After watching this film, what impressed me the most was the reflection on the trend of totalitarianism. Has totalitarianism really gone away from us? Or he is simply an important aspect of human nature, dormant in everyone's heart.
What kind of social environment would constitute centralization? We can find the answer in the German Weimar regime after World War I: 1. Excessive inflation 2. Excessive unemployment 3. General social depression4. Nationalism Arendt Hannah summed up the typical characteristics of totalitarianism in "The Origin of Totalitarianism": 1. Shared ideals2. Form a collective. 3. Divide a small number of people to become the enemy of the people. In the collective, the choices made are more likely to be extreme because the possible negative consequences of the collective choice are evenly distributed to a small part of the individual and the psychological burden is reduced. When they finally bear the consequences, they all fall into a state of blindness, unable to remember what they have done. Therefore, we can see that collective massacres are not uncommon, such as the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide, and the Khmer Rouge, and the participants in these brutal acts are generally organized into groups.
We can say that thinking about meta-problems is a manifestation of laziness. Individuals always hope to explore a social macro-problem instead of thinking about solving their own urgent problems. But this is put to good use by totalitarians, who shout slogans and paint a better future for every participant or potential participant. And through the continuous struggle to coerce more people, one movement after another makes the masses lose their senses and become fanatic. The secret is to continuously carry out social movements, incite more people, and make those who have already participated feel paid, so that the psychological cost will increase when they quit, thereby increasing their investment in sports.
And when we think about the personal factors of members of totalitarianism and other social movements, a sense of power is a big one. Appearance, family background, and power are all sources of personal strength, but the most simple and direct way is to join a group. In a group, differences are canceled, unity will replace loneliness, and collective thinking will replace individual independent thinking. This is not only the basis for the formation of political parties, but also for churches and civil organizations. The same values replace the differences in production resources, which constitutes a new cognition of oneself, but this cognition is exaggerated.
Therefore, we can find that the disadvantaged groups in the film are the deepest, including Tim, who has a cold family and is not valued, and a girl with an ordinary appearance and an ordinary family background. They don't want the movement to end because that would mean the end of the collective, the end of the power. As a result, they often become fanatics in the movement, and their characters are more prone to extremes, as Le Pen said in "The Rabble" that only people with more extreme characters can become leaders. They rely on the collective strength to give them a sense of power, which in turn is used to mobilize the masses.
The French Revolution perfectly embodies this. The people of the revolutionary party have grasped some power by inciting the hatred of the bottom people against the upper class. In order to keep the blood of the people boiling through wave after wave of social movements, they can only When Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine, the enthusiasm of the people reached its peak, and they were happy to be caught in a big social wave, and the people at the bottom gained the right to speak. At this time, the criterion for judging a person's achievement is no longer the land, property, or wisdom he owns, but whether he is radical enough and has unlimited enthusiasm for the revolution, so the Jacobin faction composed of the lowest people has gradually emerged. The leaders of the Jacobin faction, such as Dandong and Mara, were all radicals. They sent countless nobles to the gallows. At the same time, they did not forget to accuse the establishment of "betraying the revolution", and finally put the original The revolutionaries were ousted from power.
In the process, we can see that when this wave swept through, it seemed to have its own will, and the social movement itself was no longer controlled by a strongman or regime, and even began to devour the people who brought it into the world in the first place: Marat was assassinated, Danton, and Robespierre were convicted of treason by a parliament controlled by the people. In this movement, everyone's hands are covered with blood; they slander their enemies in the name of reporting spies and covet other people's wealth and concubines. But when all these movements ended, the people returned to being gentle, respectful, thrifty, and yielding, and they worked diligently in the fields.
They have no guilt in their hearts because Michelle next door did the same. Did she? When it is necessary to clear up these historical mistakes, there will be "collectives" in front of them as shields, and the "plain" people are only used by careerists and they are just mediocre evil. When responsibility and behavior are separated, even in the name of "morality", I think the kindest people will show bestiality. And all this is common in totalitarianism. Sometimes madness is like gravity; all it takes is a nudge.
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