In his major work on religion, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Sigmund Freud offers a broad definition of “illusion.” According to Freud, “We call a belief an illusion when wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation and in doing so we disregard its relation to reality.” Examined in terms of Israel and world politics, this definition is dense with implication. It is a definition that could help Israelis understand the vital linkages between “wish fulfilment” and jihadist enmity, and also the lethal consequences of global anarchy.
By its original meaning, Freud’s “illusion” references hope for personal immortality. If extended to world politics, this term could also suggest illuminating linkages between power over a despised adversary and “power over death.” For Israel, in particular, it could clarify the long-term security costs of short-term military “victories,” even against Iran.
Always, in Jerusalem, fashioning national survival strategies should be considered an intellectual task. In the seventeenth century, political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan described the global “state of nature” (aka world politics) as a “state of war.” Because this condition stipulates the absence of a world government authority to keep countries “in awe,” the international system’s unchanging dynamic is a violent struggle of “all against all.” Inevitably, as we ought already to have learned from history, seeking to survive through belligerent nationalism (i.e., via competitive risk taking) is futile. Recalling Sigmund Freud, any such search is merely an “illusion.”
Is there anything to be learned from Freud and Hobbes to meaningfully create a safer system of world politics? Though any proposals to implement a more centralized system of power and authority would be labeled “unrealistic,” nothing could be less realistic for states than to base national survival on a “balance of power.” Accordingly, all must promptly inquire: How should rational leaders proceed?
To begin, world history will deserve pride of place. Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, global politics have been shaped by sovereignty-centered belligerence. When considered over time, especially as the technologies of military destruction have become more “advanced,” this system of competitive nationalism exhibits one overriding deficit: It is destined to fail.
For humankind, there should emerge one general expectation. This is the obligation of states to replace “Westphalian” threat-system dynamics with plausibly durable mechanisms of world legal order. Animating this core obligation would be scholars who could finally understand that only a true visionary could be a true realist.
One point is incontestable. If left unchallenged, world politics will undergo increasingly catastrophic breakdowns. To call for yet another round of “tribal conflict” would be to reject everything we ought already to have learned about law, civilization and “wish fulfilment.” For Israel, the fact that such a tiny and beleaguered state has been effective in its brief history of war-fighting ought not to be taken as “evidence” of future or protracted efficacy.
There is more. Going forward, Israel cannot afford to detach its own national survival strategies from the wider considerations of planetary survival. Unless world leaders take tangible steps to implement a cooperative planetary civilization – i.e., one based on the central truth of human “oneness” – there will be no civilization for any state. To reject this sobering conclusion would require world leaders to accept that an inherently corrosive ethos of “everyone for himself” could somehow be made reasonable. Prima facie, any such requirement would not “only” be illogical. It would also represent a grievous violation of international law and a rejection of Jewish precepts of justice.
In world politics, retreats from “wish fulfillment” policies will require serious erudition and diligent study – traits long-connected to Jewish intellectual life. A universal dimension of species identity (“human oneness”) can be encountered not just in Torah and Talmud, but also among such expressly secular thinkers as Sören Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Jose Ortega y’ Gasset, Miguel de Unamuno and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The fact that such exceptional thought is almost always disregarded in “real life” is lamentable testimony to how little is being done to save an imperiled planet from itself.
In all world politics, not just the Middle East, everything begins with the individual, with the microcosm. More precisely, humans generally fear solitude or “aloneness” more than anything else on earth, sometimes even more than death. Amid the chaos that is already stampeding across entire continents, individuals still prioritize loyalty to variously dissembling claims of “tribe.” Ironically, because the cumulative effect of these private claims is radical insecurity for all, such loyalty is irrational. Ultimately, ipso facto, it is self-destructive for both microcosm and macrocosm.
There is more. Among Israel’s enemies, loyalties to tribe may carry within themselves a witting embrace of “martyrdom.” Recalling the marooned English schoolboys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Israelis may be reminded here that the veneer of human civilization is razor thin. Impressive scientific and medical discoveries aside, whole swaths of humankind remain fiercely dedicated to murderous visions of “sacrifice.” Prophetically, wrote Jewish psychologist Otto Rank in Will Therapy and Reality (1945): “The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying….”
Hope still exists, but now it must sing softly, with circumspection, inconspicuously, sotto voce. Though counter-intuitive, incentives for celebrating gleaming new space technologies are exaggerated or contrived. Though Space X-type ventures promise wealth, excitement and glory, humankind ought not suffer the captivating delusions of extra-terrestrial “progress.” At best, rather than produce a safe-haven for human beings on distant planets, such delusions would only extend bitter human defilements to outer-space.
In The Decline of the West, first published during World War I, Oswald Spengler inquired: “Can a desperate faith in knowledge free us from the nightmare of the grand questions?” This remains an indispensable query. Among other things, a correct answer would acknowledge that war and terrorism can never be countered with more “advanced” weapon systems or by transporting human populations to extra-terrestrial habitats. To believe otherwise is to accept an ultimate illusion.
Always, truth is exculpatory. Presently, our tribal planet lacks a tolerable future not because we have been too slow to learn what has been taught, but because what has been taught is generally beside the point. That point should be the core species obligation to seek a science-based human survival, not illusionary goals of durable military victory.
Even if all current wars in the Middle East could somehow be ended “successfully” (an inconceivable expectation), the underlying system of world politics would remain structurally unstable and psychologically self-deceiving. For all states, but for Israel in particular, any further decisions to seek protracted security through protracted conflict would represent abandonment to Sigmund Freud’s “wish fulfilment.” From such a witting abandonment, Israel could expect only war, terrorism and irremediable despair.
