A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

continuous act of choice. The weak people, those who make little effort of control, spend their lives
in a permanent state of mild discomfort, like a man who wants to rush to the lavatory. Blake says in
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: ‘Those who restrain their desire do so because theirs is weak
enough to be restrained’, and this is one of the few statements of that remarkable mystic that is
downright wrong-headed. (Admittedly, he is putting it into the mouth of the devil.) Beethoven was
notoriously explosive and irascible; but his ‘inhibitory force’ was also great enough to canalise the
destabilising force into musical creation.
It is obvious that Sika deer, Norwegian rats, lemmings, snow-shoe hares and other creatures that
have been observed to die of stress, lack control of the inhibitory force. Certainly all creatures must
possess some control of this force, or they would be totally unable to focus their energies or direct
their activities. But in animals, this control is completely bound up with external stimuli. A cat
watching a mouse hole, a dog lying outside the house of a bitch on heat, will show astonishing selfcontrol,
maintaining a high level of attention (that is, focused consciousness) for hours or even
days. But without external stimuli, the animal will show signs of boredom or fall asleep. Man is the
only animal whose way of life demands almost constant use of the inhibitory faculty.
We can see the problem of the Ik: they had no reason to develop the inhibitory faculty where
personal feelings were concerned. As hunter-gatherers, their lives had been very nearly as
uncomplicated as those of the animals with whom they shared their hunting grounds. Placed in a
situation that required a completely different set of controls, they became victims of their own
destabilising forces.
All of which suggests that, in the case of Kinzel’s prisoners, ‘personal space’ was not the real issue.
This can be grasped by repeating his experiment. The co-operation of a child will make the point
even clearer. Ask the child to stand in the centre of the room, then go on all fours and advance
towards him, making growling noises. The child’s first reaction is amusement and pleasurable
excitement. As you get nearer, the laughter develops a note of hysteria and, at a certain distance,
the child will turn and run. (It may be an idea to conduct the experiment with the child’s mother
sitting right behind him, so that he can take refuge in her arms.) More confident children may run at
you - a way of telling themselves that this is really only daddy.
Now reverse the situation, and take his place in the centre of the room, while some other adult
crawls towards you and makes threatening noises. You will observe with interest that although you
have set up the experiment, you still feel an impulse of alarm, and a release of adrenalin. To a large
extent, the destabilising mechanism is automatic.
You will also have the opportunity to note the extent to which you can apply the control
mechanism. The imagined threat triggers a flight impulse and raises your inner tension. One way of
releasing this tension is to give way to it. If you refuse to do this, you will be able to observe the
attempts of your stabilising mechanism - the C Force - to control the destabilising force. You will
observe that you still have a number of alternatives, depending on how far you choose to exert
control. You can allow yourself to feel a rush of alarm, but refuse to react to it. You can actively
suppress the rush of alarm. You may even be able, with a little practice, to prevent it from
happening at all.
I had a recent opportunity to observe the mechanism at an amusement park, where a small cinema
shows films designed to induce vertigo. The audience has to stand, and the screen is enormous and
curved. Carriages surge down switchbacks; toboggans hurtle across the ice and down ski-slopes;
the watchers soon begin to feel that the floor is moving underneath their feet. After twenty minutes