620 2pages

Freud:

The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to beloved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and tokill him. Homo homini lupus[“Man is a wolfto man”]. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. In circumstances that are favourable to it, when the mental counter-forces which ordinarily inhibit it are out of action, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savagebeast to whom consideration towards his own kindis somethingalien. Anyone who calls mind the atrocities committed during the racial migrations the invasions of the Huns,or by the people known as Mongolsunder Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane, or at the capture ofJerusalem by the pious Crusaders, or even, indeed, the horrors of the recent World War—anyone who calls these things to mind will$ have to bow humbly before the truth of this view.The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detects in ourselvesand justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbour and whichforces civilization into such a high expenditure of energy.In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilizationhas to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man’saggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of menin check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people intoidentifications and aim-inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the ideal’scommandment to love one’sneighbour as oneself—a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runsasstrongly counter tothe original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavours of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. At the same time, it would be unfair to reproach civilization with trying to eliminatestrife and competition from human activity. These things are undoubtedly indispensable. But opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity. The communists believe that they have found the path to deliverance from ourevils. According to them, man is wholly good and is well-disposed to his neighbour; but the institution of private property has corrupted his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and with it the temptation to ill-treat his neighbour; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against his oppressor. If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyoneallowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone’sneeds would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary.I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous.*But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are anuntenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive thehuman love of aggression of oneof its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature.Aggressiveness was not created by property. Itreigned almostwithoutlimit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nurseryalmost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (withthe single exception, perhaps, of the mother’srelation to her male child). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become thesource of the strongestdislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexuallifeand thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, itis true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of humannature, will follow it there. *[Anyone who has tasted the miseries of poverty in hisown youth and has experienced the indifference and arrogance of the well-to-do, should be safe from the suspicion of having no understanding or good will towards endeavours to fight against the inequality of wealth among men and all that it leads to. To be sure, if an attempt is made to base this fight upon an abstract demand, in the name of justice, for equality for all men, there is a very obvious objection to be made—that nature, by endowing individuals with extremely unequal physical attributes and mental capacities, has introduced injustices against which there is no remedy.]It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, solong as there are other people left over to receivethe manifestations of their aggressiveness.Ionce discussed the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other—likethe Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance, the North Germans and South Germans, the English and Scotch,and so on. I gave this phenomenon the name of‘the narcissism of minor differences’, a name which does not do much to explain it. We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which, cohesion between the members of the community is made easier; inthis respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most usefulservices to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of theJews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows. When once the Apostle Paulhad posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community, extreme intolerance on the part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitableconsequence. To the Romans, who had not founded their communal life asa State upon love, religious intolerance was something foreign, although with them religion was a concernof the State and the State was permeated by religion. Neither was it an unaccountable chance that the dream of a Germanic world-dominion called for anti-semitism as its complement; and it is intelligible that the attempt to establish a new, communist civilization in Russia should find its psychological support in the persecution of the bourgeois. One only wonders, withconcern, what the Soviets will do after they have wiped out their bourgeois. If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’ssexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security. We must not forget, however, that in the primal family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual freedom; the rest lived in slavish suppression. In that primal period of civilization, the contrast between a minority who enjoyed the advantages of civilization and a majority who were robbed of those advantages was, therefore, carried to extremes. As regards the primitive peoples who exist to-day, careful researches have shown that their instinctual life is by no means to beenvied for its freedom. It is subject to restrictions of a different kind but perhaps of greater severity than thoseattaching to modern civilized man. When we justly find fault with the present state of our civilization for so inadequately fulfilling our demands for a plan of life that shall make us happy; and for allowing the existence of so much suffering which could probably beavoided—when, with unsparing criticism, we try to uncover the roots of its imperfection, we are undoubtedly exercising a proper right and are not showing ourselves enemies of civilization. We may expect gradually to carry through such alterations in our civilization as will better satisfy our needs and will escape our criticisms. But perhaps we may also familiarize ourselves with the idea that there are difficulties attaching to the nature of civilization which will not yield to any attempt at reform. Over and above the tasks of restricting the instincts, which we are prepared for, there forces itself on our notice the danger of a state of things which might be termed‘the psychological poverty of groups’.This danger is most threatening where the bonds of a society are chieflyconstituted by theidentification of its members with one another, while individuals of the leader type do not acquire the importance that should fall to them inthe formation of a group.The present cultural state of America would give us a good opportunity for studying the damage to civilization which is thus to be feared. But I shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization; I do not wish to give an impression of wanting myself to employ American methods.