From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 22:13:00 MDT
On 9 Sep 2002 at 23:03, PsycheCulture@cs.com wrote:
>
> We resist applying the principles of unconscious determinism to
> events occurring on the
> stage of cultural and political reality. Persons prefer the vision of
> liberal humanism or "Realpolitick" or "evolutionary psychology."
> Anything to save delusion of "rationality." Contemporary thought
> revolves around denial of the psyche.
>
> We resist LINKING our internal worlds to the external one. Or perhaps
> it is more accurate to
> say that we do link the internal to the external, but then perceive
> the former as if emanating from the latter. Our psyche is projected
> back to us by that which we create and project. Our grandiose
> fantasies become "politics."
>
> We say that human behavior is "culturally constituted." We take note
> of the "discourses" that
> push and pull us. We provide detailed "thick description" and
> historical "contextualization." The purpose of this erudition is to
> avoid noticing that the human mind is the source of the every thing.
>
> An October 13 article in the New York Times traces the intellectual
> roots of AI Qaeda to the
> Egyptian writer and activist Sayyid Qutb. Mr. Qutb, who began his
> career as a modernist literary critic, was radicalized by a yearlong
> stay in the United States between 1948 and 1950. In a book about his
> travels, he cited the Kinsey Report, along with Darwin, Marx and
> Freud, as forces that had contributed to the degradation of the
> country. "No one is more distant than the Americans from spirituality
> and piety," he wrote.
>
> He also narrated, with evident disgust, his observations of the
> sexual
> promiscuity of American culture. Describing a church dance in Greeley,
> Colorado he wrote: "Every young man took the hand of a young woman.
> And these were the young men and women who had just been singing their
> hymns! Red and blue lights, with only a few white lamps, illuminated
> the dance floor. The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms
> twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together."
>
> For much of the Muslim world, Americans are "the Other"--symbolizing
> and stimulating
> repressed jouissance. An article in Business Week observed that groups
> such as bin Laden's AI Qaeda network view America as "The infidel
> power that is spreading its permissive, secular culture, the Great
> Satan that pollutes the world with its pornographic cinema, its
> alcohol, and its equal treatment of women. As one terrorist put it,
> "We will destroy American cities piece by piece because your life
> style is so objectionable to us, your pornographic movies and TV."
> Osama bin Laden himself while in college frequented flashy nightclubs,
> casinos and bars (and) was a drinker and womanizer. He soon felt guilt
> for his sins, and joined the extreme fundamentalist movement,
> preaching killing Westerners for their freedoms and enticements of
> Muslims.
>
> In an article in the New York Times Magazine, Andrew Sullivan
> observed that as modernism
> takes hold throughout the world, the once dominant Islam culture now
> is in a defensive mode. One cannot help thinking of this
> defensiveness, he says, when reading of the suicide bombers sitting
> poolside in Florida or racking up a $48 vodka tab in an American
> restaurant, or I might add when soliciting prostitutes in Boston the
> day before their mission.
>
> We tend to think that assimilation into the West might bring Islamic
> fundamentalists around
> somewhat, temper their zeal. But in fact according to Sullivan the
> opposite is the case: "The temptation of American and Western
> culture--indeed, the very allure of such culture -- may well require a
> repression all the more brutal if it is to be overcome." Sullivan goes
> on to say:
>
> There is little room in the fundamentalist psyche for a moderate
> accommodation. The very psychological dynamics that lead repressed
> homosexuals to be viciously homophobic or that entice sexually tempted
> preachers to inveigh against immorality are the very dynamics that
> lead vodka drinking fundamentalists to steer planes into buildings. It
> is not designed to achieve anything, construct anything, or argue
> anything. It is a violent acting out of internal conflicts.
>
> Norman O. Brown stated that "culture exists in order to project the
> infantile conflicts into
> external reality." It seems "oh so real" all that stuff going on out
> there-- so portentous. Actually, it doesn't have to do with anything.
> Yet, it does have to do with something. It's our momentous struggles
> with our desires and conflicts transformed into grandiose "world
> historical events."
>
> With regards,
>
> Richard K.
>
> Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
> Director, Library of Social Science
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