ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 further explores totalitarianism as a culture with its own system of beliefs, language, and art that shapes peoples’ way of life. Following the view of culture as a cognitive tool for organizing and understanding social world, we can study culture by how it is represented in our present life and what different cultures have in common. This approach leads me to suggest that personality cultism is not specific to totalitarian regimes and is a feature of any emerging culture. Not incidentally, the words “cult” and “culture” both come from the same root, which relates to “cultivation.” Cult creation carries numerous psychological benefits: In a tumultuous world, the cult creates an illusion of security, predictability, and self-actualization. Another way to conceptualize culture is to describe its cultural prototype, or “typical representative.” In this way, the “Homo Sovieticus” is a hyperbolized image of a person who is ideally adapted to living under totalitarian and communistic regimes. Not surprisingly, in totalitarian societies, art becomes a powerful tool of propaganda and embodiment of totalitarian mythology that serves to strengthen the alternative image of reality that is in sharp contrast with daily life.
