July 29, 2026
Freud, War, and Band FOMO
Thanatos Rising
Einstein and Freud asked why war happens, and readers spiraled into band-envy
TLDR: The article revisits a 1930s exchange where Einstein asked Freud to explain why wars happen, as Europe was sliding toward catastrophe. In the comments, readers swerved hard into bittersweet humor, with one standout lamenting never starting a college rock band.
This wasn’t just a history piece about Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud swapping letters on war and peace in the shadow of rising fascism. In true comment-section fashion, the big academic mood got immediately hijacked by a gloriously human reaction: one reader, effnorwood, confessed they now regret never starting a college rock band. Honestly? That may be the most relatable response possible to an essay that opens with a writer remembering his own band blasting a furious version of “Peace, Love and Understanding.”
The article itself is heavy stuff: Einstein, the world-famous physicist, asks Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, to explain why people go to war. Both men are staring down a terrifying political moment in 1930s Europe, with Hitler on the rise and the future looking bleak. There’s tragedy, irony, and a grim sense that even giant minds can’t neatly solve human violence in a letter.
But the community mood? Half wistful, half darkly amused. The hottest take is basically: forget the League of Nations drama for a second, why didn’t I become cooler in college? It turns the whole piece into a mini meme about intellectual history meeting indie-band nostalgia. No huge flame war erupted here, but there is a delicious contrast between the article’s world-historical stakes and the comment section’s deeply personal FOMO. Classic internet: mankind wrestles with death, and someone in the back is mourning the band they never formed.
Key Points
- •The article connects changing cultural attitudes toward peace, illustrated through two versions of Nick Lowe’s song, to a historical examination of war and pacifism.
- •In 1931–1932, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, linked to the League of Nations, prompted Albert Einstein to begin a written exchange with Sigmund Freud on the question 'Why War?'
- •Einstein and Freud had previously met in Berlin in 1926 during Freud’s visit to see his son Ernst.
- •The article situates the correspondence amid the rise of Nazism, with Einstein later leaving Europe and Freud remaining in Vienna under increasingly dangerous conditions.
- •The Einstein-Freud letters were later published in German, French, and English, translated into English by Stuart Gilbert, but the pamphlet was barred from distribution in Germany.