Beyond The Primal Passion Of Politics

As the countdown begins towards the final showdown which will determine who becomes the 47th occupant of the White House, the whole world watches with 'shock and awe', to borrow a phrase from a different battlefield, as the bid to become the most powerful individual on earth degenerates into a slanging match, unparalleled in the annals of electioneering in US or elsewhere.

Power comes out of the barrel of a gun, said Mao. In today's US, power seems to come from a barrage of bombast, the more below-the-belt the better.

Politics is about the pursuit of power; war by verbal means. While Kamala Harris herself has largely displayed dignified restraint in her rhetoric, her supporters have matched Donald and his Trumpeters, invective for unbridled invective.

In the lexicon of the stock market the term 'animal spirits' refers to the irrational impulses, based on the primal reactions of greed and fear, which instigate the bull runs and the bear routs on bourses.

Similar emotions come to the fore when the power play of politics takes centre stage in public life. The quest for dominance of one candidate over another, one party over another, elicits responses from what neuroscience identifies as a limbic system of the human brain , comprising the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the thalamus, which govern our emotional and instinctive responses, favouring those which are prioritised for survival, including the 'fight or flight' physiological stimulus activated when faced with a real or imagined physical or psychological threat.

Scientists such as Carl Sagan have formulated an evolutionary theory of the 'triune' brain, which consists of the so-called R-complex, which is responsible for primal instincts, the limbic system which is in charge of emotions, and the neocortex which is the source of rational thought and behaviour.

In Freudian terms the triune brain is defined as the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, which together chart the geography of the human psyche. Freud saw the Id as the unconscious and deep-rooted amalgam of all uncontrolled desire. The Superego as the conscience, the moral and prescriptive authority, like a schoolmaster, which is adversarial to the Id. The mediator is the Ego, which seeks to find a viable balance between the two.

According to some commentators Freud may have, consciously or otherwise, borrowed his mechanistic formulation from the Vedic concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat is the choice-making agency, corresponding to the Freudian Ego, negotiating the alternatives between Chit, the meaning-seeking and rule-making Superego, and the Freudian Id becomes the transcendent Ananda, the supreme bliss of union with cosmic consciousness.

In Freudian terms, in the heat of the electoral fray, the Ego and the Superego have taken a backseat to the untrammelled Id, which is what we are witnessing in the contest for the US presidency .

However, whoever comes to occupy the White House, it is to be hoped that there will be no losers. As the Ego once again reasserts the rule of the Superego, ensuring that the presidency represents not a sectarian separation between opposing camps, but a wholeness of the body politic. The political passions of the Id expended, the war cry of MAGA might yet get a new iteration: Make Anger Go Away. Fingers crossed.

Authored by: Jug Suraiya