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Arno Gruen, Verratene Liebe-Falsche Götter (Betrayed Love and False Gods) Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2003. 292 pp.
Arno Gruen sees "History as created from a combination of interactions of those who must conquer territories, nature, and other human beings, in order to salvage themselves, and those who hang onto false gods (these people) in order to secure their inner connectedness. Said differently, out of their passion to be great men, this set of men and women rejects all responsibility for their fellow human beings; in the meantime, the others have no strength for responsibility because they need evil in order to subject themselves to it." Already before the present administration settled in Washington, D.C., Gruen wrote that those in power are "the first to weaken those societal structures that give people a sense of security...They limit the social aspects of the budget, they reduce the means for social welfare, public transportation, the support for public works programs (but the means for the military and armaments are of course not cut)...In the end, such leaders do not care if everything collapses."
Gruen argues further that both leaders and followers grow up in similar settings. In the case of leaders, they learn to turn the humiliations they experienced as children, especially from their mothers, into hatred of others; that is, rather than integrating their experience or hating themselves, they turn their turmoil on others. Children want to be independent but...