Perla and Marco’s proposal for me to take part in this Philosophy Night with the title of «The Future of Democracy», and the specific title of the table «Democracy and (its) Unconscious», came on the same night that my eldest son, 17.5 years old decided to take part in the demonstrations in Haifa as a protest against what he called the unfairness of what the Jews are doing to the Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. While I was trying to make him change his mind, I asked him maybe he could find other ways to pass his voice (more civilized ones??), he answered me, Mom it’s a democratic action.
On the next morning I answered yes to participating in this night, though I had no Idea about what would I say, I depended on the knowledge that I don’t have, with three words stuck in my mind: Future, Democracy and the Unconscious…
In Parallel I’ve encountered, maybe by chance or perhaps not, Freud’s text «Thoughts for the Times of War and Death» which he wrote in 1915 few months after the outbreak of the First World War. I say perhaps not by chance, because it happened during the period of May events that broke out in the country, in which Arab and Jew citizens attacked each other on the basis of racial affiliation, in parallel to the war in Gaza, and my neighborhood was one of the attacked places, a thing that left a significant impact on me. Though the distress, pain and disappointment, I couldn’t be surprised, after all, in the era of the of the inexistent Other, and with the new knowledge from my analytic experience, in which I face the devil inside me, I get to know that the world can’t be divided into good and bad, angels and demons, truth and lie, since «the truth is fatally divided» as J.A. Miller says in «Milanese Intuitions» in 2002. These pairs of opposites imply the inhibition of the primitive impulses, directed towards other aims and fields, altering their objects.
And beyond despair I couldn’t continue to be passive and started a search for explanations and consolation, by talking, writing and corresponding to people, kind of «passage a l’acte», a speech act, and while reading the fascinating, consoling text, I mentioned before I was struck by a paragraph and would like to read it here with you:
«Civilized society, which demands good conduct and does not trouble itself about the instinctual basis of this conduct, has thus won over to obedience a great many people who are not in their own natures.
…The pressure of civilization can be shown in malformations of character, and in the perpetual readiness of the inhibited instincts to break through to satisfaction at any suitable opportunity.
Anyone thus compelled to act continually in accordance with precepts which are not the expression of his instinctual inclinations, is living, psychologically or psychoanalytically speaking, beyond his means, and may objectively be described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly aware of the incongruity or not. It is undeniable that our contemporary civilization favours the production of this form of hypocrisy to an extraordinary extent. One might venture to say that it is built up on such hypocrisy, and that it would have to submit to far-reaching modifications if people were to undertake to live in accordance with psychological truth. Thus there are very many more cultural hypocrites than truly civilized men – indeed, it is a debatable point whether a certain degree of cultural hypocrisy is not indispensable for the maintenance of civilization, because the susceptibility to culture which has hitherto been organized in the minds of present-day men would perhaps not prove sufficient for the task…We may already derive one consolation from this discussion: our mortification and our painful disillusionment on account of the uncivilized behaviour of our fellow-citizens of the world during this war were unjustified. They were based on an illusion to which we had given way. In reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed. The fact that the collective individuals of mankind, the peoples and states, mutually abrogated their moral restraints naturally prompted these individual citizens to withdraw for a while from the constant pressure of civilization and to grant a temporary satisfaction to the instincts which they had been holding in check…The primitive soul is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable (eternal)»
And if we go back to democracy, I think about it as an illusion, which we need desperately in order to have a good image or idea about ourselves, a beautiful lie, but unfortunately the instinct is not democratic. Going back to Freud’s text in criticism of the disappointment of the uncivilized man acting at time of war: «Strictly speaking it is not justified, for it consists in the destruction of an illusion. We welcome illusions because they spare us unpleasurable feelings, and enable us to enjoy satisfactions instead. We must not complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some portion of reality, and are shattered against it.»
Trying to be optimistic, I think that paving the way, as Freud says, in each new generation for a more far-reaching transformation of instinct, shall be the vehicle of a better civilization, even on a dubious basis.
Wardi Haj-Nasrallah is psychoanalist, lives in Haifa.
Specialist in oral medicine. Works at the Center “Pequeño Hans”, in Haifa.
*Text presented in the panel «Democracy and ( its) unconscious». Activity organized as part of the annual “Night of philosophy», in Tel Aviv by the French Consulate.