[lbo-talk] Political Economy for the 21st Century

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 21 12:23:53 PDT 2009


All risky behavior violates the sense of self-preservation. Sacrificing yourself for the group violates the sense of self-preservation. Proving your manhood by killing a lion, a la Zulus (I think), clearly violates the sense of self-preservation.

Human beings do not actually have instincts. Instincts are complicated behaviors that are inborn, like dam building or flying south for the winter.

People do not have a money-making "instinct." However, they do generally have a drive to move up in the social order and live more comfortably, which in some cultures involves money. In others, it does not.

Also, wars do not require states, unless you define "war" tendentiously as "organized violent conflict that is carried out by a state." Non-state organizations carry out organized violent conflict all the time.

--- On Mon, 9/21/09, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: Gotta disagree with Freud. War is not instinctive. It's
> learned,
> cultural. It directly contradicts the instinct of
> self-preservation.
>



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