[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.
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