We're All the Greengrocer Now

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave an extraordinary speech this past week that, to me, was the final evidence that the United States has jumped the shark. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney told the world, “Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.”

Carney was invoking a 1978 essay by the Czech dissident and later president, Václav Havel, called, “The Power of the Powerless.” In it, Havel explains how the most atomized individual in a totalitarian state (at the time he was writing, the Soviet Union) helps facilitate the endurance of the regime. His protagonist is a “greengrocer,” an ordinary individual just living his life, but who, zombie-like, nevertheless participates in the rituals that he is expected to perform, like putting up the party slogan — “Workers of the World Unite!” — in his window when he opens each morning:

Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace….’

We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer’s slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, this real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty (and he can do no other if his declaration is to be accepted) in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place.

Fine, you might say, it’s just the greengrocer. He has to live with himself and his conscience. But Havel observes that the greengrocer’s actions — even if he might be doing it for his own self-preservation — creates the social pressure for his neighbor to do the same:

The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.

In short, everyone who obeys the system is complicit in the system’s successful functioning overall.

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Professor Catherine Sanderson, author of Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels and a guest speaker for this Substack a couple of weeks ago, explains this phenomenon in psychological terms. One of the most basic desires of individuals is to belong. Professor Sanderson notes that research has shown that most people experience the loss of their standing in a peer group or society at the same level as physical pain. So to “risk the loss of their peace of tranquility and security” is a huge ask for those whose goal is to feel safe and secure, even if they know that what they are doing is not aligned with what they believe and what they stand for. In short, loyalty (even reluctantly expressed), trumps (no pun intended!) values. This is why one of Timothy Snyder’s dictums from On Tyranny — “Stand out” — is so difficult to put into practice.

However. Professor Sanderson also observes that there is strength in numbers, and people are more likely to stand up to bullies when they believe they are not alone. In fact, she says that often, people are paralyzed from acting on their higher values because they aren’t sure if others are seeing and experiencing the same thing they are, a phenomenon that is called pluralistic ignorance. In that state, it feels safer to stay quiet and go along than to speak up and potentially have everyone else turn against you…what you don’t realize is that everyone is thinking the exact same thing but doesn’t know it! So everyone continues to go along with something they don’t like/agree with/know is wrong, unsure if everyone else sees the same thing they’re seeing, and no one takes action. You see the problem?

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One person speaking out breaks this spell, saying out loud what many people are thinking but afraid to act upon. And this passage from Havel is where the image Carney invokes comes from:

Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth….

By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal.

What Havel’s greengrocer has done is pierce the pluralistic ignorance — which then gives permission to the next shopkeeper, and the next, and perhaps a government bureaucrat, then a soldier, and so on, to do the same. If you have ever heard the phrase, “courage is contagious,” that’s why. It’s why for the regime, even one lowly shopkeeper breaking ranks is so incredibly dangerous.

This is the context in which we need to understand Carney’s speech. In my research on complicity and courage, I am looking at the role of individuals in larger, complicit systems. The institution of slavery, for example, was a complicit system — it required everyone to proverbially “put the sign on the door” in order to function. Certain socially deviant organizations, like cults, gangs, or organized crime, are also complicit systems that require rituals of loyalty. And, as Havel describes in his essay, authoritarian government are complicit systems as well.

What I hadn’t considered in my research is that the world order writ large is functioning as a complicit system, and Canada (in Carney’s view) is a greengrocer. (Just in case it’s not clear from the metaphor, that means that the United States is Leonid Brezhnev.) That…is pretty strong language.

But it is an interesting juxtaposition and paradox: Even if we, collectively, are the “dictator” with respect to other countries — and for better or worse, Trump represents US, collectively on the world stage (yes this makes me want to fling myself on a window, too) — we, as individuals, are in the same position as Canada vis-a-vis Trump, as well.

And so to me, Carney’s speech is both a warning and an inspiration. As Americans, it is a warning that the world order isn’t going to continue playing our reindeer games as long as Trump continues to act like a megalomaniacal jackass, which is to our collective detriment — because as Carney notes, the rules to date have largely benefited us.

But as individuals who are also in an increasingly oppressive regime, Carney offers an example: he is showing that it is possible to “live within the truth.” Hopefully we, as a country, can follow that same path and start taking the signs down, too.

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