Human Development, Language and the Future of Mankind

The Madness of Culture

L. Berger

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137415264
• eBook ISBN: 9781137415271
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psycolinguistics
• Index: Psychology

Drawing on and integrating unorthodox thought from a broad range of disciplines including clinical psychology, linguistics, philosophy, natural science and psychoanalysis, this book offers a provocative, original analysis of the global threats to our survival, and proposes a remedy.

1

Understanding Our Global Dangers

Questions that need to be asked

Nobody likes to think about it, but it is undeniable that humanity is facing grave threats. Especially dangerous are the ‘two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war, and environmental catastrophe’.¹ It is neither obvious nor certain that the human species can survive.²

Humankind has created these perils, and more – poverty, disease, famine, genocide, hatred and overpopulation. How could that have happened in the first place? How could we have allowed ourselves to drift into these awful conditions? How could we stand idly by and watch them arise, evolve and assume such enormous proportions? But perhaps even more to the point, now that we are facing these dangerous situations, how is it that although we did create them, we are unable to reverse them? It isn’t because we haven’t tried. Some perils, war for instance, have been with us for a very long time (although in much tamer forms until Hiroshima and Nagasaki), while others, such as the environmental crises, are comparatively recent, but there have been numerous and continual efforts, some longstanding, to head off these and others. Doesn’t the fact that while we are responsible for our dire circumstances we apparently cannot ameliorate them, call for an explanation? Why the continual failures? Why does it now even seem that these threats are alien, not of our own making, to be coming from some unknown, otherworldly external forces beyond our control? (For instance, we now have ‘the threat of nuclear war’, a depersonalized, looming ogre. Where are the war-makers? It is getting more and more difficult to remain aware that these dangers have human origins.) What are we missing, what accounts for humankind’s apparent inability to control its own destiny? What would it take to undo these dangers that we ourselves have created?

These, broadly, are the questions that this book raises and addresses. It joins countless past and present analyses and explanations of the world’s ills undertaken from a variety perspectives and disciplines. It is safe to say that not only have these analyses, explanations and suggestions failed to lead to any substantial improvement in our lot, but that in spite of them the world’s overall situation continues to deteriorate greatly.³ There is ample ground, then, for viewing yet another restorative attempt and proposal such as this one with skepticism and suspicion. Why should it fare any better than the multitude of its predecessors?

Certainly the odds against bringing about change are great, but I suggest that the enterprise isn’t entirely hopeless. There is room for cautious optimism because, as I see it, there are several important differences between this and the preceding efforts. For one thing, the goal of most extant works is to propose strategies for countering the threats. Here, the prime focus will be on understanding why standard kinds of strategy have invariably failed. But a more significant difference is in the underlying framework. Although they appear to come from a variety of positions and disciplines, actually the attempts share a certain tacit foundation – a master framework as it were. I believe that it is the undesirable features of that covert base that account for the failures of the varied remedial approaches.

The ground of the present work differs drastically from that common foundation. It is unorthodox, incorporating certain unconventional models of human development, ontogenetic as well as phylogenetic, that are ignored in other attempts, and I believe it is the inclusion of these developmental considerations that gives this effort a better chance of success. That is, by looking carefully at certain key developmental events, this effort is able to offer otherwise unavailable insights – more fundamental, penetrating and useful ways of understanding the nature of our global threats and of the reasons for past failures. Therefore, it may be able to lead to original, better approaches to our dilemmas, to envision remedial approaches that now are precluded by our flawed perspectives. That is the reason for my cautious optimism.

A history of failed remedial efforts

To start, let us take a look at some representative examples of the long parade of previous remedial efforts to improve the world’s lot. These have come from a range of disciplines, including biology, neuropsychobiology, engineering, physics, systems analysis, psychology, medicine, the mental health professions, sociology, law, economics, political science, history, anthropology, sociobiology, philosophy and religion. A range of analyses has resulted in a variety of proposals to explain the nature and origins of our difficulties and to recommend the remedies that follow. For example, one common position is that our problems stem from humankind’s innate destructiveness, an appealingly simple, reductionist explanation that supports fatalism and persists in the face of a considerable amount of contradictory scientific evidence.⁴ These days, perhaps the most common orientation of analyses and corrective recommendations is scientific and technological. It is almost de rigeur to presuppose that regardless of their origins, our difficulties can and must be dealt with by cutting-edge science and technology.⁵

Another common approach is illustrated in efforts to eliminate warfare. The exchanges that took place in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud may be dated but they still are prototypical and instructive. Einstein was not exactly a fan of psychology. In a diary entry about the important Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, he wrote:

I understand Jung’s vague, unprecise notions, but I consider them worthless: a lot of talk without any clear direction. If there has to be a psychiatrist, I should prefer Freud. I do not believe in him, but I love very much his concise style and his original, although rather extravagant, mind.⁶

Einstein’s objections to psychiatry and psychoanalysis were those that one might expect from a natural scientist, even from a creative one. He objected to logically weak, inadequately empirically supported theorizing, and so his disapproval of Freud’s work was based mostly on psychoanalysis’s failure to live up to science’s standards of rigor, internal consistency, empirical confirmation, quantification and the like. In general, his writings indicate that although in important ways he was a humanist, Einstein was not what clinicians call ‘psychologically minded’. His thought, even though revolutionary, was still formalistic, mathematical, abstract, lofty, objective and depersonalized. Freud sensed this. Although he had no doubts about the significance of Einstein’s work as a physicist, apparently he didn’t think much of the latter’s psychological understanding. In a letter to a friend, Freud wrote: ‘Several years ago I had a long talk with him [Einstein] during which I realized, to my amusement, that he knows no more about psychology than I do about mathematics.’⁷ Einstein later modified his criticism of Freud and even ‘approached Freud in his [Einstein’s] attempt to assemble a group of intellectual leaders and, subsequently, suggested that Freud engage him in a public discussion about how mankind could be delivered from the menace of war’.⁸

The discussions took place in 1939. Under the auspices of the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Einstein invited Freud to publicly exchange thoughts about the causes of and cure for wars. Einstein became convinced that recent efforts to prevent war had failed because ‘strong psychological factors are at work which paralyze these efforts’.⁹ In retrospect, what these exchanges illustrate is that, together, the best that even this pair of intellectual giants could come up with were mostly standard, familiar analyses and proposals, except for a few ideas and concepts that were imported by Freud from the then generally unfamiliar field of psychoanalysis. The two formulated the problematic issues and conceptualized remedial rationales and actions mostly in the usual social, political and military contexts. They saw the causes of war primarily in standard terms, such as the availability of weaponry and the refusal to disarm; conflicting political motives of nations; the craving for power of the governing class, which among other consequences stimulates collective psychosis; conflicts between individuals and small groups; malignant forms of government; the erotic and aggressive instincts shared by humans and other animals;¹⁰ and self-centered nationalism. Other than for some of the recommendations that reflected psychoanalytic thought,¹¹ the solutions that followed were also mostly the familiar traditional ones: to disarm; establish a world government and a world court with executive force; establish and consult with an international group of eminent intellectuals; elect better leaders; restructure the form of society (socialism is the system preferred by both); or to enlist the support of religious groups.

Neither Freud nor Einstein were naive about the chances of controlling aggression in individuals or in nations. Freud, especially, emphasized the recalcitrance, the obstinateness, of human aggressive destructiveness.¹² Their exchanges are marked by an undertone of bleak pessimism. It is especially worth noting that, in an aside, Freud made an unusual, almost radical observation that is very much in line with one of the key theses of this book. He noted that ‘cultural progress’ not only can improve civilization’s conditions but also ‘may well lead to the extinction of mankind’¹³ – as I see it, an insightful, perceptive, highly unconventional observation that still goes against consensual, uncritically accepted rosy views of ‘cultural progress’. His thought should to have been taken more seriously by his peers and contemporaries, and should be taken more seriously by us. A developmentally focused version of this position will be developed in the later chapters.

All this of course took place well before anyone could foresee the development of today’s weapons of mass destruction. More than a decade later, shortly after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein made the much-quoted statement that

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe . . . A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels . . . Today we must abandon competition and secure co-operation . . . Past thinking methods did not prevent world wars [but] future thinking must prevent wars . . . Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground.¹⁴

Some 50 years after, that the psychoanalyst Hanna Segal stated:

We have not come to realize that the advent of the atomic weapons made meaningless the idea of a just war, or the defense of civilized values, since the war would destroy all values . . . I am afraid that the atomic bomb may have changed our thinking for the worse.¹⁵

So much for the effectiveness of almost a century of analyses of our ills and the associated solutions, and for the impact of reality. (Reality is a notoriously difficult, slippery, controversial subject, and will be central to the argument that I will unfold. I postpone a more extended consideration until Chapter 6, because that calls for a good deal of preparatory work. Until then, I will often use the term casually, flexibly or intuitively.)

It is all too evident now that although there have apparently been notable advances in psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, political science, history, anthropology, the natural sciences and technology, which have supposedly advanced our understanding of war’s causes, still our conceptions of available remedies, of what we see as available options for countering the threats, haven’t changed fundamentally. Increasing our armaments, remaining competitive and superior, using threats and intimidation, attempting to negotiate, use bribery, form coalitions, hold peace conferences and the like remain our sole and standard means of trying to intervene. All of these are variants of an effort to change the adversary’s mind and practices – as we will see, not necessarily the only option. At any rate, the nefarious symptoms of seething conflict remain. We are still plagued by racism, extremes of poverty and wealth, fanatical and hostile nationalism, genocide, oppression of women, egocentric and exploitive acts that destroy the environment, lack of education, lack of communication, loss of spirituality, growing arsenals of unimaginably destructive weapons, gross economic inequality and religious hatred, and these conditions are still blamed for the threats’ persistence and the chronic violence. Worse, the world is almost never free of highly destructive warfare going on somewhere.

Current attempts are still drawing on the old familiar spectrum of remedial approaches, although perhaps implemented with some new technological wrinkles. Our situation has failed to improve since the era of the Einstein–Freud exchanges. Not only is it also painfully obvious that the have threats persisted but, because of our continuing scientific-technological ‘advances’, the nature and scope of these threats have become ever more destructive.

Let us ask what conceptual frameworks and what worldviews have grounded this large collection of investigations and remedial efforts? There is no obvious answer, and that in itself is telling. I haven’t seen this question even raised. Thus much if not all of the corpus of extant remedial approaches floats on air. Whatever their foundations may be, they remain unspecified and implicit. It seems that the experts just wade in, oblivious of and indifferent to their presuppositions, and start analyzing and making recommendations without examining their groundwork, the vast body of assumptions on which the arguments rest. The results are predictable. Unexamined conceptual foundations typically lead to unexamined, poorly grounded solutions. My constant refrain is going to be that the nature of the conceptual underpinnings of these remedial efforts does need our most careful attention. Unearthing that ground will reveal flaws that have played a key role in the failed attempts. Indeed, one of the basic premises of this work, one that will be restated in various aspects throughout this work, is that a radically new perspective or worldview (meaning the combined view of self, world and language) is needed if we want to become able to conceptualize effective solutions.

The shortcomings of symptom removal

I claimed that history tells us that none of the identified approaches has worked, but that is true only to a limited extent. There have been, and continue to be, pockets of progress – for example, our gains in civil rights. The trouble is that when one looks at these isolated gains carefully, it becomes evident that at least in most cases they have had relatively little staying power. Benign gains are temporary and are lost. The usual pattern is that regressive forces reassert themselves and regain lost ground. Why is that? A pattern that repeats in various guises is that first, after much struggle, reformers have managed to achieve their goals. The majority have imposed their benign, beneficial reform views ‘democratically’, typically through sanctioned political action. However, that amounts to socially approved coercion, and history tells us that in most cases the progress achieved by such well-intentioned, legally sanctioned, one-sided actions brings only temporary relief. Sooner or later (and usually sooner) the old noxious patterns and opponents reassert themselves with a vengeance. That is because the nefarious, regressive needs and wishes of the powerful minority forces have not been dealt with adequately, if at all. In essence, the ‘cure’ of the social ill had been cosmetic. It did not attend to the dynamics underlying the conflict between the opposing forces. The underlying ills had not been resolved but had only gone underground. Historically, self-centered groups have been more focused, single-minded and persistent than the reformers, and all too often more successful. The unrelenting, tenacious forces bide their time, and at an opportune moment they reassert themselves successfully, and the cycle starts all over again. Currently there is no shortage of examples illustrating just this phenomenon.

What happens in these cases is analogous to an all too familiar pattern in the therapy of individuals. It is what therapists call a cure through ‘symptom removal’. A superficial ‘therapy’ fails to attend properly to the underlying destructive dynamics, concentrating instead on the tangible phenomena that were only the symptoms – and poorly understood symptoms at that. The achieved results were unstable. In this model we can say that even when they have been successful to some degree, past efforts to resolve the world’s problems have failed to recognize, let alone take into consideration, the world’s underlying pathology, its madness. We need to make sure that any amelioration of the world threats that we achieve is not such a cosmetic solution. Such a symptom-removing cure may very well turn out to be worse than the disease. So, we need to make sure first that we understand what is wrong with the way we have been looking at our severe difficulties, that we understand our pathology – and that calls for an examination of the current framework and also for developing genuinely different one that will provide an adequate grasp for future use. It may not be readily apparent, but if we aren’t very careful, relying primarily on science and technology to solve our difficulties – say, global warming – may be such a questionable, potentially destructive cosmetic ‘cure’. The issue here is, are science and technology really neutral, equally capable of good as well as evil? This question of science’s neutrality will be considered in chapter 6. As E. F. Schumacher tells us,

[w]hen the level of the knower is not adequate to the level (or grade of significance) of the object of knowledge, the result is not factual error but something much more serious: an inadequate and impoverished view of reality.¹⁶

‘Selfish’ behaviors

Let...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Understanding Our Global Dangers
• 2. What Is Language and Why Does It Matter?
• 3. Infancy and First Language Acquisition
• 4. Literacy and Primary Orality
• 5. Ontogenesis and Pathology
• 6. Phylogenesis and Madness
• 7. Visions of Sanity
• 8. Toward Restorative Change
• Notes
• References
• Index