One of the more subtle and nefarious misunderstandings of Freud is encapsulated by the term "root causes." One of Freud's most brilliant insights was the recognition that our manifest behavior was the result of a compromise between multiple, often competing, sometimes complementary, desires and inhibitions. Most of the time our defense mechanisms work well enough to keep us unaware of the full panoply of motives that are at work which result in a particular behavior.
The focus on "root causes" is then used in an attempt to obfuscate and deny the existence of enemies who desire to destroy us.
Bruce Thornton, in a review of Robert Conquest’s Reflections on a Ravaged Century, points to the parallel between the failure of Western intellectuals to recognize the threat from Soviet Communism and their ongoing failure to recognize the threat from Islamic extremism. In Total Silence: Conquest reveals Western “traitors to the human mind”, Thornton describes the Western habit, seen in our Academics and Media especially, to imagine that our enemies don't really mean what they say. While some of this is a reflection of elitist Narcissism (an inability to recognize that other people's minds can work differently from their own), some of this is also based on a deconstruction of Freud:
Conquest shrewdly links to Freudianism this strange Western habit of thinking that people are incapable of knowing their own minds and saying what they mean. Like Marxism, this materialist explanation for behavior dismissed conscious motives as so much camouflage or rationalizations for deeper, unconscious causes. “And both doctrines provided,” Conquest writes, “separately or together, that built-in proof that disagreement was due to prejudices predictably embedded in the opponent’s mind by forces understood by the elect.” Likewise with many of today’s commentators who ignore conscious motives: these “elect” know that such spiritual beliefs are mere illusions masking some deeper psychic dysfunction or compensating for some environmental cause. And they display the same elitist disdain for those who prefer to take seriously what the jihadists tell us, scorning them instead as intellectually unsophisticated or in thrall to various neuroses such as bigotry.
In her discussion of the recent events at Columbia, THE NEW RELIGIOUS SOCIALISTS, Dr. Sanity pointed to the failure of critical thinking that is an outgrowth of Post-Modernism to explain how the Left can ally itself with Islamic fascism without noticing the inherent contradictions:
Multiculturalism and political correctness have been incorporated into most K-12 curricula and all other learning environments. They have been at the forefront of attempts by leading academics and academic institutions to rewrite most of history and undo thousands of years of Western cultural advancement. And further, as the culture has been completely saturated with this toxic brew, any attempt to question the tenets' validity or to contest their value is met with hysterical accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, imperialism, bigotry, or--worse of all --intolerance or insensitivity.
It just so happens that multicultural, political correctness (and a third--radical environmentalism) are three of the four pillars that are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist remnants of the 20th century have developed and are using to prevent socialist/communist ideology from entering the dustbin of history.
Please notice that the banner unfurled by these students was written in English and Arabic. I have had people write to me saying that it is "absolutely ridiculous" and that I am "hatemongering" because I have dared to suggest that the left has made common cause with the Islamic jihadists. Is it? If you read the news article in its entirety, what do you suppose these caring, compassionate "justice"-seeking individuals who triumphantly prevented people they disagreed with from speaking intend to do with the next set of proposed speakers; speakers whose message does not happen to agree with their distorted view of reality? Speakers, who are sure to be classified by the International Socialist Organization as "racist" and therefore "not entitled to speak at Columbia (or anywhere, I presume, if these student totalitarians have their way).
Gagdad Bob points out that the Left has used a deconstructed understanding of science and philosophy to advance their assault on critical thinking. The assault on tradition, and the denial of any truths that cannot be scientifically supported, creates the illusion that there is no bed rock to reality; for the Post-Modern Left, reality is constructed by those with power. Bob arrives at his chilling conclusion via the philosophy of Michael Polanyi:
Thus, at the foundation of postmodern moral inversion is always the same thing: “the combination of skeptical rationalism and moral perfectionism, which is nothing more than the 'secularized fervor of Christianity.’” But whereas “moral perfectionism within a Christian context is moderated by the doctrine of original sin and deferral of perfection to the end of history, the perfectionism of a post-Christian world provides no such moderating counterbalances.”
Therefore, the dynamic of this moral inversion allows both societies and individuals “to commit appallingly immoral acts--acts which, according to the skeptic, are not really immoral, since morality is an empty category.” Leftists are therefore sanctioned to “bring about a purely immanent perfection without the hindrance of moral limitations on the means to the end.” This utopian fantasy demands the immediate and total transformation of society, which may be pursued without limit.
Now you know why the socialist thugs at Columbia may say with a straight farce, “Nobody is Illegal": because they themselves are beyond law and morality. And you also know why they can say that traditional Americans who believe in the rule of law are “racist individuals” who have “no right to be able to speak here."
Stephen, at Horsefeathers, has an excellent post up about the fading glory of Liberalism, STICK A FORK IN IT, IT'S DONE: THE DEATH OF LIBERALISM. It has been undone (dialectically?) by its internal contradictions. He points out that Freud's insights were directed toward increasing the freedom of action of the individual, and increasing the responsibility of the actor, not in using "root causes" to deny responsibility:
In his Freud lecture at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1956, Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture, Trilling admiringly cited the classical psychoanalytic view of human nature as being eternally conflicted and not changeable through schemes of social engineering. He discerned in Freud’s writings, particularly in Civilization and its Discontents a stoic classicism. He believed this could serve as a corrective to the utopianism that regards human nature as infinitely malleable. Unfortunately, in the years that followed, Trilling’s voice was drowned out by the rise of the New Left. Freud’s stoicism did not fit well with the temper of the times. Revolution was in the air and quick fixes, behavior modification, psycho-babbling charlatans selling transcendence prevailed. Within psychoanalysis itself, Freud’s dark, tragic realism was rejected as too pessimistic. A new sunnier, feel good therapeutic approach was preferred. Writers from Wilhelm Reich to R. D. Laing, to Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse argued that neurotic unhappiness was produced by "surplus repression" imposed by capitalism. "Getting in touch" with those repressed feelings became the cant of the age and made fortunes for many a psychopath. Change the family and society, they claimed, and human nature would follow. Come the revolution and egalitarian happiness will prevail as inhibitions and differences wither away. Marcuse’s vision of a world free of repression and inhibition animated the campus radicals of the 1960’s and Trilling became a prime target of their adolescent rage against repressive authority.
The Left has insisted that every action, every atrocity, committed by our self-proclaimed enemies is the result of some initiating insult by us. The "root cause" of all Islamist terror is Western colonialism, or our support of Israel, or some other derivative of Western Civilization. A former leftist who at one time obtained all his information from the Guardian and only recently came to realize his information was incomplete, decided to test the theory that there were "root causes" to Islamic terror that were being ignored and denied by America. Sir Henry Morgan, at a new blog, Reconquista, has undertaken a statistical analysis of terror attacks by Islamic extremists. The results are shown in graphic form on his blog. Most of my readers will not be surprised by his results, but it is interesting to see what he has found and ponder the implications; Is Islam waging war on the world?:
In the meantime I have to conclude that I never was paranoid, and that there really is a war being waged by Islam against the whole world, and it is intensifying by the day. The main problem with it is that the leadership, and most of the population, of only one side in this war knows it. Or at least, knows the full extent of it. The leadership and most of the population of the other (our) side of it are, in psychological-technical terms, in Denial. Given the rate of increase in attacks, then though that might be comforting to them in the short-term, in the long term it may prove disastrous, though I cannot see that our side would ultimately lose. What the data does show is that the sooner this war is addressed as a war, and in respect of its full worldwide extent, the easier and less damaging to us it will be to win.
(Today, Sir Henry Morgan has Part II available.)
The next time you hear or see a spokesman for the Islamists (CAIR is a prominent purveyor of disinformation), an Academic Leftist, a government spokesperson or any other "talking head" prattle about "root causes" consider its value as a defensive maneuver. Consider its value as an all purpose statement of non-fact (fantasy) which allows one to focus away from the manifest, often noxious and evil, behavior, and express their refined Western Civilized guilt and angst, as well as hiding fear and rationalizing appeasement.
This is not to say that we should not try to understand as much as possible about people's motives and the unconscious determinants of behavior but using "root causes" to excuse evil is a perversion of Psychology and an overt assault on rationality.
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