Since my time as Education student, I have frequently pondered the phenomenon of sectarianism. Here's my thoughts, for the record:
1. ORIGINS Sectarianism refers to mistaken and stunted attitudes to politics, real social movements and human relations. The point of departure of sectarians is basically idealist. Idealism has its source in the development of ideas in abstraction from practical experience, and removed from an adequate disciplining of mental schemes by practical experience. This leads to continual overestimation and underestimation, exaggerated expectations and unjustified disappointments, a superpoliticisation (every trivial thing seems to have a political significance). Sectarianism escapes from the real dance of life, and being outside it, cannot grasp the real motivation of the dancers. Projection, addiction, transference, paranoia and a whole bag of pathological phenomena therefore follow. It's a sort of infection. The roots of this idealism are in the division of labor between thinkers and doers, and in superspecialisation and overgeneralisation from experience, i.e. from malabstractions (one-sidedness) created by a specific position in life which is not fully understood, in the sense that the precise limits which that position implies for thought, are not fully understood. Already here, it is clear that sectarianism is incompatible with scientific activity and contradicts it. Postmodernist culture can make that worse, because it starts to draw into question what science is, and provides new justifications providing a new "cover" or new outlets for sectarian practices. The idealism encourages the sectarians to believe they have already discovered the solution to the problems of their constituency in an idea. This solution is elaborated as a doctrine or set of principles, ultimately with a universal application; all problems can be assimilated to a unitary set of concepts of categories, from which any solution can be computed to any problem. The abstractive or deductive process involved consists largely of making analogies (logical, non-logical or arbitrary associations) between a new situation and the theoretically envisaged situation or precedent, for which the sectarian already claims to have computed a solution in advance. This stops real thinking, and avoids an exploration of different ways of obtaining knowledge. In turn, this implies an overextension of theory in a way which cannot be scientific, because (1) scientific theory always specifies the limits of the application of a theory, (2) develops its theory from the object of that theory experientially, i.e. pursues the growth of knowledge through a competition between rival theories, in their confrontation with the same experiential evidence. For the scientist, theory is a means to an end. For the sectarian, there is a certainty to be found in theory or doctrine itself, because theory has become a faith, and therefore an end in itself. Its function has changed. 2. CONSOLIDATION This ideational basis of the sectarian is then consolidated in an organisation of people who agree with that ideational basis. Obviously, any political innovator must go through a propaganda stage, an advertising stage if you like, in order to get a hearing for his or her ideas and attract support, to sway people. But what exactly does the sectarian seek to persuade people of, and how does he do it ? They want to persuade people of the intrinsic validity and superiority of an idea, held to be the only correct idea, which is indispensable for advancing the objectives of their claimed constituency. That can work well in a university context, a workplace, a musical group, or a church. But in real power politics, it easily produces sectarianism, because it makes participation in a group conditional on acceptance of the idea and the rejection of any idea incompatible with it. The sectarian implicitly or explicitly looks on life as a "great school" with himself as a teacher or preacher in it. Healthy thought would take lived experience as its point of departure, and always return to it. But the sectarian lives in a sphere of ready-made formulas and slogans, supported by texts and authorities. The gap between ideas and real experience that results, and the lack of a method to bring them together, means that the sectarian constantly has to make his ideas more precise, and thus constantly talks about "clarity". He might say "it's clear that..." but in reality, it is as clear as a bloody Mary. Sectarians like to have "discussions" along these lines, but the more he discusses, the more what has to be done escapes him. He is "like a man who satisfies his thirst with salt water; the more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes" (Lev Trotsky) Of course, there are millions of different ideas held by people in a community, and often they clash. The sectarian is convinced his idea is superior, and he wants to win other people to that idea. But what does winning people to an idea mean for him ? It means that people accept the sect's idea as true, and that really they act in accordance with that idea. Acting in accordance with the idea, means joining the sect, and submitting to its rules. If the sect's idea is the truth, other ideas must be wrong, and "clear" lines must always be drawn. Communication therefore has a narrow purpose: either to establish that agreement exists, or else to establish and polarise opposition. It's always one of the two, and thus a question of "who is not for me, is against me". By that fact alone, the sect counterposes itself to its constituency, which must be "operated on". The broader movement cannot be correct, it must be deficient, because otherwise they'd be flocking in, to join the sect. The sectarian hopes they that they will. Of course, he feels that sufficient allowance must be made for stupidity and backward consciousness, but he hopes that through patient recruitment, a process of cumulative attraction to the sect will occur. He feels that eventually people must be driven to draw conclusions which the sect had drawn already long ago. They will see the truth. 3. OPERATION By implication, the point of honour of the sect is not what it has in common with its purported constituency, but the criteria it has that distinguish it from its constituency. There's got to be insiders and outsiders. If the sect wasn't different from its constituency, there would be no need for anybody to join the sect. And if it did not differentiate itself continuously, the sects identity and existence would be drawn in question. Hence, the sectarian does not see organisation as a tool to achieve a purpose, but as an end in itself. The aim is not just to organise people in line with the correct idea, but to organise people on the basis of the correct idea, and this requires conversion to a systematic ideology. Also, if the sect did not differentiate itself from its constituency in a systematic pattern, then it could just join its purported constituency; but the whole point is, that the sect's idea is different and unique, that is what justifies its existence. The existing relations of its constituency are not accepted as they are, that's the whole point. That non-acceptance is the very basis for the sect. To join the sect, there are conditions, and the main condition is a change in ideas, and a change in behavior, such that they sufficiently resemble the consciousness and behaviour of the sect. Only if this conversion occurs, is admittance accepted, and membership maintained. The sect therefore develops its own language, through which it expresses its doctrinal beliefs. This strongly influences the ability to conceptualise anything new. Sectarians are religious in the specific sense of having an unshakeable confidence in the correctness of an idea even when, and especially when, their idea contradicts real experience. The idea is upheld despite, and regardless of, any real experience. The corollary is, that nothing is learnt from experience, or at any rate that no correct lessons are drawn from experience. All experience is just assimilated, explained and interpreted in terms of a prior authoritative doctrine, and ultimately the say-so of an authority. The wrongs encountered are blamed on other people, regarded as treacherous. A scientist will sometimes also adopt an idea unquestioningly, but it is clearly understood that this is a methodological decision, not an article of faith; we must adopt a belief in order to act, but the scientific belief is a limited belief which can be relativised, because it's clear that it's just an assumption you make for the purpose of inquiry. You retain the possibility of constructive doubt, i.e. alternative possibilities. Some corporations are also simply sects, and the corporation provides a world view which the staff cannot see beyond. Sectarians therefore characteristically people who seek an authority who provides certainty, evading the question of how they could themselves become certain, acquire authoritative knowledge themselves, become "living authorities". The clientele of the sect therefore consists of people who are in some ways weak, and therefore dependent. The sect just solves a problem for them, namely it provides certainty and security through acceptance of an idea, submission to an authority, and clear rules for inclusion and exclusion, endlessly repeated. If the sectarian therefore separates himself from the real movement on the basis of an idea deemed authoritative, and if he is no longer able to learn from experience in a healthy way, then his experience becomes increasingly incommensurate with the rest of the people. It is a form of individuation and insularity which provides less and less points of contact with other people, instead of more and more. The sect claims to pursue certain goals, but in reality it just seeks to build the sect. 4. SEEING FAILURE AS SUCCESS, AND SUCCESS AS FAILURE Therefore the sectarian is at some point puzzled about why people cannot agree with him, why they cannot accept his idea in which he believes so fervently, why they are ignored or misunderstood, and he has fewer and fewer people to talk to, except in a "periphery" of rival sects. This creates warped priorities, and then sectarians will engage in warfare with each other, regardless of any real dangers faced by their constituency, to which they might be perfectly blind (bad sex is typical of sects). Any success by outsiders must be a failure. Any failure by the sect itself must be portrayed as a success. Necessarily, the sect must be dishonest. Where ordinary folks see they have things in common, the sectarian tries to draw distinctions. Where ordinary folks draw a distinction, the sectarian seeks to promote unity. This is not surprising, because the experience of the sectarian increasing diverges from other people. The categorisations of the sectarian don't just differ from ordinary folks, but that difference is mostly incommensurable and absolute. It therefore cannot be possible that two people both have part of the truth, one must be right, and the other must be wrong. And of course the sectarian believes terribly strongly he is right. On that basis, people must be converted to a different idea, and any manipulation compatible with the sect's own doctrine is justified. This method is then perfected and routinised to the nth degree. Thus, the sectarian seizes on trivial inconsistencies and enlarges them out of all proportion to the real situation, for the specific purpose of fomenting a split in his target group, and winning an identified group in the debate to his own sect. It's a process of divide and conquer, divide and rule. The purpose of debate is not to learn something, or reach a better evaluation, rather, the intention is to identify potential members that could be recruited to the sect, all the rest is a cover. To recruit new people, those people must first of all disagree with whatever group or constituency they already belong to. Once they disagree, then they become receptive to a different idea. And then the sectarian tries to introduce his own idea as superior, with the aim of winning a new convert. Since intelligent, balanced people will see through the scam, the sect attracts only people with a specific mindset: people who are in some sense weak, or ignorant, or naive or oppressed. The sectarian precisely seeks out that weakness, and then he tries to persuade the targeted person of his own panacea. 5. RHETORIC, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, POISON Characteristic of sectarians is rhetoric. They shout very loudly about "unity", "love", ""progress" etc. but in practice do not do anything really effective to create it. They posture as the most principled partisans, but their partisanship is unliveable, and therefore in practice, they end up making concessions all over the place. In reality, their own outlook is hopelessly deficient from the outset, because of the specific way in which they obtained their ideas in the first place - not from a critical engagement with real social experience, or reflections on a practical involvement, but from an authoritative doctrine or authority, which in fact may be no authority in any sense whatsoever. Sectarianism is ultimately not compatible with independent thinking, it relies on taking on board a new idea lock, stock and barrel. Sectarianism therefore has a psychopathology, but it is difficult to make generalisations about this. The reason is that no idea is intrinsically sectarian, rather it is sectarian only in a specific context, something which the sectarian in fact exploits to his advantage. Starting off from a weak position, the sectarian had joined the sect, which seems to provide security and confidence; but the sect lacks any success formula; it just keeps on reproducing its own problems over and over, and it cannot learn anything substantive from experience. Yet the sectarian cannot admit this; if he did admit it, then he wouldn't be in the sect, and if he left the sect, he would be faced with the uncertainties he sought to escape from, by joining it. Thus the sectarian poisons the atmosphere, projecting his hatred and frustration on somebody or something external to the sect. The sect creates a fake confidence, because it claims to have all of the answers to all of the problems already, and the result of this is boastfulness, duplicity, conceit and arrogance. This has its culmination in the desire of the sectarian to impose his own policy on his constituency, whether those people like that or not, since there is no other way he can get his ideas accepted. Sectarian discussion really reduces to point-scoring, denunciation, demonisation and anathematisation; any real unification and coming together is impossible, except on the sectarians' own terms. The very method of the sectarian prevents him from finding the real bases of unity, and in fact sectarian violence ultimately necessarily follows. 6. CONSEQUENCES The effects of sectarianism are that most healthy people find the sectarians repulsive, and regard them as a menace, and that its content is essentially reactionary and conservative, from a healthy human point of view. If the sectarian already has the answers, he cannot be creative in his activity either. Most importantly, he cannot create real leaders, people who know what to do next, and show people what to do. He can lead people only "astray" or into a detour. The overall effect of sectarianism is dogmatisation and apologistic exercises in self-justification. Nothing new can be discovered, because anything new is assimilated to pre-existing concepts. We are talking here about a sentimental or axiomatic adherence to an idea, belief or tradition, irrespective of any rational or practical relation between means and ends, i.e. pure idealism that provides continuity. It is tautological that sectarianism is normally inversely proportional to the real intellectual and experiential maturity of their constituency, and the activity of their constituency. The more passive, weak and apathetic people are, the more breeding grounds for sects there are. Sects grow out of weakness and powerless, and recruit on that basis. In reality, the sectarian is stuck, and cannot advance, but his own ideation prevents him from understand why. As soon as the constituency of the sectarian really gets "on the move", and starts do do things, the sectarian is disoriented and lost, because the movement is actually in quite a different direction from what he thought. The only way in which he can cope with this is, by once again extending the doctrine with a new "explanation" about the latest failures. After all, if you set out from the idea that your own idea is absolutely true at the most fundamental level, you can only do one of two things: either you keep believing it, or you try to select more experiences that confirm it. If you dropped the idea altogether (loss of faith), then you wouldn't be a sectarian anymore, but at the same time you'd be disoriented, and face all the problems and pains which the idea was supposed to resolve. 7. REMEDY What then is the solution of the problem of sectarianism ? Psychological, sociological and historical sciences offer an array of tools for this, and obviously different sectarianisms have different origins specific to them. As I have said, no idea is intrinsically sectarian, it is the application of the idea that is sectarian, i.e. the idea must always be seen in context. A sectarian might guiltily or shamefully mull over his own sectarianism, or that of others, but he gets no answer that solves the problem, because his own idea is, that ideas are in some sense intrinsically good or evil in some sense, rather than in a specific context or for a specific person or group. But, basically the original problem is always the same in every diagnosis: some kind of misplaced idealism which exaggerates the power of ideas, a faulty relationship between theory and practice, a faulty division of labor, a misallocation of energy. The solution is therefore always a careful and systematic attempt to return to real, lived, practical experience basing itself on solid logical and practical tests, creating illuminating contradictions for the sectarians, reframing, and cultivating a renewed appreciation for novelty, the mainsprings of life, and youth. Jurriaan Reference: Doris Lessing, The Good Terrorist. Some people run from a possible fight Some people figure they can never win And although this is a fight I can lose The accused is an innocent man I am an innocent man Oh yes I am An innocent man You know you only hurt yourself out of spite I guess you'd rather be a martyr tonight That's your decision But I'm not below anybody I know If there's a chance of resurrecting a love I'm not above going back to the start To find out where the heartache began Some people hope for a miracle cure Some people just accept the world as it is But I'm not willing to lay down and die Because I am an innocent man - Billy Joel, Innocent Man
