Normally I would conclude with my commentary and thoughts - however I will presume them here for the sake of attribution henceforth:
If such a book was written nearly a decade after the Great Depression . . . and World War II followed shortly thereafter - the issue of war and macroeconomic disparity I infer as hierarchical and institutional in terms of the human spirit to prevail beyond internally bound aggression, external obstacles, product attitudes, gain evaluation and prejudice. The continuation of arms production and distribution is a succession of Eisenhower’s forewarned “Military Industrial Complex” which seeks to exist as both a protector of its own and national interests at the cost of regenerative qualities. If America cannot get its own military and fiscal house in order via humanitarian projects and the principle of tying the fiat dollar to natural disaster and industrial accident the forces of self-preservation, profit incentive, and corruption will implode the heir to legal realism (America). We all must invest in our uppermost attitudes and resist from the rhetorical bad faith of current political matters.
“YO THOSE WHO WOULD USE INTELLIGENCE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST DEATH – TO STRENGTHEN THE WILL TO LIVE AGAINST THE WISH TO DIE, AND TO REPLACE WITH LOVE THE BLIND COMPULSION TO GIVE HOSTAGES TO HATRED AS THE PRICE OF LIVING”
PART 1: DESTRUCTION EROS & THANATOS (PG. 2) Try as we may, it is difficult to conceive of our universe in terms of concord: instead we are faced everywhere with the evidences of conflict. Love and hate, production and consumption, creation and destruction – the constant war of opposing tendencies would appear to be the dynamic heart of the world. Man runs the eager gamut of his life through the hazards of sickness and accident, beast and bacteria, the malignant power of the forces of nature, and vengeful hands of fellow men. Against these numberless forces of destruction, the long thin line of defense afforded by scientific intelligence ceaselessly battles in an effort to thwart the destruction of mankind. It is no wonder that humanity looks wistfully to magic and mystery no less than to medical science for protection.
PART 6: RECONSTRUCTION (PG424) To aspire to the elimination of all direct aggressiveness after the patterns of Amenhotep IV, Jesus of Nazareth, and Mahatma Gandhi is an ideal which still leaves room in a practical world for self-defensive aggression. As William James has well said, pacifists often make the mistake of disparaging the commendable element of the martial spirit. For all that it so often leads to disastrous misapplications, through exploitation by the greedy and unscrupulous, the aggressive spirit properly directed has its uses. (PG425) . . .as to the needs of the people – ‘Panem et circenses’ (Bread and circuses).
This is what William James had in mind in his celebrated essay on “The Moral Equivalent of War.”
“THERE IS NOTHING TO MAKE ONE INDIGNANT IN THE MERE FACT THAT LIFE IS HARD, THAT MEN SHOULD TOIL AND SUFFER PAIN. THE PLANETARY CONDITIONS ONCE FOR ALL ARE SUCH, AND WE CAN STAND IT. BUT THAT SO MANY MEN, BY MERE ACCIDENTS OF BIRTH AND OPPORTUNITY, SHOULD HAVE A LIFE OF NOTHING ELSE BUT TOIL AND PAIN AND HARDNESS AN INFERIORITY IMPOSED UPON THEM, SHOULD HAVE NO VACATION, WITH OTHERS, NATIVELY NO MORE DESERVING, NEVER GET ANY TASTE OF THIS CAMPAIGNING LIFE AT ALL – THIS IS CAPABLE OF AROUSING INDIGNATION IN REFLECTIVE MINDS. IT MAY END BY SEEMING SHAMEFUL TO ALL OF US THAT SOME OF US HAVE NOTHING BUT CAMPAIGNING, AND OTHERS NOTHING BUT UNMANLY EASE. IF NOW – AND THIS IS MY IDEA – THERE WERE, INSTEAD OF MILITARY CONSCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE YOUTHFUL POPULATION TO FORM FOR A CERTAIN NUMBER OF YEARS A PART OF THE ARMY ENLISTED AGAINST NATURE, THE INJUSTICE WOULD TEND TO BE EVENED OUT, AND NUMEROUS OTHER GOODS TO THE COMMONWEALTH WOULD FOLLOW. THE MILITARY IDEALS OF HARDIHOOD AND DISCIPLINE WOULD BE WROUGHT INTO THE GROWING FIBER OF THE PEOPLE, NO ONE WOULD REMAIN BLIND AS THE LUXURIOUS CLASSES NOW ARE BLIND, TO MAN’S RELATIONS TO THE GLOBE HE LIVES ON, AND TO THE PERMANENTLY SOUR AND HARD FOUNDATIONS OF HIS HIGHER LIFE. TO COAL AND IRON MINES, TO FREIGHT TRAINS, TO FISHING FLEETS IN DECEMBER, TO DISH-WASHING, CLOTHES-WASHING, AND WINDOW-WASHING, TO ROAD-BUILDING AND TUNNEL-MAKING, TO FOUNDRIES AND STOKE-HOLES, AND TO THE FRAMES OF SKYSCRAPERS, WOULD OUR GILDED YOUTHS BE DRAFTED OFF, ACCORDING TO THEIR CHOICE, TO GET THE CHILDISHNESS KNOCKED OUT OF THEM, AND TO COME BACK INTO SOCIETY WITH HEALTHIER SYMPATHIES AND SOBERER IDEAS. THEY WOULD HAVE PAID THEIR BLOOD-TAX, DONE THEIR PART IN THE IMMEMORIAL HUMAN WARFARE AGAINST NATURE; THEY WOULD TREAD THE EARTH MORE PROUDLY, THE WOMEN WOULD VALUE THEM MORE HIGHLY, THEY WOULD BE BETTER FATHERS AND TEACHERS OF THE FOLLOWING GENERATION.” “SUCH A CONSCRIPTION, WITH THE STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION THAT WOULD HAVE REQUIRED IT, AND THE MANY MORAL FRUITS IT WOULD BEAR, WOULD PRESERVE IN THE MIDST OF A PACIFIC CIVILIZATION AND MANLY VIRTUES WHICH THE MILITARY PARTY IS SO AFRAID OF SEEING DISAPPEAR IN PEACE. . . .” (PG466)
Every physician and every layman should read the following declaration of the Netherlands psychiatrists: “We psychiatrists, who duty it is to investigate the normal and diseased mind, and to serve mankind with our knowledge, feel impelled to address a serious word to you in our quality of physicians. It seems to us that there is in the world a mentality which entails great danger to mankind, leading as it may, to an evident war-psychosis. War means that all destructive forces are set loose by mankind against itself. War means the annihilation of mankind by technical science. As in all things human, psychological factors play a very important part in the complicated problem of war. If war is to be prevented the nations and their leaders must understand their own attitudes towards war. By self-knowledge a world calamity may be prevented. Therefore, we draw your attention to the following:
“ There is a seeming contradiction between the conscious individual aversion to war and the collective preparedness to wage war. This is explained by the fact that the behavior, the feelings, the thoughts of an independent individual are quite different from those of a man who forms part of a collective whole. Instincts, which have Civilized twentieth century man still possess strong, fierce and destructive not been sublimated, or only partly so, and which break loose as soon as the community to which he belongs feels itself threatened by danger. The unconscious desire to give rein to the primitive instinct not only without punishment but even with reward, furthers in a great measure the preparedness of war. It should be realized that the fighting instinct, if well directed, gives energy for much that is good and beautiful. But the same instinct may create chaos if it breaks loose from all restraint, making use of the greatest discoveries of the human intellect.”
“It is appalling to see how little the peoples are alive to reality. Popular ideas of war as they find expression in full dress uniforms, military display, etc., are no longer in keeping with the realities of war itself. The apathy, with regard to the actions and intrigues of the international traffic in arms, is surprising to anyone who realizes the dangers into which this traffic threatens to lead them. It should be realized that it is foolish to suffer certain groups of persons to derive personal profit from the death of groups of persons to derive personal profit from the death of millions of men. We come to you with the urgent advice to arouse the nations to the realization to fact and the sense of collective self-preservation, these powerful instincts being the strongest allies for the elimination of war. The heightening of the moral and religious sense of your people tends to the same end.” (PG 467)
“ From the utterances of well known statesmen it has repeatedly been evident that many of them have conceptions of war that are identical with those of the average man. Arguments such as “ War is the supreme Court of Appeal” and “War is the necessary outcome of Darwin’s Theory” erroneous and dangerous are , in view of the realities of modern warfare. They camouflage a primitive craving for war among the speaker’s countrymen. The camouflage a primitive craving for power and are meant to stimulate the preparedness for war among the speaker’s countrymen. The suggestive force of speeches made by leading statesmen is enormous and may be dangerous. The warlike spirit, so easily aroused by the cry that the country is in danger, is not to be bridled, as was evident in 1914. Peoples, as well as individuals, under the influence of suggestions like these, may become neurotic. They may be carried away by hallucinations and delusions, thus involving themselves in adventures perilous to their own and other nations’ safety. “ We psychiatrists declare that our science is sufficiently advanced for us to distinguish between real, pretended, and unconscious motives, even in statesmen. The desire to disguise national militarism by continual talk about peace will not protect political leaders from the judgement of history. The secret promotors of militarism are responsible for the boundless misery which a new war is sure to bring. . .” (PG 468)
It is entirely compatible with his genius that it should have occurred to Albert Einstein to address a formal inquiry to Sigmund Freud regarding the psychological principles involved in war. “ How is it possible to modify human psychic development in such a way as to produce an increasing resistance to these psychoses of hatred and destruction?” And to this Freud replied with a recapitulation of the conclusions drawn from long years of clinical observation, principles which have been elaborated in the present book. It is an error in judgement, he pointed out, to overlook the fact that right was originally might and cannot even now survive without the support of power. As to whether there is an instinct to hate and destroy, Freud replied, of course, in the affirmative.
“ The willingness to fight may depend upon a variety of motives which may be lofty, frankly outspoken, or unmentionable. The pleasure in aggression and destruction is certainly one of them. The satisfaction derived from these destructive tendencies is, of course, modified by others which are erotic and ideational in nature. At times we are under the impression that idealistic motives have simply been a screen for the atrocities of nature; at other times, that they were more prominent and that the destructive drives came to their assistance for unconscious reasons, as in the cruelties perpetrated during the Holy Inquisition. ” “ The death instinct, ” he would go on to say, “would destroy the individual were it not turned upon objects other than the self that the individual saves his own life by destroying something external to himself. Let this be the biological excuse or all the ugly and dangerous strivings against which we struggle. They are more natural than the resistance we offer them. For our present purposes then it is useless to try to eliminate the aggressive tendencies in man. ”
This has been but should not be interpreted pessimistically. Such a view conforms neither with Freud’s theory nor with his practice. He has not lived as if he believed “useless to try to eliminate the aggressive tendencies in man,” or at least to redirect them. And the same perspicacity that recognized the death instinct, examined and demonstrated some of the devices for combating it. It is on the basis of Freud’s work that others have proposed applications of our psychological knowledge to the elimination of war and the scientific study of crime. But most significant of all, the therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis itself disputes such pessimistic interpretations. For if it be possible to change one individual, no matter how laboriously if one person can be helped, by any of the methods which have described, to be less destructive I there is hope for the human race. The special encouragement of the psychoanalytical method is that the individual’s own intelligence can be utilized to direct his better adaption, a diminution in his self destructiveness. Granted that it may be a slow process, such a transformation of self—destructive energy into constructive channels can gradually spread over the entire human world. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”’
The sum of the whole matter is that dependable bulwarks against self destruction. To recognize the existence of such a force within us is the first step toward its control. To “know thyself” must mean to know the malignancy of one’s own instincts and to know as well one’s own power to deflect it. Blindness or indifference to the existence of self-destructiveness are the devices it constructs for its continuance.To the support of our intelligence we must bring the conscious and purposive direction and encouragement of love. In the function of friendship, that conventional term for the controlled investment of love, we must place the highest hopes. Both for those who would save themselves and for those who would save others, it remains our most powerful tool. The private citizen no less than the psychiatrist or the social worker may, by dint of the simple expedients of an encouraging smile, a sympathetic inquiry, a patient audience to an outpouring of troubles, lift the woes of voluntary or involuntary martyrdom and frustrate the urge toward self burdens of depression, diminish destruction of many a sufferer.
And so our final conclusion must be that a consideration of war and crime, no less than of sickness and suicide, leads us back to a reiteration and reaffirmation of the hypothesis of Freud that man is a creature dominated by an instinct which battles heroically with varying success against its ultimate conqueror. This magnificent tragedy of life sets our highest ideal there is a lesser spiritual nobility in the face of certain defeat. But victory in the mere prolonging of the game with a zest not born of illusion, and in this game within a game some win, some lose; relentlessness of self destruction never ceases. And it is here that Science has replaced magic as the serpent held high in the wilderness for what there is of life for us. Toward the temporary staying of the malignancy of the self destructive impulse, toward capitulation to Death, we may sometime, by prodigious the averting of a premature labors, lend an effective hand. (pg471)
