Strength Through Disunity

It's common to assume that groups of people are stronger when they are unified and this is especially true of authoritarians who act like any sort of disunity is a sign of disloyalty. We often see such attitudes in religious organizations where dissent is labeled heresy and can be violently put down. It's arguable, though, that some strength can come through differences and conflicts. A culture, for example, is stronger and better when there is a variety of conflicting elements. A monoculture, in contrast, becomes static, boring, and dull — and this is precisely what Christian "culture warriors" are seeking to create in America.

Colin Fleming reviews Eric Weitz's book Weimar Germany:

Despite political and economic turmoil, Weimar culture blossomed. It is this paradox that binds the disparate elements of Weitz’s book. Sleek department store façades, photograms, cabaret smut, jazz, expressionist cinema, sex manuals—“all had their roots in the dual sensibility of the vast destructiveness of war and the powerful creativity of revolution.” In the cities, the factory became “a symphony, or perhaps a collage,” and the blinding colors emanating from nightclubs and theater houses replaced agrarian life’s “natural rhythms of sunrise and sunset.” Germany was cutting loose. This was fertile ground, of course, for a despot looking to leverage power with the right platform, but also fertile ground for the artist. ...

Weitz makes a case for Germany’s fragmentation as the source of this artistic bounty. Without any prevailing—or even constant—ideological or political viewpoint, thinkers, artists, and progressives were free to fashion new dogmas that would address the republic’s problems and shape its future. Savvy creators were open to inspiration wherever they could get it; continuous evolution — social, political, artistic — was the ultimate directive. Even in sexual matters, a good chunk of German society was ready to tap into what were seen as fresh opportunities and to let the id have its day.

“With so many men killed and ravaged by bullets, shells, and gas,” Weitz writes, “so many women left without loved ones or reduced to caring for the seriously maimed — why not indulge life’s pleasures when possible? Why wait for the official sanction of marriage to sample sex?” You could make a mint in Weimar with a well-considered, quasi-scientific (for that hint of legitimacy) sex tutorial.

Source: Wilson Quarterly

It's probably not a coincidence that all the cultural experimentation was also accompanied by more than a little bit of sexual experimentation. Both culture and sexuality were liberated from authoritarian control and both became fertile ground for human imagination. The establishment of a new authoritarian system under the Nazi Party also saw the repression of both cultural and sexual experimentation. Does anyone remember any great or influential works of art, literature, or any other important cultural products coming out of Nazi Germany?

Authoritarian politics and authoritarian religion are dead-ends culturally and sexually. There's nothing of any real value there, not even in the area where authoritarians proclaim their greatest advantage: strength through unity. Culture is more productive and results in greater variety through disunity. This, in turn, is what allows a culture to have greater influence and attract greater support from everyone else. What bullets and bombs cannot acquire through force, attractive culture can attract through sheer sex appeal. Maybe that's why so many Christian Nationalists keep supporting military interventions abroad: they know, deep down, that they are incapable of producing the sort of culture which would be attractive to others and have a positive influence around the world.