Jag skickade ett brev till psykohistorikern Lloyd Demause som i sin forskning psykoanalyserar hela samhällen och historiska rörelser, speciellt deras benägenhet till våld och självspäkning.
Hello Lloyd!
Now that the rhetoric/propaganda surrounding the Iran "conflict" intensifies, I remembered you writing somewhere that a war is instigated as a sort of therapy for a guilty conscience, i.e. a dialectical confrontation between the ego and the alter ego in order to relive the tension in their struggle. As you have also stated, war follows an era or period of societal expansion often containing progress in many areas - a sort of "growth anxiety". One must then ask why this guilty conscience persists in times of independence and relative plenty.
I personally think that this happens, not because people perceive the expansion as generally good but unpermitted by their elders (the childlike complex), but rather because they genuinely fail to see the benefits of the expansion, and focus solely on the negative aspects, aspects which are often fictionalized or imagined, but put forth or agreed to as true by almost everyone. This notion is then fueled by the media, intellectuals, politicians, war mongerers, and the general sophists among us. I think the most obvious current manifestation of this phenomenon is the fear of "globalization", which displays all the charateristics mentioned. I think globalization will evolve further into becoming the envelope for all that which people pericive as wrong with the world. In this envelope belong such major sub-categories as global warming, poisoning of the oceans, resource depletion, pollution, exploitation, and the largely martyrised characterisation of women by contemporary authoritarian feminism. It's truly scary but fascinating what we're going through at the moment, and surely things will intensify as the major economies around the world start to fall into depression. This depression by the way, is already being felt to its psychological extent, as people seem to lack hope for the imminent future. All this anxiety stems, I think, from the false dichotomy of the emotional management in the personal life, and that in the public sphere. Instead of dealing with the pain of examining the origins of your depression by introspection, all negative emotions are abstracted and projected onto the collective, which is the body that sacrificial action is then called for. This inturn is an effect of a broken childhood, where submissiveness to arbitrary parental authority is held as virtuous and rewarded with phrases and material goods, whereas independent thinking is ostracised, shamed and punished. Conformity to tribe mentality will rule the world up until full person hood has been extended to children. I myself am from Sweden, and this culture is often hailed as a trailblazer in this area, but let me tell you - day care, working parents, mandatory "schooling", stressed out mothers and absent fathers, passive aggressive relationships, mental instability. The so called welfare state is a colossal failure, and things are not so dandy over here either. The entire world has a long way left to go, and yet we are all never more than one generation away from enlightenment.
So what do you think; Will the US go to war with Iran soon, will the fear-of globalization-phenomenon gain traction, leading to more sacrificial wars, authoritarianism and mass hysteria throughout the world. What is your take? I just watched the box office hits this week, since I recall that you also wrote something about violent women like killer mothers or femme fatales, taking up the screen as a culture prepares for war. Have you seen any such signs?
With kind regards,
Jag fick ett koncist om än något korthugget svar. Hoppas det är fel.
"I would not be surprised to see a war between the U.S. and Iran soon."
