Bureaucratic rule strips events of rational meaning, producing endless interpretive speculation

Evidence

And it is this pseudomysticism that is the stamp of bureaucracy when it becomes a form of government. Since the people it dominates never really know why something is happening, and a rational interpretation of laws does not exist, there remains only one thing that counts, the brutal naked event itself. What happens to one then becomes subject to an interpretation whose possibilities are endless, unlimited by reason and unhampered by knowledge. Within the framework of such endless interpretative speculation, so characteristic of all branches of Russian pre-revolutionary literature, the whole texture of life and world assume a mysterious secrecy and depth. There is a dangerous charm in this aura because of its seemingly inexhaustible richness; interpretation of suffering has a much larger range than that of action for the former goes on in the inwardness of the soul and re-leases all the possibilities of human imagination, whereas the latter is constantly checked, and possibly led into absurdity, by outward consequence and controllable experience. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 623

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s mechanism for ‘pseudomysticism’ as the stamp of bureaucratic government — unknowability breeds endless interpretation.
• XREF: Connects to the module’s heap/representation concerns — how the Other becomes an object of endless speculation when rational interpretation is withheld.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that interpretation of suffering has larger range than action, since inwardness is unchecked while action is bounded by outward consequences, is paradigm-shifting about the psychology of the dominated.