When Totalitarianism Comes, Will You Do the Right Thing?

It's not easy when survival is on the line…

I recently read something disturbing: When a person is about to drown, he will use any means possible to get to the surface…including pushing down on another person in order to get leverage to swim up. This reaction is so instinctive that he will even do it to a loved one.

I certainly hope none of us ever gets to put this to the test, but it does match reported human behaviors in other difficult circumstances. When survival is on the line, moral considerations often take a back seat.

Stories of people living under totalitarian systems are especially chilling. Such terrible circumstances cause people to do terrible things—for some, reluctantly, to survive; for others, because such circumstances bring out the worst in them.

We have not come close to the gray misery of Soviet Russia or Maoist China, but we are seeing the seeds of totalitarianism starting to sprout. The systemic reaction to covid throughout the West certainly gave us an acrid taste of what may be to come. This was not the kind of test that the oppressed millions underwent in the 20th century, but it was more than a hint.

It has long been a source of pride for me that when the little tests came, I stuck to my principles. I did not mask up, even when I was the only one out of a hundred or more. I did not lock down or follow the one-way signs down grocery store aisles. I did not take the poison jab.

But I also have to remind myself that I did not have much on the line. I was not in danger of losing my job. (In fact, I had already lost it due to other circumstances, and had pivoted to finishing my book and assuming all the domestic chores in my home.)

Others weren’t so lucky.

The gal checking masks at the front of Marshalls was told to do so, or she would lose her job. The worker who took the vaccine was told to do so or he would lose his job. This is part of the horror of totalitarianism. People are given the choice: comply or starve. Most people will choose to comply.

I had it easy by contrast. I am still proud of my stand, but the cost of standing by my convictions was far lower for me than for others.

Last night, I had a dream that reinforced this somewhat humbling notion…

I was one of ten people in a focus group. [I did a lot of these in my 20s when I lived in Los Angeles and needed quick and easy money, so they are a part of my psyche.]

The eleventh person—the person administering the session—was sitting to the right of the person directly across from me. The group was ethnically/racially diverse: the only other white male sat to my right.

As the session concluded, the administrator mentioned that there would be an opportunity for a focus group on another product afterwards. [I do not recall what the product was; I am not sure I even knew during the dream.] I told her that I wished to participate.

At that point, she cast her eyes down at the table and, somewhat reluctantly, told me that I was not eligible for that group. I asked why. Once again, she was evasive, but I could tell she was not happy about the situation. Suddenly, it dawned on me what was going on.

“Is he eligible?” I asked, referring to the guy on my right.

“No,” she said.

“Is everyone else?”

“Yes,” she replied sheepishly.

In the dream, I knew that, for essentially racist reasons, the opinions of white males were not wanted by the manufacturers of whatever product was being focus-grouped…and that this woman’s job left her no choice but to impose this preference.

(Note: racial issues are not my area of focus; indeed, I hate talking about anything race-related. But please also note that this is not some sort of paranoid white-supremacist fantasy—white males are being excluded from consideration and hiring in all sorts of industries, to increasing degrees across the country. But that was not actually the point of the dream…)

The point of the dream was this woman’s obvious dilemma. She did not like the policy she was told to implement, but she had to implement it in order to keep her job. That was the takeaway. I woke up with a feeling of sympathy for the position she was in.

More importantly, I came away with the sense that I need to be a bit more humble about the choices that people are forced to make in order to survive in totalitarian circumstances. To the extent that we all fall into broad categories based on our reactions to oppression, most of us are very much victims of that oppression. It is a cruel position to put any human in.

A few nights ago, I asked a friend of mine who works in law enforcement if there are any laws he would deem unjust and refuse to enforce. His answer gave me some hope, but the truth is, everyone who works in law enforcement is subject to his own set of perverse incentives. When the totalitarianism trail rolls into town, they are faced with hard choices—their jobs, pensions, family incomes, relationships with their fellows, and more are all on the line.

I think we can and should expect ourselves, and our fellows, to do the right thing. But we must also acknowledge that when a government (or any system) decides to ramp up the oppression, doing the right thing gets a lot harder.

We’re not going to change human nature or eliminate the exigencies of survival. Instead, our focus should be on tearing up the tracks before the totalitarianism train gets here.

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