Life force and death instinct
I now can comment on another of your statements. You are amazed that it is so easy to infect men with the war-fever, and you surmise that man has in him an active instinct for hatred and destruction, amenable to such stimulations. I entirely agree with you. I believe in the existence of this instinct and have been recently at pains to study its manifestations. In this connexion may I set out a fragment of that knowledge of the instincts, which we psychoanalysts, after so many tentative essays and gropings in the dark, have compassed? We assume that human instincts are of two kinds: those that conserve and unify, which we call “erotic” (in the meaning Plato gives to Eros in his Symposium), or else “sexual” (explicitly extending the popular connotations of “sex”); and, secondly, the instincts to destroy and kill, which we assimilate as the aggressive or destructive instincts. These are, as you perceive, the well-known opposites, Love and Hate, transformed into theoretical entities; they are, perhaps, another aspect of those eternal polarities, attraction and repulsion, which fall within your province. But we must be chary of passing over hastily to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is every whit as indispensable as its opposite and all the phenomena of life derive from their activity, whether they work in concert or in opposition. It seems that an instinct of either category can operate but rarely in isolation; it is always blended (“alloyed”, as we say) with a certain dosage of its opposite, which modifies its aim or even, in certain circumstances, is a prime condition of its attainment. Thus the instinct of self-preservation is certainly of an erotic nature, but to gain its ends this very instinct necessitates aggressive action. In the same way the love-instinct, when directed to a specific object, calls for an admixture of the acquisitive instinct if it is to enter into effective possession of that object. It is the difficulty of isolating the two kinds of instinct in their manifestations that has so long prevented us from recognizing them. If you will travel with me a little further on this road, you will find that human affairs are complicated in yet another way. Only exceptionally does an action follow on the stimulus of a single instinct. As a rule several motives of similar composition concur to bring about the act. When a nation is summoned to engage in war, a whole gamut of human motives may respond to this appeal; high and low motives, some openly avowed, others slurred over. The lust for aggression and destruction is certainly included; the innumerable cruelties of history and man’s daily life confirm its prevalence and strength. The stimulation of these destructive impulses by appeals to idealism and the erotic instinct naturally facilitates their release. Musing on the atrocities recorded on history’s page, we feel that the ideal motive has often served as a camouflage for the lust of destruction; sometimes, as with the cruelties of the Inquisition, it seems that, while the ideal motives occupied the foreground of consciousness, they drew their strength from the destructive instincts submerged in the unconscious. Both interpretations are feasible. I would like to dwell a little longer on this destructive instinct which is seldom given the attention that its importance warrants. With the least of speculative efforts we are led to conclude that this instinct functions in every living being, striving to work its ruin and reduce life to its primal state of inert matter. Indeed, it might well be called the “death-instinct”; whereas the erotic instincts vouch for the struggle to live on. The death instinct becomes an impulse to destruction when, with the aid of certain organs, it directs its action outwards, against external objects. The living being, that is to say, defends its own existence by destroying foreign bodies. But, in one of its activities, the death instinct is operative within the living being and we have sought to trace back a number of normal and pathological phenomena to this introversion of the destructive instinct. We have even committed the heresy of explaining the origin of human conscience by some such “turning inward” of the aggressive impulse. Obviously when this internal tendency operates on too large a scale, it is no trivial matter, rather a positively morbid state of things; whereas the diversion of the destructive impulse towards the external world must have beneficial effects. Here is then the biological justification for all those vile, pernicious propensities which we now are combating. We can but own that they are really more akin to nature than this our stand against them, which, in fact, remains to be accounted for. The upshot of these observations, as bearing on the subject in hand, is that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies. In some happy corners of the earth, they say, where nature brings forth abundantly whatever man desires, there flourish races whose lives go gently by, unknowing of aggression or constraint. This I can hardly credit; I would like further details about these happy folk.
From our “mythology” of the instincts we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment between man and man must serve us as war’s antidote. These ties are of two kinds. First, such relations as those towards a beloved object, void though they be of sexual intent. The psychoanalyst need feel no compunction in mentioning “love” in this connexion; religion uses the same language: Love thy neighbour as thyself. A pious injunction easy to enounce, but hard to carry out! The other bond of sentiment is by way of identification. All that brings out the significant resemblances between men calls into play this feeling of community, identification, whereon is founded, in large measure, the whole edifice of human society. In your strictures on the abuse of authority I find another suggestion for an indirect attack on the war-impulse. That men are divided into leaders and the led is but another manifestation of their inborn and irremediable inequality. The second class constitutes the vast majority; they need a high command to make decisions for them, to which decisions they usually bow without demur. In this context we would point out that men should be at greater pains than heretofore to form a superior class of independent thinkers, unamenable to intimidation and fervent in the quest for truth, whose function it would be to guide the masses dependent on their lead. There is no need to point out how little the rule of politicians and the Church’s ban on liberty of thought encourage such a new creation. The ideal conditions would obviously be found in a community where every man subordinated his instinctive life to the dictates of reason. Nothing less than this could bring about so thorough and so durable a union between men, even if this involved the severance of mutual ties of sentiment. But surely such a hope is utterly Utopian, as things are. The other indirect methods of preventing war are certainly more feasible, but entail no quick results. They conjure up an ugly picture of mills that grind so slowly that, before the flour is ready, men are dead of hunger. But why do we, you and I and many another, protest so vehemently against war, instead of just accepting it as another of life’s odious importunities? For it seems a natural thing enough, biologically sound and practically unavoidable. I trust you will not be shocked by my raising such a question. For the better conduct of an inquiry it may be well to don a mask of feigned aloofness. The answer to my query may run as follows:
Because every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will; it ravages material amenities, the fruits of human toil, and much besides. Moreover wars, as now conducted, afford no scope for acts of heroism according to the old ideals and, given the high perfection of modern arms, war today would mean the sheer extermination of one of the combatants, if not of both. This is so true, so obvious, that we can but wonder why the conduct of war is not banned by general consent/Doubtless either of the points I have just made is open to debate. It may be asked if the community, in its turn, cannot claim a right over the individual lives of its members. Moreover, all forms of war cannot be indiscriminately condemned; so long as there are nations and empires, each prepared callously to exterminate its rival, all alike must be equipped for war. But we will not dwell on any of these problems; they lie outside the debate to which you have invited me. I pass on to another point, the basis, as it strikes me, of our common hatred of war. It is this: we cannot do otherwise than hate it. Pacifists we are, since our organic nature wills us thus to be. Hence it comes easy to us to find arguments that justify our standpoint. This point, however, calls for elucidation. Here is the way in which I see it. The cultural development of mankind (some, I know, prefer to call it civilization) has been in progress since immemorial antiquity. To this phenomenon we owe all that is best in our composition, but also much that makes for human suffering. Its origins and causes are obscure, its issue is uncertain, but some of its characteristics are easy to perceive The psychic changes which accompany this process of cultural change are striking, and not to be gainsaid. They consist in the progressive rejection of instinctive ends and a scaling down of instinctive reactions. Sensations which delighted our forefathers have become neutral or unbearable to us; and, if our ethical and aesthetic ideals have undergone a change, the causes of this are ultimately organic. On the psychological side two of the most important phenomena of culture are, firstly, a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life, and, secondly, an introversion of the aggressive impulse, with all its consequent benefits and perils. Now war runs most emphatically counter to the psychic disposition imposed on us by the growth of culture; we are therefore bound to resent war, to find it utterly intolerable. With pacifists like us it is not merely an intellectual and affective repulsion, but a constitutional intolerance, an idiosyncrasy in its most drastic form. And it would seem that the aesthetic ignominies of warfare play almost as large a part in this repugnance as war’s atrocities. How long have we to wait before the rest of men turn pacifist? Impossible to say, and yet perhaps our hope that these two factors man’s cultural disposition and a well-founded dread of the form that future wars will take may serve to put an end to war in the near, future, is not chimerical. But by what ways or by-ways this will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war.—(Concluded)
(With publication of this Part-II of the article the article is concluded. The Author is research Fellow at United Nations World Peace Institute. Views are exclusively his own)
India needs more women leaders in health care
Shagun Sabarwal
Development by and for women is at the centre of India’s vision for inclusive growth. The Union Budget’s Nari Shakti initiatives reinstated this by equipping women with tools to steer change and lead the way towards a brighter tomorrow. Leaders have the power to transform, and women are integral to this change story. In contexts where structural inequalities are endemic and support systems are fragile, such as in India, strong leaders can bring about positive, lasting change in people’s lives. Effective leadership depends on intentional investment and creating opportunities to level the playing field. Health leadership is largely centred on the ability to identify priorities, provide strategic direction to multiple actors within the health system and create commitment across the health sector. As health systems change, the leadership must modify and respond to political, technological, social, and economic developments that are essential for strengthening the health system. With the pandemic revealing the fragility of existing systems and the need for timely, efficient decision-making, it is critical to relook at our investments such that the health leadership at all levels is inclusive, diverse and equitable. Reaching leadership positions has proven to be especially rare for women, and the health sector is no different. As per a study published in the medical journal Lancet in 2021, women represent 71% of the global health care workforce and though both men and women progress similarly in this field in their early careers, women are five times more likely to face disruptions in their pathways. This gender gap in global health leadership is particularly troubling because women’s health and reducing unjust health inequalities are central to the field. Addressing this gap will not in itself solve all women’s health problems. But it is a first step that is overdue. The Indian landscape is aligned with global trends — women are not commonly found in senior positions in our country’s health domain. To change this across the country, gender discrimination, unpaid work, absence of agency, lack of networks and support systems are some factors that need to be addressed. Studies establish that placing more women in leadership positions not only increases organisational productivity but maximises the value of the female workforce. Having women at the front and centre of decision-making processes can help integrate nuances of our social fabric in policies. For instance, in India, women’s and children’s health are areas of concern with more than half of the cohort being anaemic and a large proportion suffering from malnutrition. In adolescent girls, anaemia has actually gone up from 54% (2015-16) to 59% (2019-21), as per the National Family Health Survey-5. These issues are closely related to socio-cultural factors such as early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and unsafe abortion, which lead to compromised nutritional and health status among young girls and their children.
Optimising pathways to accelerate women’s leadership requires breaking away from socio cultural beliefs and making equal opportunities available to all. The Union Budget’s Nari Shakti initiatives reinstated this by equipping women with tools to steer change and lead the way towards a brighter tomorrow.
Further, with women taking up most of the household work, they are exposed to the threats of neglected tropical diseases such as lymphatic filariasis. Often, they don’t even seek care on time, unless their husbands or guardians agree. These intersecting challenges must be accounted for while designing solutions. Significantly, the Nari Shakti initiative and Mission Shakti were re-launched in the Budget session to deliver unified citizen-centric support for women through integrated care and safety, rehabilitation, for women as they progress through life. This is a step in the right direction. Having more women at the head of decision-making tables is urgent, to introduce more interventions, address social barriers, build resilient, inclusive health systems and for diverse perspectives to be integrated into health resource allocation, research policies and financing. We must make more concerted and intentional efforts to accelerate women’s leadership in health and optimise pathways to this. This requires changing perspectives, breaking away from deep-rooted socio cultural beliefs and making equal opportunities available to all. Only by believing in and working towards gender transformative leadership can we ensure that policy decisions benefit all and bring intergenerational change.
Empowering contract workforce through better technology
Sumeet Doshi
Today as India marches ahead in the global economy, organizations are understanding how important the workforce is to a sustainable business and investing significantly to be recognized as a great workplace. Even as companies are outdoing themselves in their attempts to woo the best of talent through their doors, and digital transformation initiatives are proceeding at full-speed, there is one very large and significant area that most organizations fail to notice– the inclusion of the contract workforce in their digitization plans. Given how significant contract workforce is in any organization’s workforce strategy, it is puzzling as to how under-represented this group is when it comes to technology interventions. Today contract workforce management tools are largely seen as tools to automate compliance management. In fact, most organizations feel that their obligation to the contract workforce is just to comply with the minimum standards set by the government and other regulatory authorities. However, it is a fact even in some of the largest organizations in India, contract workforce continues to be managed by fragmented systems administered at the security gates and a bulk of the process is managed through physical paper and at times even scraps of paper with highly unintelligible scrawls on them. The sole purpose of such systems seems to be is to provide organizations with a semblance of compliance administration. A common reason for the low technology penetration in the past has been a perception that the contract workforce segment is highly fragmented and technology adoption will be difficult given the skill level of the workers themselves. While this might have been true a few years ago, over the past couple of years India has made significant strides around technology adoption, even more so during the pandemic. Even the smallest of vendors today are conversant in digital payments and every household has multiple mobile data users. So why then this reluctance in Corporate India adopting better technology for their extended workforce? Access to data and technology could make a world of difference to the workers themselves. Even today there are instances where the contract worker continues to be exploited with contractors resorting to irregular payments, incorrect PF contributions and many of their rights like bonus payouts, paid leave etc. being conveniently ignored. Most workers do not even realize what they lose as they have no visibility into their own data.
Better access to technology has been proven to motivate and empower the workforce. And a more motivated and empowered workforce is the key to ensuring that that talent pool continues to expand and grow in a way that benefits the industry and the economy.
While organizations are entrusted with the principal employer obligation of ensuring that these workers are fairly treated, doing so becomes a mammoth task when dealing with manual processes and paper. It becomes that much easier for contractors with dubious intentions to falsify records and resort to payment irregularities. Digitizing the contract workforce management process can resolve some of these issues as well as provide contract workers with access to data that ensures their basic rights are being upheld. However it is important to note that managing compliance should not be the sole objective of any digital intervention. A process well managed not only ensures compliance to the laws, but also provides opportunity to optimization which in turn can save costs and improve productivity. Visibility to contract workforce costs across contractors, locations and job types can provide insights to organizations on talent pools and better ways to source them. In the past organizations were wary around providing common benefits to their contract workforce and permanent staff due perceived risk around the labor laws. Part of that involved the use of common technology for the different categories of workers. This reluctance in turn has resulted in almost a different cultural experience for the different worker groups within the same organization. It is common for contract workforce to feel marginalized compared to their counterparts who are under direct employment. Industrial conflicts due to perceived injustice are not uncommon and have been ongoing over the past few decades. However with the current labour codes becoming more clear and transparent in the definition of the contract workforce and the role of the principal employer, this threat no longer exists. Also, with organizations looking to minimize inequities and promote fairness and inclusivity, the inclusion of the contract workforce seems only a very natural progression. But the biggest advantage itself is around how better technology can impact employee morale and motivation. Contract workforce has been and continues to be the base talent pool for most organizations. Better access to technology has been proven to motivate and empower the workforce. And a more motivated and empowered workforce is the key to ensuring that that talent pool continues to expand and grow in a way that benefits the industry and the economy.
Back to school
Sudipta Bhattacharjee
The website of the Union ministry of health and family welfare puts active Covid cases in the country at less than 0.5 per cent and alerts about a new, severe variant of the virus. Yet, there is a visible lowering of guard. The overwhelming impact of this changed scenario, especially with the reopening of educational institutions in West Bengal this month, is being felt by students. For almost two years, through an uncertain path of no lessons followed by a prolonged phase of online classes, the teaching-learning mechanism underwent an unprecedented metamorphosis. A young colleague, whose son had enrolled in nursery at a reputed Calcutta school on the eve of the lockdown, said the child has taken her presence for granted during online classes. Each time he darts away to clamber up the window, or decides to lie down, she yanks him up and ensures that he listens attentively to the teacher. But not all parents are such disciplinarians. “I could see grandmothers on screen frequently cajoling the child with food. There were parents prompting answers, often wrong ones, instead of allowing a child to think,” she said, adding that she was grappling with major teething troubles as her child was now refusing to go to school without her. Another woman, however, said her five-year-old was raring to get his first taste of school after the prolonged online phase. “He is looking forward to playing with his friends and I have explained that I will not be present there, only his teacher,” she said. Teenaged students, quite adept at hoodwinking teachers by switching off their laptop cameras, citing “network issues”, now have to sit through the entire class. “We can no longer log out after giving attendance,” rued a first-year pupil. In online mode, those who were absent could fall back on recorded versions of classes (till Google stopped the facility this month) because that is no longer an option. The transition has had an impact on teachers too. While most had struggled with online teaching, some had been able to utilize the time saved on commutes over the past two years to upgrade skills and multi-task better. Niranjan Goswami, a professor at Chandernagore College, said: “The online-to-offline mode is a welcome transition. A general disinterest had set in among students in online classes. Turning into alphabets, they remained inscrutable and absent in many ways. We realised the importance of facial, gestural communication and the inadequacy of the merely verbal.”
With a modicum of normalcy visible for the time being, the deplorable advertisement portraying a harmless young elephant as the symbol of the coronavirus will hopefully come to an end. Or does the government think the pandemic has robbed us of finer sensibilities?
A teacher of a government college in Calcutta added: “I have always loved an interactive classroom, so online class was a big dampener. The laptop screen displayed some fixed faces who would react only if a question was asked. Online classes, however, were a learning experience for me, a Net immigrant. What I missed most was the changing expressions on students’ faces. With the Covid wave being on the wane, offline classes have been restored and I am back to conventional modes of teaching. The tense and lighter moments of a classroom, the drama that breaks out when a student gives a counter-argument, are back. They are eagerly looking at me and I am happy being face-to-face with them.” The college principal, Ajanta Paul, was more circumspect: “The change from online to offline education is not a simple return to the traditional pedagogical mode. In the current scenario, which requires a phased accommodation of students in a blended mode, the challenges are many but hopefully things will be sorted out in due course.” With a modicum of normalcy visible for the time being, the deplorable advertisement portraying a harmless young elephant as the symbol of the coronavirus will hopefully come to an end. Or does the government think the pandemic has robbed us of finer sensibilities?
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