Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>]

At 05:11 PM 3/7/2005 -0600, you wrote:

> > Good
> > point. History was on Freud's side when he defined this death urge in
> > Civilization and it's Discontents and history since has not
> > exactly proven him wrong if the reports from Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur
> > are to be compared to the two world wars. 
>
> Not to put a pin in anybody's bubble, but war claims a far smaller
> percentage of the civilian population now than it did ten thousand years
> ago - just 1500 years ago in some parts of the Americas.  If modern
> civilization has a destructive urge, it's certainly not as great it was
> for the "uncivilized." 

Wade,

   I'd like to think your statement is true, but when I think
of Lenin and Stalin, of millions of Jews and Poles, of Pol Pot and Kmer
Rouge --- it gets doubtful. The instinct for destruction of the other
does not seem to have abated.

Ken A.