“Madness! Madness… madness!”
This line is uttered by Major Clipton, a character in the iconic film The Bridge Over the River Kwai. The major is watching from a hill with a view of a bridge on which he witnesses the carnage and the destruction occurring as British Colonel Nicholson’s troops attack the British Allied troops.
Nicholson built the bridge as a Japanese prisoner of war as the British commander in the Japanese prisoner of war camp. But now, Nicholson, blinded by his military pride and his obsession with showing off what he considered British engineering perfection, attacks his own Allied command troops to protect his beloved bridge.
Delusions are a major symptom of psychosis. Psychosis is the psychiatric term for the lay terms of insanity or madness. Delusions are defined as fixed false beliefs.
Although there is abundant historical and present evidence that war and armaments and nuclear weapons have now led to a very precarious state of human survival, the delusions of militarism, despite all the evidence to the contrary, defies all healthy logic and clings to their own psychotic logic that war and armaments and nuclear weapons create security.
There is a psychiatric term called “folie a deux”, which in English translates to the term “madness of two”. This term refers to a situation in which two people, usually very isolated and bound together, share the same psychotic delusions.
The term “folie a plusieurs” translates into the English term “madness of the many”.
This is the case with militarism, where billions of men share the delusion that war and armaments and nuclear weapons create security, despite the abundant evidence that that belief is manifestly false and delusional.
The question then becomes how we treat this psychotic illness in mankind.
The problem is that delusions, by their inherent nature, do not respond to logic. And further, that there is no medication that could be prescribed to all of mankind to treat their psychotic delusionary militarism.
So, unfortunately, the prognosis is very guarded.
The only treatment solution to this illness is to replace the current psychotic world leaders with sane world leaders, which can only be achieved through a non-violent democratic process.
Thus, the only solution to spare the world from abject destruction by its psychotic leaders is a political one.
The challenge for the non-psychotic anti-militarism citizens is in creating an effective enough political movement such that it can replace the current psychotic leadership.
That means challenging the delusions of the other psychotic pro-military citizens. As mentioned above, this is an exceedingly difficult task, as already stated, because delusions, by their nature, are not amenable to logic.
However, in terms of human survival, there is no other alternative treatment.
So how does one part of society convince the other part of society that their thinking is delusional?
War is sold very successfully using military propaganda, which draws on the military delusion of the false belief that militarism can achieve security. Propaganda is designed to manipulate people’s unconscious instincts and motivations.
To be successful, any group of sane anti-militarism citizens must understand very clearly how each specific piece of military propaganda works on the brains of the pro-military citizens. Based on this understanding, the non-military citizens of each country must design and articulate responses to protect the human brain from the toxic but exceedingly convincing impact of military propaganda.
The only treatment tools that the non-psychotic citizens have available to use in their attempts to treat the other deluded citizens is words and insight. These words and this insight must directly address the distorted delusional content of the psychotic thinking of the other mentally disturbed citizens.
The use of language in the service of attempting to convince the other citizenry of the psychotic nature of their current leader can only be achieved with highly developed verbal and marketing skills. These skills must be informed by a very deep understanding and insight into the powerful capacity of propaganda to convince a willing population of men to incorporate military delusions into their own distorted worldviews.
This is in keeping with the advice of Dr. Sigmund Freud, a Jewish Austrian physician who was initially a neurologist. However, Freud created, in his time, the new psychiatric field of psychoanalysis and following which, he then realized himself professionally as a psychiatrist.
Freud was approached by the world-renowned physicist Albert Einstein on behalf of the League of Nations in the league’s attempts to promote peace. Freud’s advice to Einstein has become enshrined in the annals of Freud’s letters, now known as the ‘Why War?’ letters.
In 1931, the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation was instructed by a committee of the League of Nations to arrange for an exchange of letters, intended for public publication, between representative intellectuals in keeping with the League’s efforts to promote peace. The League first chose Einstein who, in turn, immediately chose to correspond with Sigmund Freud. Einstein picked Freud because Einstein believed that Freud’s understanding of the instinctual life of man could shed light on “a question which seems the most insistent of all the problems civilization has to face.”.
Einstein and Freud had met each other five years earlier in Berlin, at the home of Freud’s youngest son, where the two Jewish leading formative thinkers were intrigued to discuss their work and respective fields with each other.
In 1932, the scientist who redefined for 20th-century humanity its understanding of the physical world posed the following question to the physician who had changed its perception of the psychological one: “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war? It is common knowledge that modern science has come to mean a matter of life or death for civilisation as we know it.”
Although the building of the atomic bomb was still some years away, Einstein had already discovered the science that would make it possible and feared its catastrophic potential. He asked Freud, “to bring the light of your far-reaching knowledge of man’s instinctual life to bear upon the problem” and hoped that his “most recent discoveries might blaze the trail for new and fruitful modes of action.”
Einstein was concerned about the role of the militaristic elites in promoting war, the “small but determined groups, active in every nation, composed of individuals who, indifferent to social considerations and restraints, regard warfare, the manifestation and sale of arms, simply as an occasion to advance their own personal interests and enlarge their own personal authority.”
This phenomenon was later termed the “military-industrial complex” by the then departing US President, Dwight Eisenhower. The arms trade is one of the largest industries in the world, at $2.887 trillion USD per year and with the average salary of an American CEO of a weapons manufacturing company being between $20 to $30 million a year, if you include their stock options.
In Einstein’s view, the elites were able to wield power because “the schools and press, usually the church as well were under their thumb” and so were able to “whip up the hatred and destruction of the masses into a collective psychosis.” Thus, Einstein invoked the language of psychiatry and madness to describe the propaganda machine now already operating in Nazi Germany under the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Thus, Einstein’s insight into the psychiatric nature of militarism existed as early as 1932.
Einstein proposed to Freud the establishment “by international consent, of a legislative and judicial body to settle every conflict arising between nations” but lamented that “we are far from possessing any supranational organization competent to render verdicts of incontestable authority and enforce absolute submission to the execution of its verdicts.” However, as Einstein observed, there are “strong psychological factors” that “paralyse” efforts to enforce the peaceful coexistence of nations. And so, he sought the counsel of his friend and fellow intellectual Freud.
Replying to Einstein’s letter, Freud expressed his surprise that, as a physician and psychoanalyst, his advice regarding a social rather than clinical problem had been sought. However, he wrote Einstein that he agreed with everything Einstein had said, “particularly the need for a central authority.”
Freud described war as futile.
“The results of conquest are as a rule short-lived,” Freud wrote, “the newly created units fall apart once again, usually owing to a lack of cohesion between parties united by violence.”
Freud too, was concerned that the League of Nations lacked “the necessary power to act” and shared Einstein’s apocalyptic fear that “a future war might involve the extermination of one or perhaps both of the antagonists.”
Freud then went on to outline for Einstein his theory of Eros, the life instinct that “seeks to preserve and unite” and of Thanatos, the death instinct.
For Freud, aggression and unbridled competition were the manifestation of Thanatos and thus an essential element of human nature, which could well lead to humanities’ demise. This prediction of Freud’s has been now fully realized in the present rampant spread and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons as well as the increasingly and highly dangerous and irresponsible threats of their use. This current situation leads inextricably to Thanatos, the death of all humanity.
What Freud offered Einstein by way of an answer were “indirect methods of combating war.” Freud saw public education as an essential institution capable of creating “independent minds not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth.” That is, a protection against the powerful distortions of military propaganda.
Thus, the world renowned, historic and now a fully realized psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, saw public education as a powerful tool in the treatment of the psychosis of militarism.
The early wisdom of Einstein and Freud offers humanity today a very relevant and hopeful treatment strategy in the armamentarium required to treat the planet-destroying psychosis of militarism.
This psychosis, untreated, will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, lead to the complete and utter destruction of humanity.
As we have seen, through the wisdom of Einstein and Freud, there are remedies to treat this planet destroying disorder. But they will never be achieved without the worldwide highly and deeply concerted efforts by the many peoples of the earth to challenge the delusions of militarism.
Peace and human survival will never be arrived at only by prayer. They will only be achieved through the organized and highly determined efforts of all those members of the world community who have been able to achieve a fully realized degree of insight into the delusions and lies that make up the planetary murder of human warfare.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
