Sombras
La sombra del aloe vera
extiende largos dedos
por el piso de mármol,
son nubes de enredos
de largas líneas rectas.
Shadows
The shadows of aloe vera
extend
long fingers
across the
marble floor.
They are slow
entanglements
of long, straight lines.
K. Cronick
Monsters
are supposed to scare us. But in two different stories, one written by Mary Shelley
and the other by Oscar Wilde, the authors created outwardly terrifying creatures that, in
the end, make us sorry for them. In her novel Shelley described how her main character,
Dr. Victor Frankenstein, constructed his unnamed Monster[1],
and how “it” dies alone and rejected. But Oscar Wilde’s evil phantom, Sir Simon,
finally finds peace after centuries of terrorizing his victims.
They are
both XIX century creations[2],
interestingly imagined in an age when scientific doubt was finally energized by
new technologies. Shelley and Wilde use their creatures to focus this doubt on
two age-old problems: what is life? and, what is evil? In Shelley’s
imagination, life is generated by a simple bolt of electricity in the hands of
a forensic scientist. Wilde, on the other hand, examines the ancient question of
eternal, evil spirits who are denied the luxury of dying as a punishment for
their foul deeds. But, Wilde, instead of beheading his monster, Sir Simon (as St.
George or St. Margaret of Antioch would have done[3]), saves him from his dark destiny.
Frankenstein’s
creature is, indeed, created by scientific technology, and while Wilde’s Sir
Simon is a traditional chateau spook, the attitude of those he tries to haunt is
humorously enlightened by technological skepticism.
Indeed,
scientific awareness and technological savvy play roles in both stories. In
Shelley’s novel Dr. Frankenstein is able to create a living “human” being in
his laboratory out of biological discards. He gets a face from here, hands from
somewhere else, all scavenged from dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses. Once
put together, he brings his creation to life with some sort electrical shock. The
final living-being looks stitched together, ugly, and much too big at eight
feet in height. He terrifies people, including Dr. Frankenstein himself. It is
a tragic story of scientific excess and dubious experimental ethics. He abandons
his creation in horror. But the “monster” has feelings. He feels rejected and
vengeful, and kills several people who were close to his originator. Frankenstein
ends up chasing his monster into the Arctic where they both die.
In an
entirely different approach Oscar Wilde imagines a minister, Hiram B. Otis from
the United States, who buys an old mansion in Canterville in England. The mansion
includes a malevolent ghost that has haunted it for 300 years. Lord
Canterville, the aristocrat who sells him the property warns him of all the
horrific crimes the ghost has committed. But Hiram Otis and his family have
come from a materialistic country where everything can be solved by over-the-counter
domestic cleaning products[4]
and pluck. It is a hilarious satire, but in the end, it is compassion that solves
everything. Otis’ fifteen-year-old daughter Virginia approaches Sir Simon and
offers him companionship in his efforts to be forgiven for his crimes, and then
accompanies him in his quest for a final, serene death.
The XIX
century marked a surge in technologically possible science, but much of the
culture of the time was frequented by mythical creatures and legends that many
people still believed in. Some were benevolent, even sweet little beings like
the brownies, elves, dwarves, and hobgoblins. The Loche Ness Monster still
attracted attention, but not dread. Some spirits were more fearsome, and took
the form of big, aggressive dogs on the highways. Castles -even Edinburgh- were
full of them.
But what
interests us here is the monster seen as a victim. In both Shelley’s novel and
Wilde’s short story, they are seen as beings needing empathy. These authors
understand that the monsters can be the result of cultural cruelty and personal
rejection. The idea of an inherent evil that must be combated comes to us from
very ancient times. The Christian and Hebrew Bibles are very graphic in this
respect (Schwartz, 2024). In the stories
we have reviewed here, Frankenstein’s monster is driven to evil only after
being shunned and abandoned. And Wilde’s monster was, in fact, a criminal when
he lived 300 years ago, but at the time of the story, he desired reconciliation
and peace.
[1] Dr. Frankenstein’s monster has no real name, but he referred to himself as Adam.
[2] There were, of course other XIX c. literary monsters born of the new technology available at the time. Robert Luis Stevenson created a story about doctor Henry Jekyll, who wanted to separate the duality of good and evil. He created and consumed a potion that separated his personality into its good and evil components, and in this way the virtuous Dr. Jekyll created the evil Edward Hyde. Mr. Hyde commits horrible crimes. This story is almost pre-psychoanalytic.
[3] In the center of the city of Quito in Ecuador, there is a statue of the Virgin that dominates demons by dancing on them.
References
Ethan Schwartz (2024, December 4). God’s Monsters: Vengeful
Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible.
ANCIENT JEW REVIEW https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/godsmonsters
Mary
Shelley (1818/19982003). Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo. Oxford.
Robert Luia Stevenson (1886/n.d.). El extraño caso del Dr.
Jekyll y Mr. Hyde. Feedbooks. https://www.secst.cl/upfiles/documentos/07042016_1116am_570695e0a7eec.pdf
Oscar Wilde
(1887/2007). El fantasma de Canterville y otros cuentos. Buenos Aires:
Alfagura
K. Cronick
*This poem has been translated below to Spanish
*Este poema ha sido traducido abajo a español.
The passing clouds fly by
this bright and brilliant day,
over high and lowlands,
above the bands of birds
so light, so far away.
I watch one twist
and change its shape
rework itself,
all on its own,
existentially.
The self I see
from this kitchen chair
changes shape and takes
me off -elsewhere.
What does it weigh?
I asked Google
and this they say:
“five hundred thousand
kilograms of puff,
of watery air,
flying soul-stuff,
an airy anagram
and a daisy snare”.
From this window
I watch, I follow
flowing fantasy.
Este día brillante y resplandeciente
Las nubes que pasan volando
Este día brillante y resplandeciente,
sobre las altas y bajas tierras,
Tan ligeros, tan lejos.
Veo a una girar
y cambiar su forma.
Se rehace a sí mismo,
convirtiéndose en sí mismo,
existencialmente.
El yo que veo
desde esta silla de cocina
me lleva a otro lugar.
¿Cuánto pesaría?
Le pregunté a Google
Y esto dice:
"quinientos mil kilogramos
de bocanada,
de aire acuoso,
materia de alma voladora,
y anagramas etéreos".
Desde esta ventana
Observo, sigo
esta fantasía fluida.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
(William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV Scene iii)
A BAND OF BROTHERS (THE MILITARY MIND)
Karen Cronick
In
Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, he depicts an English military incursion into
France in which the invaders are outnumbered and poorly equipped. The king
exhorts his army not to flee, but to stay and fight, for glory, and for a basic
feeling of loyalty among the soldiers who, he says, share a common mission.
They are like brothers. In this play they do stay and fight, and they win the
battle for their king. We can ask: why do soldiers stay and fight? How do they
perceive their culture’s power structures? What´s in it for them?
In this
essay we will review different aspects of the collective awareness of power,
from the relatively inoffensive ideas in Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Carl
Gustav Jung, to more darkly elaborated views of dominance, expressed, for
example, in Adolf Hitler´s Mein Kamph. We will not be referring to Thomas Hobbes’s
idea of voluntary submission in order to avoid interpersonal violence (Hobbes,
n.d.) because the kind of surrender we examine here involves cultural
permission for cruelty and killing. Hobbes does refer to a “shadow kingdom”[1],
but he also describes human nature as basically kind.[2] Nor will we refer to the Marxist idea of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, because his original conception of the idea
can be interpreted as a harmonious agreement among the previously downtrodden
to create a social system in which economic justice would replace exploitation.[3]
We will
examine the motives of soldiers and activists, who often give their lives for
causes for which they, personally, will perceive no benefits. We will look at
what happens to those who must face danger and kill others for these causes.
Our basic
questions are, how is dominance created and why is it often successful? And
what motivates the extreme obedience of the soldier and the more violent
political activists? We will see power depicted as a cultural inheritance, a
psychological drive, and a as the result of indoctrination.
Hitler
We will
begin, very briefly, with Adolf Hitler. He expressed his views in several
writings, above all in Mein Kamph (My struggle), a sort of autobiography of his
radicalization, first in his native Austria and later in Germany.
Like many
people who see the use of unmitigated power as a solution to their own, and
their country’s problems, he claimed to have a difficult childhood.[4]
He lost his parents early, and complained of economic difficulties. He was
active from a young age in nationalistic politics, and talked of participating
in street demonstrations in which:
“[…] we
saluted with a ‘Heill’ and sang the Deutschland úber alles, instead of the
imperial [Austrian Empire’s] anthem, despite the admonitions and punishments. […]
It is understandable, then, that at that time I was not among those who felt
indifferent” (Hitler, 212., p. 15).
In his rise
to power, he observed that:
"The crowd bows more easily to the one who
dominates than to the one who implores, feeling inwardly more satisfied with an
intransigent doctrine that admits of no doubt, […] The masses do not know what
to do with freedom, feeling even slightly abandoned. […] I also came to
understand the importance of physical terror both in the individual and in the
masses (p. 34).
He also
stated that:
The State does not consist of a meeting of
economic managers carrying out an activity within a specific living space, but
is the organization of a community of morally and physically homogeneous
beings, with the aim of improving the conditions of conservation of their race
and thus fulfilling the mission that Providence has assigned to it. This and no
other is the purpose and raison d'être of a State (p. 97).
With this brief
review of some of his thoughts, we can appreciate both Hitler’s goals and the
means he used to achieve them. He was an extreme exponent of the idea of
unilateral power that is maintained for the sole purpose of control in and for
itself. Even his goal of racial dominance supposes that among his followers
there will be constant reenactments of abusive dominance.
Many
questions can also be posed about Hitler’s followers. Klímova (2015) asks about
the role of the social unconscious, psychological regression, nonverbal
communication, community rituals, and the existence of true or false collective
selves. She suggests that there is a:
[…] false collective self, similar to the false
self in an individual, [that] is born and grows as an outcome of the identification
with aggressor. Especially the traumatized groups are prone to succumb to
aggressor –in the search for a mighty protective authority. Masses of previously traumatized people are
trying to find rescue in the identification with a Big We (Big Us?).
We have
begun with this figure because of his extreme position, which he explained in
detail in Mein Kamph. This position allows us to create contrasts with other
personages who have thought about power seen as dominance. We will examine the
idea of collective identity in the following pages.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche
has been accused of forming a philosophical current that justified fascism even
though he strongly disliked nationalism. The fascists used his ideas (like the Übermensch[5]
and Will to Power) for their own ends. Fascism interpreted these concepts as
state worship and Arian racial superiority, which is a perversion of his
critique of herd mentality. Nevertheless, his ideas about obedience and the
natural superiority of the leader can easily be understood in these terms. In
the following paragraphs we will review some of his writings.
Nietzsche
decried what he perceived as a growing European nihilism which he described in
the Will to Power (1968) as:
a psychological state, [… that happens] when we
have sought a “meaning” in all events that is not there [….], a totality, a systematization, indeed any
organization in all events, and underneath all events, and a soul that longs to
admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination
and administration […. or] a disbelief in any metaphysical world [… or] any
belief in a true world. (p. 12-13).
These are
three states. He likened the lack of meaning as the loss of Christian values in
Europe. The second state, systematic conceptual “organization” of reality may
refer to Hegel’s and Marx’s growing influence, and the third one may refer to a
scientific conception of the world. In any case, Nietzsche (p. 16) points out
how people -and society-, having lost their old authority, “seek another
authority that can speak unconditionally and command goals and tasks.” This new
influence may be a personal voice, abstract reason, or social instinct in the
sense of the herd. With obvious reference to Hegel, he also mentions “history”
that possesses an immanent spirit and a goal within itself. Nihilism “reaches
its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction—as active
nihilism” (p. 18).
He never
really defines the “will to power”. Beery (2020, p. 4-5)
offers a summarized definition from Martin Heidegger (1991), and John
Richardson (2002) as:
“an
absolute objective certainty which makes up the main driving force behind all
nature and reality. Under this interpretation the universe and all that
inhabits it does not merely express a Will to Power, but rather is a Will to
Power. [….] That is, all reality/all living things are in a constant power
struggle amongst each other, in order to spread out and strengthen their power.”
This
concept of power is similar to Darwin’s idea of the biological competition that
leads to species’ survival and mutation.
Nietzsche
proposed “Active nihilism” in The Will to Power, as a rejection of “the horror
of existence”, and as a means for creating meaning, and value. Beery (2020, p.
24) cites Heidegger (1991). who said: “[t]he expression ‘will to power’
designates the basic character of beings; any being which is, insofar as it is,
is will to power”. And Beery (p. 25) goes on to say that in Nietzsche “[…] all aim-driven behaviors, whether conscious
or unconscious, are reducible to an expression or manifestation of will to
power. Here, will to power serves as a unifying principle behind all organic
and inorganic beings and their functions.”
Power is
not just a form of self-realization for Nietzsche. Beery (p. 40) quotes from The
Gay Science in which Nietzsche argues that:
Benefitting and hurting others are ways of
exercising one’s power upon others… One hurts those whom one wants to feel one’s
power…we benefit and show benevolence to those who are already dependent on us
in some way; we want to increase their power because in that way we increase
ours.
Likewise,
our use of our power can benefit us even when we help others because we thusly
make them dependent, which heightens our own power. In the same way, when we
hurt others, we increase our own feeling of power over them. Beery (p. 42)
cites Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
But wherever I found the living, there I heard
the speech on obedience: Whatever lives, obeys. And this is the second point:
he who cannot obey himself is commanded. That is the nature of the living. […]commanding
is harder than obeying …. Where I found the living, there I found the will to
power; and even in the will of those who serve I found the will to be master. (Nietzsche,
1987, p. 12)
Just as
people have the will to command, they also obey, either their own dictates or
those of others. A person who obeys another accepts his masters’ goals as
superior to his or her own. Those who cannot command themselves are commanded
by others. However, it must be observed that Nietzsche also said that intentionally
hurting other people is a sign of weakness.
He has
traced a very fine line in which he recognizes domination as a legitimate
social force, but he rejects cruelty. This rejection would be a moral decision,
but he does not clarify where this limitation would come from. If there is no
overriding ethical structure, the reasons for rejecting viciousness are not
clear.
Will to power in Jung
Jung
modified Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power. Instead of “domination” he
turned it into a psychological drive for agency. It became willpower (or ego
energy) in his writing, an energy that exists uneasily alongside Eros. It is,
in his concept, a force of the libido that can either act as healthy assertion
or as a destructive tendency.
Jung (1970,
p. 9) reminds us that the idea of an "unconscious" has its roots in
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and that he referred to the individual
psyche in this way:
In the
first place it was a designation for the state of forgotten or repressed mental
contents. In Freud, the unconscious, although it already appears—at least
metaphorically—as an acting subject, is only the meeting place of these
forgotten and repressed contents, and only because of these it has a practical
significance.
Jung refers
to an active and necessary unconscious that gives basic meaning to existence
through symbols, archetypes and animi which are culturally shared. He speaks of
a collective unconscious. Cultures take care of their archetypes and legends,
because they arise from this collective and mythical knowledge, which is a kind
of underground and ancestral water of knowledge. Once they are lost, as when in
Europe the Catholic religion ceased to be universal, anxieties and social
crises are evoked. Jung says that when the primitive passions are uncontained,
the conscience is easily weakened "and possession can take place. Hence,
the efforts of humanity are always directed to the strengthening of
consciousness" (p. 27). Cultural walls must be built.
[…]
These walls, erected from primitive times, later served as the foundations of
the Church. And when symbols age and weaken, it is also these walls that
crumble. Then the waters rise and limitless catastrophes befall humanity.
(1970, p. 27).
The idea of
"possession" has several interpretations that Jung does not
elaborate. The most obvious is individual neurosis. But since the unconscious is culturally
shared, there can be collective repercussions to cultural losses. We might
posit the development of a general need to create religious, ideological or sociopolitical
belief systems in which people can hide. Submission stems from the loss of old
beliefs.[6]
In Jung,
however the will to power is largely benevolent. This willpower must first be
exercised on an individual level, when the “inner parent” nurtures one’s
capacity to achieve long-term fulfillment.
However much the ego can be proved to be
dependent and preconditioned, it cannot be convinced that it has no freedom…. The
existence of ego consciousness has meaning only if it is free and autonomous….
There are temporal, local, and individual differences in the degree of
dependence and freedom. In reality both are always present: the supremacy of
the self and the hubris of consciousness (Jung, 1954, p 28)
Psychologically,
the will to power is the opposite of love or Eros. Where love is predominant,
there is little will to power; and where the will to power is dominant, love is
lacking.
The
medieval state and religious explanations of power structures
The three
men we have cited so far in this essay complain of the loss of cultural belief
structures, specifically structures that justified and explained power
relationships. To understand this anguish, it is important to examine just what
this historical loss meant. It is also important to show that this kind of loss
was not unique: it has happened many times.
Kingdoms
and belief systems come and go. Before the city of Rome fell to the Visigoths
in the year 410, Rome was considered eternal. Traditional Roman beliefs had upheld
centuries of political systems, from the Republic to the many emperors that
vied for regency in the peninsula and its territories. As EBSCO (n.d.)
observes, the Eternal City was no longer safe. “The physical damage was
relatively light, but the psychological shock was great.” It was just one of
the major cultural upheavals that mankind has experienced, and that has
demanded major shifts in belief systems.
But
Catholic Christianity was about to be established politically and culturally in
what was to become Europe. The bishop of Hippo Regius at the time of the fall
of Rome, Saint Augustine, responded to the crisis by writing his De civitate
Dei (413-427/2021 -The City of God) over a period of about thirteen years.
With this writing, Saint Augustine bridged several cultural breaches: the first
was the idea of the loss of the eternal city. In his vision secular power was
transient, and at the same time eternal: it was temporal but subordinate to
God's law. The emperors, kings, and queens only rule on earth to keep order and
represent God’s will. He also created a bridge between the old Roman pantheon
and Christianity. He distinguished between the earthly city which was founded
on mundane, passing issues, and the City of God which represented eternal
truths. He saw the Earthly City as immersed in selfish motives of power and
ostentation, although guided by the holy hand, while the City of God was built
on divine love and eternal peace. Finally, he gave concrete, physical existence
to the idea of a worldly and human environment that could aspire to eternal
values.
After the Christian Catholic church lost power many centuries later, there were
many thinkers that longed for the lost certainties of Catholic medieval
culture. We need to ask what this culture had to say about the relationship
between belief systems and the state, and ultimately between religion and the
maintenance of power.
One way of
observing the relationship is to look at medieval art.
A work that
demonstrates the intimate relationship between the church and earthly power is the
Mosaic at Ravenna at San Vitale. It represents the Emperor Justinian I and
Empress Theodora in the sixth century. These royal figures show the union
between imperial power and the Church in Byzantine art. The fact that terrenal
political figures were placed near the alter shows how close power was to
divinity. Other works, such as the
numerous depictions of the crowning of the Virgin, show her being exalted as
the Queen of Heaven. These paintings often include angels, local kings, and
noblemen arranged hierarchically around her, as if they were in an earthly imperial
court. In other words, the artists imagined that heaven would have power
structures similar to those in found in the king's extended household, with
nobles and family, that is, a center for ceremony and justice.
This
justification of Catholic hierarchy was challenged by the emergence of the
Protestant churches, and then by the Renaissance and the Illustration.
Nietzsche and Jung depicted the need many people had for explanations of the
political changes in the XVIII and XIX centuries, and for justifications for the
existing power-based inequalities. The popular response to Fascism in Germany,
Italy, and other places shows that the longing for belief-supported power
structures was widespread, especially among those who considered that they
should have influence and political clout themselves.
The grey
zone
In the
second chapter of Primo Levi’s book, The drowned and the saved, he introduces
the idea of the “grey zone” (Levi, 2004).
The grey zone is described a self-classification of prisoners in the
death camps during WW II that collaborated with their jailers. They had
privileges in exchange for this. Levi
says that in situations where few have power, some of the dominated obtain
concessions. This is encouraged by those in the upper levels. In prison situations
a hybrid class of the prisoner-functionary develops, and inhabits the gray
zone. A subdivision of the relation between the masters and servants appears.
This phenomenon is clearly not restricted to prisons. It is a characteristic of
the psychology of underdog class in any given political setting.
It further develops
the idea of hierarchy. Within any given class in an up-down distribution of
power, there can be subclasses of privilege in which relative power can be
exercised by some over others. This can be found in governmental agencies,
schools, businesses, police departments, and military bases, and any other
semi-independent organization immersed in a greater power structure.
Military
Culture
Military
organization is necessarily hierarchical and based on power structures. The
armed forces have usually been under the exclusive command of their nation’s principle civilian leader although
some legal or traditional limits might exist to his or her capacity to declare
war. (Conquerors like Alexander the Great or the Genghis Khan were both rulers and generals, but usually there has
been a difference in these status levels.) The kings (or emperors or
conquerors, or in modern days, dictators or presidents) had (and have) the power to oblige the
obedience of their generals, and they in turn could order the lower ranks. Only
the top leaders and their generals could order the deployment of these forces.
In general,
uprisings in kingdoms and dictatorships are simple power grabs, as in the times
described by Shakespeare in the Wars of the Roses in England in the XV century,
or the murder of Hamlet’s father, Old Hamlet, in Demark by his brother,
Claudius. These stories in Shakespeare are generally tragedies, but in history
they are simply variations on the theme of power.
When the
generals have posed a problem for leadership in republics, however, there have
been dramatic responses. Brutus’ motivation (at least in Shakespeare’s play,
Julius Cesar) for taking part in the assassination (execution?) of Julius Cesar
was to preserve the Republic, although this action did, in fact, signal the
Republic’s end. In modern times generals may be peacefully disposed, as when
President Truman removed General Douglas MacArthur from his command in 1951
during the Korean War. MacArthur was vociferous in his desire to continue the
war, even attack China. But Truman reaffirmed civilian control over the
military.
Until
modern times the kings and generals would take an active part in the battles,
sometimes suffering wounds or even death. There are famous works of art, such
as the mosaic of the Battle of Issus in which Alexander the Great wounded king Darius
III of Persia. Generals stopped fighting on the front lines when battles became
large engagements and communication systems could be handled by radio, telegraph,
telephone connections, and other technologies. By World War I, generals mostly
commanded their troops from a distance, thus ensuring their own personal safety.
The
foot-soldier has always been at the other end of the command chain. These days
he or she is the only one that actually carries the weapons and kills the
enemy. But the lower ranks have never had a say in their deployment. This
required the development of a global belief system that turned military obedience
into a respected duty, and which considered these soldiers to be potential
heroes.
To
understand this, we must return to the idea of belief systems. Military belief
systems combine formal martial values with those of recognized religious faiths.
Christian, Islamic, and other faiths are often used to help soldiers deal with
issues of loss and death. But for Grimell (2024) the comparison is deeper: he
describes military ethics as implicit religion, as “practices that can be
understood and described as sacred – something greater than the self and worthy
of dying for” (p. 162). He says, in fact, that some soldiers have not been able
leave the militia because of “the perception that military service held deeper
meaning than a life in civilian work” (p 164). It is similar to monastic life
and other communal experiences in that:
This organized communal life cultivates strong
beliefs, specific ethics and codes of conduct, numerous rituals, devotion to a
cause and purpose, loyalty to the members, potential sacrifices and even standardized
clothing, circumscribing individual uniqueness through the enforcement of a
uniformed identity (p. 165).
Lieutenant Colonel
Joseph Smith (1993) goes further. He was, at the time of the publication of his
article, an official in the United States Air Force Reserve. He said that:
“humanistic values are materialistic and
self-centered, [while] spiritually-based believers trust in divine power
greater than themselves, [they] regard others as equals, and believe all men
possess an eternal spirit which is of more worth than the physical world” (p.
4).
He affirmed
that these two ways of viewing the world affect people´s moral ideas. He
considered that the humanists are simply erratic opportunists that change their
moral viewpoints for personal gain. He would discard Kant’s method of looking
for categorical imperatives in favor of relying on the Ten Commandments. Smith rather
trusted people who accept their morality from a received religious doctrine. Of
course, humanism does change according to the logical development of the
philosophy that gives It form, while doctrine is relatively stable.
Grimell
defines the military as “a […] society with members. The social processes in
such a […] society include, but are not limited to, military training
facilities/schools/academia, a legal system, healthcare support, cultures,
units, members, and so on” (p. 166).
All military
structures have a code of values. These norms have sometimes been expressed in
ways that civilian societies find abhorrent. This tension between military and
civilian values has a long history. Homer’s description of the Trojan war,
especially it’s end when the whole city of Troy and most of its inhabitants
have been destroyed, attests to his sympathy for the victims -even though he was
Greek and had descended from the victors over Troy (Homer, 1989, Cronick,
2024). This same sympathy appeared in later Greek playwriters such as Euripides’
(n.d.) The Trojan Women. The Roman destruction of Carthage in the year 146 has
produced similar reactions. In modern times the total destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, ending WWII, has also been questioned.
After World
War II, and the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, the newly instituted United
Nations, established the International Law Commission (ILC)[7].
The newly adopted rules of war evolved from the Nuremberg Principles, which accepted
the code of individual accountability for war crimes (solders cannot claim they
were "just following orders"). The ILC codified these principles into
permanent international law, in the 1949 in the Geneva Conventions and the 1948
Genocide Convention. In the Nuremberg trials, however, only the defeated
Germans were tried.
Heward,
C., Li, W., Tie, Y. C., &
Waterworth, P. (2024, p 282) observe that:
The military is a unique cultural institution
that significantly influences its members, contributing to the development and
transformation of their identities. Despite growing interest in identity
research in the military, challenges persist in the conceptualization of
military identity, including understanding how it forms, assessing the
influence of military culture on identity development, and evaluating the
implications for mental health.
These
authors examine the reactions of military veterans who retire to civilian life.
They observe that martial experience impacts service members’ self-perceptions,
worldviews, and mental health. They say that some aspects of military life are positive, like their sense of identity. This reduces suicidal thought among
retired veterans. However, the strong sense of interconnectedness, and the role
that fellow-soldiers have as an extended family, lead to a sense of loss after
retirement and correlates with depression, PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder),
and negative affect (p. 283).
The
consequences of violence on the civilian population
The
experience of participating in a street gang, or of being affected by one, can
have similar repercussions in people and communities.
Llorens (n.d.)
says that chronic violence leaves traces on the people who suffer it. He refers
specifically to the conditions produced by illegal street gangs, but also
refers to the effects of wars on populations living in conditions of military
threat. One of the results of living in violent situations is post-traumatic
stress, a condition that also affects soldiers who have seen combat. Among its
symptoms are hypervigilance, hyper-aggressiveness, fear, isolation, loss of
hope, desensitization and emotional anesthesia.
Llorens
observes that these traumas can exist at the collective level. A culture of
fear and isolation develops. The development of a "double
consciousness" can occur that combines the acceptance of violence as
"normal" but that generates individual and collective fear that can
be debilitating.
Llorens
points out how, after episodes such as civil wars, there can be increases in
internal civilian violence in the affected countries. One of the results can be
an increase in neighborhood distrust, social fragmentation, and the development
of an identity crisis in which people reduce their personalities to the
conditions of "us" are opposed to "them" (whatever “them”
may be).
Another
important element is the creation of the "gray zones" that Llorens
quotes from Primo Levi (2004), in which the victims of violence can become
victimizers, losing their essential humanity. Quoting Martín Baró, he observes that
the trauma of the experience of violence is not caused only by individuals, nor
does it have effects only on them, (Llorens, p. 30). It can become a local culture.
Thus, trauma is not just caused by individual people, nor does it have effects
only on them. Martín Baró (1990) considered that the tasks of
de-ideologization, depolarization, and demilitarization are as important as is attention
to the traumas of war. He spoke of the
rupture of coexistence and the dehumanization of the Other.
These
individual and collective traumas produce a phenomenon that Llorens calls the
militarization of the mind: it is found in the beliefs that the armed forces
are necessary to pacify the country. It also appears in the ideas that having
enemies is a natural condition; hierarchies are necessary; and the law of the
strongest is something natural. All this leads to the naturalization of
violence.
Final
Reflections
Christensen,
G. (2023) observed that “Research in other historical periods and cultures …
shows that power cannot be conceptualized through merely hierarchical and
top-down models but must be understood as complex phenomena, which can be
distributed, questioned, and come from below.” This idea has been developed in
an anthropological sense by Graeber and Wenfrow (2021) in their book, The dawn
of everything. They develop ample
evidence to show that in the early human tribes, power was distributed among
all the members, and decisions were made through consultation processes. In this essay we have not analyzed
distributive power, but we have reviewed this idea in Cronick (2025).
These early
manifestations of distributive power were almost lost when early city-states
began to appear. We have not dealt with this theme in this essay, but it
remains as a subject for further reflection. Here our interest has been to
explore how power can permeate culture, and almost be seen as a human need.
We have
reviewed ideas related to the philosophy of power, its cultural, ideological,
and personal manifestations, and its incorporation in certain religious dogmas.
We have seen how the will to power, and willpower can justify both tyranny and
challenges to oppression through the establishment of new hegemonic systems. We
have considered how, in a given totalitarian society, sub-systems can develop
as described in the writings of Primo Levi (2004). And we have considered
military belief structures in which obedience and brotherhood (as in the “band
of brothers”) become almost identical concepts. Finally, we have considered the
trauma produced by neighborhood violence that reinforces gang loyalty and produces
“us versus them” identities, that Llorens (n.d) called the “militarization of
the mind”.
In order to
create fewer power-based cultures it is important to understand authoritarianism
and its historical justifications. The philosophical and psychological
reflections that have been written about this topic reveal an underlying preoccupation,
an almost unconscious ethos of discomfort with the idea of power, conceived of
as the domination of some individuals over others. We can continue to accept
it, thus denying this discomfort, or we can understand it as one cultural
phenomenon among many others, and thus it is modifiable.
Footnotes
[1] "Hobbes shadow kingdom" refers to an allegory of a hypothetical state of political and religious tyranny, where erroneous doctrines extinguish reason.
[2] Hobbes says that he cannot conceive of the posibility that man might find pleasure in perceiving great unhappines in other people (p. 33).
[3] This, of course, was not what appeared in “communist” regimes like Russia, China or the other countries that claimed affiliation with Marx’ ideas.
[4] The role of childhood trauma in the creation of later power-related trauma was explored in Cronick (2024).
[5] The Übermensch in Nietzsche is a philosophical ideal of a person who overcomes traditional morality, and creates his own values; it embodies self-conquest. This ideal can be found in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".
[6] A most obvious example of a neurotically engendered system of this type might be the belief in a flat earth, but possibly there exists any number of situations that require extreme loyalty and the refusal to examine other ideas.
[7] The ILC was established in 1947 to develop a set of international laws to define acceptable conduct in war and to define what are war crimes. It is made up of 34 legal experts elected by the UN General Assembly that do not represent any particular government interests. The ILC prepares documents to facilitate the elaboration of international treaties regarding the laws of war.
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Additional
Referencias
Cronick, Karen (2024, 2). Los griegos y...nosotros: 2da
edición Edición Kindle. Anuncio en la página web: https://www.amazon.com.mx/Los-griegos-nosotros-2da-edici%C3%B3n-ebook/dp/B0D7CGQQ6P
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(1990). Psicología social de la guerra: trauma y terapia. San Salvador.
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https://www.academia.edu/107708675/On_Power_in_Simone_Weil_and_Hannah_Arendt_Contrasts_and_Correlations
Nota: En esta página pongo una lista de mis publicaciones con el objeto de abrir diálogos con mis colegas y otras personas interesadas. Muchas están disponibles en Internet. Incluyo las más recientes que sólo fueron publicadas en mi blog.
Note: On
this page I list my publications in order to open dialogues with my colleagues
and other interested people. Many are available on the Internet. I include many that were only published on my blog.
1. 1. Cronick K. (1980). "Análisis de una
Situación de Desamparo Aprendido”. en
Granell de Aldaz (Cood). Cienciá y Tecnología del Comportamiento. Caracas:
Equinoccio, Editorial de la Universidad Simón Bolívar. (por invitación).
34. Cronick, K. y Aguirre, J. M. sj. (2021). Comunidades populares caraqueñas: una historia de participación. En M. Zapata, sj y L. Mora-Salas, (Coords.). Iglesia católica, memoria y acción psicosocial: Tránsitos hacia la reconciliación en comunidades populares. Caracas: Fundación Centro Gumilla.
39. Cronick, Karen (2024). Los griegos y...nosotros: 2da edición Edición Kindle. Anuncio en la página web: https://www.amazon.com.mx/Los-griegos-nosotros-2da-edici%C3%B3n-ebook/dp/B0D7CGQQ6P
49. Cronick, K Blog: (2025, July 17). LETHAL ARMAMENT / ARMAMENTO LETAL. Reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com.. Blog: Reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com. https://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2025/07/lethal-armament-armamento-letal.html
53. Cronick, K Blog: (2025, September 3). The logic of twisted Republican logistics. Reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com.. Blog: Reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com. https://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-logic-of-twisted-republican.html
