Dear Friends

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Martin van Creveld

Dear Friends:

Ten years after I started this blog, circumstances are making it impossible for me to continue with it. So I am going to suspend it, at least temporarily, in the hope of resuming it one day not too far away.

For me it has been a glorious ten years. A period during which I felt free to write whatever I wanted, in any form I wanted, and at any time I wanted. Without having some kind of editor look over my shoulder. Freedom, freedom–if there is anything I treasure, this it is.

It was also a period filled with intense intellectual excitement and, here and there, new friendships. These I cherish and hope we can keep up in the form of correspondence.

Thank you. All of you, so much. And be well.

Martin

Hear, o Israel

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Martin van Creveld

As readers have probably noticed, throughout the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas I’ve devoted relatively little attention to that topic. Not because there is nothing to say—there is—but because I did not want to gladden the Philistines daughters’ hearts. Now, however, the point has come where I can no longer avoid telling my countrymen- and women the truth about the danger facing us. My vehicle for doing so will be a long quote from the famous historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny. Kindle Edition. 2024.

”Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible. It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groups can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician—or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader. Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it. Violent right-wing groups, such as the Iron Guard in interwar Romania or the Arrow Cross in interwar Hungary, intimidated their rivals. Nazi storm troopers began as a security detail clearing the halls of Hitler’s opponents during his rallies. As paramilitaries known as the SA and the SS, they created a climate of fear that helped the Nazi Party in the parliamentary elections of 1932 and 1933. In Austria in 1938 it was the local SA that quickly took advantage of the absence of the usual local authority to loot, beat, and humiliate Jews, thereby changing the rules of politics and preparing the way for the Nazi takeover of the country. It was the SS that ran the German concentration camps—lawless zones where ordinary rules did not apply. During the Second World War, the SS extended the lawlessness it had pioneered in the camps to whole European countries under German occupation. The SS began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law.”

Let me make myself clear; I am not trying to equate Israel with Germany during the last days of the Weimar Republic. Not yet, at any rate. But the potential in the form of political extremism and armed militias, rampaging mainly but not solely in the West Bank, is definitely there. So are threats on the justice system and its desperate attempts to keep some kind of order. And it is growing every day. First anarchy then, by way of a “corrective,” Fascism.

This country is at war, the most terrible and, in some ways, most important activity man can engage in. God grant our leaders (and those on the other side) the wisdom to know what to do and, above all, what not to do. Or else, I am afraid, we will all meet in hell.

PE (again)

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Martin van Creveld

This week I once again got involved in a debate concerning penis envy. My interlocutor was an Israeli of my own age, a retired mathematician and computer expert with wide interests in psychology also. I found our debate extremely enlightening, so much so as to make me want to repeat some key parts of it. So here are a number of propositions we discussed, each one with a short commentary.

There is no such thing as penis envy. Wrong. I would argue that, to the contrary, so ubiquitous is penis envy, so numerous its manifestations in every nook and cranny of human life, as to make looking for “proof” of its existence not just impossible but well-nigh preposterous. In the words of Isaiah 6.3, “the whole earth is filled with [its] glory.” Starting with another Biblical phrase, “unto your man your passion, and he will rule you.” And ending with today’s women who, putting on full combat gear, will not rest until they too fight in tanks just as men do. Denying PE is a bit like trying to understand the way the world works without taking gravity into account. Do so and nothing, literally nothing, in the physical world makes sense.

Here it is worth adding that no one, not even the great Newton, has ever actually seen gravity. All we can do is postulate its existence by observing its effects. The same applies to penis envy. In other words, the fact that we do not know of a “penis envy gland” means nothing.

Penis envy may be understood in two different ways. Correct. First, in a literal sense, as the emotion that a person who does not possess something feels for another who does. The following silly little story illustrates the point. A boy and a girl are arguing. “I’ve got an ass,” says the girl. “I too have an ass,” says the boy. “But I have an ass in front too,” says the girl. “Yes, but I have an ass with a handle to it.”

Second, the penis as a symbol, the symbol, of all the advantages men enjoy over women in society; in other words, as a social construct. Freud himself never made up his mind as to which of the two approaches he preferred. His female students were divided on the issue. On one hand stood Helene Deutsch, who saw penis envy as fundamental to the development of womanhood. On the other, Karen Horney who considered it secondary, an effect of women’s inferior position rather than a cause. Freud’s own daughter, Ann, ignored the issue.

The natural sciences’ contribution to our understanding of the human soul is close to zero. Correct. All brain scientists and psychiatrists know is how to detect, register and sometimes modify electric pulses on one hand and administer medicines (many of them useless, and some of them harmful) to their patients. Well aware of that fact, they follow Hobbes and Descartes in claiming that the soul does not exist.

In spite of the Niagara of nonsense that has been poured on Freud and psychoanalysis from about 1970 on, their contribution to understanding the human psyche remains immense beyond measure. Correct. Stripped off endless fluff, essentially it consists of three propositions. First, the idea that the unconsciousness plays an important, often decisive, role in human thought, emotion and behavior. Second, the critical role played by childhood experiences in shaping those thoughts, emotions and behavior. Third, idea that the best, often almost the only, way of reaching the unconsciousness and influencing it is by means of what is usually known as the talking cure, which Freud, along with Joseph Breuer, invented. Far from being obsolete; even today rare is the psychologist who does not resort to it to one extent or another,

Today not only much of the general public but the majority of mental health experts no longer believe in Freud and psychoanalysis. Correct. However, as either Hegel or Goethe is supposed have said, no one is a hero to his servant. Rather, such is the mind of servants that they often fail to recognize a hero even when he (or she) is standing right in front of one. A good story in case comes from the New Testament. Appearing at court before Pontius Pilatus, Jesus says: “I am truth.” “What is truth?” retorts Pilate, the Roman intellectual. What an idiot! Almost alone in the whole of history, he has been presented with the truth; only to blow it.

Finally, here is what Nietzsche in his late, unpublished writings has to say about heroes and hero worship:

”My brothers,” said the oldest dwarf, “we are in danger. I understand his posture, this great Giant, this Number One. He means to do the little one, number one, and drizzle on us. When a Number One does number one, there is a Flood. If he drizzles on us, then we are lost. Not to mention the disgusting element in which we will drown.” “Problem,” said the second dwarf: “How are we to keep a Big One, this Number One, from doing number one?” “Problem,” said the third dwarf: “How are we to keep a Number One, this Big One, from doing the big one, a great thing and number two, doing it with greatness and in a big way?” “I thank you,” replied the oldest dwarf with dignity. “Now the problem has taken a more philosophical turn, its interest has been doubled, and the approach has been cleared to its solution.” “We need to scare him,” said the fourth dwarf. “We need to tickle him,” said the fifth dwarf. “We need to bite him on the toes,” said the sixth dwarf. “Let us do all these things and do them at the same time” decided the oldest dwarf.” I see that we can measure up and rise to this challenge.”