Bombs and Id

So today I was sitting outside a grocery store, reading a so far fascinating book about dying languages, when a man and a woman in their late-fifties come out of the store. The man and woman were having a conversation with each other, and it seemed like they hadn't known each other before today. Now, I don't know what their conversation was about, but I heard the man say, "You know what it is? Technology has changed, but we, as humans, haven't."

And that was very true, and it got me thinking. I was remembering a similar sentiment expressed in An Inconvenient Truth.

I thought for a while about primitive man and animals. I have a general idea of what humans were like then: they killed when threatened, rivaled, or when they needed to survive (a more modern example would be the Donner Party). But, of course, while they did have tools, the tools required some energy be exerted into them (which would prevent people from killing willy-nilly), and it would be very hard to kill even ten people at the same time with these tools. I imagined a caveman being attacked by another caveman, so the first caveman killed the second.

This is sort of like a pre-emptive strike on a much smaller scale. And then I got to thinking that war is sort of like cavemen. Like the Montagues and Capulets, Jets and Sharks, Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, only with bombs. Smart bombs to get one precise person from a distance, nuclear bombs for absolute destruction, chlorine bombs for blinding people, all kinds of bombs.

If we're going to develop the technology to wipe out entire cities, we need to change our attitudes. We can't kill people just because we feel threatened anymore. Cavemen killing one another, they acted on impulse. When something is flying fast at, say, your eye, it's a reflex to guard your eye. But entire nations with machine guns and bombs can't act on impulse.

Freud separated the thoughts into id, ego, and superego. Id is base instinct, one shared by pretty much all animals, from humans to ants to elephants. Superego is thoughts, intellect, etc. Ego is sort of the middle ground between the two. And you can't make decisions, decisions that can destroy the lives of millions of people, based on id. People are made leaders because it is assumed that they will make decisions based on something higher than animal instinct. We've got intelligence, let's use it.