Some Thoughts on Civilization and Violence

If part of what we mean by civilized is a higher material standard of living, at least for some people, then there is little doubt that we have more of this kind of civilized world now than we have had in the past. The process of technological creation goes in only one direction. Once a new technology is created it is with us forever. The more time that passes the more we have. We are more efficient than we used to be. Now we can move more goods, at much faster speeds, and far more cheaply than we once were able to. We can also communicate and exchange information much faster.

The interesting question is: Has this increase in civilization been beneficial or not, and in what ways? As both Freud and Fuchsman have pointed out, more civilization (including technological advances) means more undesirable things along with the desirable ones. One of the areas of increased efficiency that is the hallmark of technological progress is increased efficiency and being

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able to do a variety of harmful things much more easily than we could in days of yore. So many of our technological advances have their origin in the context of fighting a war.

From the psychological side, as Freud said in his book on group psychology as well as in Civilization and its Discontents (1930), the affiliative bonds between members of the in-group, such as the creation of a nation state which facilitates the distribution of the benefits of technological advances, comes with a corresponding increase of aggression directed toward the out-group, the enemy other. Thus the more civilization there is, the greater the likelihood there will be more warfare, ethnic cleansing, exploitation, scapegoating, and the rest of the panoply of nasty things people can do to one another. As Freud says in Civilization and its Discontents: “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness” (S.E., 114).

Freud’s central thesis in Civilization and its Discontents is that the more civilized we become the more we repress impulses, most importantly the aggressive impulses. However, the repressed always returns. The harder it is pushed down the harder it pushes back. It is not the lack of civilization, or a reversion to “barbarism” that’s the problem; it’s civilization itself.

The question of whether actual violence is decreasing or not is only part of the story. Pinker may well be right in saying that, overall, overt violence has been declining, but if we take Freud seriously, this decrease in expressed aggression will be accompanied by an increase in the potential for violence to erupt in the future. Even if Pinker is correct, we cannot conclude that this upward progression of “civilization” is a good thing. It may look good on the surface but watch out below. For Freud, the danger lies in the return of the repressed aggression; for Jung it would be the pressure for the shadow side to manifest itself; and for Volkan and other psychohistorians it would be the enactment of personal, or handed-down from previous generations, unprocessed trauma that seeks expression.

Still, there is another realm that may have more to do with determining how much violence is expressed. This lies in the

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events and forces that characterize the current surroundings and situations in which people find themselves. For example, consider a possible future scenario: Global climate change accelerates as we continue to spew more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, sea levels rise, and extreme weather events become more frequent and severe. Large populations are displaced due to flooding or drought. Refugees on the move clash with neighboring populations, food shortages, and so forth lead to all sorts of bloody conflicts between large groups of people. Since there are already more than seven billion of us there is precious little in the way of spare livable space on the planet on which to settle refugees. In addition, there is the reality that modern, highly lethal weapons are so plentiful and easily obtainable, that should such events occur there will most likely be a significant increase in violence. This holds independent of whether you believe that human aggression is part of our inborn nature, or that it is in reaction to trauma or frustration that arise from the environment in which you were nurtured. The contention here is that situational factors, rather than individual or group traits, levels of individual or societal maturity, or history of trauma, have as much, and perhaps more, to do with how much violence will occur. So whether or not our better angels triumph may be less important than stopping the burning of fossil fuels and dealing with our overpopulation problem.

One final point about Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. In the eighth and final section of the book Freud says, speaking of the entire book, that “the final conclusion of our investigation” is “…the sense of guilt [is] the most important problem in the development of civilization and…that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt” (S.E., 134).

So in addition to the problem of increased repressed aggression pushing to get out, there is the problem of a buildup of guilt. While there are many possible permutations of how individuals and groups deal with guilt, they often involve sacrifice or other forms of self-generated punishment.

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