[infowar.de] Violence as Destruction of Doubt

["Orion Anderson" <libraryofsocialscience -! - earthlink - net>]

Just Published: 
 
TOLERATING DIFFERENCE AND COPING WITH THE INFIDEL

David P. Levine

 

The critical, and therefore negative, quality of the doubting self appears
to us as an attack on our faith, which can alone keep us whole. When the
unfaithful self is projected onto external objects, the aggression we
attribute to it becomes their aggression directed at us, their desire to
destroy our faith.  We must now mobilize aggression to protect ourselves
against the infidel, notwithstanding the fact that the threat he poses is
the threat of connection with our own split off and disavowed faithless
selves.

 

 Since the infidel's rejection of the good object is also our own, the
aggression we attribute to him is also our own aggression projected outside
and experienced as a threat to us.  The critical, and therefore negative,
quality of our doubting self appears to us as an attack on our faith.  We
must now mobilize aggression to protect ourselves against the infidel, whose
threat to us is the threat of connection with split off and disavowed parts
of our selves.  That is, the aggression mobilized against the infidel is
deployed for the purpose of maintaining separation from our own doubt.

            

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Ideologies externalize and articulate shared fantasies, structuring our
experience and perception of reality. What are the nature of those desires,
conflicts and anxieties that give rise to ideologies of war and terror? Why
is the historical record a narrative of collective violence; of destruction
and self-destruction? What would it mean to become conscious of the
fantasies and desires that generate ideologies of war, genocide and terror?
It is possible to awaken from the nightmare of history?

 

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The complete paper by Professor David Levine is available as an on-line
publication. 

To read: "Tolerating Difference and Coping With the Infidel" 

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TOLERATING DIFFERENCE AND COPING WITH THE INFIDEL


The alien, both internal and external, is the self that refuses to know what
must be true.  In ourselves, it is the part of us that refuses to believe,
and that therefore has no faith.  Refusing to believe is, however, the
starting point for thinking, since so long as we continue to believe we have
no need for thinking, which begins where belief ends. Thus, the alien part
of ourselves, our internal infidel, is the part that thinks. 

 

The internal good object is the faithful self.  And just as we wish for an
external object that is wholly good, we seek an identification of our selves
with the internal good object; we wish to be the faithful self. In other
words, we wish to be pure in our faith in, and obedience to, the good
object.  To do this, we must get rid of the internal bad object, which means
to rid ourselves of doubt.  We accomplish this goal by projecting the
internal infidel onto a convenient container in the external world, which is
the unbeliever.  We then attempt to make that object good by the strategy of
conversion; or we exile it from our homeland; or, we attempt to control it,
for example by enslavement. This is the effort to dispel doubt and destroy
the internal infidel.

 
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