[percy-l] a question re The Thanatos Syndrome

Ken Armstrong armstron at ohiou.edu
Wed Mar 9 16:22:18 EST 2005


At 05:11 PM 3/7/2005 -0600, you wrote:

>>Good point. History was on Freud's side when he defined this death urge 
>>in Civilization and it's Discontents and history since has not exactly 
>>proven him wrong if the reports from Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur are to be 
>>compared to the two world wars.
>
>Not to put a pin in anybody's bubble, but war claims a far smaller 
>percentage of the civilian population now than it did ten thousand years 
>ago - just 1500 years ago in some parts of the Americas.  If modern 
>civilization has a destructive urge, it's certainly not as great it was 
>for the "uncivilized."

Wade,

    I'd like to think your statement is true, but when I think of Lenin and 
Stalin, of millions of Jews and Poles, of Pol Pot and Kmer Rouge --- it 
gets doubtful. The instinct for destruction of the other does not seem to 
have abated.

Ken A. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/attachments/20050309/aac73d5c/attachment.html>


More information about the Percy-L mailing list