Reply #109: we are in the grip of Thanatos on a social psychological level...

[nashville_brook]

it's so pervasive we don't even notice it anymore. for example, nearly all pop culture narratives (movies, tv, novels) involve a crisis or tension that is told thru the lens of murder. you can't have a work of fiction without conflict, and murder the easiest, most available means to tell this story.

in this way, a novel that is really talking about growing up, or rites of passage, uses murder as metaphor for transformation (the child murders the parents literally and figuratively).

politically, we can't imagine any sort of social program that isn't some sort of "war." the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror.

Thanatos is reigning unchallenged. "abstinence education" is a war on teenage pregnancy. see, we can't even invoke Eros in her own territory. remember this?




to me, this is the image to remember when wondering how to overthrow Thanatos. it's just an index -- not prescriptive -- but it illustrates the basic idea. we've been here before.

in this vein, Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism can be useful -- also speaking to mind/body dualism.