The Grasshopper

Chapter 125

“You’ve strived the entire time to find yourself in such a situation? I’ve concluded this from your biography,” Dr. Palladino said to the Grasshopper.

“That’s right.”

“When did you realize that the opportunity was that room that you are in and that command desk?”

“Very early on. As soon as I understood how the energy system was organized. Back in high school.”

“And at that same moment you wanted to sit at the command desk?”

“No. That developed within me over time. I cannot tell you the exact moment… Somewhere half way through university, I guess. That’s when I understood that the urge to kill would overpower sexual urge.”

“Eros and Thanatos?”

“Eros, yes, but only as libido. Everything around it is noise. As far as Thanatos is concerned, I agree that we can call it the primal instinct of death, but solely at the collective level.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the level of mankind. As humanity’s unique urge for self-destruction. At the individual level Thanatos is the drive to kill other people. It doesn’t represent man’s desire to return to inorganic matter, but to transform another living being into the non-living state. Our aggression does not appear because Eros has pushed Thanatos out of us and directed it towards other people. Our drive to kill is primal, seminal, basic. When we cannot satisfy it, when we are not in a situation to kill, that is when self-destruction emerges, the desire for one’s own death. As the just punishment for our incompetence, our failure.”

“This could be argued…”

“Certainly. But all that doesn’t matter, that was in the days when I was a student. It simply seemed to me that the urge to kill was so strong that it couldn’t be only the reflection of the urge for self-destruction. It was precisely then,” the Grasshopper continued, “as a young man, that I thought about the causes. But actually I haven’t been interested in them for a long time. I’m only dealing with the consequences. Just as you said, Dr. Palladino. You aren’t interested in whether the killer had an unhappy childhood.”

“I understand. Let’s go back to the beginning. You said that you understood that the urge to kill would overpower the libido.”

“Yes. The sexual act leads to the creation of new life. And killing represents the act of ending an existing life. People consider the satisfying of both urges to be immoral and sinful. The difference is that sex, unlike murder, is not persecuted and punished. This is why it took only one excuse for people to have sex: the birth of their progeny and survival of the species, so that…”

“Excuse me. I have to interrupt you…” said Dr. Palladino.

“Yes?”

“In your opinion, why is murder punished and sex isn’t?”

“Because of morals, ethics, God’s commandments…”

“And where did people get all that, if the killing instinct is so strong?”

“The Eros in people came up with that. It is that noise around the libido that I mentioned. It is the result of people’s fear that they will be killed. Fear for their own lives. And that fear was the only thing postponing the inevitable end of all life.”