The Moult

Thinking in symbols is both the mainstay of a culture, and the process by which cultures evolve in tune with ‘rites’ and ‘gods’. For example, the behavioural scientist Konrad Lorenz symbolised the dangerous moment of instability for any society as the time when the next generation of youths reaches puberty. He used the metaphor of 'moult'. This encapsulates the idea that puberty is as hazardous a time for society as it is for the newly moulted soft-shelled crab! He described the pubertal moult as 'the open door through which new ideas gain entrance'. But these new ideas have to be compatible with the old and have to achieve balance with them. The arrogance of youth has to be countered by the wisdom of collective experience, as the young themselves come to appreciate when they get older. This is where symbolic gods come in with their divinely authorized rites of initiation that route individuals to destinations approved by the elders of society. This has been described as ‘brainwashing’ and the deprivation of growing individuals of their freedom. It is no means certain that we can impart both.

As enduring and forceful regulators of the social order, the gods ensure that a balance is maintained between the traditional forces of conservation and the progressive forces of change: they enshrine the important balancing scientific principle of homeostasis. In the recurring conflict between the generations, it is crucial that there should be no outright winner. A complete break with tradition brought about by the total victory of the youthful progressives would imperil the survival of the social order as much as the triumph of conservative inflexibility imposed by the elders.

Lorenz’s use of symbolism of the moult stands for a general system of social evolution. Human groups, like all groups of social animals, possess an inherent dynamic to thrive and multiply until they reach a critical size at which the resources at their disposal are no longer adequate for their needs. Then they become unstable and split. When the split occurs, the group divides into two opposing factions, and all the mechanisms that previously served to promote group solidarity are put into reverse so as to drive the two subgroups apart. At this point, the issue of leadership becomes crucial for survival, because the leader has to inspire the departing group with its sense of mission and purpose, so that it can win through against all odds and find its own Promised Land. Such a leader needs the sort of charisma traditionally granted by divine will and maintained through direct communion with the gods. Leaders of this kind are thrown up at crucial moments in the history of all societies and many of them, on close examination, prove to have been of a schizoid, paranoid, or schizotypal disposition. What price then for universal brotherhood?

Their influence, as is the case with all charismatic leaders arises from their apparent ability to put themselves in close touch with the unconscious and to articulate its archetypal contents in a way that convinces their followers that they are divinely inspired. The inspired figure is always one who stands apart, completely focused on his inner vision. This sets him on a level above that of ordinary humanity. He is seen to be in a state, halfway between Heaven and Earth. It means that he speaks with the conviction of higher authority, which puts his followers in awe of him. They adore him and long to place themselves under his influence, for he can heal their fears of separation by giving them direction and welcoming them into the arms of the charismatic group.

With time, this union, even in the most secular movement, assumes an unmistakably religious form, as the new group is bound together in its faith and rituals. Thus Nazism had its Messiah (Hitler), its Holy Book (Mein Kampf], its cross (the swastika), its religious processions (the Nuremberg Rally), its ritual (the Beer Hall Putsch Remembrance Parade), its anointed elite (the SS), its hymn (the 'Horst Wessel Lied'), excommunication for heretics (the concentration camps), its devils (the Jews), its millennial promise (the Thousand-Year Reich), and its Promised Land (the East).

In the history of Nazi Germany we see how a new religion may be born out of social disintegration and the compensatory emergence of a charismatic leader — although in Hitler's case, instead of leading a subgroup, he took over the host group, completely displacing the old guard, and then proceeded to mastermind the split in German society between the Aryans and the Jews. Having stigmatised the Jews as 'subhuman', he expelled those who could leave and exterminated those who could not, while leading his own people off into the Promised Land of the East. This particular sterile segment of European history illustrates the role of symbolism in processes of cultural change. In particular it demonstrates the power of idiosyncratic symbolism arising from the unconscious of a charismatic leader to inspire his fellows to collective action with incalculable consequences. It also brings the definition of destiny literally down to earth to include the transitory targets of individuals who create maps to guide their life’s achievement. Destinies thereby become destinations, which can be managed to meet relatively short-term social targets.