Aucbvax.1817
fa.arms-d
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!CSVAX.upstill@Berkeley
Thu Jun 18 15:49:12 1981
Konrad Lorenz on militarism
From Konrad Lorenz, "On Aggression":
"Every man of normally strong emotions knows, from his
own experience, the subjective phenomena that go hand in
hand with the response of militant enthusiasm. A shiver runs
down the back and, as more exact observation shows, along
the outside of both arms. One soars elated, above all the
ties of every day life, one is ready to abandon all for the
call of what, in the moment of this specific emotion, seems
to be a sacred duty. All obstacles in its path become unim-
portant; the instinctive inhibitions against hurting or kil-
ling one's fellows lose, unfortunately, much of their power.
Rational considerations, criticisms, and all reasonable
arguments against the behavior dictated by militant
enthusiasm are silenced by an amazing reversal of all
values, making them appear not only untenable but base and
dishonorable. Men may enjoy the feeling of absolute righte-
ousness even while they commit atrocities. As a Ukrainian
proverb says: "When the banner is unfurled, all reason is in
the trumpet."
The subjective experiences just described are corre-
lated with the following, objectively demonstrable
phenomena. The tone of the entire striated musculature is
raised, the carriage is stiffened, the arms are raised from
the sides and slightly rotated inward so that the elbows
point outward. The head is proudly raised, the chin stuck
out, and the facial muscles mime the "hero face," familiar
from the films. On the back and along the outer surface of
the arms the hair stands on end. This is the objectively
observed aspect of the shiver!
Anybody who has ever seen the corresponding behavior of
the male chimpanzee defending his band or family with self-
sacrificing courage will doubt the purely spiritual charac-
ter of human enthusiasm. The chimp, too, sticks out his
chin, stiffens his body, and raises his elbows; His hair
stands on end, producing a terrifying magnification of his
body contours as seen from the front. The inward rotation
of his arms obviously has the purpose of turning the
longest-haired side outward to enhance the effect.
"...to the humble seeker of biological truth there can-
not be the slightest doubt that human militant enthusiasm
evolved out of a communal defense response of our prehuman
ancestors. The unthinking single-mindedness of the response
must have been of high survival value even in a tribe of
fully evolved human beings.
"...The object which militant enthusiasm tends to
defend has changed with cultural development. Originally it
was certainly the community of concrete, individually known
members of a group, held together by the bond of personal
love and friendship. With the growth of the social unit,
June 16, 1981
- 2 -
the social norms and rites held in common by all its members
became the main factor holding it together as an entity, and
therewith they bacame automatically the symbol of the unit.
By a process of true Pavlovian conditioning plus a certain
amount of irreversible imprinting these rather abstract
values have in every human culture been substituted for the
primal, concrete object of the communal defense reaction.
"...On the one hand, the abstract nature of its object
can give it a definitely inhuman aspect and make it posi-
tively dangerous...; on the other hand it makes it possible
to recruit militant enthusiasm in the service of really eth-
ical values...There is reasonable hope that our moral
responsibility may gain control over the primeval drive, but
our only hope of its ever doing so rests on the humble
recognition of the fact that militant enthusiasm is an
instinctive response with a phylogenetically determined
releasing mechanism and that the only point at which intel-
ligent and responsible supervision can get control is in the
conditioning of the respnse to an object which proves to be
a genuine value under the scrutiny of the categorical ques-
tion.
"...The strength of its seductive lure explains why
intelligent men may behave as irrationally and immorally in
their political as in their sexual lives...
"...The first prerequisite for rational control of an
instinctiv behavior pattern is the knowledge of the stimulus
situation which releases it. Militant enthusiasm can be
elicited with the predictablility of a reflex when the fol-
lowing environmental situations arise. First of all, a
social unit whith which the subject identifies himself must
appear to be threatened by some danger from outside.
"...A second key stimulus which contributes enourmously
to the releasing of intense militant enthusialm is the pres-
ence of a hated enemy from whom the threat to the above
"values" emanates.
"...A third factor contributing to the environmental
situation eliciting the response is an inspiring leader fig-
ure.
"...A fourth, and perhaps the most inportant, prere-
quisite for the full eliciting of militant enthusiasm is the
presence of many other individuals, all agitated by the same
emotion. Their absolute number has a certain influence on
the quality of the response. Smaller numbers at issue with
a large majority tend to obstinate defense with the emo-
tional value of "making a last stand," while very large
numbers inspired by the same enthusiasm feel the urge to
conquer the whole world in the name of their sacred cause.
Here the laws of mass enthusiasm are strictly analogous to
June 16, 1981
- 3 -
those of flock formation..."
June 16, 1981
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