GS232 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Margaret Mead, Thanatos, Class Conflict
Document Summary
Trying to establish the league of nations. Sovereign nations must submit a degree of power for the greater good. Freud tries to understand the roots of certain behaviors. Group psychosis: justify violence through national defense. Relation between aggressive instincts of the individual and international conflict. Eros and thanatos (love, reproduction and death, reduce life) Eros is the solution for conflict: neighborly love, finding similarities rather than emphasizing. Individual or organized violence have the same root on differences and submit instinctual thinking to a higher institution. Violent skills are enhanced through love and hate relationships between the soldier and reality. War is not inherent in human nature or biology. War is not a socio-economic class struggle either. War is an invention and inventions are disposed over time when a better one arrives. Solution for war is to invent another mean to solve conflicts. If humans are deprived from sex they will become violent. Violence is something secondary to human nature.
