The Psychology of Chaos: The Lebanese governing party VS The People

If you ever watched Zombie or “end of the world” movies, such as the movie 2012, War of The Worlds or World War Z, there is always one common phenomenon that takes place when the attack or the devastating events of the apocalypse start unfolding: total chaos among people.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been grappling with its worst economic crisis in decades: social unrest and political turmoil, COVID-19 pandemic, and a major explosion that tore through the capital Beirut, in August of 2020. Huge wave of layoffs, electric blackouts, shortage of food and medicine, fuel prices escalating, a monthly inflation rate of more than 50%, with no clear resolution in sight. The Lebanese Lira joins the list of dozens failed world fiat currencies.
The Country plunged in chaos. Demonstrations that turn into violent confrontations between citizens and ground forces; random acts of vandalism; aggression is increasing in gas stations, supermarkets, on the streets, in houses, at the workplace…
The people who did not flee the Country are left to the “Laisser-Faire”. A deliberate abstention from direction or interference from any governmental authority whatsoever. Basically everyone is left for himself, to survive. And in the absence of authority, we have a sense of returning to the Jungle Law: Survival of the Fittest. The strongest and richest will survive.
So I ask: is this Laisser-Faire on purpose? Intentional?

From London to Hong Kong, even peaceful cities can sometimes erupt suddenly into widespread, and often sustained, unrest. But what role does psychology play in this?
The recent film “Joker” (with Joaquin Phoenix) tells the bleak story of how a mentally ill loner, Arthur Fleck, becomes the infamous villain in the comic book Batman — and inspires a riotous popular movement. The film reflects the views of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who argued that society has a drive towards chaos and destruction.
When people riot, their collective behavior is never mindless. It may often be criminal, but it is structured and coherent with meaning and conscious intent. Classical crowd theories, like the narrative of the Joker, suggest that mere exposure to the behavior of others leads observers to act in the same way. According to this line of thinking, behavior is spread via a process of “contagion”, transmitted automatically from one person to another. This would mean the mere act of watching the Joker kill live on television could explain why others turned to violence on the streets of Gotham. Individuals lose their sense of self, reason and rationality in a crowd and so do things they otherwise might not do as an individual. Peer pressure.

This is what the Lebanese people have been witnessing for the last couple of years. Moral, physical and mental aggression. On televisions, in newspapers, international media and on the streets. We have become addicted to chaos and violence. And although bitter, but they are extreme sensations. In a culture where the extreme has become the norm, people are increasingly seduced into believing that intensity equals being alive. When that happens, the mind becomes wired for drama and the soul is starved of meaningful purpose. This type of life may produce heart-pounding excitement, and the absence of this addictive energy can bring about withdrawal, fear, and restlessness. This partly explains why nightclubs and restaurants, despite the miserable condition of the Country, are irregularly packed with people, especially during the weekends. So frustration is not the only answer for the loud night life during weekends, it is the painful addiction to chaos and extreme sensations that got the Lebanese population hooked to ecstatic events.

So now how do the ruling party benefit from indirectly suggesting Laisser-Faire to the citizens of Lebanon? Did they intend it? Maybe not. Did they take advantage of it?
How would a group of unqualified, incapable, egocentric, non-academic, barely literate, group of managers actually govern a large corporate entity? They would fail you would assume. And how would they cover up for their failure? Well, the citizens of Lebanon found the answer for them: they create diversion. They divert the attention from their failures and transfer it unto alternative crisis such as: shortage of fuel and electricity. Which are circumstantial to the initial problem, but noone is aware anymore.

You all know the epic story told in the old testament of the Bible of the Tower of Babel. In biblical literature, the story of construction of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) appears to be an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth. You get a bunch of people to speak different languages, react in different ways, think individualistically, you get confusion, chaos and disorientation. Would they know how to achieve anything? Doubtful. Would they even remember whom to blame for it?

This is what Sun Tzu in his book the Art of War refers to as Divide and Conquer.
The Art of War is one of the world’s most influential books on military strategy. Written well over two thousand years ago in China, and translated into English in twentieth century, it is now studied in military academies around the globe.
For Sun Tzu, and for any strategist, the best war is the one that delivers victory without fighting. I believe it is also referred to as Cold War. You get people to fight and beat each other while you watch apathetically. They save you effort, money, resources and time.
Divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy (the governing party).
The use of this technique is meant to empower the governing party to control subjects, populations, or factions of different interests, who collectively might be able to oppose the ruling party. Niccolò Machiavelli advises that the act of Divide and Conquer should be achieved either by making the people suspicious of each other, or by giving them cause to separate their forces, hence become weaker.
So in brief, the government suggested the Laisser-Faire and the people bought it. This created Diversion among the population from the real problem, resulting in the implementation of Divide and Conquer.

So how do you resolve this, or what do I think is the ultimate form of resolution: on a political level (which is not the principal source of resolution rather an idealistic approach) Hobbes believed that the only form of government strong enough to hold humanity’s cruel impulses in check was absolute monarchy, where a king wielded supreme and unchecked power over his subjects. While Hobbes believed in social contract theory, that is the theory that a ruler has an unspoken, implicit contract with his people requiring him to reign fairly, he ascribed nearly total power to the monarch, and did not believe the people to have any right to rebel whatsoever.
But how do you really defeat such hypocrite, unqualified, self-centered, uncompromising, manipulative governing party? One cost-effective thing, that is in our total power today: Civil Disobedience. In the absence of any international intervention, the only method to put excessive pressure on the current ruling party, is to stop doing anything.

Civil disobedience is the active, non-violent refusal to accept the dictates of governments. It informs them that unjust actions will be opposed and the people will act illegally if pushed to do so.
Civil disobedience gave birth to the United States. The US was built when the American colonists refused to listen to their British leaders and started disobeying them and their rules. Popular protests are chronicled in the Bible and Scripture, Talmud and Koran. Famous disobedience were conducted by Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.
In Lebanon it consists of: stop paying bills and taxes. Stop going to work. Stop fighting or striving for basic needs such as food, fuel or gas. Stop caring for the media. Close all restaurants. All nightclubs. All retail centers. Simply shut down the Country.
It is debatable. Citizens need to go to work to make ends meet. But what is the difference between going to work to barely make ends meet for a long period of time and not making ends meet for a short period of time and winning at the long run? Harsh and needs discipline and consistency. But when all else fails, you need to seek the harsh and unusual.