DR NORWOOD AND THE WORLD IN CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22292, 19 June 1934, Page 4

DR NORWOOD AND THE WORLD IN CRISIS

By Dr. Stuart Moore

It has indeed been a privilege for Dunedin to have delivered to it by a finished orator, by so clear a thinker, and so accurate an observer as Dr Norwood, his masterly analysis of the world's crisis. He is, further, a man who cares not so much.about the literal truth of religious story but sees clearly what it means for us to-day. He calls on us to think internationally, but also maintains that the cause of the present crisis lies within men in their hearts, in the form of anti-social greed. The exercise of this. gre,ed threatens; the existence of each nation and of ' our civilisation. Dr Norwood does not tell us that we Bhould cease to be ready to kill ourselves, to die if need be, for a cause. On Sunday afternoon he said that we could not realise ourselves fully unless we had some ideal for which we lived and were, if necessary, ready to die. There is therefore nothing good or bad about an impulse to die. What makes the impulse good or bad is whether its aim is the conservation of our own interests and those of humanity or not. If a nation or a civilisation takes action that results in its destruction it is nevertheless' in its highest, interests if the action will result in the promotion of the highest.interests of mankind. In Europe representatives of the nations meet and argue the pros and cons of the situation, but despite the glaringly obvious fact that the policies of the nations threaten uselessly to destroy our civilisations, no sane conclusion is reached. The view of .the world's crisis that religion takes, as understood by Dr Norwood, is,, I wish to point out, exactly the same as that which, to my mind, the application to social questions of modern psychology, psycho-analysis, arrives 'at; but psycho-analysis carries us further into the depths of the problem and explains why ■ reasoning has failed so far to solve it. It is easy to parallel the present international situation in the nursery. There children squabble and make themselves miserable; no amount of reasoning will result in a satisfactory solution of their difficulties or lead to sane behaviour. The same condition ,of affairs can be seen in athletic and other clubs and in the social life of any community, vide the cricket controversy in England. It also can be seen in the life of a normal touchy indN vidual and in the mind of a neurotic or of an insane patient. Such people will argue the pros and cons of their situation without ever arriving at.any satisfactory or sane < conclusion. Psychoanalysis. . has shown that when such unreasonableness, and inability to reach a conclusion exist, it is because the real facts of "the. situation are. not being brought to light—that,: in fact, the individual is trying to settle one question by talking about an entirely different one which lies hidden in the secret depths of the mind. • ';'■', Dr Norwood says the nations are killing themselves, just, I would add and as he implies, as the touchy sensitive normal, or the neurotic or insane patient is in reality somehow destroying himself or his own interest. ' ~ '■ >■ , Now the real danger to the patient lies, not in the attacks' which he thinks the. world and people are making on him, but in his own unconscious desire to ruin himself. His constant greed for love or for material benefits, and his constant desire to defend himself arise from his fear of his own impulse to self-rmm Self-ruin has become for him a secret pleasure, but he is unaware of this fact. So it is with the nations. They feel guilty for the war and those nations that hated others most, now, unknown to themselves, aim most fully at their own destruction. Those nations which hated lea6t are most honest in their desire for peace. That nation to which the war wag a means of making money is today by 'its greed destroying itself financially. It has an overpowering impulse, unrecognised by itself, to ruin itself finanThe cause of the world crisis then is anti-social greed, but the greed is an attempt by the nations to conceal from themselves their wish to ruin themselves. The wish to ruin themselves is due to the guilt of the war and also to the guilt due to their enjoying unworthily, in their unconscious opinion, the pleasures that our civilisation brings them. This latter cause of guilt is absurd in fact, but nevertheless a real cause. _ It is only when men as individuals, and the nations as nations, make clearly.conscious the real question at issue—their intense wish to ruin themselves—that the cause of the present crisis can be criticised in the light of reality by them. At present each _ nation projects its own suicidal wish on to its neighbour, which it regards as desirous of attacking it. Every individual and every nation hates to be reminded of its unconscious wish for its own _destruction. The nations cannot realise that each is its/own most dangerous enemy.