Flourishing

This piece sits somewhere between the loose tango theme of The Outpost and the rather more dangerous flotsam and jetsam currently strewn about The Intertidal Zone at present.

 Just over ten years ago, in February 2016, I started preparing a series on The Outpost on how good dancing and good milongas depended on certain conditions which was to run over a series of pieces. 

Much later I noticed, among the hundreds of draft pieces, I had never published the set, partly because it was so important.  I had wanted to get it right. I have a vague memory of noticing someone else writing on a related topic the week I wanted to publish and didn't want to coincide.  I now think this was a mistake. Other topics took over but the theme has persisted in tango and in life.

In essence, the conditions  were things like the host, the welcome, the lighting, room size and shape, good lines of sight, the seating, tables, the music, technical management of the music, the sound system, the floor, adherence to milonga codes, maybe more. The key was that these were often essential before finding a great dance partner for that sublime experience. This won’t be the case for everyone and Why is it so for some and not others? is an interesting question. Why are some people so difficult to please? or, in the common tango parlance “so snobby”?   

The themes of necessary or good conditions and of flourishing have often appeared since in The Outpost in various guises: gardens, growing vs building, emergence, uniqueness, things of that sort. Later that year there was a post on eudaimonia, a concept in the branch of ethics that considers what is a good life, a life well lived, famously explored by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers.

I noticed the themes of emergence and flourishing and of what contributes to flourishing were appearing in response to my experience of trauma, extreme stress and anxiety.  Partly, it is because when fear colonises so many corners of a life, a way to counter that is to expand agency.  The fear can be acknowledged but when you are gardening, fear can takes up less space. When enough of your mind is occupied on a task, or when meditating for that matter, but when, in some way you are focused enough in the present that your mind does not wander into the future or the past, agency increases and diminishes the power of fear. 

What the health sector calls “self care” is even more important I suspect than is often suggested in that industry.  The sense I have there is that drugs, therapy - things that can be professionalised - are the main things, but actually, I feel it is key to health to do things not only where I feel safe or “safe enough”, but that I enjoy, that are interesting and exciting.  Sometimes they are physical like Glasgow Magic Cycling club, which is  like Critical Mass but with more social time, less politics, and happens more often and with more people than the Central Belt can usually command for CM.  Sometimes that special thing is conversation with someone unusual or intelligent, or it is something creative. But the really special activities, the ones that I notice not only improve my health stats but also make me feel great have an elusive kind of spark to them. There is healthy relation and response, reciprocity, generosity, stability, play. Critically, ego is absent. Other people will be restored by different things, no doubt.

In the past, I had been interested in what the conditions for flourishing were. Flourishing of many kinds - a dance event, in a person, a mind, a group, an organization, a town, society, or in nature. In recent years, having experienced a stalker, a narcissist, someone who tried to extort me while I was stuck abroad with COVID, and, most recently, someone with an immensely destructive dark triad personality, together with the complete indifference of organisations whose mission is purportedly, to help and protect, I had experienced, like a plant in storms, the forces that impede flourishing or cause it to fall away.  Unsurprisingly, these were among the old themes in the darker corners of The Outpost and the Intertidal Zone pre-trauma: control, tyranny, money, manipulation, power.

I see now that the conditions that allow a dance, a garden, a person or a community to come alive are also the conditions tyranny, domination and control most reliably destroy.

So does that mean that flourishing is not decorative or indulgent, the cherry on top, but a matter of survival? And yet don’t we think about flourishing as more than survival? Flourishing is the flower when it blooms.  But then if the flower doesn't bloom, we wouldn’t say it had properly lived or flourished, because it hasn’t fulfilled the form of a flowering plant, it hasn’t “been a flower”. It certainly hasn’t produced fruit and had an opportunity to carry forward life. So I'm inclined to wonder now if flourishing is not just "the best" of something, but actually, integral to the definition of surviving at least when we consider plants and perhaps people too.  What life and survival flourishing meant seemed at first to be separate thing but now I'm not so sure.

The rain is mundane, sunshine is commonplace, the dirt is…dirt and yet together they create life from the miracle of a seed  So, too, the small practical conditions that let life recover in people are not trivial at all. There is a follow-up piece, Living Conditions, on The Intertidal Zone.

Technique!

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” 

- Martha Graham

***

On social media: "There is always competition in tango so we have to keep our dance practice up if we want to dance and not belly ache about not getting dances." 

***

2026: The post after this intro is from 2015.  There are hundreds of posts in draft, that for one reason or another didn't get published (yet).  Prompted by a reel I saw recently, I was sure I had written one on "Technique" and found it languishing in draft.  I have written extensively in various posts on why I don't think technique in tango is the meal people tend to make of it, but here I suppose was one of my earliest forays into the topic.  My view hasn't really changed at all even while reels proliferate of the latest up-and-coming young thing, in beautiful shoes, practicing intricate barre work. For one of the funniest tango quotes I've heard on this subject see Doubt and Kindness. 

Over the years, I have found reading other people on tango largely depressing and so I don't tend to do it.  Nonetheless this reel caught my eye the other day. For when this link breaks, it's by Marco Aurelio El Tupungatino.  Now, I didn't know this until a minute ago when I looked it up, but Tupungato is near Mendoza, in Argentina, far nearer Chile than Buenos Aires.  Argentinians also tend to speak more sense about tango than people from other countries, even sometimes when they are teachers. 

So this guy was exhorting women not to go to classes to learn steps, but to go straight to the milonga  where they would become better dancers by dancing with guys who could dance.   This is a view I share, but it is strangely unusual, particularly in a teacher.  

I think the guy is a teacher. He talks about introducing the tango embrace to Hong Kong in another post and in another he is referred to by someone else as a "maestro" who will be giving tango dance tips.  Curiouser and curiouser.  If he's famous, well, I'm a social dancer and only tend to notice the people dancing socially on the social floor. 

The point is also that this video has, at the time of writing 288 likes.  I was flabbergasted., never having seen so many people agree in one place on this, at least previously,  controversial point.  Controversial that is to say, in Europe and among Argentinians who have been taken in by the tango industry. Eleven years ago, this view in the UK and Europe was very unpopular.  I would write about in Facebook forums and was slammed over and over, in much the same way that El Tupungatino has received criticism in the comments.  I also commented about it on other blogs until, along with friends, I got fed up with these kinds of comments being censored simply for not being in line with the author's own view.

I don't know whether the difference is time, or that he's male, or that he made a video, or is Argentinian, or a teacher or some combination of these, but I am very glad that people like the point.  

***

2015:

I like dancing with people I like, more than I care about their level of technique or attainment.

The technique that comes from stuffing your head full of things to remember in lessons is stressful when, in the milonga, you try to remember all the things you are supposed to be doing: "Stand up straight!", "Reach up with the chest!", "Open the throat area!" "Be grounded!" "Connect!" "Loosen your arm!", "Don’t collapse your arm!", "Reach back from the hip!", "Move fluidly!", "Engage the core!", "Relax!" I gave up. That's when I really did relax and then I started to learn to dance.

Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t found that it’s really about technique. Or perhaps I just don’t care to spend my time balancing on one leg in a workshop. I don’t think it’s important . I think dancing well is more an awareness of how it feels for the other person and how it is to feel them. How on earth would you go about teaching that? When did you ever go to a class that talked about feeling? Who would buy that? Why would you when you can just do it?

[2026 footnote, apropos "what goes on in classes": I bumped into someone I knew slightly, a friend of a friend, the other day, in a Cuban cafe in Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside littoral, some fifty miles from my home. Stranger still, it turned out this person had been unwittingly taking tango lessons with the Stalker, about whom enough has been written elsewhere.  It turned out the new person didn't know the first thing about social dancing, literally, not a thing, which tells me they are learning steps. We discussed more about the fascinating subtleties and traditions of the milonga in a 10 minute conversation than she had in any of her so-called lessons. ]

So I think it’s about how it feels for the other person. As the girl that would be to be close, but not heavy, relaxed and not stiff, the kind of embrace which is natural yet allows for dance movement, an impulse to move together to music that you know. These are the things I think of as technique. And this comes simply from awareness, listening, in a word, and practice. From listening comes feeling.

These things are very hard to teach, largely because they rely on a natural desire to want to embrace another person, which is not the case in class situations. That is an artificial environment, where most embraces are contrived. And yet I remember a teacher telling me something which I thought was probably true at the time, although I had yet to understand it: that you can tell who will dance best simply from the way they embrace at the start.

Ricardo Vidort said something I find very sustaining:

"Today, people teach methodic ways and tango, the real one, does not have a method because it is a feeling. Technique and choreography? It’s only for performance. It is a tango that has been learned for hours and hours for show business."

Even when people agree that step and sequence based teaching is not so great, they still cling to the idea of technique. But it doesn't make you feel better to your partner. Good feel comes from plenty of dancing with people who can dance where you both listen to the music, each other and your own bodies.

Hosting - an invisible craft

"God's eye" basket in progress

Recently, to expand my experiences in crafting, which form a cornerstone of getting better through topping up your cup, I went to a couple of hours of basket weaving, something I've wanted to do for a long time.  It was at a place where the focus is community, spirituality, healing and practical skills. I'd like to be able to share the name, but since the stalker has had a distasteful and uncanny habit of turning up at things I have mentioned, and so I can't as I like to go there worry-free.

The young host and leader was delightful: fun, bubbly and enthusiastic and on the professional side: competent, prepared and helpful.  During the event, I mentioned to her what a happy sound there was in the room, people laughing, chatting and relaxed as their hands were busy.

 

- Those good vibes, they come from the host, I said, because I like to give compliments. 

- Oh! she said, pleased.
- You must have noticed that at events? I said. 

- No, she said, I don't go to that many events. But it's true, that's my life's ambition. 

- What is? 

- To create good vibes. 

- What is it in the host, I said, that you think that makes for good vibes? 

She thought for a minute and said: 

- The welcome. 

- Yes, I said.... 

[If have read much of The Outpost, you will recognise a theme.]

...The host's welcome is the number one thing that sets the tone. 

- And...making people feel, yes, welcome, happy to be there, to be themselves.... she said, feeling her way, somewhat to my surprise. 

- I agree, I said. It's something to do with the people being able to do what they came to do or be who they want to be, or discover what they were hoping.  

I thought later that all of that is an kind of enabling and to do with a genuine care for the people that is separate from a financial motivation. It will come as no surprise then, that, this workshop was free or by donation.  She didn't even advertise, as far as I recall, her business.

Containment and authorship

Hotel view 

I'm in another hotel room, still cheap, further north this time, with an interesting view of Aberdeen's port and ships.  The colour is a welcome respite to the Granite City's endless grey.  The view reminds me of that I once enjoyed in my first flat, an ocean eyrie underneath the penthouse at the end of The Shore, in Leith, Edinburgh's port.  

It was my birthday on Saturday.  Last year on the same day in the morning I had a meal out with my husband.  There's a happy, smiling picture in the restaurant.  In the afternoon there's another picture in my mother's house.  I look almost unrecognisable: shocked, in disbelief, and in tears.  A monstrous family member, (though not one I now recognise as having any family connection to me) the common or garden version of the truly evil despots that I started to write about nearly a year ago, announced that the next day he would be taking mum away from her home of thirty years to lock her up in England.  That was not quite the start, but just part of a campaign of terror against me and of indifference to mum and what she wanted in order to take control of and abuse her substantial assets and to force me, with joint power of attorney, completely out of the picture through intimidation, coercion, control of the narrative and all vicious, bullying cousins of that family.    

And he managed it. Eighteen months after it started I am still ill.  The symptoms are more or less manageable depending on the environment, context and triggers.  Yesterday I couldn't walk outside without a hoodie, dark glasses, headphones.  We came across, by chance, some family members he lied to and manipulated to do things he wanted.  They, like so many people, places and organisations are now connected with, part of the trauma I still live with.  I had a panic attack such that my throat felt like it was closing up. That particular version has never happened before and it was obviously terrifying.  For all you might think you want to die, your body panics when it thinks that's happening.

This year, with my own family, we were supposed to go to Glasgow for my birthday meal.  Son 1 wanted a second lift to university with the rest his stuff.  No, you drive, said the husband who had recently picked up a parking fine. I tried to make out the M80 through the hammering rain that made visibility almost nil he drove from the front back seat. Near the halls I pointed out a highly rated food truck I'd scouted out for him nearby, for future reference.  We were supposed to be eating the birthday meal elsewhere. We dropped off Son 1 and the husband then Son 2 and I got snarled up in the Glasgow LEZ, high parking charges and the coin-only parking machines. Twenty minutes later, somewhat frazzled we rejoined husband and Son 1, who, to my disbelief, were lunching from the same food truck.  We'll take you to the train station now, said Son 1, through his burger, mission clearly accomplished. I looked at the husband in astonishment, who shrugged in a perennial "What can I do?" way.  

"You could've said 'Wait!'" I said.  

"He hadn't had breakfast" he said, by way of ...something.  

"Whose fault is that?" I said, shortly knowing Son 1 never got up before lunchtime if he could help it. 

Son 2 wisely didn't say anything but plainly longed for a gyros.  

So I left them to it for that day, had a greasy snack on my own in a Venezuelan bodega and went to a tango practica where they were going to turn me away for having no cash. 

- "Can't you take a bank transfer?" 

- "No, we get charged," came the implausible reply. Luckily, a pal chummed me in with a fiver and another friend I've danced with since forever and hadn't seen for months turned up by chance. I went on to see a decent film.  It wasn't a bad day all in all, but I got home dispirited.

So I decided to treat myself to my own birthday treat instead: a couple of days away and visit Aberdeen art gallery which has long been on my bucket list. The trip also provided material for the most farcical tango experience since, well, since somehow announced they were going to run a class attached to my successful tango practica, which proved to be the beginning of the end of that adventure.  The vultures soon joined up, dived in. 

I didn't say, I was going to Aberdeen.  In fact, I didn't say anything at all, I just left. Figured he'd work it out from the door surveillance cameras, the bank account and the terse message the previous day about about unilateral decisions and being repeatedly disregarded. It seems to be a bit of a pattern.  Perhaps it's like pheromones.  It occurred to me later my surreptitious packing and desire to leave unobserved, avoiding the windows had  the flavour of someone living under surveillance in occupied territory.

I realised that I was finally taking some steps in authorship. My own life has been so shaped by looking after other people and the environment they live in.  It has been shaped by other people's voices: especially that of my father, his son,  mostly male bosses at work, my husband who has also been supportive, even our sons.  What they say to or me often followed a patriarchal line of domination, distortion, erasure, gaslighting and plain disregard.  

It isn't what my mother says about me.  If I want confirmation that someone outside the family perhaps might have behaved in a way that it might be better to quietly withdraw from, I ask mum what she thinks.  And even now, her moral compass is dead on. And for all her quiet, gentle, fun-loving good-humour mum could, and still can, turn a phrase to put someone completely in the their place with a devastating politeness I don't think I will ever be able to match.  And what the men say is not what, I might wonder if, perhaps, sometimes, on a good day, I might have some qualities that were not altogether contemptible or, more often, laughable.  

When you live in a state of shutdown or near shutdown, meaning, you can't move or speak you forget who you are, what defines you, what you enjoy.  

The suicide rate for caregivers is double the national average. That's without recent relational and institutional/systemic trauma layers on top. I learned a lot about how ways of coping.  It's actually ways of surviving.  You don't really cope with trauma, I think you try to survive it. And you can't heal from trauma until you're out of what is doing the traumatizing. 

It's perhaps not quite that linear.  You can carve out safer spaces for yourself where the trauma can't reach you as much but it's like hiding in a crater in a live warzone. When you have been so terrified that eyou become mute, frozen, you try to make yourself invisible even to you yourself.  The hypervigilant mind shuts down, being overloaded with threat. 

Anyway, those spaces you carve out, perhaps occasionally during the trauma and gradually thereafter, are I suppose anchors, harbours, refuges, sanctuaries.  They can be things like stones in your pocket, or a cherished object, places, people (people don't feature highly in my list).  

They can be rituals, environments like nature,  a safe space, a bench in a park. 

 

The recently regenerated Union Terrace Gardens, Aberdeen

They can be symbols you hold in your mind - earlier this year I created a whole dictionary of them to try to anchor what was happening to me and how to counter it.  That was before I learned that I am more aligned with Daoist concepts of flow and yielding than western ones of combat and countering.

They can even be even words. They can be a conscious breath, the sound of birdsong, a hot drink.  Birdsong once got me out of a car where I had been stuck in a shutdown for a Tesco carpark after the trauma freeze came over me during the period of intense assault by social services team that was oh, ironies, supposed to signpost, assist, support, with particular responsibility for vulnerable people.

Those "containers" allow you to begin small acts of authorship, of reclamation. A trip away, a hotel room, an art gallery, writing. 

Imagine my surprise when I turned a corner on the first floor and gasped.  Was it my imagination or "Does this look like young me?" I asked an art-savvy friend. Yes! He said.  I took it as a sign on my authorship journey. 

Anne Finlay by Dorothy Johnstone, Aberdeen Art Gallery

Sometimes I wonder which is the container and which the authorship.  Is the trip the container or the authorship.  On a big scale, the trip may be the container, but in itself, the railway carriage may not feel safe so the journey then becomes authorship, using your safe objects to give safety or containment.  

The container is something that makes you feel safe.  From there, you can do something that nourishes, fulfils, or expands your life.  Sometimes I think of the container as a bothy and authorship as walking wild land, land and events and weather beyond your control, but which gives nourishes your soul, perhaps freedom, perhaps adventure, perhaps breathing space. Authorship is something that you do even when there may not be carved out space for you, when things may not be going with you. It's not defiance though, not for its own sake. It's something more fulfilling.

For months and months my thoughts just looped in fear. It gets to the point where the triggers have been so successfully installed by the abuser fear loops and whoever works with them, that it creates an internal architecture of trauma that runs itself, that doesn't need those specific instigators to be there any more.  Then when I realised that I was afraid and all my behaviour was fear based then I started to loop on how to get out of it and when not completely shut down from exhaustion tried all kinds of obsessive strategies because you will try anything.  Now my thoughts don't loop on trauma all the time, just when I walk in my town or the phone rings or the mail comes through the door, so, less often.   

In-between the moments of fear I carve out authorship.  I shaped them big - whole trips this summer, to Devon three times between May and August - the first for respite and the others for recovery, so I thought, and to France.  I have overdone these trips. I was so desperate for authorship, but it becomes a different kind of tiring and all those unknowns in travel aren't necessarily good to an over-sensitised system. But I needed to get away from Scotland and reminders of what I have lived through

A sea change

You have to relearn what is safe, because almost nothing feels safe.  And if you start to feel safe then you can begin those small acts of authorship which might be creative but something that replenishes you. Because we don't just need air and water, food, sleep and shelter.  We need to feel safe because without that we can't move.  And then to function in a way that is not just providing those core physical needs we need things that feed our inner selves, that bring us joy and fulfilment and a sense of who we are. 

It surprised me that despite the last 18 months, when I did eventually dance again, it was in the milongas that I had a much better sense of who I was.  It was as though the milongas for me were outside all of what had happened. I hadn't lost my sense of discernment, my values, what I looked for, what I allowed, what I didn't.  I had and still have a sense of clarity in the milongas, that I don't have outside it.  Let there be no mistake, that clarity and confidence took me years to establish and many hard-earned lessons.  I also realised at a recent event that the milongas were not an impermeable shield.  I was more fragile than I thought and was easily pierced by reminders of mum's situation, by abrasive people or by people who sent mixed messages and confused me. 

But mostly I held on to that core clarity within tango, within tango events, because none of those undermining voices can reach inside the milonga.  In large part, that is because I had a good example of reference points early on.  Those chimed with my own instincts and made sense to me. A safe kind of  garden or bower grew around me so that although there were snakes, and things that could bite or sting I knew how to deal with them. On the whole, I kept myself safe, much safer certainly now, than many of the women I meet. Experience within the milonga, living in the milongas in accordance with those values lent me that clarity. Someone within the tango community said recently that I had a lot of confidence.  I don't.  I have very poor self esteem from my life outside the milonga, from external voices that run me down, and what has happened to me, especially over the last eighteen months, but also before that.  But it's different inside the milonga, it's a container that allows me authorship. I do see a common and sad lack of confidence in women who dance just fine, who are nice to dance with. I even dance with them sometimes and say nice things, specifically to try to boost their self esteem because I know that is what is happening to them.  I experienced something earlier in my tango journey, but found ways to overcome and it isn't through joining advanced dance classes. It has nothing to do with that. I think a lot of women never get over it though but I know from conversation that they don't have those guiding values that I was shown early on, that made sense to me then and more so with experience. Those values make sense to me and give clarity and confidence. They are like buoys, like markers but also like good instinct.

Good instinct, example and education don't always line up though, in fact rarely do. Twice now, I have heard of "socialisation" spoken of in let's say, not the usual positive terms. Once was by my Devon-based Alexander teacher who uses it when she is talking about how small children have good posture to "before they get socialised".  Robert Kegan from developmental psychology explicitly frames the “socialised mind” as limited: when your identity and values are shaped primarily by external voices (parents, culture, institutions), you lack authorship. His “self-authoring mind” is the next developmental stage: constructing your own system of values and compass. Beyond that, he even posits a “self-transforming mind,” able to hold multiple systems in dialogue. I was describing socialisation in this way to my more local Alexander teacher, recommended by the first.  Ah yes, he said.  This was given to me by one of her teachers (it must be decades ago). 

So dancing, for me, though I still don't do a lot of it, is certainly an act of authorship and a relational one at that, co-authorship then. I think for anyone who has been through relational trauma (where the trauma is caused or deliberately inflicted by another person) the possibility of this is surprising.  That I mostly lead, probably helped.  With great dancing from men being so thin on the ground, and relational trauma tending to come from men, to once or twice dance with a man and enjoy it is nothing short of miraculous.

So how to extend clarity and authorship outside the milonga? That's a whole other story.

Surfacing

I often used to write in the mornings even 'til lunch. I'd start meaning to do half an hour over breakfast, but hours would fly past and I wouldn't even notice  I would feel guilty not to have been more "productive" in other ways. I see things differently now and anyway, while guilt stopped me doing a lot of things, it didn't stop me doing that. It felt like life.

It was always like that - easy, effortless, addictive.  Revision was more of a task. But writing flowed.  There was never a dearth of content, subject, ideas.  There are scores of drafts that haven't been published, from just not enough time to get to them, or they were superseded in waves of other topics. 

There hasn't been a lack of material to write about in this long hiatus either. But fear is an eraser, a great inhibitor. Fear is murderous. And publishing is public, it's in the very word, which means, not necessarily safe.

Meanwhile, strangely, the readership has not gone down, but up. It used to be that readers were in the UK, then Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand and then the US and then a few years ago it was Singapore, Hong Kong. And now it's south east Asia and South America, Vietnam and Brazil for some reason and Singapore still. 

Is tango big in Brazil? They have lots of great Brazilian dances.  Many strike me as upbeat, for parties and carnivals.  I was told recently, by a tango teacher living in the UK, that the southern part of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, which borders northern Uruguay shares the same culture. I already knew Uruguayan culture is similar to Argentina, maybe in a way that echoes similarities between Colombian and Venezuelan cultures but I'm stopping there as I am losing my feet.  Do we say that in English?  Or is it from Spanish? French?  When you start to go out of your depth. 

There is so much to say. It is as though I have been underwater for a long time and seen many monstrous things and some special and rare.  

I am underslept.  My back aches, pain nosing it's way down my leg probing. I cancelled a hike today which has left me at a loss, at least, so I thought.  This week has been carefully planned with restorative, joyful or new experiences, things that don't let me think too much.  But maybe this is where I am meant to be now.

Although, actually, I don't want to be at home even though it's quiet and most of the family are out or away for hours. When I lie in bed or sit very still I can partly hear, partly feel a mechanical noise that seems to come through the ground.  On, on, on then for a second off; on, on on etc. I don't want to believe it is the new underground pumping system they have just installed a few streets away beside the Tay. The sensation pulses night and day.  

I don't want lists or tasks either.  I want to be in a modern, quiet, anonymous chain hotel where you know what you are getting, and no one wants to know who you are.  No demands, co-codamol, away for at least two days, because of the first night effect where you adjust.  Ideally I would like to be away much longer. By the sea perhaps. Or beside woods, or gardens, with birdsong, like the youth hostel in Chester where I booked a private room breaking the long drive back to Scotland after spending the week on the Devon/Cornwall  border, dancing and camping, with more clothes than on my impromptu arrival last time.

I slept so badly the other day that's exactly what I did.  After much prevarication, and self-justification I took myself off to a Premier Inn in east Dundee a mere half hour from me.  £52 for 8 hours sleep.  A grand trade.  

But here we are, at my dining room table, which at least, after five months is mine again.  Is this like surfacing?  A gasp of air, a shake of the head, the sun on your face.

Ideologies and control

Chairman Mao poster, People's Republic of China, 1968 in the University of Oregon

 II. Ideology

It is probably in initial motivation that we see the biggest difference in national and individual tyrants.

The motivation of national tyrants often comes from ideology. This lends conviction and focus - or rather the excuse that justifies the purging of opponents that inevitably attends the tyrants alternative view of society. Usually ideology gives way to, morphs into an obsession with extreme control, frequently accompanied by paranoia.  

To take some examples, Stalin was initially driven by a Marxist - Leninist ideology but systematically eliminated potential rivals.  He created the cult of personality  common in tyrants that led to a rule of terror and absolutism. Similarly, Hitler started with nationalist and racist ideologies but dismantled democratic institutions to establish totalitarian control.

Mao and Pol Pot's ideology was communist but became just another form of authoritarian control on the one hand and genocide on the other.  Castro’s communist ideals were similarly maintained through authoritarian means - control of the press, surveillance and repression. There are endless left wing leaders who started out with an ideology that turned autocratic. Latin America seems to have them on repeat. In Europe, Alexander Lukashenko’s rule in Belarus has been called "Europe's last dictatorship" and combines elements of Soviet-era policies with strong nationalist rhetoric. 

The same happens on the right: Mussolini was a fascist, Putin seems to be motivated by Russian exceptionalism.  While Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were “democratically” elected there are questions about how democratically they govern and the integrity of their electoral systems.  Erdoğan seems to be pursuing a broadly nationalist ideology based on traditional Islamic values in a nominally secular state.  Orbán doesn’t have an ideology per se, more a set of traditionally right wing ideas.  The difference between him and what have typically been more dangerous dictators is that the latter tend to have one particular burning issue like “agrarian reform”, “the end of private ownership”, “racial purity”, “a pan-Arab state”, “Sharia law”.

The Arab world has its own versions of dictatorships: Gaddafi’s ideology was Arab nationalism and socialist.  Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist (single Arab state). Both became autocratic. In Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman runs a repressive absolute monarchy based on Sharia principles around a cult of personality albeit not one as outlandish as some. 

The non-Arab dictatorships in the Middle East, Iran and the Taliban are Islamic theocracies.  The latter combines an extreme form of Deobandi Islam with Pashtun nationalism.

The many military dictatorships tend to seek power for its own sake, though sometimes this combines with establishing “order” or economic benefits for those at the top. 

In Africa, Leopold II of Belgium (Congo Free State)’s tyranny (1865-1909) was motivated primarily by personal enrichment through exploitation of the Congo. In the same region ) (Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo), Mobutu Sese Seko’s reign (1965-97) was motivated by personal enrichment and power. Idi Amin in Uganda (1971-79) was motivated by personal power and paranoia. Robert Mugabe’s hold on power in Zimbabwe (1980-2017) was dominated by maintaining personal power although it had had ideological origins.

Tyrannies around personal power tend to be found more in Africa - notably Bokassa in the Central African Republic; Macías Nguema and Nguema Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia, Sani Abacha in Nigeria. Ferdinand Marcos was an example form the the Philippines and the aforementioned Jean-Claude Duvalier "Baby Doc" in Haiti.

In most of these regimes, control and repression are as much, if not more, the symbol of the regime than whatever it is the regimes is supposed to safeguard, promote or change. This is as much a good indicator of a totalitarian regime as any other. More people could probably tell you Pinochet was a dictator than whether he was on the left or on the right. It is often pointed out that when it comes to dictatorship, there is little distinction any more between left and right. The cost in human suffering is the same.

All this to say that while ideology varies, tyranny on a national scale invariably ends up being about power and control for its own sake.

The dogmatic micro tyrant

The micro-tyrant does not have an ideology per se.  What they have instead is a dogmatic view - about what, doesn’t matter; the point is they will not entertain an alternative. What seemed to be a diverging open circle of different motivations between macro and micro tyrants in fact comes together again because the ideology is just the excuse for control.  No tyrant will brook opposition.  Their way  - no matter how they may frame any so-called “discussion”  - is the only way.  Example after example appears in 'The Feast of the Goat' of laws that are passed  for the benefit of those in power using language that show these either as supposedly necessary incursions on civil liberties or appearing to be for the benefit of citizens . 

In both macro and micro cases, motivations are some combination of power/ control, greed, convenience, and self-interest - in all cases, selfish motivations. This will come up in more detail under identifying tyrants

Tyrants, post 9

The traits of tyrants

Rafael Trujillo

A handbook for tyranny

I want to use Vargas Llosa's 'The Feast of the Goat' as a springboard to look at traits of tyrants on the micro and macro scale, which is to say the tyrant you may encounter in everyday life versus the tyrant who operates on a national scale.  While there are some differences, I have been surprised at the behavioural similarities between them.

Just as 'The Prince' is a theory book on how to manipulate and hold power, 'The Feast of the Goat' is a handbook for the tyrant, great or small.  There is no space here to delve into how different ideologies give rise to tyrannies nor how they are sustained so long, apparently sometimes with popular support although later we will look briefly at this and at complicity.  

Each individual will have their own interpretation of what a tyrant looks like but a coincidence of literature and personal experience, brings me to identify the tyrant as having various characteristics, the first of which I explore here.  

Tyranny has existed for so long and has been so widespread across the globe that there is only space here to touch on a very few to exemplify a few similarities and differences between them. What marks a tyranny? Often it is a vast number of deaths. It is causing death that tends to make the tyrant stand out.  Yet most people living under a tyrant will not die.  Many more, probably a majority, will live in fear of the tyrant, or more likely their secret police.  They may fear their neighbours if the tyranny has set up a system of denunciation such as existed in Nazi Germany, East Germany with the Stasi, the USSR, China, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Communist Romania under Ceaușescu and North Korea.  Or, they live lives that have been co-opted into the service of the tyrant such as in Equatorial Guinea in the late 1960 and 70s or in the Congo under Leopold II in the late nineteenth century. In more modern tyrannies like those currently in Belarus, Hungary and more controversially, Turkey, they live lives that are restricted and repressed, towards conservative ideas and where democratic institutions are being undermined.  Viktor Orbán in Hungary actively promotes an "illiberal democracy". 

I also want to keep drawing attention to the common behaviours and motivations that unite both the national tyrant and the common or everyday tyrant of the workplace, school or family.  A tyrant is fundamentally someone who cannot brook any conception of anything being other than the way they see it and say it and they have the forcefulness to ensure that what they say, goes. Everything else is a detail regarding why they are like that, or how they get their way, or what the consequences are for those around them.

I. Cruelty 

The first common trait in tyrants is cruelty.  I don’t necessarily mean they are sadists, though they might be and probably on a personal level, may well be: the kind of person who as a child would kill animals or engineer situations to get someone else into trouble and delight in the resulting fear, anger and frustration.   Those, indeed, are behaviours more psychopathic and sadistic than simply cruel.  

Someone may be cruel through intent or cruel through indifference.  A sadist tends to operate on a personal level.  We don’t tend to hear about sadists operating at a mass scale.  Sadism is personal. It is usually one or perhaps two people acting on one or two others.  It therefore takes time and focus.  Over a lifetime a sadist may indeed harm many people.

A tyrant, on the other hand, tends towards control and that can be exerted over one person or a small group (micro-tyrant), which of course could result in many, over a life time. But the macro tyrant can control and therefore harm many hundreds of thousands or millions at a time.  

Hitler, racists, any group that says they want to or which does exterminate another, they all seem to feel glee or satisfaction at that prospect.  There is a nuance of difference between pleasure through causing personal harm to one other person and satisfaction at the extermination of a group. I am quite sure that many, if not all of the latter are quite able also to be sadists, and this is what makes them one of the most dangerous of all types of humans.

But my point is rather that the more ordinary tyrant who is not bent on the extermination of a group has an ability to cause harm that leaves them indifferent to the harm caused rather than taking sadistic pleasure in it.  

If the tyrant is the micro type that inflicts harm in the workplace, the school, the community, the family, then it is harder to say whether they are psychopathically conscious but indifferent to the harm they cause or whether they cause it sadistically.  In these cases it could well be a combination of the two.  

In national tyrants, especially those not deliberately intent on exterminating another group, it is far more likely to be conscious indifference because of the difficulty in feeling pleasure towards the harm caused to many when your motivation may well be something completely different like control or greed.  Motivation we will come on to later but it is rarely said that tyrants are motivated by a desire to cause harm.  They tend to want other things, but it is their indifference to the suffering they bring about that sets them apart from other people.

The tyrant then  is responsible for acts that horrify and appall those not under their spell or those forced to work under it. The Parsley Massacre alone is a lesson that normal standards of morality are far removed from the thinking of tyrants.  They have a capacity to go beyond, to do acts of such cruelty and barbarity where other people draw a line. 

Kinds of harm

What sorts of extreme harm do tyrants cause?  In macro tyrants, most obviously, it is death. How do tyrants execute killing on such a large scale and what are the main causes of death? Are there any patterns? It is usually a combination of factors:  with Hitler it was a a systematic approach to eradicate certain groups completely, combined with mass complicity, or mass ignorance.  It has also been the result of an enormous failure in central decision-making usually driven by ideology, as was the case in China under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot and Stalin. Most of the single  biggest cause of deaths under these tyrannies occurred through famine caused by collectivization, with other causes typically due to various forms of forced labour and executions. Estimated deaths under Stalin range from 10 - 60 million with more than 10 million being more likely.

During Mao Zedong's tyranny (1849-76), between 40 and 78 million were killed, the majority of these, in The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). It was an attempt to rapidly industrialise China and collectivise agriculture which, being disastrously planned and executed led to 15 - 45 million deaths due to starvation, disease, forced labour and repression as agricultural output plummeted.  

Pol Pot's and the Khmer Rouge's tyranny (1975-79) in Cambodia killed nearly 25% of the country's population. His idea was similar to Mao's: a classless, agrarian society. Starvation killed 1.5 - 2 million, executions 1.4 - 1.7 million, disease and forced labour accounted for another 1-2 million.

Deaths under Leopold II were different: The 10 million he killed was about half the population at the time. These deaths were largely through forced labour and horrific punishment if quotas were not met, together with disruption to local lifestyles which caused disease and death. Another factor was that because the country was his own property, there was essentially no oversight during his long rule.

What about the harms caused by the micro tyrant?  They, quite simply, can drive someone to suicide. They cause them to lose their peace of mind. They bully, harass, coerce, criticise repeatedly in many areas. All of this, is legal, incidentally, in Scotland, unless (since 2018) towards a domestic partner. It is illegal in England if the parties have a “personal connection”. With time I expect bullying, intimidating and coercive behaviour to become more generally illegal in the UK if the democracy becomes more liberal instead of less, which is its current path (see recent curbs on protest and free speech).

The effects of the above cause stress, anxiety, insomnia, which lead to physical damage. The micro-tyrant will engage in psychological manipulation: they will strait-jacket the attempts to manoeuvre of the person they want to control.  They will lie, stall, steal, gaslight, slander, manipulate, create a false narrative, show one face to the authorities or the public, to friends and family, another altogether in private.  They destabilise and act unilaterally and unexpectedly instead of cooperatively. They will do anything at all to control, to have their own way. In a word, they are diabolical.  

I said above that the type of human that wants to exterminate another group is one of the most dangerous. At least, though this action is recognised as illegal. The type of micro-tyrant who wants to completely remove something - which is to say someone - in their way, without resorting to assassination or murder is cleverer. They will dispatch and dispense with them legally because psychological abuse is still legal in most parts of society. And in the end they will say, completely legitimately that you need help. That is the line they walk - legal, legitimate, diabolical. If they are the type that just wants to control, perhaps to feel powerful, or for their own ends, they will turn the subject into a zombie, a puppet, not dead but not really living either. Either way, they will have no regard for their emotions or humanity because to the sociopath these don't matter.

Corporations, institutions, are very much like this. They squeeze employees for as much as they can which why so many have so much poor ratings. The job of human resources is simply to ensure this is done legally. Perhaps the happiest people inside corporations are those with the power of management. They become a part of the vampiric entity by participating in its power. The best manager I ever had was the only one who didn't manage: who listened, praised, encouraged. In contrast, when on my second placement in a local school in Perth and Kinross, in frustration, I asked for a morsel of evidence that I was doing something right, instead of the weekly list of a hundred criticism - no exaggeration, I counted - I was told they weren't there to massage my ego. I left the following week. The place felt as though at any moment it could turn the corner into a Scottish version of the Cultural Revolution.

The narcissist wants your attention and will try to manipulate you and possibly others to get it. The tyrant is not only likely to be narcissistic, but to have elements of the dark triad personality type, psychopathy and machiavellianism, as well.  They don’t just want your attention.  They want to control you for other reasons - for whatever it is they want. That could be just for control’s sake or more likely, to exploit you in some way or remove you as an obstacle to something they want.

To sum up the last few paragraphs, it is this cold-blooded capacity for extreme harm that causes people to fear the tyrant big or small. It is fear that allows them to operate.  Fear paralyses.  Fear, like pain, is something that does work as you might expect. People can sometimes overcome pain with their mind, or even invent it. Fear can attack even when you know nothing can physically happen to you. People can shake with fear inside their houses because of the psychological harm caused by others, even when that same instigator might be in another country.

People feared the Goat because they knew his proven ruthlessness which would follow if anyone stepped out of line.

“- Usted, Presidente Balaguer, tiene la suerte de ocuparse sólo de aquello que la política tiene de mejor -dijo, glacial-. Leyes, reformas, negociaciones diplomáticas, tramsformaciones sociales. Así lo ha hecho treinta y un años. Le tocó el aspecto grato, amable, de gobernar. ¡Lo envidio! Me hubiera gustado ser sólo un estadista, un reformador. Pero, gobernar tiene una cara sucia, sin la cual lo que usted hace sería imposible. ¿Y el orden? ¿Y la estabilidad? ¿Y la seguridad? He procurado que usted no se ocupara de esas cosas ingratas. Pero, no me diga que no sabe cómo se consigue la paz. Con cuánto sacrificio y cuánta sangre. Agradezca que yo le permitiera mirar al otro lado, dedicarse a lo bueno, mientras yo, Abbes, el teniente Peña Rivera y otros teníamos tranquilo al país para que usted escribiera sus poemas y sus discursos.”

“You, President Balaguer, have the good fortune to be concerned only with the best part of politics’, he said icily. ‘Laws, reforms, diplomatic negotiations, social transformations. That's what you've done for 31 years. You've been involved in the pleasant, enjoyable aspect of governing. I envy you. I would like to have been only a statesman, a reformer. But governing has a dirty side, and without it, what you do would be impossible. What about order, stability, security? I've tried to keep you away from unpleasant things, but don't tell me you don't know how peace is achieved, with how much sacrifice and how much blood. Be grateful that I've allowed you to see the other side and devote yourself to the good, while I, Abess, Lieutenant Peña Rivera, and others kept the country in order, so you could write your poems and your speeches.”

A tyrant may be capable of executing their cruelties themselves.  On a national scale, it obviously isn’t practical so the tyrant recruits henchmen. Trujillo hired Johnny Abbes who shaped the SIM, his secret police in his image. 

In summary, tyrants have this ability to go further than others can or will , to step over the limits of ordinary morality.  They see it as a kind of power that sets them apart - which it is.  They have a unique ability to balance between being personally indifferent to the harm they cause - which they normalise or justify - while being perfectly conscious of that harm to cause fear in the people he wants to control. While others are repulsed by the acts, the tyrant sees this “weakness” as a sign both of their greatness and often of the necessarily hardship thrust upon them by weakness in others or in society. Whatever nuance you care to cast: the picture is the same: 

I am right / great / strong / wise.  You (singular or plural) are wrong / nothing / weak / foolish

X must be done.  

And  / or: Your weakness or failures have forced me to do X. 

You will be instrumental in achieving X or you will be removed.  

Tyrants: post 7