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Freud saw that when it comes to enemies and strangers, the ego can consign them to the limbo of death without even a second thought. Modern man lives in illusion, said Freud, because he denies or suppresses his wish for the other's death and for his own immortality; and it is precisely because of this illusion that mankind cannot get control over social evils like war. This is what makes war irrational: each person has the same hidden problem, and as antagonists obsessively work their cross purposes, the result is truly demonic; the film The Bridge on the River Kwai summed this up beautifully. Not only enemies but even friends and loved ones are fair fuel for our own perpetuation, said Freud: "In our unconscious we daily and hourly deport all who stand in our way, all who have offended or injured us." This is the price of our natural animal narcissism; very few of us, if pressured, would be unwilling to sacrfiice someone else in our place. The exception to this is of course the hero. We admire him precisely because he is willing to give his life for others instead of taking theirs for his. Heroism is an unusual reversal of routine values, and it is another thing that makes war so uplifting, as mankind has long known: war is a ritual for the emergence of heroes, and so for the transmutation of common, selfish values. In war men live their own ennbolement. But what we are reluctant to admit is that the admiration of the hero is a vicarious catharsis of our own fears, fears that are deeply hidden; and this is what plunges us into uncritical hero worship: what the hero does seems so superlative to us. Thus from another point of view we see how right Freud was on enslavement by our illusions based on our repressions.
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