Understanding Modern Conflict - Essay Example

Understanding Modern Conflict On the 14th February 2008, a man entered a lecture hall of the of Northern Illinois and opened fire on the students gathered there .He shot again and again and killed five students and injured sixteen others ,of whom two were critically wounded. He himself succumbed to his self inflicted gun wounds. A day earlier, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia tendered an emotional apology to the Aborigines of Australia for the past wrongs done to them. The apology was particularly significant for the ‘Stolen Generations ‘of First Australians, who as children, had been forcibly separated from their Aborigine mothers to be brought up in state institutions. An estimated 100,000 children of mixed blood had been taken away from their mothers between 1910 and the 1970s , many of whom were subjected to humiliation, sexual abuse and ill treatment and forced to become unskilled labor. At first glance, these two incidents happening close together in geographically distant locations seem to have nothing in common, but a little reflection makes it evident that both incidents are centered around aggression. On the one hand, it is aggression of an individual against others, a classic case of the the individual’s death drive unleashing its negative energy. On the other hand, the aggression committed is by a race against another and the apology points to Freud’s theories of guilt and the conscience. Since ancient times, there have been recurring events of aggression, which took the form of conquest and pillage. Modern day conflicts have their roots in the latent fear and hatred of cultures and sex other than one’s own. According to Freud, aggression is common to all human beings, as it is an ingrained personality trait. The suppression of the sexual drive exacerbates the need for aggression. Let us consider the books, Love My Rifle More than You by Kayla Williams and Bury me Standing by Isabel Fonseca. In the former, conflict is seen from the point of view of the female of the species, while in the latter, it is the victims sufferings which are highlighted.. Williams gives a graphic account of her experiences as a soldier in the U.S. army in Iraq. She served in Iraq for one year at the beginning of the U.S war against Iraq. The war was fought in the midst of civilian population. Being a female, Williams was considered to be “less threatening” than her male colleagues. As she was fluent in Arabic, she had the job of communicating with the local people. In her inimitable style, Williams narrates many disturbing incidents, from humiliating an Iraqi prisoner to aiming the gun at a child. She writes, ”Sex is the key to any woman soldier’s experience in the American military”. She describes a game where her fellow soldiers throw stones at her breasts. The men throw stones at each other’s genitals. In another incident recounted by her, she is made to humiliate a naked and weeping Iraqi prisoner by alluding to the inadequacy of his sexual organs. “Do you think you can please a woman with that thing?” Some of her male colleagues called her a slut while some others groped for her. The incidents recounted in this book lead us to conclude that Freud’s ideas on civilization are still valid: man is innately aggressive in the subconscious and this aggressiveness is held in check by the repression of the violent urges, which is demanded by civilization. While Williams book is on contemporary aggression , Bury me standing by Isabel Fonseca is about historic victimization of a race which is continuing to this day .Like the Jews, the Gypsies were hounded and subjected to unspeakable forms of violence ever since the time of their arrival in Europe centuries ago. They were called congenital liars and thieves and the epithet continues to the present time. The violence and abuse directed against them steadily increased through the centuries and culminated in the Holocaust. When she embarked on her research project, Isabel Fonseca considered the Gypsies to be the “New Jews” of modern Europe as they were “the first casualties of nascent democracies”. As her research progressed, she realized that the Gypsies, along with the Jews were systematically terrorized throughout history. She calls them “ancient scapegoats”. In her book , Fonseca describes specific cases of hostility against the Gypsies in recent times. In 1995, there was a case of bombing in Austria where four Gypsy men were killed when they were trying to take down a sign saying, ”Gypsies go back to India”. A bomb concealed behind the sign killed the men . The Gypsies were treated with contempt and hostility in Albania, Poland and Romania too. In Romania the Gypsies were enslaved for five to six centuries- they could be bought and sold like commodities, beaten, tortured, and even killed. The Gypsies or the Romas as they are now called, came to Europe originally from India centuries ago when 10,000 musicians were sent to the court of the King of Persia. Wandering, they ended up in Europe. As they followed different customs and had a different culture, they were the natural targets of mob violence. They were the perfect scapegoats! Fonseca cites an incident in Germany in 1783 where a group of Gypsies were tortured, hanged and quartered, and beheaded to make them confess to cannibalism .According to Freud, the aggressors direct their aggression towards scapegoats, so that civilization is coherent, but it does not have any effect. During all this hostility, the instinct for survival kept the Gypsies from extinction .Fonseca quotes the teacher of Romani, the language of the Gypsies. He said that they didn’t want to know. “What he was really talking about was survival” (15), says Fonseca. Aggression can be understood in the light of Sigmund Freud’s seminal work Civilization and its Discontents .Freud says that human behavior is controlled by the desire for happiness.. Civilization with its repressions prevents man from attaining happiness. He says that man is constantly balancing between his urge for freedom and civilization’s demand for conformity. Man is not a gentle animal, but has a strong inbuilt desire for aggression.. This aggressive tendency is weakened by a feeling of guilt, which is a consequence of civilization. This inbuilt cruelty is usually well hidden , but manifests itself at some provocation. The brutality of the American soldiers and the humiliation caused to the Iraqi prisoner in Love my rifle more than me illustrates the darker aspect of man’s nature which manifests itself when ordinary restrictions of civilization could easily be set aside. To quote Kayla Williams, “…we found ourselves in this situation where we had all this power over another person. And suddenly, we could do whatever the fuck we wanted to them.” According to Freud, the greatest hindrance to civilization is the natural human tendency for aggressiveness and self destruction. In the conflict between man’s death drive, Thanatos and Eros, some of the negative energy from the death drive is directed against others, so that the individual is not destroyed. This direction of Thanatos energy causes aggression against others. To quote Freud, “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another”.(Freud,Sigmund,) Thus we can have a glimmer of understanding of the cause of recurring violence whether it is in Romania ,Bosnia or Iraq, in the light of Sigmund Freud’s ideas. Works Cited Fonseca ,Isabel. Bury me Standing, New York: Random House1996 Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, Trans. Strachey, James .reissue ed. New York W. W. Norton &Company, 1989 Williams, Kayla, Staub, Michael.E, Love My Rifle More than You, W.W.Norton&Company Inc, 2005 Read More