Exploring the Factors Fueling Aggression in the Modern World Today
In recent years, the world has witnessed an alarming upsurge in violence, with wars, violent mass demonstrations, and an unsettling increase in gun violence becoming all too common. This trend is particularly pronounced in Western societies, such as the United States, where there has been a notable rise in firearm-related mass shootings.
The causes of this increased violence are complex and multifaceted. Easy availability of firearms, including semi-automatic weapons, is a significant factor. Social and economic instability, underlying mental health issues in perpetrators, and cultural factors promoting or normalizing violence also play a role.
The implications of this trend are severe. Increased public fear and insecurity, strain on law enforcement and emergency medical services, pressures on policymakers to enact gun control or violence prevention measures, and broader social and economic costs due to loss of life and community trauma are just a few of the consequences.
Globally, violent conflict and violence against civilians have also risen, especially in low-income and fragile states. However, the recent spike in mass shootings appears particularly pronounced in Western contexts.
Psychoanalysis offers an explanation for this violence, placing a primordial crime at the origin of the law and culture. Culture is seen as a spiritualization and deepening of cruelty, but not raw cruelty and violence. Instead, it takes aggressiveness as "fuel" for its progress.
Culture can only maintain larger groups of individuals by prohibiting the satisfaction of aggressiveness in others. The dilution of the Oedipus complex seems to be advancing rapidly, and culture requires other myths that account for the process of subjectivation.
Psychoanalysis allows us to understand and work on the linguistic foundation of aggression and violence, overcoming the imaginary stagnation in brute violence. This is a poetic dimension that encourages us to believe that each person should eradicate violence from themselves and their environment to achieve coexistence based on respect, peace, and harmony.
However, it is important to note that knowledge, applied to the subject and the social, is not sterilized from a conception of the world, from a morality, and from a pre-conceived idea of what is expected of someone. The work of psychoanalysis fulfills a social order related to the mode of production of a certain society, which can overshadow the place of the subject.
In the discourse of markets, the agent is not the S1 or the $, but the object @, which is the condition of possibility of the operation of the production device (Gestell). Knowledge (of science) is objectified in the construction of the object as a cybernetic servomechanism. The relationship between the Urvater and Big Brother is now considered a sinister prophecy, a reference to dystopias described by authors like Orwell and Huxley.
The father, who for millennia served as a reference, has lost his prerogatives in societies governed by the web and binary language. The death drive, or the drive to destroy, is a key concept in psychoanalysis, and culture is seen as a means of containing and transforming it.
In summary, while global violence is rising in many fragile regions for structural reasons, Western societies such as the US are witnessing a recent uptick in firearm-related mass shootings with complex social, cultural, and economic causes. The implications are severe, prompting debates on policy and community safety.
- Understanding the causes of this increased violence in Western societies requires examining not only the easy availability of firearms but also underlying mental health issues, social and economic instability, and cultural factors promoting or normalizing violence.
- Psychology, specifically psychoanalysis, can offer insights into the origins of violence, pointing to a primordial crime and culture's role in spiritualizing and deepening cruelty.
- The work of psychoanalysis can help us recognize and address the linguistic foundation of aggression and violence, fostering coexistence based on respect, peace, and harmony.
- However, it is crucial to recognize that knowledge, including that from science, is not neutral but is shaped by societal expectations and values, and can even contribute to dystopian narratives seen in literature like Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World.
