http://www.farrfeed.com/2007/12/13/the-killing-voice/ John Hamilton Farr's Living Planet Mystery Tales from Taos, New Mexico Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:57:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.farrfeed.com/2007/12/13/the-killing-voice/comment-page-1/#comment-205 K.J. Webb Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:49:11 +0000 http://jhfarr.com/farrfeed/2007/12/13/the-killing-voice/#comment-205 That old quack, Dr. Freud, was wrong about a lot of things, but I always thought there was something in his notion of the superego - the punishing censorious part of us that won't let us feel joy in the use of our minds or pleasure in the use of our bones. He thought that this part of us, though it professed to be the keeper of a higher morality, was really allied with the id - the blind subconscious animal thing in us that is prior to intelligence and certainly prior to morality. This Dr. Hyde of the soul, when obstructed and thwarted in its natural outlets, would, he thought, express itself in a twisted way in self-lacerating gestures of morality. This all seems intuitively true, at least to me: Think of your typical Elmer Gantry or Jimmy Swaggart type. Think of your murderer of abortion doctors. Think of certain types on the left - the Unibomber, animal rights activitists at their most extreme, Greenpeace at times. The fury behind the self-righteous posturing of these folks has to me a primitive feel about it. The return of the suppressed id? A maniacal lust to dominate others in the way the id lusts to dominate the other parts of the human personality? --It would take a wiser man than me to say what makes anyone else tick. I'll stick with Socrates' injunction to try to know myself a bit better. What little self-knowledge I can get usually takes me down a peg and makes me feel in need of forgiveness - a strangely satisfying emotion. We humans all need to cut our own poor tortured selves some slack - as well as all the other similarly tortured selves out there peopling this funny old world of ours. That old quack, Dr. Freud, was wrong about a lot of things, but I always thought there was something in his notion of the superego – the punishing censorious part of us that won’t let us feel joy in the use of our minds or pleasure in the use of our bones. He thought that this part of us, though it professed to be the keeper of a higher morality, was really allied with the id – the blind subconscious animal thing in us that is prior to intelligence and certainly prior to morality. This Dr. Hyde of the soul, when obstructed and thwarted in its natural outlets, would, he thought, express itself in a twisted way in self-lacerating gestures of morality. This all seems intuitively true, at least to me: Think of your typical Elmer Gantry or Jimmy Swaggart type. Think of your murderer of abortion doctors. Think of certain types on the left – the Unibomber, animal rights activitists at their most extreme, Greenpeace at times. The fury behind the self-righteous posturing of these folks has to me a primitive feel about it. The return of the suppressed id? A maniacal lust to dominate others in the way the id lusts to dominate the other parts of the human personality? –It would take a wiser man than me to say what makes anyone else tick. I’ll stick with Socrates’ injunction to try to know myself a bit better. What little self-knowledge I can get usually takes me down a peg and makes me feel in need of forgiveness – a strangely satisfying emotion. We humans all need to cut our own poor tortured selves some slack – as well as all the other similarly tortured selves out there peopling this funny old world of ours.

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