Pride, Prejudice and Paranoia -

Dismantling the Ideology of Domination

Introduction -- Five Forms of Prejudice and Domination

No one who lives in today's world can claim to be unaware of the existence of prejudice, discrimination and domination which have become such pervasive features of our experiential landscape. Millions of people of diverse ethnicities have found themselves unwilling targets of discrimination or outright abuse from adherents to a racist ideology. Millions of women, again of diverse ethnicities the world over, have found themselves born and raised in societies in which deeply ingrained sexist prejudices create subtle and not-so-subtle patterns of devaluation and oppression towards women. Racism and sexism are the two best-known of these ideologies of domination that, like a virus pandemic, spread increasing social disruption, conflict, xenophobia, suspiciousness, fear and violence in societies infected by them. Because of the similarity in the logic and psychology of these different forms of prejudice, it makes sense to consider them as alternate expressions of the same underlying dynamics; analogous to the way an infectious disease may manifest in a number of different though parallel symptoms.

Others have pointed to the ubiquity of domination and prejudice, manifesting in the different arenas. Riane Eisler, the American historian of culture, has spoken of the "dominator society", which came into being with the invasions of the patriarchal Kurgan pastoralists into Old Europe about six thousand years ago, displacing the matricentric "partnership society" that was the norm for village culture throughout the Neolithic (Eisler, 1987). Irenus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the Austrian human ethologist, has written of the "suspicion society" (Misstrauensgesellschaft) which we have developed; he argues that our biological potentials towards both competition and cooperation have been more or less taken over by cultural ideologies which magnify separative and antagonistic predispositions (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1994). Not only human inter-group relations, but the basic attitude of humans towards the rest of the world has been infected by this virus of domination. The ecologist David Ehrenfeld has written of the "arrogance of humanism", according to which humans in the Western industrialized world have tended to assume without question that their technological superiority justifies the domination and exploitation of nature, in order to provide limitless access to material abundance (Ehrenfeld, 1978).

While there are other forms of domination as well, in this essay I wish to explore certain basic parallels between five major patterns that seem to have become ubiquitous throughout modern, industrialized societies. Four of these involve prejudicial and dominating behavior of one group of human beings toward another group or groups: racism or ethnocentrism; sexism and the oppression of women; class prejudice and discrimination; nationalism and xenophobia. The fifth pattern is the dominating attitude and behavior of human beings towards other animals and non-human nature in general; -- what eco-philosphers call "anthropocentrism", and what I have called the "humanist superiority complex" (Metzner, 1994). Several other writers have pointed out the similarities between sexism, racism and human "speciesism", especially toward other animals (Nash, 1989; Singer, 1975). Over a hundred years ago both Marx and Engels linked their critique of the ideology of industrial capitalism, the exploitation and domination of labor by capital, with the parallel domination of women, of other ethnic groups and of nature (Lerner, 1986; O'Connor, 1988).

The underlying logic, or better -- illogic, of each of these patterns of dominator behavior is that one group of humans (or humans in general), assumes the superiority of their group over others not of that group. From that position of assumed superiority flow discriminatory, exploitative and dominating behaviors. The assumption of superiority is known as arrogance: it is a form of prejudice , since it is a pre-judgement, formed prior to direct perception or contact with the others, and not based on evidence of real superiority. On the basic of this assumed superiority, the self-identified group then feels that it has the right, or even the duty, to manage, control, use, exploit, dominate or even exterminate, the others.

The destructive and socially divisive effects of racist, sexist, classist and nationalist forms of prejudice and discrimination are too well known and amply documented to need much argument or documentation. The arrogant assumption of male superiority gives free rein to the sexist oppression of women in patriarchal societies and institutions, and fails to restrain the continuing violence against women in most modern societies. Racist attitudes and beliefs undergird the long and brutal history of slavery and genocide, as well as the more subtle and insidious forms of discrimination in economic and employment relations. Class prejudice has provided the ideological justification for the economic exploitation of the working poor, the associated violent supression of workers' attempts to organize, and the maintainance of egregious injustice, poverty and social degradation. Nationalist and xenophobic prejudices have provided the motivation and justification for imperialist wars of aggression, the predatory exploitation of colonialism, and the take-over of democratic states by fascistic dictatorships. The domination and exploitation of nature by humans, which now threatens the viability of the entire biosphere, is based on a precisely parallel arrogant assumption of human superiority, that ignores any ethical or moral considerations or responsibility to non-human life (Metzner, 1993).

I propose, in this paper, to present a heuristic model of how dominator behavior patterns develop, both ideologically and psychologically. Other writers have amply demonstrated the irrationality of the ideology of prejudice and domination. Nevertheless, for all the philosophical deconstruction, these patterns persist, indeed seem to be getting stronger. So the question remains, how do these patterns of belief and behavior actually develop, and how can they be changed? In other words, the ideological dismantling needs to be supplemented by psychological analysis. My starting point was the question of the difference between patriotism and nationalism: how do the apparently harmless feelings of patriotism get overgeneralized to become the prejudice of nationalism? Can a similar sequence of stages be observed in the other forms of domination?

The model, summarized in Table I, suggests that dominator attitudes and behavior develop or escalate through three stages: starting from normal, healthy feelings of pride and self-affirmation, these can become distorted to arrogant and prejudicial attitudes, which in turn may escalate to the pathological extremes of discrimination, domination, paranoia and oppression. With the help of this model, we can critically examine the ideo-logic and the assumptions underlying the development of dominator behaviors. We can also gain some understanding of the social and psychological factors which predispose individuals to progress through these stages. The purpose of such an exercise in ideo-psychological deconstruction or dismantling is to understand how the patterns of prejudice might be prevented from escalating to destructive extremes; and how the progression to domination might be reversed.

It is an open question to what extent the prejudices and ideas of assumed superiority are really the effective causes of dominating and exploitative behavior patterns. It may instead be the case that the ideology is really an after-the-fact rationalization for the aggressive domination which is indulged for purely self-serving interests. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, if you have your oppressor's boot in somebody else's neck, you better have a pretty good story to tell your conscience and your children, as to why this is justified (Chomsky, 1993). The mythologies of the Indo-European family of peoples are filled with stories which explain and justify acts of war, invasion or theft, usually by reference to some earlier insult by the other tribe (Metzner, 1997). The Spanish soldiers and monks who followed Columbus into the New World, worked Indian slaves to death and subjected them to horrendous acts of gratuitous cruelty, felt justified in treating Indians as less than human, because the Vatican had assured them that Indians had no souls and were therefore not human. The ideology of "racial purity" and "ethnic cleansing" has provided the rationale for barbaric acts of genocide from the Nazis to the Serbs.

The logical and anthropological counter-argument to racism is of course that concepts of racial or ethnic purity are meaningless in view of centuries-long patterns of inter-breeding and peaceful coexistence between humans of diverse ethnicities. Similar arguments have often been eloquently and cogently put forward in criticiques of sexism, classism, nationalism and homocentrism. The fact that the existence of this argument does not seem to have stemmed the escalating tide of hatred and violence lends credibility to the notion that prejudicial attitudes and dominator impulses precede the self-justifying ideologies of superiority. Psychological feelings and impulses seem all to often to override the dictates of reason or the imperatives of morality.

In this paper, I will not further examine the complicated question to what extent these various forms of prejudice and domination co-exist in the same individuals. I consider it an empirical question whether prejudice is associated with some sort of character trait, such as the "authoritarian personality" (Adorno et al., 1950), and therefore easily generalized from one target group to another. The original authors of the the concept of the authoritarian personality argued that this trait develops as a function of certain kinds of child-rearing behavior. The Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller likewise has argued, by means of highly suggestive case-studies, that dominator and abusive behavior is learned in childhood in response to brutal conditions of parental control and neglect (Miller, 1983).

I also will not further examine the question of how these patterns of prejudice and domination interact in society, and whether one form of prejudice or domination is more fundamental and therefore causative of the others. Much interesting and provocative work has been done in these areas. There are vigorous debates between leftist social justice activists, feminists working for gender equity, and environmentalists who champion a deep ecology platform, as to which of these patterns is most fundamental and hence should be be made the priority target for social transformation. My assumption is that the five (and perhaps more) forms of prejudice and domination are psychologically and sociologically related in complex ways, that need to be further studied. Whether one or another of these forms of social pathology is more fundamental than the others is perhaps at this juncture less important than the question of what they all have in common.

Any attempt to develop a general model of social behavior, such as this one, is vulnerable to the charge of oversimplification and overgeneralization. A complete account of domination in its various forms would of course need to take the historical and ecological particularities of each society into consideration. Like any theoretical model, especially in the area of social studies, this one abstracts from and thereby simplifies extremely complex phenomena. Nevertheless, there may be heuristic value in looking at these interlocking systems of domination for common features. If we can identify some commonalities and understand how they develop psychologically, we may be in a better position to overcome these divisive and destructive forces. The realization of the vision of a pluralistic, democratic society, existing in a balanced, non-exploitative relationship to the biosphere, depends on our coming to terms with these virulent destructive manifestations of our collective psyche.

From Identification to Empowerment and Pride

In each of these five patterns of prejudicial ideology and dominating behavior, we can identify at the beginning a quality of pride in one's group membership, and an affirmation of one's inherent worth as a member of that group. This pride can subsequently, under certain conditions, be deformed and exacerbated into prejudice, arrogance and assumed generalized superiority. According to the model, the normal, harmless precursor to aberrant prejudice is pride or self-empowerment. However, natural feelings of pride may also not escalate to arrogance and superiority. And with some groups, pride may function to empower and liberate those who have been trapped as victims in a system of oppression.

There is often not one single term that characterizes the complex emotions and motivations that cluster around pride in one's group identity. The second column in Table I lists some examples of the psychological states that may be involved here. I believe that such notions as self-affirmation and self-empowerment, which have been particularly employed in movements advocating equality, should be included under this heading. For groups that have been oppressed or discriminated against, and who have internalized the oppressor's perception of inferiority, a feeling of pride in one's being, an affirmation of inherent value and sense of empowerment, would seem to be essential psychic foundation for movement toward equality. Also associated with pride in one's group identity are feelings of affinity and solidarity with other members of that group, which in turn can provide the motivation for egalitarian social reform movements. So pride, it seems, can lead to arrogance and prejudice, but it can also, under different conditions, be the basis for correcting inequality and injustice.

Patriotism or national pride. The patriot who feels and says: "I am proud to be an American", or "I love my country", or "we Americans are fine people", may not mean any implication of superiority; he may say "I love the French too", and "the Japanese are excellent also". Pride in our own identity can be associated with an appreciation of others. Even although, very often, prejudices about other nations may develop at the same time as the child's identification with and patriotic pride in their own nation, there are other developmental patterns in which this does not happen. Patriotic pride in one's country and its particular qualities and accomplishments, could remain without any generalized inferiority of others. Patriotic pride in one's country's accomplishments is generally supported by the ruling elites and their hired opinion makers. Some regard it as a harmless outlet for competitive feelings, although considering the ease with which it can become exaggerated to fanatical and aggressive nationalism, this view should be reconsidered. The frequent eruptions of violence among fans at international soccer matches and similar events, can be seen as an example of this tendency.

Gender pride. Pride in one's gender, in one's sexual nature, or in one's essential value as a male or female, could be a natural sense of self-affirmation, of self-esteem based a man's virility, or a woman's femininity. The male bonding of a band of brother warriors or teammates could include (consciously or unconsciously) a superiority and arrogance toward women, often called the weaker sex. Similarly some women, and some women's groups, may espouse a sense of superiority or hostility toward men. But we can assume that it is possible for men or women to feel a kind of pride in their gender, a feeling of affinity for other men and other women that is analogous to patriotic love of one's nationality, and that does not involve any implication of superiority or put-down. Since women have occupied an inferior social and economic status in society, the feminist and women's liberation movements have often involved an appeal to sisterhood, a kind of affiliative caring for other women, as well as an explicit valuing of women's special gifts and contributions to society. Since men have mostly been in the dominating position, any notions of male pride have naturally been suspected as likely antecedents of sexist superiority.

Racial or ethnic pride. Here we can also discern the possibility of a kind of ethnic pride that would not necessarily be associated with ethnocentrism or racism. The black power movement, or the use of such slogans as "black is beautiful", or symbols such as the Black Panther, can all be seen as expressions of self-affirmation and self-empowerment for members of an oppressed group. The Million Man March on the capital which occurred in the Summer of 1995, was an example of a demonstration affirming racial pride and empowerment for African-American men. The purpose of such movements and symbols is to assert and support equality, in a situation that has been unequal. They do not involve an implication of superiority, any more than patriotism does, or sisterhood. On the other hand, in white supremacist movements, such as the Aryan Nation, or various neo-Nazi groups, the pride in one's group identity and belongingness have become exacerbated to an irrational extreme of prejudice and hatred toward others.

Class pride. The class struggle in industrial societies also involves a sense of pride, though it takes very different forms in the two main classes. The basic division here, as pointed out by Marx and his followers long ago, is between capital, the class of people that owns and controls most of the wealth, and labor, the working people who actually produce the wealth, or "surplus value" (as Marx called it). Critics of the industrial system have often pointed out how the mechanization of labor diminished the healthy pride of workers in their craft and alienated them from the product of their labor. Class pride for the working class has coalesced around movements that affirm the dignity and worth of working people and the struggle in solidarity to defend their interests. On the other side, those who affirm the value and importance of the capitalist class, often speak in glowing terms of the spirit of enterprise, or the significance of the high-achieving entrepreneur. The capitalists (like the aristocrats who historically preceded them) feel proud and superior because of their wealth, even (absurdly) when it is inherited.

Human pride. The proud over-idealization of the human being has never been better expressed than in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Here, ironically spoken by the doddering fool Polonius, we have what sound like a pure expression of human worthiness; yet the humanist superiority towards the non-human is already present ("the paragon of animals"). This pride in one's humanness later became distorted into homocentric arrogance, which in turn served as justification of the human domination of the natural world. Elsewhere, I have pointed out that humanist arrogance, which underlies the domination of nature, originally grew out of the proud affirmation of the value of human beings. "Renaissance humanism, with the rediscovery of the culture of antiquity, celebrated the intrinsic worth of human beings and gave a much-needed boost to human self-esteem, burdened as it was with a thousand years of indoctrination about original sin" (Metzner, 1993).

Once we recognize the pride and sense of self-worth that, under certain circumstances, can lead to arrogance, superiority, prejudice and domination, we must ask ourselves the question: how and why does pride arise in the first place? I asked myself this question in regard to patriotism, which I can remember feeling on occasion, when I was younger. What triggered patriotic feelings in me, although with some embarrassment, was the perception of achievement or excellence by the people of my country. People feel proud of their nation, when people of that nation have accomplished something like winning athletic gold medals, or sports prizes, or technical accomplishments such as space travel, or prize-winning scientific discoveries, or excellence in the arts. Individuals feel proud of their own accomplishments, their own personal victories and prize-winning performances. We also feel proud of family members, including children, when they accomplish something special. Pride is a natural, normal response to perceived success or achievement.

This kind of pride can evidently be experienced vicariously and indirectly, for the successes and accomplishments of others with whom we are identified. Pride in one's children or family is very widespread. Pride in one's ethnic group is readily experienced, as is patriotic pride, which is also overtly encouraged and supported in the political arena. Demonstrated patriotism can get votes in an election. Gender and class pride are more subtly disguised, perhaps because of the existing inequalities in those areas. Humanist pride is almost totally unconscious, since it is an age-old, deeply-rooted assumption that humans really are superior to animals.

Whereas an individual's pride in some accomplishment or success may well be innate, the vicarious feeling of worthiness that comes from belonging to a group depends on the learned response of identification. The child learns at some point that she or he is a member of a particular family, and/or ethnic group, learns to identify him or herself as us who are different from them. Feelings of pride or shame can then begin to coalesce around the perceived difference and the learned identification. In ancient times, and in some cultures to this day, the actions of an individual brought honor or dishonor to the entire family or clan, and would be appropriately celebrated or avenged.

Social psychologists have shown that the capacity to distinguish between family and friends (us) and strangers (them) is learned by children from adults, as early as age five (Mack, 1990; Zur, 1991). Or even earlier, since "stranger anxiety" has been observed in infants. This discrimination is typically overlaid right from the beginning with the dichotomy of good and bad, safe and unsafe, friends and enemies. Part of the reason for such early learning of the enemy category is perhaps the parents' desire to ensure protection for their child from threats of kidnapping and the like. "My mother told me not take candy from strangers." Thus in many individuals, perhaps most, the process of identifying with a particular group is often bound up right from the beginning with a judgement that categorizes the in-group as good and friendly, and the out-group as bad and potentially dangerous. In a classic experiment, Muzafer Sherif showed how easily and naturally enmity, prejudice and hostilies broke out between two groups of boys, unknown to each other, who were placed in close proximity in the same camp (Sherif & Sherif, 1966).

National identity. Identification with one's nation and the associated categorizing of other nations as potentially threatening or inferior, tends to occur later, around age ten to twelve, since it requires more complex perceptions and learnings. As John Mack has pointed out, "the identification of the self with powerful leaders and with the nation as a whole is particularly frequent way for individuals, beginning in adolescence, to gain an added sense of personal power" (Mack, 1990, p. 646). However, since national identity is subject to change, unlike family and ethnicity, the development of patriotism is a much less consistent affair, and may sometimes not occur at all. In other words, someone may identify themselves as citizens of a particular nation, and even serve that nation, and not necessarily have any sense of pride or empowerment associated with that identification. I know that in my own case, since I was born German, but schooled mostly in Britain, and eventually became an American citizen, feelings of patriotism never really took hold in me to any significant degree -- though I certainly identify myself as an American.

Sexual or gender identity. Identification as a man or a woman occurs in traditional tribal societies through adolescent rites of passage, in which boys were initiated by the adult males and girls by the elder women. In modern societies, some adolescent transition rites still exist, that give religious meaning to gender identification, for example the Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and the Catholic Confirmation Rite. But many adolescent rites have become trivial and superficial, empty of any capacity to connect the young meaningfully to a supportive community of peers and elders. Or we find, especially for boys, the militaristic initiations of street gangs or bootcamp training, which reinforce patterns of domination and oppression. Thus one's sense of identity and self-worth as male or female is often associated with much uncertainty and ignorance, as well as stereotyping and prejudice. Issues of gender identity, especially for those with socially less accepted sexual orientation, are among the most frequently involved in persons seeking psychological counseling or psychotherapy.

Racial or ethnic identity. Identification with one's racial or ethnic group usually occurs along with family identification at an early age. It may be associated with religious training, and explanations of the meanings of religious holidays; or with stories told about the ancestors, history and country of origin; or with cultural symbols and ethnic customs in the areas of food, dress, music, language, games, and the like. In societies where a child grows up as a member of an ethnic minority subject to prejudice and discrimination, this identification is accompanied from the earliest times with feelings of shame, inferiority, isolation, wanting to disguise, but also with indignation, resentment, rage and rebelliousness.

Class identity. The identification with class, like that with nationality, also occurs at varying times in childhood or adolescence, depending on the particularities of the family and society. But certainly it is reinforced around the time when sons are being groomed for entry into class-related work or career, and daughters prepared to make themselves eligible for the "right" kind of marriage. And because one's class can also change (except in countries like India with a hereditary caste system), class identification is also a shifting, uncertain affair. This is particularly the case in those Western countries, like the US, where the official ideology maintains that there are no classes. Furthermore, those who see themselves as belonging to a middle or professional class may not clearly identify with either the wealth-owning class or the working poor.

Human identity. Identification as a human being occurs of course also in childhood, and as Paul Shepard has cogently argued, the perceptual categorization of animals in comparison with humans is one of the keys to linguistic and cognitive development in children (Shepard, 1978). Whether such a thing as human pride or self-worth develops that is not also immediately associated with feelings of superiority toward non-human animals, is an open question. Perhaps not in Western cultures. Indigenous societies, such as the Native American, who in their prayers and ceremonies, regularly invoke and speak of animals and plants as "all our relations", would have a very different and much more egalitarian sense of belongingness. Furthermore, while native people undoubtedly identify strongly with family, clan and tribe, their sense of who they are is also connected in a deep and vital communion to the land or place in which they were born and raised -- and this is something quite alien to Western urban people (Allen, 1991; Brown, 1982; McGaa, 1990). Human self-worth and pride could be based here not on superiority, but on familial relatedness with all other living beings, including the Earth.

Much more could be said on these different kinds of identification and the sense of pride or self-worth that may be associated with group identity. For the purposes of this paper, we can summarize this section by stating that feelings of pride, self-affirmation and empowerment may or may not be the precursor to superiority feelings, arrogance and prejudice. Pride arises usually in response to individual or group success or accomplishment. And there is also a kind of vicarious pride that is purely a function of identification, i.e. of belonging to a certain group. We could say it is a false pride, since it is not based on any real accomplishment of the individual. We learn to identify ourselves as members of a certain group by learning (or being taught) that there is a perceptible difference between "us" and "them". Thus, pride depends on identification, and identification in turn depends on perceived difference. We shall return, in a subsequent essay, to the question of whether and how the transition from group identification to false or vicarious pride can be prevented or reversed. We shall also consider whether identification can be transcended or expanded, for example through spiritual practices such as meditation, thus short-circuiting the processes of pride, prejudice and domination.

From Pride to Arrogance and Prejudice

Even although there is evidence, as noted above, that young children may learn stereotypes and prejudices about others at about the same time as they learn to identify themselves as members of a group, I have argued that feelings of pride and empowerment through group identity are logical and psychological precursors to prejudicial arrogance and superior attitudes toward others. We now want to examine more closely the nature of the transition from pride to prejudice, in the different systems of domination. What exactly is happening, psychologically, when an individual move from saying (thinking, feeling) "I'm proud to be a ...." to "we are superior to the others"? In Table I this is the transition from the second to the third column.

The eminent psychologist Gordon Allport, in his classic work The Nature of Prejudice, ibed prejudice as being caused by a combination of two factors: one was hostility, and the other was "erroneous generalization" (Allport, 1954). The categorization of an individual (what I am calling identification), is followed by the application of an erroneous generalization, which in turn leads to the projection of hostility on to the target. Over-generalization is the primary logical error involved in moving from pride or self-affirmation to arrogant superiority. If an athlete feels proud of winning a race, or of being a member of a winning team, we see this as justified pride and applaud the winning performance. If he goes on to over-generalize by saying "we're the best -- in all respects", we discount the simplistic arrogance because we realize that the results of further competitions will inevitably correct the erroneous assumptions. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Adolf Hitler expected and predicted, on the basis of his racist beliefs in general Aryan superiority, that the blond, blue-eyed German athletes would win all events. To his chagrin, it was a Black American athlete, Jesse Owens, who won four or five gold medals with record-breaking performances.

The simplistic over-generalization involved in the assertion of one's own, or one's group's, superiority can cause serious distortions in the capacity for accurate perception and judgement. Military history from Alexander of Macedonia to Napoleon and beyond, is filled with examples of commanders who, on the basis of prior victories, overestimated their own capability and underestimated the enemy, with disastrous consequences. As the Biblical proverb goes: "pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall". This distorting effect on judgement is the reason why wise spiritual teachers of all times, as well as teachers of the martial arts, counsel that one should preserve equanimity in all situations, including conflict or struggle, and not be attached to gain or loss. Pride is considered one of the cardinal sins in the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, in the realm of intergroup relations and attitudes, stereotyped prejudices and simplistic over-generalizations are much more resistant to change than in sports events, probably because the error-correcting feedback information is not so readily available. Furthermore, if family, teachers, and the indoctrination provided by political leaders and their propaganda systems support and endorse the prejudicial judgement, any perceptions that might tend to correct it will be systematically excluded. The interaction between individual attitudes and the attitudes promoted by leaders, through the pronouncements of the media and the intellectual elites, is extremely complex and subject to shifting power plays and exploitation by various interest groups. In the realm of international relations, as John Mack points out, "the direction of the emotional attitude of one people toward another is usually determined by a leadership elite, which manipulates, through the mass media, the minds of a largely uncritical citizenry for domestic political purposes of which the public generally knows little" (Mack, 1990, p. 59).

Nationalism/Chauvinism. Whereas the patriot professes pride in his nation, the nationalist goes a step further and says "we're number one", "we're the best", "we're superior -- in general." This is an attitude commonly referred to as chauvinism, after the French soldier Nicholas Chauvin, who was fanatically devoted to Napoleon and his imperialist ambitions. Chauvinism is sometimes defined as "fanatical patriotism". The word "fanatic" comes from the Latin fanum, "temple": in other words, it is love of one's country taken to a quasi-religious intensity of irrational zeal. Outright chauvinistic nationalism has acquired a sinister reputation, since the excesses of the German National Socialist Party under Hitler, and is therefore considered politically taboo. Nevertheless, nationalistic superiority attitudes are fervently propagated in disguised and subtler form, especially in the US which considers itself the only remaining "superpower" in world politics. Thus the simplistic and competitive slogan "we're the best", can often be heard or read, whether discussing athletics and sports events, economics and trade, technological inventiveness, scientific genius or military prowess.

Assuming that a sequence similar to that from patriotism to chauvinistic nationalism occurs with the other forms of domination, we could state, as a hypothesis, that pride exaggerated with fanatical zeal, and associated with the generalization of simplistic stereotypes, becomes prejudice and arrogance.

Sexism/Patriarchy. In gender relations, there is, on the one hand, the official governmental and academic endorsement of gender equality, and on the other hand, the millenia-old tradition of patriarchal bias and oppression against women. The clashes and interactions between these opposing movements are played out in many fields in modern and post-modern politics. The patriarchal tradition has the immense weight of age-old religious belief sytems behind it, in virtually all the major world religions of the present time. As just one example, a prayer still taught to many Jewish boys involves thanking God for not having made him a girl. In Latin American cultures, the concept of machismo connotes more than just a man's pride in his maleness, -- that it contains an implicit put-down of women. The various branches of the feminist or women's liberation movements have made it their cause to correct the inequalities that still exist, and to undo the deeply engrained prejudices of male superiority conditioned into the minds of not only men, but women also. This process will probably take a great deal more struggle and political consciousness-raising, before the over-generalized stereotypes can be neutralized (Eisler, 1987; Lerner, 1986; Mies, 1986; Spretnak, 1982).

Racism/Ethnocentrism. In the area of race relations, much work has been and is being done to unravel the complex interlocking systems of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination in a multi-ethnic society such as the United States. There is no space here to go into these issues at any length, except to note that with a history of slavery and a civil war over its abolition, black-white prejudice, hostility and discrimination are among the core identity themes of the United States. For African-Americans, and to a certain extent for Hispanics as well, the identity challenge is how to find a sense of self-affirmation, empowerment and self-worth, after a multi-generational history of slavery and oppression. For Euro-Americans, the identity challenge is different: how to relinquish a feeling of themselves as innately superior, which also has a multi-generational history behind it. As noted above, the attitudes of European whites toward the people they called "Indians" were characterized from the beginning by the arrogant assumptions of superiority, based on religious or academic ideology concering "savages" or "primitves". These prejudicial attitudes served as justification for government sponsored campaigns of land theft, enslavement and genocide (Hooks, 1993; Marable, 1992; Koning, 1993; Stannard, 1992).

Class Prejudice. The classist prejudices of superiority and inferiority have a history and tradition that goes back to the relationship between aristocrats and peasants in feudal society; and even further back to the master-slave relationship in ancient Greece and other societies. The prejudiced assumption of superiority serves to rationalize the existing inequality and domination: for example, Aristotle had argued that slaves were naturally born to be slaves, just as women had an innate predisposition to be subservient to men. In the modern era, the theories of Marx and Engels, though widely believed to have been discredited by the collapse of communist regimes, are as insightful and relevant as ever. In both the anarchist and the socialist schools of thought, the Marxist analysis of the inevitable struggle between wealth-owning capital and wealth-producing labor, has yielded important insights into the origin and function of class prejudice. The works of Noam Chomsky have been particularly incisive in analysing the complicity of the media and the academics in maintaining the power and control of the ruling, wealth-holding elites. It is self-evident that the ruling elites in any society will continue to assert their superiority, as a justification for the continuation of policies of domination and exploitation (Bellamy, 1994; Chomsky, 1993; Fischer & Marek, 1995).

Anthropocentrism (homocentrism). The human assumption of superiority to animals and other non-human life was decreed in religious texts from the Hebrew Bible onwards. But human arrogance and superiority attitudes did not diminish with the declining influence of the Church. Instead, it continued with apparent scientific justification. Although Darwin's teachings of evolution seemed to dethrone mankind from the favored position they had in the medieval Christian worldview, it is still a widely accepted view that we humans are superior animals: we have reason, or language, or consciousness, or technology. The assumption that humans are animals with superior ability has taken its place as the great justification story, even although current evolutionary theory does not endorse any concept of superiority in evolutionary terms. While language, tool-using and other capacities may distinguish us from other species of animals, they do not make us superior in any absolute or general way. Every species is special, in its own way; each represents a unique adaptation to an evolutionary challenge and ecological niche. But humans cling to their assumed human superiority with tenacity.

Deep ecologists and philosophical writers on environmental ethics have long been questioning both the logic and the ethics of this way of thinking (Drengson & Inoue, 1995; Sessions, 1994). Instead of anthropocentrism, they have advocated a biocentric or ecocentric point of view, according to which every form of life on this Earth has an equal right to unfold their evolutionary potentials, without interference from any one species, except for the satisfaction of vital needs. This is not a misanthrophic view, as has been erroneously asserted: it does not value humans less than animals. It is a kind of species egalitarianism. Here too there is an over-generalization of superiority: from our superiority and pride in human language, or reason, or technology, we conclude, with the apparent support of science, that we must be the superior animals on the Earth. And here too, the arrogant human speciesism distorts our perception and understanding of the destructive consequences of anthropocentric domination.

I have argued that the transition from pride or empowerment to arrogance and prejudice, in the dominant group in each of these systems of domination, involves over-generalization and simplistic categorization using dualistic judgements (good vs bad, friendly vs dangerous, higher vs lower, etc), as well as an exacerbation of pride to the level of fanatical zeal. For the non-dominant or oppressed group, pride and empowerment have quite different meanings and different consequences. An oppressed group works with consciousness-raising and empowerment to raise its sense of self-worth and bring about political and social changes in existing situations of inequity. We know that for some individuals, pride in one's own identity does not escalate to prejudice against others. The deeper psychological question that remains is: why, and under what conditions, does this over-generalizing and arrogant assumption of superiority take place?

A preliminary answer is that simplistic over-generalizing is a primitive, juvenile way of thinking. We expect a child or adolescent to move easily from pride in a particular achievement ("I'm proud that we won that game") to boastful arrogance ("we're the best"). The normal processes of feedback from failures and mistakes would tend to correct a generalized assumption of superiority. However, under some circumstances, this more differentiated attitude does not develop, and instead the prejudice is reinforced by familial and social indoctrination. So from this point of view, prejudiced attitudes represent a developmental shortcoming, and their correction an educational challenge.

More deep-seated psychological dynamics may also play a role here, centering around the notion of compensating for inferiority feelings. The psychologist Alfred Adler, a contemporary and one-time colleague of Freud, argued that every child has a tendency to build up a "superiority complex", which he also later called a "will to power" (Adler, 1979/1928). These superiority feelings are a kind of compensation for unconsciously held, deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, stemming from the prolonged dependency of normal childhood. It is worth considering the hypothesis that in each of these systems of domination, underlying the drive to exaggerate pride, and to adopt stereotyped negative judgements toward others, may be deep feelings of inadequacy and fear of helplessness.

Can we say that the exacerbation of normal patriotic pride to fanatical chauvinism occurs as a consequence of feelings of defeat and inadequacy? Hitler's propagandistic use of the Germans' feelings of humiliation by the 1918 Treaty of Versailles (which he called a "stab in the back") to bolster the appeal of his nationalistic party, supports such a connection. In the area of gender relations, many feminist scholars have suggested that underlying male superiority strivings is the boy's deep-seated fear of engulfment by the mother. Others have pointed out that the cult of machismo is particularly associated with Latin countries, in which the mother's relation to the boy is a mixture of seductiveness and control. In the area of race relations, the slavemaster's underlying, and justified, fear that the slaves might revolt against their oppressors, is a probable component of the dominators' assumption of superiority and control. In class warfare as well, the dominant position of the ruling elites, the "prosperous few" in Chomsky's phrase, has to be vigorously defended against the obvious possibility that the "restless many" might not want to continue in a subservient position. In trying to to understand the dynamics of the humanist superiority complex toward nature, I have elsewhere suggested, following Paul Shepard's theorizing, that fear and helplessness in the face of nature's unpredictable episodes of catastrophic violence may well be a factor in the development of the fanatical human obsession with superiority and control (Metzner, 1995).

If an exaggerated sense of self-importance (compensating for unconscious inferiority feelings), is a factor in the development of generalized pride and stereotyped prejudices, then it might be possible to devise educational strategies to contain or counteract such tendencies. This is a theme I will return to in a subsequent essay.

The key psychological process that provides the motivation for the imperialist-fascist ideological complex is the demonization and scapegoating of the designated "enemy", together with the assertion of one's own group as divinely inspired or commanded, or inherently and obviously superior. The scapegoating and demonization processes require that the leaders instill in the population a mixture of fear and hatred. Thus we have on the one hand xenophobia, fear of economic burdens brought by immigration, the "international Jewish financial cabals" and similar paranoid delusions; and on the other hand, the outright hatred and rage, which is channelled into support of military aggression, or if that is not available as an outlet, spills over into street violence against perceived or imagined enemy aliens.

In sex and gender relations, the legal system, at least in the Western nations, now protects both women and men against outright forms of discrimination in the areas of employment and access to housing, etc. However, much discriminatory behavior escapes the network of social and legal sanctions. Patriarchal institutions, including the religious, academic, professional, medical and governmental, attempt to exercise control over women's bodies and reproductive freedom, using covert forms of coercion and control, primarily through educational and familial indoctrination. In the political arena, misogynistic actions can be disguised as economic or political necessities: for example, providing no material support for women's domestic work and childcare, the constantly decreasing levels of social support for welfare mothers, and most blatantly, the restrictions on a women's right to make her own reproductive choices.

The patriarchal family structure and the belief systems associated with it, have for centuries (perhaps millenia) provided a cover of denial and rationalization for violent aggression and hatred directed at women, including wife battering, incest and abuse of young girls , female genital mutilation, and others. The high point (or bettter, low point) of woman-hating violence in Western history was probably the Medieval Inquisition directed at mostly female "witches", who were practicioners of herbal healing and adherents of the old nature religion. It is estimated that several million women were sadistically tortured and publicly burned to death, in a gynocidal holocaust, instigated and executed with judicial cover by the authorities of church and state. While state-sponsored violence against pagan women has definitely been outlawed, the misogyny pervasive in patriarchal societies is expressed in epidemic levels of assaults and rapes, street violence against prostitutes, sadistic pornography, rape as an instrument of war, sexual torture in the huge number countries that condone torture, and others. All of these practices have been abundantly documented and frequently reported in the media.

The same processes of paranoid fear, of scapegoating and demonizing, occur in this area: when welfare mothers are absurdly blamed for recessionary economic conditions, when rape victims are blamed and harrassed, or when all feminists are reflexively categorized as man-haters. This situation is complex : some feminist groups do focus on hating and blaming all men, thus also indulging in stereotyping and scapegoating in reverse (Zur, 1994). The underlying fear of women and compensation for masculine inadequacy plays a role that has already been mentioned. The medieval Church taught that women had no souls, and the belief that women's uncontrollable sexuality rendered them vulnerable to the devil's evil seduction, was a core tenet of the Inquisition. The inferiority of the oppressed group is linked with the superiority of the dominant group. The idealization of aggressive masculinity and a tendency toward homophobia are analogous to the fascistic emphasis on one exclusively correct way to be, or think, or feel. Indeed, fascism, male narcisissm and homophobia are often associated in the same individual or culture (Theweleit, 1987).

In race relations as well, we find a similar discrepancy as in gender relations, between law and policy on the one hand, and attitude and practice on the other. A state that imprisons more black men than it sends to college, that allows 80% or higher unemployment on Indian reservations, that applies the death penalty to disproportionally more black than white convicted criminals, that establishes toxic dumps in ethnic minority neighborhoods but far from the white suburbs, to mention only a few salient examples, is a state with a pervasive racist agenda. The agenda, freely admitted, and frequently supported by the spurious rationalizations of academics (such as The Bell Curve), is to keep the dominant Euro-American white group in their position of power and privilege, and prevent or block any attempt by ethnic minorities to claim equality of access to material success. The deafening silence and denial around the 500 year American history of genocide toward Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans, only adds to the uneasy tension smoldering beneath the surface of American culture. Racial discrimination, enslavement and genocidal extermination of other ethnic groups (e.g."ethnic cleansing"), is of course widespread throughout the world, and has a long and brutal history behind it. The same mechanisms of paranoid demonization and scapegoating can be observed here, and have been amply documented by numerous researchers (Koning, 1993; Stannard, 1992).

In the area of class relations, the ancient struggle between the rich and the poor, between the "haves" and the "have-nots", is still carried on in contemporary societies, even those, like the United States, that claim not to have class divisions. The Marxist analysis of the domination by capital (the wealth-owning classes) of labor (the value-producing classes) still provides a valid account of the political economy in the countries of the industrialized world.29 In the 19th and early 20th century the oppression of the working class took the form of outright violent assaults on unions, backed by the armed forces and police. In the late 20th century, this relentless exploitation and domination is carried on through corporations merging into ever-larger and more powerful transnational entities, that are not accountable to any state or national authority. In the brief interlude in which socialist or communist systems held power in Russia and elsewhere, the dynamics were not essentially different: the state bureaucracies that controlled the wealth and power held on to it with all the means at their disposal, which included the full force of the state to establish a totalitarian, slave-labor regime, such as the Stalinist gulag. The demonization and scapegoating in such systems is targeted at those groups, usually workers, students and some intellectuals, who try to act in opposition to the regime -- they are called "deviants", "reactionaries", "subversives", "dissidents" or "revolutionaries". In advanced capitalist countries such as the United States, we have seen the demonization of communism and "anti-Americanism", which stemmed from a combination of nationalist and classist prejudice, reach grotesque heights of delusional paranoia during the McCarthy era.

The domination of nature by humans has been regarded by ecophilosophers dating back to the Euorpean Romantic movement and the American Transcendentalists, as the root pathology of Western civilization. In the 20th century, as the pace of worldwide ecological destruction and the loss of species diversity has accelerated, under the relentless onslaught of technological industrialism, while human populations continue to grow exponentially, such critiques have taken on a tone of urgency verging on desperation. A distinction can be made between, on the one hand, those environmental movements that focus on improved legislative control over pollution and waste, and scientific ecosystem management; and, on the other hand, those movements of "radical ecology" that challenge the very foundations of the modernist industrial worldview. Radical ecology movements include deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, socialist ecology, eco-justice, bioregionalism and perhaps ecopsychology.

The long-range, deep ecology movement makes the replacement of anthropocentrism by non-dominating, ecocentric values its central focus (Drengon & Inoue, 1995; Sessions, 1994). The other radical ecology movements emphasize one or another form of domination as the core of the interlocking systems of domination that characterize the modern world. Ecofeminism links the domination of nature with patriachal domination of women (Diamond & Orenstein, 1990; Gaard, 1993). Social ecology critiques all forms of hierarchical order and domination, whether of class, ethnicity or gender (Bookchin, 1986, 1990). For socialist ecology the crucial diagnosis is via the critique of capital accumulation and the profit motive, which inevitably involves the depletion and degradation of "natural capital" or "resources" (Bellamy, 1994; Merchant, 1992). The eco- or environmental justice movement focusses on the racism that permits disproportional number of toxic waste sites to be sited in minority communities (Hofrichter, 1993; Schwab, 1994). Bioregionalism involves a critique of convential political and economic approaches to places and regions (Andrus et al., 1990; Sale, 1985). Ecopsychology is the attempt to formulate a fundamental revisioning of psychology to take the ecological context of human life into account (Roszak, 1992; Roszak, Gomes & Kanner, 1995).

I might add here that I regard the renewed interest in and practice of shamanic methods, including the use of hallucinogenic plants in the context of sacramental rituals, as movements that also serve to counter the conflict between industrial culture and the natural world, and therefore contribute to the healing of our dysfunctional civilization.

The same fascistic tendencies that we have noted in the other systems of domination can also be observed in the human domination of nature, most notably in the rise of the transnational, corporate monoculture that accompanies the global expansion of the capitalist-industrial system. Corporations, which are legal abstractions, with no human values or ethics, exist only to maximize profits and returns on investment. Issues of human welfare, justice, equality, quality of life, health, liberty, and other democratic, human values do not figure into the corporate accounting system. Similarly, environmental depletion and degradation are seen as "externalities", as factors to be minimized, denied, deflected through public relations or ignored. The whole system of commodity production and consumption is organized with quasi-military efficiency and uniformity, even while the destruction of the biosphere through over-production and consumption reaches catastrophic proportions.

In each of these five systems domination, which are interrelatied in complex ways, the underlying thought-pattern goes something like this: "because we (our group) are superior to (all or specified) others, we have the right to assume control over their lives, land, property, political and economic system, and even culture and ways of thinking." Since such a move is both immoral and irrational, it is clearly more of a justification than a motivation, a rationalization rather than a reason. It is best thought of as an ideological maneuver designed to conceal the aggressive and predatory intention of the oppressing group. In an evolutionary sense, this kind of behavior most resembles predation, and may have evolved from it. However, in the animal realm predation is usually confined to inter-species relations. Although there is intra-species competition in the animal kingdom, often for access to sexual mates or for territory, the human tendency to prey on other humans appears to be some kind of evolutionary aberration. In part II of this essay, we shall consider what strategies may be available to counter and contain the virulent combination of prejudice with scapegoating tendencies that leads large segments of the population to paranoid fear and violent hatred toward groups or individuals considered "alien" or "other" in some way.

In the area of the human industrial over-exploitation of biosphere resources, the capitalist system of production-consumption can be seen as an out-of-control system of organized predation that bodes ill for the future of countless species, including the human, on this planet. The number of individuals, and their corporate creations, that benefit, in the short run enormously, from this systematic plundering of the planet is getting smaller and smaller. And the number of individuals and societies that are plunging into unimaginable degradation and misery as a result is increasing with astounding rapidity. The question of what can be done to prevent or reverse the escalation of these dominator patterns, is therefore of enormous urgency.

Published in: World Futures, 1998, Vol 251, pg 239-267