www.ynowar.com

[29]
From our "mythology" of the instincts we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment between man and man must serve us as war's antidote. These ties are of two kinds. First, such relations as those toward a beloved object, void though they be of sexual intent. The psychoanalyst need feel no compunction in mentioning "love" in this connection; religion uses the same language: Love thy neighbor as thyself. A pious injunction, easy to enounce, but hard to carry out! The other bond of sentiment is by way of identification. All that brings out the significant resemblances between men calls into play this feeling of community, identification, whereon is founded, in large measure, the whole edifice of human society.
[30]
In your strictures on the abuse of authority I find another suggestion for an indirect attack on the war impulse. That men are divided into the leaders and the led is but another manifestation of their inborn and irremediable inequality. The second class constitutes the vast majority; they need a high command to make decisions for them, to which decisions they usually bow without demur. In this context we would point out that men should be at greater pains than heretofore to form a superior class of independent thinkers, unamenable to intimidation and fervent in the quest of truth, whose function it would be to guide the masses dependent on their lead. There is no need to point out how little the rule of politicians and the Church's ban on liberty of thought encourage such a new creation. The ideal conditions would obviously be found in a community where every man subordinated his instinctive life to the dictates of reason. Nothing less than this could bring about so thorough and so durable a union between men, even if this involved the severance of mutual ties of sentiment. But surely such a hope is utterly utopian, as things are. The other indirect methods of preventing war are certainly more feasible, but entail no quick results. They conjure up an ugly picture of mills that grind so slowly that, before the flour is ready, men are dead of hunger.
 
[31]
As you see, little good comes of consulting a theoretician, aloof from worldly contact, on practical and urgent problems! Better it were to tackle each successive crisis with means that we have ready to our hands. However, I would like to deal with a question which, though it is not mooted in your letter, interests me greatly. Why do we, you and I and many another, protest so vehemently against war, instead of just accepting it as another of life's odious importunities? For it seems a natural thing enough, biologically sound and practically unavoidable. I trust you will not be shocked by my raising such a question. For the better conduct of an inquiry it may be well to don a mask of feigned aloofness. The answer to my query may run as follows: Because every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will; it ravages material amenities, the fruits of human toil, and much besides. Moreover, wars, as now conducted, afford no scope for acts of heroism according to the old ideals and, given the high perfection of modern arms, war today would mean the sheer extermination of one of the combatants, if not of both. This is so true, so obvious, that we can but wonder why the conduct of war is not banned by general consent. Doubtless either of the points I have just made is open to debate. It may be asked if the community, in its turn, cannot claim a right over the individual lives of its members. Moreover, all forms of war cannot be indiscriminately condemned; so long as there are nations and empires, each prepared callously to exterminate its rival, all alike must be equipped for war. But we will not dwell on any of these problems; they lie outside the debate to which you have invited me. I pass on to another point, the basis, as it strikes me, of our common hatred of war. It is this: We cannot do otherwise than hate it. Pacifists we are, since our organic nature wills us thus to be. Hence it comes easy to us to find arguments that justify our standpoint
 
[32]
This point, however, calls for elucidation. Here is the way in which Isee it. The cultural development of mankind (some, I know, prefer to call itcivilization) has been in progress since immemorial antiquity. To this processus we owe all that is best in our composition, but also much that makes for human suffering. Its origins and causes are obscure, its issue is uncertain, but some of its characteristics are easy to perceive. It well may lead to the extinction of mankind, for it impairs the sexual function in more than one respect, and even today the uncivilized races and the backward classes of all nations are multiplying more rapidly than the cultured elements. This process may, perhaps, be likened to the effects of domestication on certain animals--it clearly involves physical changes of structure--but the view that cultural development is an organic process of this order has not yet become generally familiar. The psychic changes which accompany this process of cultural change are striking, and not to be gainsaid. They consist in the progressive rejection of instinctive ends and a scaling down of instinctive reactions. Sensations which delighted our forefathers have become neutral or unbearable to us; and, if our ethical and aesthetic ideals have undergone a change, the causes of this are ultimately organic. On the psychological side two of the most important phenomena of culture are, firstly, a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life, and, secondly, an introversion of the aggressive impulse, with all its consequent benefits and perils. Now war runs most emphatically counter to the psychic disposition imposed on us by the growth of culture; we are therefore bound to resent war, to find it utterly intolerable. With pacifists like us it is not merely an intellectual and affective repulsion, but a constitutional intolerance, an idiosyncrasy in its most drastic form. And it would seem that the aesthetic ignominies of warfare play almost as large a part in this repugnance as war's atrocities.
 
[33]
How long have we to wait before the rest of men turn pacifist? Impossible to say, and yet perhaps our hope that these two factors--man's cultural disposition and a well-founded dread of the form that future wars will take--may serve to put an end to war in the near future, is not chimerical. But by what ways or byways this will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war.
[34]
With kindest regards and, should this expose prove a disappointment to you, my sincere regrets,
Yours,
SIGMUND FREUD
Einstein was apparently not disappointed when Freud's reply was received.He addressed the following letter to Freud on December 3, 1932:
[35]
You have made a most gratifying gift to the League of Nations and myself with your truly classic reply. When I wrote you I was thoroughly convinced of the insignificance of my role, which was only meant to document my good will, with me as the bait on the hoof; to tempt the marvelous fish into nibbling. You have given in return something altogether magnificent. We cannot know what may grow from such seed, as the effect upon man of any action or event is always incalculable. This is not within our power and we do not need to worry aboutit.
[36]
You have earned my gratitude and the gratitude of all men for havingdevoted all your strength to the search for truth and for having shown the rarestcourage in professing your convictions all your life. . . . By the time the exchange between Einstein and Freud was published in 1933, under the title Why War?, Hitler, who was to drive both men into exile, was already in power, and the letters never achieved the wide circulation intended for them. Indeed, the first German edition of the pamphlet is reported to have been limited to only 2,000 copies, as was also the original English edition.
Besides the four major projects in 1932 that were just recorded, some of the messages, replies to inquiries, and similar statements which Einstein prepared during that same period give evidence of the increasing political tensions of those days. On April 20, 1932, he submitted to the Russian-language journal Nord-Ost, published in Riga, Latvia (then still an independentcountry), a contribution to a symposium on "Europe and the Coming War":
 
[37]
As long as all international conflicts are not subject to arbitration and the enforcement of decisions arrived at by arbitration is not guaranteed, and as long as war production is not prohibited we may be sure that war will follow upon war. Unless our civilization achieves the moral strength to overcome this evil, it is bound to share the fate of former civilizations: decline and decay.
To Arnold Kalisch, editor of the magazine Die Friedensfront, who asked him to sponsor a book against war by a Czechoslovakian physician, Einstein wrote on April 26, 1932:
[38]
No doubt you know how anxious I am to support anything that could effectively help combat the militaristic orientation of the public. But I have reservations . . . about this book. If war psychosis could be regarded as anillness like, say, paranoia, then any panic in a meeting would likewise have tobe considered a sickness. It appears to be quite normal for people to raiselittle resistance to the emotional attitude of their fellow human beings. . . . In the case of war, to describe the psychosis that may then exist as an illness does not bring us one single step closer to solving the problem of wars. . . .

Oh, no “smart” guys?
Einstein and Freud never even thought about this!
“The internet”, a phone-line shared throughout the world!
(Where everyone can speak their mind at the same “time”)
"We're still trying to figure out the central nugget of truth."
The next century could usher in an intellectual revolution even more exciting than the one Einstein helped launch in the early 1900s......
 
Det er på engelsk, men det er viktig og forklarer ALT i verdens mysterier !!!
Les det, litt om gangen, dere vil IKKE angre.
 
Eeeh, tror ikke det, for da går mine øyne i kors! Hater å lese engelsk!
 
Herregud kvinne, må skjønne at vi ikke gidder å lese så mye samme hvor mye du deler det opp. Har ikke problem med engelsk men det får da være grenser.
Hva er poenget med tråden da? Kan du ikke bare si det siden ingen gidder å lese?
 
ORIGINAL: Godhjerta

Beklager, men dette ble for tungt for meg.
Orker ikke lese det.

Men handler det om graviditet/fødsel/barn eller noe som flertallet er opptatt av her ?
Hvis det er det, så kanskje jeg setter av helga på å lese...[:)]

Nei det handler ikke om det i det hele tatt.
 
det ble jo veeeeldig mye kortere nå ja! [8|]
 
ORIGINAL: Hilde-Anita

det ble jo veeeeldig mye kortere nå ja! [8|]


Ja, ikke sant...Hvor dum går det ann å bli....[8|]
 
ORIGINAL: Godhjerta

ORIGINAL: Aftenstjerne

ORIGINAL: Godhjerta

Beklager, men dette ble for tungt for meg.
Orker ikke lese det.

Men handler det om graviditet/fødsel/barn eller noe som flertallet er opptatt av her ?
Hvis det er det, så kanskje jeg setter av helga på å lese...[:)]

Nei det handler ikke om det i det hele tatt.



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Mener dette ble litt for langt jeg og.. Men dette er jo på skravlesiden.. så at hun har skrevet det inn her gjør jo ingenting.. [;)]

MEN jeg gidder heller ikke lese dette over og forbi lange innlegget![&:]
 
Hehe! Du må jo ikke si unnskyld! Skjønner jo at du ikke mente det sånn.. Hehe![;)]

Men litt off topic her: hvorfor står du som frakoblet, og så skriver du plutselig et innlegg, og så er du frakoblet igjen..? Har du noe status "vis som frakoblet" eller?[&:]
 
er det noe religiøse greier???
jeg er OVERHODET IKKE religiøs, så den leser jeg ikke!

barnslig? der dri*** jeg i, jeg leser IKKE noe sånne greier!

kooooz i natten!
 
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