読書ノート：Part I/Chapter 2 of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALITARIANISM
はじめに
このノートは、The Psychology of Totalitarianism（Mattias Desmet著）を読み、重要と思われた部分を抜き出して記録したものです。ノートは、章単位の構成となっています。他章のノートを参照する場合、各ノート末の「全体校正」のリンクを参照してください。
このノートは、一読者としての印象を部分的に抜き出たものです。私の意見・感想は含まれていません。しかし、部分的な抜き出しなので、正しい内容を反映していないかもしれません。また、本文での引用情報も含まれていません。従って、本書を正しく理解するためには、ぜひ原文をお読みください。
このノートの目的は、自分としての理解の整理ですが、もし、本書の興味の一助になれば嬉しいです。
Part I: Science and its Psychological Effects /
Chapter 2: Science and Its Practical Applications
Science not only leads to knowledge and intellectual advances, it also has effects in the real world through its practical applications. Mechanistic science, in particular, had high ambitions in this regard. It wants to adapt the world to people, to make life easy and comfortable, and ultimately eliminate suffering and even death.
科学は知識や知的進歩をもたらすだけでなく、その実用化を通じて実社会でも効果を発揮します。特に、機械論的科学の野心は大きいです。世界を人に合わせ、生活を快適にし、最終的には苦しみや死さえも無くそうとしています。
Yet there was, undeniably, another side to the coin. Each added convenience came at a price, including a weakened connection to the natural and social environment. Artificial light broke the rhythm that the sun and moon had hitherto imposed on daily activities; the clock separated the human mind from cyclical natural processes (meeting up as soon as the dew has dried, eating when the sun is at its highest point, going to sleep when the night falls); the compass alienated man from the stars; industrial labor drew him away from the fields and the woods. The psychological impact of all this usually wasn’t considered important—if it was even considered at all. But it was undoubtedly immense. Prior to mechanization, man’s world of experience constantly resonated with nature’s evervarying language of forms; after mechanization, he was mainly absorbed by a monotonous, mechanical rhythm.
しかし、科学にも暗黒面がありました。便利さが増すごとに、自然や社会環境とのつながりが希薄になるという、代償を払うことになったのでした。
Social connections were also transformed beyond recognition. The invention of radio and television led to the rise of the mass media and a corresponding decline in direct human interactions with a merely social function. Evening meetings between neighbors, pub gatherings, harvest festivals, rituals, and celebrations—they were progressively replaced by consumption of what the media presented. This seduced us into certain social laziness. It was no longer necessary to make the effort that is required for interaction with fellow human beings.
社会的な繋がりは、見る影もなく変容しました。ラジオやテレビが発明され、マスメディアが台頭し、それに伴って、シンプルな社会機能としての人間同士の直接的な交流が減少していきました。
No risk of arguing; no confrontation with painful jealousy, shame, or embarrassment; no need to dress up or to even leave the house. It also uniformized social exchanges. Public space, including the political sphere, was increasingly dominated by a shrinking number of voices that conquered the living room via the mass media. In other words, social relationships lost their diversity and originality.
社会的な交流は画一化されました。つまり、社会的関係は多様性とオリジナリティを失いました。
The mechanization of the labor process also engendered a profound transformation of social structures and connections, a dimension explored by Marx’s historical materialism. The steam engine, for example, could power such a large number of looms and provide employment to such a large number of people that new forms of society, such as factory villages, rose around it. These communities were merely focused on mass production, wage labor being the only point of collective identification. As such, industrialization broke up traditional social structures formed by the existence of varied professions, public offices, and authority (the priest, the mayor). Although these structures curbed man’s freedom for centuries, or even radically suppressed it, they also offered him a psychological basis and frame of reference. They gave him rules and laws, commandments and prohibitions, boundaries to his lusts and urges, well-defined objects of anxiety, frustration, and anger. Their disappearance left man confused, in the darkness of his own existence; haunted by existential anxiety and unease that could not be identified. As we will see in chapter 6, this unfettered anxiety plays a crucial role in mass formation and totalitarianism.
工業化により、さまざまな職業、公職、権威（司祭、市長）から成る伝統的な社会構造は崩壊した。これらの構造は、何世紀にもわたって人の自由を制限し、あるいは根本的に抑圧してきましたが、同時に人の心理的な基礎と参照フレームを提供していました。これらは、人に規律・法律・戒律・禁止事項・欲望や衝動の境界線・不安や不満や怒りの明確な対象を与えました。このフレームが失われると、人は混乱し、自分自身の存在のあやふやさを感じました。その結果、人は自分の存在の暗闇の中で混乱し、特定できない不安と恐怖に取り憑かれてしまったのです。
The mechanization of the world also had a direct effect at the level of meaning making. Mass production rendered the end result of labor less tangible. In the past, man worked to produce the objects needed to sustain the bodily existence of oneself and the people around him. He worked to feed himself, to warm the house, to clothe himself against harsh conditions and the gaze of others. That changed with the rise of the industrial environment. He now worked to produce objects—for people far away. The answer to the question of what is the meaning of one’s work no longer welled up from one’s own body.
世界の機械化は、意味づけのレベルに対しても直接的な影響を及ぼしました。かつて、人は自分や周囲の人々の身体的な生存を維持するために必要な物を生産するために働いていました。今や、生産する物は、遥か遠くの人たちのためのものです。もはや、自分の仕事の意味とは何かという問いに対する答えは、自分の内側から湧き出てきません。
In addition, the Other for whom one worked was anonymous. The effect of one’s work on the Other could no longer be seen or felt. With the disappearance of (much of the) local, small-scale, and craft production, the direct link between producer and consumer was broken. In most cases, the person who produced the material good no longer came into contact with the person who was about to use it. When a product was delivered, the person who produced it no longer witnessed the joy or gratitude on the recipient’s face. It’s these visible, subtle physical effects that primarily provide human satisfaction in work; they are the most direct sign that work is meaningful. In this way, not only one’s own body but also the other faded as sources of meaning making. The worker became, as they say, a cog in the industrial machine, lubricated only by the thought of wages due. Labor changed from a cumbersome but inherently meaningful existential task into a disembodied utilitarian necessity.
また、自分の仕事の相手が見えなくなってしまいました。自分の仕事が他者に与える影響は、もはや見ることも感じることもできないのです。労働は、「面倒だけど本質的に意味のある仕事」から、「実体のない実用的な必要性」に変わってしまいました。
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Besides waning meaning, another problem arose. Surprisingly, industrialization and mechanization of labor didn’t mean that less work needed to be done. In the early twentieth century, British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century, technological advances would translate to a 15-hour work week, which would be sufficient for society to produce everything it needed. He was correct on that last point—more than correct, in fact. It probably requires even fewer than fifteen hours of labor for society to achieve that. But his prediction didn’t come true. By the end of the twentieth century, people worked longer hours than ever before.
労働の意味が薄れたことに加えて、もう一つ問題が生じました。意外なことに、工業化と労働の機械化は、仕事の必要性を減らすことを意味しなかったのです。20世紀末になると、人々はかつてないほど長い時間働くようになりました。
What Keynes failed to consider was the creation of meaningless and useless work on an incredible scale. Professor of anthropology David Graeber described this in his by now well-known book Bullshit Jobs. He asked a random sample of people whether they thought their jobs made a meaningful contribution to society. About 37 percent answered with a definite “no” and an additional 13 percent were unsure. These bullshit jobs were mostly created in the administrative and economic sectors, and the countless occupations that support these sectors. Graeber tells the story of “Kurt,” who works at a company providing auxiliary services for the German army, and illustrates the degree of absurdity that gradually began to characterize so many people’s working lives, and existence:
ケインズですら思い至らなかったことは、意味のない無駄な仕事が、信じられないほどの規模で生み出されているという事実です。人類学のデイビッド・グレーバー教授は、彼の著書 Bullshit Jobs で、無作為に抽出した人々に、自分の仕事は社会に有意義な貢献をしていると思うかと尋ねました。その結果、約37パーセントが「いいえ」と答え、さらに13パーセントが「わからない」と答えました。
This is an intriguing aspect of the phenomenon of meaningless work: You’d think that in private companies, dominated by capitalist pursuits and dictated by profit, such absurd work wouldn’t exist. Why would a for-profit company hemorrhage money on unprofitable workers? However, this idea can be relegated to the realm of illusions. Even in the private sector, there is a proliferation of meaningless work. We can attribute this in the first place to the changes in corporate culture. Today’s executives rarely have a true personal stake in the success or failure of the company they lead. They can afford to create pointless jobs, perhaps to do friends a favor, or to give the company a sophisticated image by employing any manner of “experts,” if need be even solely to optimize their employment statistics. By the time the company goes bust, the executive will have been employed elsewhere for a while anyway.
皆さんは、私企業では、このような不条理な仕事は存在しないだろうと思うかもしれません。なぜなら、私企業を支配しているのは、資本主義の追求と利益だからです。しかし、民間企業でも、意味のない仕事が蔓延しています。
But there’s more to it than that. The rampant growth of the administrative and economic sectors has to do with much more fundamental psychological tendencies in our society. Endless proliferation of rules, procedures, and administration usually stems from interpersonal mistrust and inability to tolerate uncertainty and risk. Both the government and the population are ever more demanding that everything be done correctly. This involves endless procedural provisions, necessary to determine who is financially and legally liable if anything goes wrong. As we will discuss in chapter, today’s compulsion to regulate and control is a frenetic attempt to master ever-growing anxiety.
通常、規則・手続き・管理の際限のない増殖は、対人不信・無力による不確実性とリスクに由来します。政府も国民も、すべてが正しく行われることをこれまで以上に求めるようになりました。これには、何か問題が起きたときに誰が財政的・法的責任を負うかを決めるために必要な、際限のない手続き上の規定が含まれます。
If human relationships are characterized by fundamental distrust, life becomes hopelessly complicated and society spends its energy at creating all kinds of “security mechanisms,” which in fact fuel mistrust even more and are, above all, psychologically exhausting. That’s why the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is also directly associated with the epidemic of workplace burnout. What makes work performance unbearable, is usually not the actual demands but the impossibility of experiencing meaning and satisfaction, of experiencing work as an act of creation. Put someone in an office and pay him a generous wage to perform a useless task, like pushing a button every ten minutes. Does such a job free you from the burdens of life, or does it make your life unbearably light?
人間関係が根本的な不信感として特徴付けられると、人生は絶望的に複雑になり、社会はあらゆる種類の「安全装置」を作ることにエネルギーを費やします。それは、さらなる不信感を煽り、何よりも心理的に疲弊させます。概して、仕事に耐えられなくなる原因は、実際に要求されていること自体（難しさ等）ではなく、仕事の意味・満足・創造性を得られないことです。
The rise of meaningless professions shows us that the real problem of humanity lies in human relationships, more so than in the struggle with natural forces or in the physical demands of work. Simply put, in a society in which human relationships are satisfying, life will be bearable even if it has only primitive means of production. Whereas in a society where human relationships are impoverished and toxic, life will be difficult and unbearable, however “advanced” such society may be in terms of mechanical-technological evolutions.
無意味な職業の増加は、人類の真の問題が、「自然との闘い」よりも、「仕事の肉体的要求」よりも、「人間関係」にあることを示しています。つまり、人間関係が充実している社会では、たとえ原始的な生産手段しか持っていなくても、生活に耐えることができます。一方、人間関係が希薄・有害な社会では、たとえ機械技術が進歩しても、生活は困難で耐え難いものになります。
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To summarize, science led to a formidable ability to alter the material world through industrialization and mechanization. But this also gave rise to problems, especially regarding our relationships, both with each other, and with nature. Furthermore, we’re faced with problems that are caused by the fact that science—or that which passes for science today—is often neither accurate nor reliable.
つまり、科学は工業化・機械化によって物質世界を大きく変化させることができるようになりました。その一方で、人間関係や自然との関係において問題が生じています。さらに、我々は、科学（あるいは科学と称されるもの）が、しばしば不正確かつ信頼できないことに起因する問題にも直面しています。
In chapter 1, I explained that the quality of research is most problematic in medical science. No less than 85 percent of medical studies come to questionable conclusions due to errors, sloppiness, and fraud. This allows us to understand, for example, why drugs that are found to be safe in research trials may, in practice, cause thousands of deaths, or generate significant side effects. The most well-known example might be the thalidomide scandal. Thalidomide (Softenon) was marketed in 1958 as an anti-nausea medication for pregnant women. By 1961, it was clear that thalidomide had caused severe malformations in at least ten thousand fetuses, mostly underdeveloped limbs or the absence of limbs altogether. The most mind-boggling aspect of the scandal is that pharmaceutical companies continued to produce the drug for years, and that in some countries (including Belgium), it was sold over the counter until 1963. This drug that deformed thousands of babies and destroyed thousands of lives wasn’t withdrawn from the market until 1969. The justification is perplexing, to put it mildly: The government first wanted to be 100 percent sure that there was, indeed, a link between the drug and fetal malformations.
第1章で、研究の質が最も問題になるのは医学系であることを説明しました。医学研究の85％以上は、誤り・杜撰さ・不正によって疑問のあるとされています。このことは、例えば、研究試験で安全だとされた薬が、実際には何千人もの死者を出したり、重大な副作用を発生させたりすることの説明となります。最もよく知られた例は、サリドマイド事件でしょう。
Another dramatic example concerns the artificial hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), which was widely administered between 1947 and 1976 to prevent miscarriages. Around 1976, it became clear that the use of DES was a terrible mistake. It did not prevent miscarriages, but it did have a series of serious side effects that affected multiple generations. 6 The women who took it developed a higher risk of breast cancer. The first generation of female offspring were at higher risk of abnormalities in the endometrium, pregnancy complications, genital deformations, and an increased risk of cervical, breast, and vaginal cancer. The first-generation of male offspring were at increased risk of nodules on the epididymis, while the second-generation of male offspring had a higher rate of ureteral abnormalities. Nobody knows if, and in which generation, the abnormalities caused by DES will cease to exist.
別の劇的な例としては、流産を防ぐために1947年から1976年まで広く投与された人工ホルモン「ジエチルスチルベストロール（DES）」のケースがあります。
But aren’t the effects and side effects of pharmaceutical drugs tested extensively before they are brought to market? How is it possible that all these harmful side effects are not discovered? Here is the problem: The phenomenon of “health” or “reaction to a drug” is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that cannot possibly be measured or understood in its entirety. A researcher can only record and monitor a very limited number of responses (for example, the effect on the symptom, the effect on blood pressure, or respiration). He remains largely in the dark about everything else. Additionally, research is only conducted for a limited period of time. The side effects that manifest after that period, even generations later, such as with thalidomide, can’t be fully accounted for. And finally, side effects can also be too subtle to detect immediately but quite serious over time, such as a decrease in general immunity.
しかし、医薬品の効果や副作用は、市場に出る前に広範囲にテストされていないのでしょうか？ここで問題なのは、「健康」や「医薬品に対する反応」という現象は、複雑でダイナミックな現象であり、その全体を測定したり理解したりすることは到底できないということです。
Accurate prediction is further complicated by strong psychological factors. The placebo effect (where a treatment has positive effects, merely because the patient believes in its effectiveness) and nocebo effect (where a treatment has negative effects because the patient believes it is harmful) are widely accepted phenomena. And they’re not minor, as some might say. Some researchers (such as Shapiro and Wampold) estimate that up to 90 percent of the effects of medical treatments can be attributed to psychological factors. If this is correct, most medical treatments would more accurately be described as (unacknowledged) psychotherapy.
正確な予測は、強い心理的要因によってさらに困難となります：プラセボ効果とノセボ効果。研究者の中には（ShapiroやWampoldなど）、医療行為の効果の最大 90% は心理的要因に起因すると推定する人もいる。もしそうであれば、ほとんどの医療は（無自覚な）心理療法と言った方が正確でしょう。
Although these data, like all data, are relative, it is clear that the influence of psychological factors is significant (chapter 10 is completely dedicated to this). That’s why the effects of pharmaceuticals and medical interventions are difficult to predict, and they can also change over time as the zeitgeist changes. Different discourse leads to different expectations and different expectations lead to different effects. This helps explain why drugs appear to lose their initial efficacy after being on the market for a while. A new therapy often raises high expectations, creating a strong placebo effect. Only from a naïve mechanistical perspective does one believe that the effects of medical interventions can be objectively measured through experiments.
これらのデータは、他のデータと同様、相対的なものですが、心理的要因の影響が大きいことは明らかです（第10章でこれについて述べます）。ナイーブな機械論的視点を信じるものだけが、医療介入の効果が実験によって客観的に測定できると信じているのです。
The poor quality of medical research also raises pressing ethical questions. For instance, it shines a harsh light on the merciless drive to conduct experiments. Every year the number of laboratory animals used for medical experiments increases. In 2005, about one hundred million animals were sacrificed worldwide (!); by 2020, this nearly doubled to just under two hundred million (!). The fate of these animals is horrific, often too horrific for words. If we take into account that 85 percent of medical studies are erroneous, biased, or even fraudulent (see chapter 1), we can only conclude that, in the majority of cases, this inferno of suffering is meaningless and unnecessary on top of that. Where exactly do we draw the line between experimentation and torture? If such a practice reaches such magnitude and such a degree of absurdity in a society, we cannot but conclude that such a society is seriously ill.
医学研究の質の低さは、差し迫った倫理的な問題を提起しています。医学実験に使用される実験動物の数は年々増加しています。2005年には世界で約1億匹の動物が犠牲になり、2020年には約2倍の約2億匹となりました。医学研究の85パーセントが誤り・偏見・詐欺であることを考慮すれば（第1章参照）、大半の場合、この地獄のような苦しみは無意味であり、不必要であると結論づけるしかありません。
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Mechanistic thinking gave man an enormous capacity to manipulate the material world. Combined with the (self-) destructive tendency intrinsic to man, this has put him in the most precarious situation he has ever been in. For the first time in history, man is able to raze the “natural resources” on which he depends, depleting the world’s fish stocks, for example, and clearing entire rainforests. Furthermore, with the industrialization and mechanization of war, mechanistic thinking showed its destructive potential in an overt and direct way. The tens of millions of victims of the destruction machines that were deployed in the world wars are silent witnesses thereof. And even more so in the years to follow, the sinister marriage between science and murderous rage wreaked such havoc that the war misery of yesteryear paled in comparison. To give just one example, Monsanto produced seventy-six million liters of Agent Orange, which was sprayed in Vietnam to defoliate the trees and drive the Vietcong out of the jungle. The result? Millions of both Vietnamese and American soldiers became seriously ill, often with tumors and cancers, causing deformities in at least 150,000 children.
機械論的思考は、人間に物質界を操作する巨大な能力を与えました。人間に内在する（自己）破壊的な傾向と相まって、このことは人間をこれまでで最も不安定な状況に追い込みました。例えば、世界の魚類資源枯渇や熱帯雨林の伐採や戦争の工業化・機械化です。
While mechanistic science sought to make the human condition more comfortable, in many respects it also made it more dangerous. Man could not help but feel threatened by the powers he himself unleashed from nature. And, for the most part, those powers ended up in the hands of a few. Due to the industrialization, mechanization, and technologization of the world, production capacities, economic power (via a self-centralizing banking system), and psychological power (via mass media) fell into the hands of an ever-decreasing number of people. The Enlightenment tradition had promised people autonomy and freedom, but, in a way, it brought people greater (feelings of) dependence and powerlessness than ever before. This powerlessness caused people to increasingly mistrust those in power. Throughout the nineteenth century, fewer and fewer people felt that political leaders really represented their voice in public space or defended their interests. As a result, man also became disassociated from the social classes that were represented by the politicians and was left uprooted, no longer connected to the whole of society, no longer belonging to a meaningful social group.
機械論的科学は人間の状態をより快適なものにしようとしましたが、多くの点で、より危険なものにもしてしまいました。世界の工業化・機械化・技術化によって、生産能力・経済力（自己中央集権的な銀行システムによる）・心理的力（マスメディアによる）は、ますます少数の人々の手に握られつつあります。啓蒙主義の伝統は、人々に自律と自由を約束しましたが、ある意味では、かつてないほどの依存と無力感を人々にもたらしました。
Although the Enlightenment tradition arose from man’s optimistic and energetic aspiration to understand and control the world, it has led to the opposite in several respects: namely, the experience of loss of control. Humans have found themselves in a state of solitude, cut off from nature, and existing apart from social structures and connections, feeling powerless due to a deep sense of meaninglessness, living under clouds that are pregnant with an inconceivable, destructive potential, all while psychologically and materially depending on the happy few, whom he does not trust and with whom he cannot identify. It is this individual that Hannah Arendt named the atomized subject. It is this atomized subject in which we recognize the elementary component of the totalitarian state.
啓蒙主義の伝統は、世界を理解し、支配しようとする人間の楽観的かつ精力的な願望から生まれましが、いくつかの点で、その逆を行くことになりました。人間は、自然から切り離された孤独の状態にあり、社会構造やつながりから切り離されて存在し、深い「意味な感覚」によって無力感を感じていることに気がついたのです。想像を絶する破壊的な可能性を秘めた雲の下に生きていることを。その一方で、この状況を幸せと感じている極めて少数の人々（でも信頼も共感もできないし、それが誰かもわからない、そんな人々）に依存していることを。ハンナ・アーレントが「原子化された主体」（atomized subject）と名付けたのは、このような個人であり、全体主義国家における基本要素である。
全体構成
Part I: Science and its Psychological Effects
Part II: Mass Formation and Totalitarianism
Part III: Beyond the Mechanistic Worldview
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