ABSTRACT
The history of the West has broken the balance between two polarities of the psyche: mania and depression. Mental times are increasingly accelerated: an apparently productive, functional trend. The mind that is considered “normal” is no longer halfway between those two extremes, but instead approaches the manic pole and rejects the necessary pauses for reflection and self-criticism. Also favored by mass communication, hastiness and superficiality then lead to the projection of internal conflicts outward: in this way, we look for enemies to whom we can attribute them. Yes, the Clash of Civilizations theory emphasizes undeniable differences, but it obtains mass diffusion by exploiting a pre-existing psychological imbalance: our propensity to mania and paranoia.
The West was born in Greece, which practiced self-restraint and self-criticism, but then conquered the world by making mania the norm. The other cultures were not necessarily like that. Before Columbus, China’s supremacy was such that it could have started a world conquest, but it chose to retire behind the Great Wall. Our haste and lack of self-analysis make our identity creak (the nucleus of the personality supposedly being stable, identical), putting functionality before it, which looks to immediate results. An example is provided by psychologists who agree to collaborate in the interrogation of detainees in American extrajudicial prisons such as Guantánamo, but in all fields daily concessions are made for commercial reasons. Similar sales of the Faustian soul, due to their fundamental unacceptability, are removed. Like all unconscious contradictions, they are denied and projected externally. The “clash between irreconcilable worlds” is also the transposition of an internal conflict that has long threatened our identity.
