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

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  • From: Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] a question re The Thanatos Syndrome
  • Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 16:22:18 -0500

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.


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