Harvard psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has some thoughts on how the mechanisms of mass psychology work in wartime situations like the present one.
We're all survivors seeking meaning in Iraq San Francisco Chronicle 12/04/03
This particular essay talks about the effects of a person's death on survivors and how that operates in larger groups as well as in individuals. "It is in the nature of all survivors to desperately seek meaning in death, and that meaning, once discovered, can become the basis for an overriding survivor mission - a sustained and passionate advocacy that, by giving significance to a death, asserts new power over life."
But, he points out, that "survivor mission" can be defined in various ways. The Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks to define a survivor mission for the country that included wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And though Lifton is clearly skeptical about the Iraq War, his analysis has more general implications, describing how after the deaths of 9/11, "we quickly found various meanings for that event, virtually all of which included the right to some use of force to bring those responsible to justice."
All wars are popular during their first few weeks. A big reason for that is "a traditional response to soldiers killed in war: a commitment to a survivor mission of completing the task of the fallen by achieving final 'victory.'" But, he notes, all wars invoke to some extent a different sort of response by survivors, one which "finds its meaning in an angry condemnation of wasted lives and in a survivor mission of ending the killing and replacing the government that brought it about."
(Cont. in Part 2)
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