Warfare as Shared Psychosis
Dear Colleague,
An interesting review of Nations Have the Right to Kill appeared recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. An excerpt appears below (you may read the entire review here).
The author notes that my book “confronts the taken-for-granted worlds of nationalism and political realism” and makes them “suddenly seem utterly bizarre and peculiar.”
I like this way of putting it. If we look simply at the reality of what occurs when nations wage war (stripped of symbolic overlay), many of us might agree that warfare is bizarre and peculiar, not to mention destructive and self-destructive. As a reminder of the strange behavior that constitutes warfare, please view the following videos:
As an example of the weird thought processes that often generate group violence, please see:
If someone from another planet witnessed these videos, he or she might conclude that human beings are crazy. Indeed, in the quiet of a movie theater—witnessing the chaos and absurdity of battle—people often murmur, “War is insane.” I suggest we rigorously pursue this intuition by viewing warfare as a manifestation of shared psychosis.
Because many human beings share the fantasies that give rise to the ideology and institution that we call “war,” people who initiate and engage in warfare are not clinically psychotic. Rather, paradoxically, we often think of warfare as being the most normal or normative institution and form of behavior—lying at the core of societies and history. How can it be that a radical, self-destructive and perhaps psychotic form of behavior simultaneously is conceived as the essence of the historical process?
Perhaps this is because we human beings live within the psychosis. We are part of it, and it is part of us. What would it mean to separate from the shared fantasy or psychosis of warfare in order to imagine the nightmare of history as something other than our self?
Best regards,
Richard Koenigsberg
Review Essay of Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 48 Issue 4 (December 2009).
By Matthew Eddy
University of Oregon – Eugene, Oregon
Employing anthropological philosophy and historical analysis, the author skillfully confronts the taken-for-granted worlds of nationalism and political realism (structurally embodied in militarism and warfare), and makes them suddenly seem utterly peculiar and bizarre, even as they are shown to have logical resonance with earlier regimes of “human sacrifice” like that found in the priesthood and warfare of the Aztecs. Throwing back the curtain on reifications of the nation-state, Koenigsberg interrogates motivations and rationalizations behind the human tragedies of the two World Wars, and how the two wars might be related in ways not previously considered.
One of Koenigsberg’s central theses is that it was Hitler’s belief that German Jews had been “shirkers” of their military responsibilities in World War I which motivated his pursuit of the “Final Solution.” Many readers are likely familiar with history textbook accounts of how Hitler blamed Germany’s loss in WWI on the Jews, but Koenigsberg advances a more nuanced version. Through rhetorical and biographical analysis Koenigsberg aims to reveal Hitler’s own thought processes as he came to embrace, as an article of faith, the idea that “Nations have the right to kill”—the right to kill their own soldiers as well as populations within the nation that deny this faith (e.g., pacifists and Jewish “shirkers”), that refuse to worship the nation and who maintain subnational or cosmopolitan loyalties, or that serve to “drain” the nation’s resources. It was Hitler’s justifications for the mass slaughter he witnessed in WWI, which became logically extended to the Nazi euthanasia and genocidal programs.
Koenigsberg advances several arguments about modern warfare at a high level of generality, though we should remember that not all wars fit the template of the World Wars. He proposes it is more accurate to speak of nation-states killing and “sacrificing” their own soldiers in wartime, as opposed to speech conventions that would have us believe enemy armies have killed their fallen soldiers. In a supporting argument, Koenigsberg debunks modern warfare as an expression of traditionally “masculine” heroism, when in reality it often demands absolute submission and “abject passivity” such that one offers “no resistance” when “put forward as a sacrificial victim” (p.55). His anthropological lens comes through as he writes, “We encourage the soldiers delusion of masculine virility and call him a hero—in order to lure him into becoming a sacrificial victim” (p.76).
Scholars of religion may bristle at the running metaphor of nationalism as a religion, viewing such definitions as a sacred canopy that has become, conceptually, far too big a tent. Yet, the force of Koenigsberg’s contention leaves little doubt that in analyzing nationalism and warfare, we are treading on a kind of sacred ground in which rituals and duties engage issues of basic trust and faith, and the meaning of life and death, even as ultimate and redemptive meanings are promised. The assertion that nations demand “human sacrifice” in war as a ritual process which justifies and “makes the nation come alive” (p.33), builds momentum through accounts of the two World Wars, and a suggestive chapter comparing Aztec and Western Warfare. The Aztec practices of war were conceived as a “sacred duty” to the sun god, and the rhetoric of Hitler and many other wartime European leaders are shown to parallel those ancient ideologies of human sacrifice.
I absolutely agree with Koenigsberg’s major thesis, and have been saying so (to my friends) for quite some time.
War justifies and encourages behavior that no one would accept in “normal” life. If someone did the things to people in our town that people do to each other in war–bomb and blow up women and children, destroy life, destroy the environment, torture, etc–we would call their behavior criminally insane.
Al Qaeda thugs and abortion doctor killers are easier to see as simply thugs who want to kill and are using religion as a cover and justification for their actions.
Nationalism seems like just such a disease, but, as Koenigsberg suggests, national ideology makes it seem “normal” to people within that society.
It might be, in people’s minds, but, if you strip away the ideology, the actual BEHAVIOR is the same. It doesn’t matter to the burned up kids whether the bomb was set by an insurgent or a lone nutcase, or dropped by a US bomber pilot. And the behavior reflects badly on the perpetrator for the rest of their lives as well–PTSD is largely explained by this sense of guilt and powerlessness, powerlessness to avoid doing horrendous things to others.
Comment by Michael Traugot — March 31, 2010 @ 3:44 pm
Do we not need some kind of allegiance to those we permit to govern us – either politically, religiously or socially? Not to have this allegiance equals anarchy – does it not?? Offering up the sacrificial lamb or the sacrificial soldier in the name of religion or nationalism is a manifestation of our requirement for order itself. Is it not our civilization’s need for order that you are referring to as an evil psychosis??
Comment by Larry Smith — March 31, 2010 @ 11:28 pm
Comment number 2–Not to have this allegiance equals anarchy–does it not?? The answer is yes. But to leave the allegiance to state behind one must like childhood behind, for citizenship is sonship. To be one’s own person, fully, without contradictions–this is only fully achievable in an anarchist form of social organization.
“Perhaps this is because we human beings live within the psychosis. We are part of it, and it is part of us. What would it mean to separate from the shared fantasy or psychosis of warfare in order to imagine the nightmare of history as something other than our self?”
Organized warfare is not possible without an encompassing culture of obedience. There is always a critical distancing from the prerogatives of the self in any bureaucratic form of organization. Military organization is the ultmate expression of bureaucracy. You have a job. The value of your opinion about command and control is minimized. An unseen hand guides your every action. If one could recover oneself fully, this would not occur. There remains the problem of the spirit of vigilantism. Some form of integration between the needs of self and the needs of a reasonable society must be internalized by everyone. Do I want the best for all others? I find that I do. How does one arrive at such a belief? It is our task to discover the principles which govern this outcome, principles which transcend mere coercion or the arbitrary imposition of duty. Does fear constitute the ultimate motivator? I say it does not. If we could prove such a conviction valid, this would point the way out of patriarchy, otherwise known as the nightmare of history.
Comment by David Westling — April 1, 2010 @ 7:24 pm
Why this connection (Larry and David) between obedience and submission, one the one hand, and “order,” on the other? What kind of “anarchy” is imagined might come into being if people did not submit? And why is a sacrificial lamb required in order to bring about the idea of order?
Comment by Richard Koenigsberg — April 3, 2010 @ 4:49 pm