Cain kills Abel, Cain's children killed seven, 00:00:00

Cain's grandchildren killed seventyfold, 00:00:05

And then Tubal-Cain pops up on the horizon, 00:00:07

and he's the person who makes artifices of war. 00:00:10

And so the story, in its fragmentary manner, 00:00:14

ties the individual psychopathology that's resentful and revenge-seeking 00:00:17

to the proclivity for broad scale warfare. 00:00:23

And this really hit me, because I was interested particularly 00:00:25

in what was happening in the Nazi camps with the guards. 00:00:29

Because the guards were gratuitously cruel. 00:00:33

And I was very curious about that. 00:00:36

So, here's an interesting story. This was in a book called 'Ordinary Germans: Hitler's Willing Executioners.' 00:00:38

And it was a book that was written about thirty years ago 00:00:44

that challenged the idea that the Nazi phenomena was top down order following. 00:00:47

Which I don't believe, by the way. 00:00:51

I think that that's a very weak hypothesis. 00:00:53

Fascistic societies are fascistic in every single level of organization. 00:00:57

Spiritually, within the family, within the local community. 00:01:01

It's like a holograph. It's the same absolutely everywhere. 00:01:05

It's not top down. I mean, there are leaders who get produced, and maybe they catalyze it. 00:01:07

But to blame it on the leaders is to forget about the process by which the leaders come to be. 00:01:11

So, no, you don't get a pass that way. 00:01:17

So here's one of the things that happened. 00:01:20

As the Nazis started to lose the war... 00:01:24

So, here's what you should have done if you were a Nazi 00:01:27

and wanted to win the war. 00:01:29

You should have enslaved the Jews and the Gypsies, and had them work. Right? 00:01:30

You should have had them work for the benefit of the victory. 00:01:34

And then, if you wanted to, you liquidate them afterwards. 00:01:38

That's the logical thing to do if you want to win. 00:01:40

And we assume that Hitler wanted to win. 00:01:43

But that's not a very intelligent assumption. 00:01:45

Why would you assume that? He wasn't exactly a good guy. 00:01:48

So, why should we assume that he was aiming at the good that he was promoting 00:01:51

even in his own terms? 00:01:55

Right, the glorious, everlasting Third Reich. Right? That would rule for a thousand years 00:01:56

and be a bastion of civilization and music, 00:02:02

because that's the sort of thing that he purported to be interested in. 00:02:05

Well, so what do you do with the Jews and the Gypsies? 00:02:07

Well, round them up, fine. Enslave them, fine. You don't kill them. 00:02:10

You certainly don't devote a substantial proportion of your war resources, 00:02:14

while you're losing, to accelerate the rate at which the extermination is taking place. 00:02:19

Because that's a bit counterproductive. 00:02:24

Unless what you're aiming at is the maximum possible mayhem in the shortest period of time. 00:02:26

Well, so what happened as the Germans started to lose the war? 00:02:30

Did Hitler lose faith in his own ability? 00:02:34

No, he believed that the Germans had betrayed him with weakness, 00:02:36

and so he was perfectly willing to accelerate the rate at which Germany was losing the war. 00:02:39

And so, when Hitler and his minions had the choice, here's the choice: 00:02:44

You can suspend your unnecessary demolition of people, win the damn war, 00:02:48

and then pick it up afterwards. 00:02:53

Or, while you're losing, you could just accelerate the mayhem, even though it's counterproductive. 00:02:55

It's like, what did they pick? Well, they picked to accelerate the mayhem. 00:02:59

So, to me, there's an old psychoanalytic idea -- I think this was derived by Jung -- 00:03:04

If you can't figure out what someone's doing, or why, 00:03:08

look at the outcome. And infer the motivation. 00:03:12

If it produces mayhem, perhaps it was aiming at mayhem. 00:03:17

Now, you know, you have to use that dictum carefully. 00:03:22

If someone's irritating you, you know, maybe it's because you're irritable and you should sort yourself out. ;) 00:03:25

But maybe it's because they're actually aiming at irritating you. 00:03:29

And that's the actual motivation. So, perhaps not, but it's another tool in your analytical armament. 00:03:33

So... And so, you see, well, this is the thing about warfare that's so interesting. 00:03:40

About... about... Because you can attribute it to territoriality. 00:03:47

You can attribute it to a war for resources, 00:03:50

that's what the, I would say, wretchedly simpleminded economists presume. 00:03:53

People fight over scarce resources. 00:04:02

It's like, hey, we're a little bit more sophisticated than that. 00:04:05

And, first of all, what resources are we talking about? 00:04:08

The bloody Inuit had nothing. They lived perfectly well. 00:04:11

What did they have? Snow and seal blubber. 00:04:14

You know, people can live in unbelievably deprived conditions. 00:04:16

And so the idea that there are natural resources that we fight over 00:04:20

because there's a shortage of them is a pretty oversimplified view of human beings. 00:04:24

It's like, well, why do people fight? 00:04:28

Well, maybe they fight sometimes for good reasons. 00:04:29

But very, very frequently, they fight for bad reasons. 00:04:32

And those bad reasons are personal, as well as socio-cultural and economic. 00:04:35

You know, if you were a Nazi prison guard, for example, 00:04:40

whatever pathologies you were carrying around in your destructive little soul, 00:04:42

whatever element of Cain was deeply embedded in you, 00:04:46

had the opportunity to be manifest fully at every moment of your waking existence. 00:04:48

You had these people who were completely beholden to you, 00:04:53

with no rights whatsoever, to whom you could do 00:04:57

whatever your evil little heart determined. 00:04:59

And think, well, maybe that was the motivation for putting them there to begin with. 00:05:02

And all the cover story about, well, we're trying to build the Third Reich, 00:05:05

and we're trying to stabilize the state, and we're trying 00:05:08

to do all these good things. 00:05:11

Maybe that's just a cover story for the real motivation. 00:05:12

Which is nothing but... but what? 00:05:14

The construction of death camps that killed 6 million people. How about that? 00:05:17

And the obliteration of 120 million people on the planet. 00:05:20

And the leaving of European ruins. Maybe that was the motivation. 00:05:23

Or are we going to attribute to Hitler the highest possible motives? 00:05:30

I'd say, no, it's an archetypal manifestation of Cain. 00:05:33

Now, he's going to put up a front that says, 'I'm your saviour.' 00:05:36

It's like, well, destructive people think that Cain is their saviour. 00:05:40