War as Sacrifice -- dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

[Gordon Fitch]

> Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
> 
> <There is an interesting comparison of Saddam and Bush at the end of
> this thought-provoking piece>
> 
> From: psycheculture at cs.com [mailto:psycheculture at cs.com]
> To: free-associations at yahoogroups.com
> 
>           In reviewing my research notes on the First Gulf War, I came
> across a news report of a rally of August 26, 1990 of men &women in
> Baghdad. The marchers shouted, "We will give our body and blood to our
> President."
> [CLIP]
>           Why is it so difficult to imagine that a leader provokes war
> in order to sacrifice his people?
> 
>           According to Carolyn Marvin, the "totem secret"--that which is
> required to remain secret--is knowledge that "society depends on the
> death of its own members at the hands of the group itself." She observes
> that the "Irrefutable sign of national faith is making one's body an
> offering, a sacrifice." Jean Elshtain notes that when a young man goes
> to war he does so, not so much to kill as "to die, to forfeit his
> particular body for that of the larger body, the body-politic." A
> willingness to die represents a demonstration of faith in the sacred
> ideal.]

Carrol Cox:
> I think this illustrates why psychoanalysis isn't even worth refuting.
> It seems a deliberate effort to kill three birds with one stone: a) the
> Freudian tradition b) the Jungian tradition c) evolutionary psychology.
> It combines the most ludicrous elements of all three.
> 
> Can this writer possibly be serious? It is a hoax isn't it? Is the model
> for it _A Modest Proposal_ or _The Bickerstaff Papers_?

Evolution, including group selection, can be reasonably supposed
to produce altruism in social animals, including among other
things a human willingness to sacrifice oneself for the group
in combat.  Since humans can remember, imagine, objectify,
symbolize, ritualize and talk, and are mostly considerable
egoists, we can expect this sometimes overwhelming desire to
manifest itself in symbol, ritual, and myth, indeed to be
elaborately rhetoricized, especially since it conflicts strongly
with other desires and interests and is of great social
importance.  And just as one must criticize a theory with
another theory, so one must criticize a myth with another
myth.

-- Gordon