In Freud's book The Future of an Illusion, he says that humans are an "enemy of civilization." Humans have instinctual desires of having the most money and the most power and they steal, cheat, lie and even murder to get what they want. Human passions and instinctual drives always override any intellectual ideas. Humans, in general, are lazy and don't want to participate in work or give any earnings to benefit society. They wish everything could be taken for themselves. But in order for civilization to serve aptly, man must learn to coierce with each other and work together. Freud feels that by making this sacrifice for society, man is kept humble by giving him religion. If man obeys the laws of society he will be rewarded by a greater being in the afterlife. However, there are still those who are unable to defer their natural instincts, for example Hitler. As Freud says, "one has, I think to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men, destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural trends and that in a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behavior in society"(Freud 8).
Hitler's crimes also prove Freud's point that religion is actually more harmful to society. More religious wars, like the Holocaust, have become of it. For instance, in Hitler's case, he felt that the Jews were looked upon as scum by God and his race was more superior. Thusly, he needed to murder in order to prove he was the most powerful. He disregarded his social values and gave in to his natural instincts. The Nazi's also used there violence towards the Jews to not only prove how superior they were, but also to protect their own identity in their culture. By putting down others, they could protect their own culture. Freud would say that a culture derives satisfaction and pride in its culture by comparing themselves with other nations and looking down on them. Although the Nazi's were being dictated by Hitler and unable to have their own voice of opinion, they still respected him and had pride in their ideals because they were given the opportinity to look down at someone else. Even if they were unhappy with their own lives, the Jews lives were worse, and it gave the Nazi's pleasure to know they weren't at the bottom of the totem pole, thusly avoiding any confrontations about their identities. "The narcissistic satisfaction provided by the cultural ideal is also among the forces which are successful in combating the hostility of the culture within the cultural unit. This satisfaction can be shared in not only by the favoured class, but also by the suppressed ones, since the right to despise people outside it compensates them for wrongs they suffer within their own unit " (Freud, 16).
However, the rules of society are directly tied in with religion and God's word. When a person asks why we shouldn't kill and the response is because it's against the law, one must consider that God's laws can often be interchangable with the laws of civilization. Hitler rejected God's law in "thou shall not kill" and created his own type of religion.
Indeed, it can be said that Naziism is a type of religion by Fromm's definition that religion is "any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a framework of orientation and an object of devotion"(Fromm 21). Hitler acted as a higher power for the Germans in the same way that God did for the Jews. Fromm says that there are 2 major types of religion: authoritarian and humanistic. Naziism is an authoritarian religion in which Hitler takes his place in God's throne. The Nazi's did not see that they were causing the destruction of thousands of people. They were obeying their God's word and became his enforcers. Disobedience to Hitler was considered unthinkable and as Fromm says, disobedience of God is the most sinful crime. "A person whose exclusive devotion is to the state or his political party, whose only criterion of value and truth is the interest of the state or political party, for whom the flag as a symbol of his group is a holy object, has a religion of clan and totem worship, even though in his eyes its a perfectly rational system" (Fromm 31).
Nazi's gave up their freedom and opinions to have those of Hitler's. Dr. George Boeree translates Fromm's description of freedom in simply stating that there are 3 ways in which humans escape it. Firstly, as mentioned previously, there is authoritarianism in which a person becomes completely subdued in the society that he escapes his separate identity. Secondly, there is destructiveness, as in Hitler's case. As Bouree illustrates, "authoritarians respond to a painful existence by, in a sense, eliminating themselves: If there is no me, how can anything hurt me? But others respond to pain by striking out against the world: If I destroy the world, how can it hurt me? It is this escape from freedom that acounts for much of the indiscriminate nastiness of life--brutality, vandilism, humiliation, crime, terrorism.." (Bouree 2). Thirdly, humans are innately afraid of being the "black sheep." In order to avoid loneliness and abandonment they accept the beliefs of the mass and hide behind the authoritarian hierarchy. Adopting the ideals of a crowd seems much more appealing than become alienated from the rest of the "flock." As Fromm describes it, the person gives away all of the responsibility and wisdom away, thusly escaping his own freedom and alienating him from himself. In order to fit in with the rest of society they must anialate those who are different. 'If our God Hitler thinks that the Jews are evil then they must be.' However they could not see that by flushing the "evil" out, they were actually becoming evil themselves.
An article by Alan Jacobs describes this inability to decipher between good and evil. He says that "the search for ultimate good and evil as absolutes is part of the reason why they did it in the first place: the Nazis and many of the German people invisioned themselves as ultimate good and the Jews as primordial evil. As long as good and evil are conceived as separate and distinct entities, incapable of existing in the same person or people, humanity will continue to experience similar nightmares. For it is then always possible to identify the other as evil. What is avoided is the fact that good and evil alike exist in all, that each of us is capable of both. Creation and murder exist together, like the need to reproduce and the hunting of prey, within each human being" (Jacobs 2). However, even if there were doubts about the beliefs, a person just need to look to others for reinforcement. There is "a certain amount of security and stability which the neurotic person lacks. There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort provided it is shared by a group. The most convincing proof for this statement can be found in those incidents of mass madness of which we have been and still are witnesses. Once a doctrine, however irrational, has gained power in a society, millions of people will believe in it rather than feel ostracized and isolated" (Fromm 33).
Freud would take from this incident evidence why there should be no religion. Men should learn to think logically and scientifically. Fromm would conclude that "the question is not whether man returns to religion and believes in God, but whether he lives love and thinks truth" (Fromm 9). He also says that we must learn to remain true to ourselves, but also learn to cooperate with society. "Man is born a freak of naturem being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision making which replace the principles of instincts.."(Fromm, 1968, pg. 61).
In conclusion, the act of the Holocaust could actually be considered a ritual to honor Hitler a.k.a. God in the Naziism religion. By psychanalysis, it can be determined that the German Nazi's participated in these killings for a variety of reasons, from a desire to belong to an instinctual desire to rule above all. No matter what the reasons were, it is clearly seen that the results were destructiveness. The need for power and the following for those in power is clearly a design for structuring a society. Whether the structure is irrational or otherwise, if others follow, more and more people will begin to catch on where everyone salutes their master, human or otherwise, together.
Melissa
Becky
Evan