Brainstorming about the Civilizing Process

What makes us civilized, how do we maintain civilization, and what should we aspire to be doing as “civilized” human beings? These are vital issues very much in need of examination. The Psychohistory Forum’s September 20, 2014 discussion of the complexities of civilization drew an interesting group of participants. Nine psychoanalysts, six historians, three psychologists, one social worker, and one political scientist participated in a very lively exchange. As is always the case, some participants had dual identifications, as in the instance of David James Fisher, a Los Angeles psychoanalyst and modern European intellectual historian.

After the usual announcements of upcoming events, seminar participants identified themselves (there were two male colleagues for every female present) and asked a question that the presenters would later have an opportunity to answer. Among the questions stated or implied at this stage of our process were: Why list civilization as starting 5,000 years ago? Are we today more or less violent than in the past? Why is there so little violence in Switzerland (where every citizen is expected to have a weapon in his home as part of the country’s system of national defense)? Can you separate civilization from barbarism or are the two necessarily connected? How do you define the other? What cultures don’t have war? How do we deal with the idea of Progress that is so embedded within us? Why are we so buried in the statistics of sadism in our society? Is

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aggression necessary for the survival of our species? What is the spectrum of violence?

One colleague noted that our discussion was far more psychoanalytic than the two papers were and that there had been no discussion of narcissistic rage. He recommended Russell Jacoby’s Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present (2011). A newcomer to the group, who is the president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization, made valuable points and invited participants to come to the June 10-13, 2015 conference, Civilizations at the Crossroads, in Rio de Janeiro with a panel on Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. One of our members-at-a-distance who lives in Florida spoke about the importance of relational aggression. Another colleague made the point that it’s important in understanding violence in the United States to think in terms of it being a tale of two nations: the less violent “blue states” and more violent “red states.” Someone else thought that we might face a bloodbath due to the enormous population increase over competition for natural resources.

Two psychologists/psychoanalysts raised the issue of men being far more associated with aggression than women, who are more connected to love and nurturance. This brought up the issue of women as leaders in the world and the possibility that Hillary Rodham Clinton could win a bid for the American presidency. I raised the issue of the first woman president in a country with a strong military tradition and the status of a world power having to deal with a special burden. A woman leader in this situation is expected to be tougher than any of the men and tested by war as in the case of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meier, and Margaret Thatcher. Hillary as president would be in the unique situation of having as an advisor a former president in her husband, a man who was so well known for getting out of situations that he was called “Slick Willy” when he was Arkansas governor.

Much of the discussion was organized around Ken Fuchsman’s more critical response to Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) and my positive approach to this volume. I usually see my role in the group as a nurturer of knowledge, but in this instance I took on a more confrontational approach to contesting Fuchsman’s critique of

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Pinker. For his part, Ken Fuchsman did a good job supporting his argument that the 20^th century was the most violent century in history and that there has been enormous violence since World War II, mainly in Africa and Asia. One participant, Allan Susser Mohl, was inspired by the discussion of Pinker during the last year to write and publish the following poem “Steven Pinker’s ‘Good News,’” which he shared with the group:

A noted psychologist, Steven Pinker,
Maintains that humanity
Is becoming less violent
On the gut level, I can’t buy it.

But even if true, it’s somewhat hard to believe, since
In the 20th century, millions of civilians died
In a multiplicity of wars and genocide.
The “us vs them” mentality prevailed.
The victims included among others the Armenians,
The Kulaks, the Chinese, the Muslims, the Russians,
The Poles, the Vietnamese, the Koreans,
The Congolese, the Shias, the Tutsis, the Liberians,
The Somalis, the Afghans, the Communists,
The African Americans, the Palestinians,
The gays, the handicapped,
And of course, last, but, not least, the Jews,
Always the Jews.

Violence may increase because climate change
Will allow us not to escape the fear and loathing….

Steven Hawkings, the…astrophysicist, believes that
Humans must travel to other planets and settle them
In order to survive and ultimately to thrive.
But…when one travels one brings one’s baggage with one.
(In Cummins Starr-Joyal, ed., Fifty Great Modern Poets: The
Best Poetry of Our Times, 2014, 20).

Fuchsman consistently supported the notion that humans are very dual creatures with enormous capacity for both love and destruction. It was mentioned that despite its great importance, there was no real discussion of dramatic reenactment. Christopher Bollas’ idea that there is no love without hate was one of the final

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thoughts expressed in what was an exciting discussion. Before going to a most enjoyable lunch at the Hilton Fashion Center Hotel, appreciation was expressed to Jacques Szaluta, our fine moderator, for his dozen years of service. He has now been freed to be a more engaged participant in the group.

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