The Need for Chaos

We’ve been blogging about different political theories.  Here is another one:  Political Nihilism.

That term came up in an article about research documenting some people’s “need for chaos.”   Researchers on conspiracy theories found that some people revel in and pass around stories detrimental to both sides of our polarized political landscape.  This inspired more research.  A cross-section of Americans were asked a series of questions including these:

• “We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.”
“I need chaos around me—it is too boring if nothing is going on.”

“When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn.’”

As reported by Derek Thompson, in The Americans Who Need Chaos, in The Atlantic, “The researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the ‘need for chaos,’ which they defined as ‘a mindset to gain status’ by destroying the established order.”  They found that nearly a third of those surveyed express this need for chaos.  About 5% go further, rejecting all sides in their “desire to see the entire political elite destroyed—even without a plan to build something better in the ashes.”

Thompson quotes from the publication of the research:

“These [need-for-chaos] individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone,” the authors wrote in their conclusion. “Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.” To sum up their worldview, [lead researcher Michael] Petersen quoted a famous line from the film The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Comments Thompson, “Everywhere I look, I seem to find new evidence that American politics is being consumed by the flesh-eating bacteria of a new nihilism—a desire to see existing institutions destroyed, with no particular plan or interest to replace and improve them.”

As expected in an article published in The Atlantic, Thompson interviews some Trump supporters as evidence of his concern.  Indeed, I’ve been hearing Republicans utter those very words in the survey as reasons for their unwavering support of the party’s standard bearer.  No wonder also-ran Nikki Haley’s campaign line about how Trump brings chaos wherever he goes didn’t work for her.  For a lot of voters, that’s exactly what they like about him!

But the same sentiment also exists on the Left.  In fact, the study found that the largest demographic with the “need for chaos” is  black males.

To be sure, when a system is totally corrupt and dysfunctional, it does need to be torn down before it can be rebuilt into something better.  But you need to know what you want to build in its place.  Once you unleash chaos, what can rein it in, once the old order is destroyed?  Only an even greater power that will turn out to be even more oppressive than the one that was overthrown (think Napoleon after the French Revolution, Lenin after the Communist Revolution, Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution, etc.).  Fortunately, the American Revolution didn’t meet that fate because its leaders dismantled the tie to the English monarchy without ever allowing the country to descend into chaos.

I invite those who are interested in political nihilism to see what that looks like today in Haiti, whose government can no longer exert its authority and the country has dissolved into indiscriminate murder and cannibalism.

Photo by  Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr, CC by 2.0