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Aucbvax.1818 fa.arms-d utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!CSVAX.upstill@Berkeley Thu Jun 18 16:10:15 1981 Konrad Lorenz on militarism

From Konrad Lorenz, "On Aggression":

"Every man of normally strong emotions knows, from his own experience, the subjective phenomena that go hand in hand with the response of militant enthusiasm. A shiver runs down the back and, as more exact observation shows, along the outside of both arms. One soars elated, above all the ties of every day life, one is ready to abandon all for the call of what, in the moment of this specific emotion, seems to be a sacred duty. All obstacles in its path become unim- portant; the instinctive inhibitions against hurting or kil- ling one's fellows lose, unfortunately, much of their power. Rational considerations, criticisms, and all reasonable arguments against the behavior dictated by militant enthusiasm are silenced by an amazing reversal of all values, making them appear not only untenable but base and dishonorable. Men may enjoy the feeling of absolute righte- ousness even while they commit atrocities. As a Ukrainian proverb says: "When the banner is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet."

The subjective experiences just described are corre- lated with the following, objectively demonstrable phenomena. The tone of the entire striated musculature is raised, the carriage is stiffened, the arms are raised from the sides and slightly rotated inward so that the elbows point outward. The head is proudly raised, the chin stuck out, and the facial muscles mime the "hero face," familiar from the films. On the back and along the outer surface of the arms the hair stands on end. This is the objectively observed aspect of the shiver!

Anybody who has ever seen the corresponding behavior of the male chimpanzee defending his band or family with self- sacrificing courage will doubt the purely spiritual charac- ter of human enthusiasm. The chimp, too, sticks out his chin, stiffens his body, and raises his elbows; His hair stands on end, producing a terrifying magnification of his body contours as seen from the front. The inward rotation of his arms obviously has the purpose of turning the longest-haired side outward to enhance the effect.

"...to the humble seeker of biological truth there can- not be the slightest doubt that human militant enthusiasm evolved out of a communal defense response of our prehuman ancestors. The unthinking single-mindedness of the response must have been of high survival value even in a tribe of fully evolved human beings.

"...The object which militant enthusiasm tends to defend has changed with cultural development. Originally it was certainly the community of concrete, individually known members of a group, held together by the bond of personal love and friendship. With the growth of the social unit,

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the social norms and rites held in common by all its members became the main factor holding it together as an entity, and therewith they bacame automatically the symbol of the unit. By a process of true Pavlovian conditioning plus a certain amount of irreversible imprinting these rather abstract values have in every human culture been substituted for the primal, concrete object of the communal defense reaction.

"...On the one hand, the abstract nature of its object can give it a definitely inhuman aspect and make it posi- tively dangerous...; on the other hand it makes it possible to recruit militant enthusiasm in the service of really eth- ical values...There is reasonable hope that our moral responsibility may gain control over the primeval drive, but our only hope of its ever doing so rests on the humble recognition of the fact that militant enthusiasm is an instinctive response with a phylogenetically determined releasing mechanism and that the only point at which intel- ligent and responsible supervision can get control is in the conditioning of the respnse to an object which proves to be a genuine value under the scrutiny of the categorical ques- tion.

"...The strength of its seductive lure explains why intelligent men may behave as irrationally and immorally in their political as in their sexual lives...

"...The first prerequisite for rational control of an instinctiv behavior pattern is the knowledge of the stimulus situation which releases it. Militant enthusiasm can be elicited with the predictablility of a reflex when the fol- lowing environmental situations arise. First of all, a social unit whith which the subject identifies himself must appear to be threatened by some danger from outside.

"...A second key stimulus which contributes enourmously to the releasing of intense militant enthusialm is the pres- ence of a hated enemy from whom the threat to the above "values" emanates.

"...A third factor contributing to the environmental situation eliciting the response is an inspiring leader fig- ure.

"...A fourth, and perhaps the most inportant, prere- quisite for the full eliciting of militant enthusiasm is the presence of many other individuals, all agitated by the same emotion. Their absolute number has a certain influence on the quality of the response. Smaller numbers at issue with a large majority tend to obstinate defense with the emo- tional value of "making a last stand," while very large numbers inspired by the same enthusiasm feel the urge to conquer the whole world in the name of their sacred cause. Here the laws of mass enthusiasm are strictly analogous to

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those of flock formation..."

June 16, 1981

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