Subject: RE: Psychology of War and Genocide (Richard Koenigsberg) 
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 08:56:49 -0700



"An interesting and well-argued presentation, but it moves one to ask
why 
(looking forward in this century) the argument should identify "the
national norm" 
as the locus of pathology."

How would one define pathology in any social structure? One possibility
might be its destructiveness, but what would be the difference between a
creative destruction and self destruction: as in loss of viability of
survival?

In a biological organism, cells die and are replaced, and when invaded
by a virus, are killed and discarded. So at the level of an individual
organism, it is self-mutilating at the cell level, but self-preserving
at the organism level.

If one draws a boundary around a social structure, one could possibly
analyze a social organism the same way. One could re-describe internal
mechanisms as self-mutilating or self-preserving.

If one were to extend the metaphor to the global level, one would have
to draw a boundary around the whole human race. Then one could describe
what is self-preserving or self-mutilating.

But can one meaningfully draw a global boundary and analyze in these
terms? Where one draws boundaries may make the difference between
pathology and self-preservation, or even dare I say growth; dare,
because it opens the path to a debate on whether evolutionary
mechanisms, both biological and social, are teleological.

Mike Jones
Colorado