Thanatos Rising

In the 1980s, my college rock band closed each show with a furious rendition of “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” Written in 1974 by Nick Lowe and performed by the jangly British country-rockers Brinsley Schwarz, the song originally included a bridge in which the vocalist pleaded: “We must have peace, more peace and love, if just for the children of the new generation.” Unfortunately, by the mid-’70s, the season of flower power had passed. The song bombed. Then, around four years later, another rocker heard the song and thought: Peace? Love? Was this for real or a put-on? In 1978, he recorded a cover that cut the bridge and otherwise left little room for doubt about how he felt. Produced by Lowe himself and released on the Armed Forces album, Elvis Costello’s snarling tale of disillusionment became a New Wave anthem. Lately, I’ve been playing those two versions of the song in my head, wondering how, during a period of only a few years, a sincere call for peace became ripe for rage and sarcasm. With jingoism and belligerence all around us today, Brinsley Schwarz’s entreaty seems even quainter. But why? What is so funny about peace? In 1931, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, a branch of the League of Nations, solicited exchanges on the world’s pressing problems from a variety of thinkers. Albert Einstein was enlisted, and in July 1932, he contacted Sigmund Freud and proposed that the two tackle the question, “Why War?” The two men had met once before. During the winter of 1926, the Viennese psychoanalyst traveled to Berlin to visit his son, Ernst. Einstein and his wife, Elsa Löwenthal, paid them a visit. Freud later quipped that their two-hour discussion was excellent, since he knew no physics and Einstein knew no psychology. Six years later, both faced a darkening horizon. As they contemplated the causes of war, they had to wonder whether they would become its prey. Despite his Swiss citizenship, Einstein possessed no illusions. With the Nazi takeover of Germany a year later, he sailed across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, an ill, 76-year-old Freud clung to what he admitted might be “rationalizations.” He assured one ally that despite the rise of Hitler, Vienna’s Jews were safe, thanks to a negotiated treaty on minority rights that, if breached, required the League of Nations to intervene. As for Austria’s being swallowed whole by the Nazis, the French would “never allow” it. Such were the illusions that sustained the psychoanalyst when he received Einstein’s request to take up the riddle, “Why War?” Einstein’s question was a bit ridiculous. Explain “war” in a short letter? Did the physicist expect the psychoanalyst to have a rule, an equation, some one-stop answer on the subject? Freud was not thrilled by the request. The often-marginalized founder of psychoanalysis enjoyed his association with the wild-haired theorizer of special and general relativity, but the vastness of the question and the epistolary format seemed like a recipe for disaster. Still, he didn’t want to turn Einstein down. A year later, their letters appeared in German, French, and English (translated by Stuart Gilbert), though tellingly, the pamphlet was barred from distribution in Germany. In many ways, the dialogue between the two men highlighted their differences. Not particularly interested in depth psychology, Einstein was a moralist, a democratic socialist, and a dedicated pacifist. He had come to this last position after being disgusted by the whipped-up martial fervor in Germany prior to World War I. At that time, the 35-year-old physicist tried to rally opposition to the Kriegmenschen, who confidently touted the use of brute power as necessary and virtuous. In the 1930s, as the trumpets of war blared again, Einstein took up his pen for the cause of disarmament and building an antiwar coalition. In his letter to Freud, Einstein focused on the troubles of nationalism. During the 19th century, modern, secular European states—shorn of the bonds once solidified by Crown or Church—struggled to maintain social cohesion. Universal ethical principles did not help to create national bonds. Instead, nations were inclined to define themselves by the shared heritage of their residents and the historical grievances they held toward their neighbors. Highlighting the irrationality of this attitude, the 19th-century press dubbed such bigotry Anglophobia, Francophobia, Germanophobia, or worst of all, xenophobia. The problem got bad enough for fin-de-siècle thinkers such as the Nobel Peace Prize winner Bertha von Suttner, Bertrand Russell, and H. G. Wells to suggest that the sole remedy was some form of supranational governance. Einstein followed in that tradition. In his letter to Freud, he proposed that each country relinquish some autonomy to a neutral international body that would ensure law-based, collective justice and offer nonviolent conflict resolution. The toothless League of Nations could not yet provide this service, but it was a start. As for the enigma of why humans became possessed by a “wild enthusiasm” to kill and die for la patria, Einstein threw up his hands. Recently, he had penned a preface for a German pediatrician’s book called War as Illness. Was war, he asked, a “collective psychosis”? With that, he passed the baton to Freud. Einstein believed that humans were naturally cooperative, and that organized violence was our greatest aberration. As such, he wondered if it might be driven by madness. As Freud put pen to paper, he relied on a range of Socratic skills honed over three decades. During those years, he was in near-constant dispute with an array of adversaries. He loved debate and admitted that he was most creative when thinking against others. These intellectual battles drew out his razor-sharp powers of analysis. Insoluble questions and imprecise terms would be dug up, then transplanted to more hospitable terrain. In addition, since shifting his studies from microscopy to the inner life, Freud had pioneered methods that allowed him to feel his way forward in darkness. Failures and impasses resulted in what would prove to be Freud’s most lasting achievement: a powerful, if easily misused, form of inquiry, with novel kinds of indirect evidence, and a specialized logic regarding deeper motivations that were not already known to the thinker. Still, what an oddly phrased question. “Why War?” suggested that for his interlocuter, intergroup violence was an anomaly. Einstein believed that humans, as social animals, were naturally cooperative, and that organized violence was our greatest aberration. As such, he wondered if it might be driven by madness. Were there epidemics of insanity that explained everything from the battles of antiquity to the revolutions in France, Haiti, and Russia? As a proposition for historians, political thinkers, or military strategists, the notion was absurd. If war was an illness, they might have retorted, the cause was being human. Freud’s early views on aggression and war had encountered much disbelief. By 1905, he had concluded that behavior was solely driven by the search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. A modern Epicurean, he synthesized his theoretical excursions and clinical findings into an overarching concept: “psychosexuality,” which linked mind with body, reason with passion, and humans with their animal ancestors. Psychosexuality also made aggression neither intrinsic nor inevitable. Lift the repressive barriers imposed by family, church, and state, early Freudians contended, and civilized men and women would dispense with their frustrated fury. Otherwise, half-alive, pent-up beings would seek out violent, cathartic release. This Rousseauian critique won adherents in urbane café culture and radical political circles, but it was opposed by a more prevalent view. During the decades that followed the Napoleonic Wars, Europeans conceived of themselves as custodians of the world’s most peaceful civilization. Technologically and scientifically, the continent had leapt ahead of the rest of the planet. Innovations in medicine, manufacturing, mechanized transport, electrical power, long-distance communication, basic science, trade, and military weaponry led to health, wealth, and power. Enhancing these advancements was the fact that after 1814, this once conflict-ridden region enjoyed relatively long periods of tranquility, attributed in part to advances like the Concert of Europe. After the Congress of Vienna ended in 1815, diplomats periodically congregated at this forum to calmly work out their differences. What better sign of a peace-loving culture? In line with this self-perception, military theorists believed that in Europe, only “rational” wars would be fought. After the death of the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz in 1831, his writings were widely admired. He had presented war as a logical instrument of national policy. Although conflicts took place in an emotional maelstrom—the “fog of war”—they were governed by cold reason; war was politics by other means. Some went further and declared that war in Europe was on its way out. A Russo-Polish banker and financier, Ivan Bloch, published a six-volume study in 1899 called The Future of War. Bloch concluded that as an act of rational, Clausewitzian politics, war on the continent had become pointless. Fifteen years before World War I, Bloch predicted that future large-scale conflicts would be based on trench warfare, in which both sides took great losses and achieved little. War between nations had become “impracticable” and “impossible.” While busy wiping out the other side, one could easily be wiped out oneself. There was, however, one sizable caveat: The great European powers may have considered themselves to be peaceful by nature, but the feeling did not apply to much of Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas—parts of the world they had colonized through violent means in the 19th