The threat of nuclear destruction seems to have stimulated the human mind’s dualistic tendencies, the inclination to divide its universe into conflicting or contrasting pairs. This dichotomizing quality can be useful if it helps us to structure our perception of reality and to see the world more sharply. It can also be employed to straitjacket or distort reality and to deepen conflicts between human groups with differing views or interests.
I wish to discuss another kind of human dichotomy, more fundamental perhaps, with which, I believe, we will have to come to terms if planetary survival is to be possible. It is a division in our natures that needs to become an acknowledged ground of discourse for us all. I refer to the division between what might be characterized as the dark side of our being — the hate filled, destructive element that dominates so much of our individual and group life — and the more loving, nobler side of ourselves. Notwithstanding the fact that man is capable of much goodness, we are, in the depths of our natures, also primitive beasts, inclined, at times with little provocation, to indulge in savagery, brutality, war, and vengeance or to comply willingly with those who provide examples of such behavior.
William Broyles describes the deep and intense pleasure that he and other soldiers in Vietnam derived from killing and destroying. The political cause and hatred of the enemy do not seem to have been important for Broyles’ soldiers. Broyles enumerates the many elements which contribute to how it can be that thoughtful men may love war while hating it at the same time. He includes comradeship, the freedom and escape from everyday bonds, the chance to test one’s physical and emotional limits, the seeming power over life and death. But most importantly, Broyles says, “The love of war stems from the union, deep in the core of our being, between sex and destruction, beauty and horror, love and death.”
Psychoanalysts and others have documented the strong association between love of violence, or murderous hatred in adult life, and childhood or adolescent hurt, shame, and humiliation. Salman Rushdie, in his political novel Shame, dramatizes the connection in both individual and collective life between wounded pride and violence. “Humiliate people for long enough and a wildness bursts out of them,” Rushdie writes. “The power of the Beast of Shame cannot be held for long within any one frame of flesh and blood, because it grows, it feeds and swells, until the vessel bursts.”
Yet when it comes to war-making there seems to be something more general, more universal, operating. Rosemary Daniell, in a recent article, tells about a lover of hers, an army sergeant she calls “Zane”. Zane, like Broyles’ Vietnam soldiers, likes to kill. But now it is 1982 and Zane, a skydiver and paratrooper, is training “young maggots how to kill”. Zane drills boys who are forced to yell “kill” with every step. One of his T-shirts bears the Green Beret motto, “Live by Chance, Love by Choice, Kill by Preference”. But it is not Zane’s brutality, or the eroticism connected with it for both of them, which, for Daniell, as for Broyles, is most important. Rather, it is her own capacity for destruction, or for attaching herself to someone else’s evil.
The central idea here is that none of this is unusual. Not far below the surface in each of us are impulses of hatred and violence which can be aroused with a minimum of provocation. We may need only an opportunity to avenge some real or imagined hurt, the right political or military conditions and supporting ideology, and a properly designated enemy, so that we may participate, actively or passively, in killing without responsibility or guilt. I have stressed this dark, violent side of our natures because I believe more effort to understand its role in political life, especially in the conduct of international relations, needs to be undertaken if we are to order more effectively our collective life.
1.According to the author, what psychological effect does “the threat of nuclear destruction” have?
2.What does the author mean when he refers to the “dark side” of human nature?
3.The author uses Broyles and his troops as an example to show （ ）.
4.According to the author, what is the relationship between a debased individual and that individual’s predisposition for violence?
5.According to the author, what is the relationship between Rosemary and Zane?
