Page 26 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

CULTURE OF THE MIND

The folk mind imagines that the animal is sleeping and is dangerous to awaken
(‘He has a monstrous temper’). The dangerous animal’s aggressiveness is angry
behavior (‘He unleashed his anger’ or ‘His anger is insatiable’) (Lakoff 1987:
392–4).
The fearful person may become panic-struck in an open space, or pressed
completely out of reason if surrounded by a thicket of things, events, or people.
Fear drives the individual into his or her own solitude, close to the province of
pain. The only routes of escape other than pain are paths that cross the frontier
into anger or flight into the refuge of reason mediated by language.

The demon of war
Throughout the ages men and women have debated the causes of war. An early
explanation was given by Thucydides, who believed that people go to war out
of fear, interest, and honor (Kagan 1995: 8). War attained a privileged position
in human affairs by developing a means for resolving differences between
human groups. War has roots in cultural elements that are much more
fundamental than the derivative political aspects (Keegan 1993: 12–24). In her
analysis of war, for instance, Ehrenreich asserts that the causes of war are not
necessarily the same as its origins. She advances the disturbing idea that a chief
cause of war is an earlier war. Warfare demonstrates functional autonomy, with
one war leading naturally to the next war. The autonomy of war thus looms as
an important issue that needs to be confronted. The nature of war rules out any
single issue that can serve as an explanation, however, because war depends on a
broad and complex ecology: political leadership, the economy, the social order,
patterns of interpersonal behavior, and so on. Still, the best model for under-
standing war is to treat it as a self-reproducing cultural entity comparable to a
living organism, and like a contagious disease that spreads. War fever reached
epidemic proportions in the last century and, up to now at least, no vaccine or
effective treatment has been found.
The demon of war is encountered in the predation paradigm which human
beings have inherited from their ancestors. The human dynamic of pain-fear-
anger installs the charge. Its potential power exceeds the integrity of the body
and mind of the individual, and the cohesion of the social community. War
destroys personal and social ethics, replacing them with the ethic of heroic
sacrifice. But war also offers the pleasure and excitement of a predator at work
– hence, the appeal of violent action and the ‘romance’ of battle. The dynamic
is based on biology; it is hereditary and imperious. The drive of predation
constitutes the state of nature in human beings.
Pain and fear are major sources of sociocultural control, but if reason is
cunning, then the demon is insurgent. Cultural control refers to the develop-
ment of discipline and moral behavior according to societal norms, and allows
organized violence only under the authority and control of the society itself.
Control mechanisms in societies thus blend with designs for daily life. Cultural

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