Kratopistia is a Greek term I have just invented, for the irrational belief in the effectiveness of force to solve problems.
It’s the one-word rephrasing of what people mean when they use terms like “bringing them to heel”, or “it’s the only language these people understand” or “we should bring them to their knees”.
It’s the magical thinking that led Germany to waste its war effort on bombing London, and the Allies to waste their war effort in bombing civilians in Germany, and the US to waste their war effort in bombing Vietnam.
Kratopistia derives from two Greek words:
- kratos : strength, power, power over (something or someone).
- pistis : trust, faith, confidence, assurance, credence.
Thus kratopistia is (over-)confidence in (the use of) power.
Tolstoy refers to this idea in his posthumous (1919) book: The Pathway of Life. The book is a compilation of thoughts and meditations. It has a section devoted to “Force”. One sub-section is “The Inefficiency of Force”:
There are only two ways of directing human activities: one is to gain the inclination and to convince the reasoning, and the other to compel a man to act against his inclinations and against his reasoning. The first method is proved by experience and is always crowned by success, and the other is employed by ignorance and always results in disappointment.
Another sub-section is “Ruinous Effects of the Superstition of Force”.
[1] That evil which men think to ward off with force is incomparably less than the harm they do to themselves when defending themselves by force.
…
[7]. If it were asked how man could strip himself entirely of moral responsibility and commit the most evil deeds without a feeling of guilt, a more effective means could not be devised than the superstition that force can promote the well-being of people.
Otto Kohn deals with a related idea in his 1937 book Force or Reason: Issues of the Twentieth Century. The second chapter is “The Cult of Force”. For Kohn, the cult of force is not at heart a foolish error of judgment — the meaning I intend for kratopistia — but a dark cultural movement, a thirst for war and conquest. In the chapter: “The Cult of Force”:
… : the Cult of Force, the Dethronement of Reason, and the Crisis of Imperialism seem today to determine the political, intellectual and social life, at least in large parts of Europe and the Old World.
As a charming side-note, he follows this sentence directly with:
They have threatened least, perhaps, to become a dominant issue in the United States, and this circumstance seems to me to give a unique importance to the United States at the present time.
Later in the same chapter:
… Force has come to be seen as the great master-builder. Patience and compromise are laughed at. People do not try to convince their adversaries, to solve patiently difficult problems. They “liquidate” their enemies.