruments of the method of psychological manipulation known as propaganda.
After the Second World War, and the Nazis’ dexterous use of propaganda to achieve the extermination of at least 6 million Jews in death camps, the word “propaganda” became a pejorative term, and not one that could be freely used to describe methods of coercive, fear-driven manipulation in a democratic society.
Recognizing the power of propaganda and admiring the way that the Third Reich had employed it to propagate unquestioningly compliant participants in mass genocide, Sigmund Freud’s American nephew and student, Edward Bernays rebranded it into the more politically and economically palatable industry of Public Relations.
Edwards Bernays
“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.”
Bernays, who became known as the Father of Public Relations, then went on to birth what is now the advertising and marketing behemoths, hell-bent on appropriating the individual’s agency over their own self worth, meaning and value – making them easier to control. Enter the age of the human reduced to the consumer.
Through all this, the use of dogma never wavered.
As such, dogma is the preferred Modus Operandi of the colonial-fascist mindset, with its emphasis on creating a dominant narrative wherein any differing, questioning, or - Goddess forbid - dissenting opinions are tantamount to treason.
Nowadays, we don’t have literal hangings or being burnt at the stake if one’s experience of consensus reality is at odds with the mainstream. But the Hammer of Witches is very much alive in things like public shaming, cancelling, censoring, having your livelihood, financial security and even physical safety threatened. All of this seems to be increasingly accepted, and even applauded, standards of conduct.
Hitler would most certainly approve of all this censorious disapproving. Which moves one to remember that without dissenting voices, we have totalitarianism.
I’m reminded here of the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, the biographer of Voltaire, who summarized his work and philosophy on freedom of speech and democracy with the following (often misattributed to Voltaire himself):
“I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Embodying this is embodying the essential paradox of existence.
To emphasize, dogma, through the machine of PR - which, in our digital age can be disseminated as liberally as the spraying of toxic fertilizer over acres of soil/soul degrading monoculture cash crops - is one of the colonizer’s calling cards. It seeks to dominate through fear, coercion, a sense of helplessness and loss of meaning.
Its rallying cry is the polarizing call of the righteous and good against the bad and wrong, the ones whose souls have a different experience of what it means to be human, of what the world and life and death mean.
It is a literal dehumanizing of the other.
Dogma can be spotted through the use of repetitive slogans. This is the fertilizer with which the PR/Propaganda machine instills fear and creates a compliant monoculture.
“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
Repetitive, relentless dogma abhors biodiversity – which is the soul’s Eden, and the fundament of thriving community.
So today, I’d like to ask you:
How does dogma feel in your body?
When someone comes towards you blindly brandishing their bludgeon of dogma, forcing you towards making meanings that are not yours, how does that feel?
To me it feels like an assault, a violation.
What would power feel like if it was not used to control through domination, fear and the fictions of unworthiness and scarcity?
To me, it would feel open, expansive, nourishing.
The indigenous mindset, the esoteric mindset, the animistic mindset, the alchemical mindset sees all that is - including art, science and the human being as a living process – antithesis to the immutable monolith of dogma. A process that is spontaneously an involution and an evolution.
It is the alchemical resolution of opposites; a spiraling, a gradual revealing of Mystery: the unfurling of a flower, the cycles of cells, seasons and time, the shedding skin of a snake.
Inner – and outer - decolonization starts with learning how to listen to your body and honoring their answer. Often, this can feel dangerous, especially when it goes against the grain of dominant propagandized, polarized dogma.
But the Earth, and the emergent, wild Mystery of the enslaved feminine principle – which makes space for the complex systems of biodiverse paradox that we are - needs us to engage in this. These are no longer romantic abstractions – it is the very soul of the world, the Anima Mundi, speaking to us through our soul-bodies.
Listen.
“To know what objective truth is, we must investigate with an open mind, which means fluttering to both extremes, to both sides of an issue to the bitter end. There must be no bias toward any outcome lest our narrow-minded view prevent us from perceiving the truth that is right before our eyes. The true scientific method must include all possibilities for the proper revelation to take place; otherwise it is prone to corruption and a personal or political agenda.”