Civilization and Its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur) is one of the most remarkable books of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud wrote his book in 1930 and explains main reasons of individual's discontents in civilization.
Freud starts his working with a very different question, though many people and philosophers asked the question “What is the purpose of life?” however unfortunately no one could not answer it, Freud asks “Can human behaviours give hints about the purpose of life?”
Human is pleasure oriented animal, all of our behaviours are driven according to two principles. One is positive and the other is negative. Feel pleasure and absence of pain and unpleasurable experiences. If human achieve these principles, then he would be happy.
Freud gives three options for pleasure. The first two options are the same with Pascal's. They are about present, powerful distractions (cultivating garden, scholarly activities, cooking etc.), substitutive satisfactions (which are illusions that contrasts with reality like art, painting or computer games – the last example is mine of course) and intoxicants.
Another three options follow for absence of pain and unpleasurable experiences. The superior power of nature (distractive forced upon us like falling, or bitten by animal), the frailty of our bodies (aging – dying etc.) and relations with other humans.
At that point Freud argues that the last subject, relations with others, is not clear.
Relations? Why do people relate in each other? There are two main reasons, one of them is sexual the other is economic. Sexual relation is needed to reproduce and economic is needed for distribution of Daily Works.
Many of people think like that ancient people and tribes were happier than us, civilized men. Why? What has been changed with civilization? Men, through his science and technology has produced in this World where every individual of his species must still make his entry as a helpless babe, formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience (gods) and has almost become a god himself. But why modern man does not feel happy with his god-like nature?
Lets look into civilization. Freud gives us four important values of civilization. Beauty, Cleanliness, Order and Justice. Well than what about individual liberty? Many of us think that we are free and civilization is existed for our liberty. But, Freud claims civilization is existed to restrict individual liberty by its order and laws.
So, there should be some human drives restricted by civilization and these must be discontents of civilization.
According to Freud's model, there are three parts of psychic apparatus, id, ego and super-ego. Id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends, the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. So the resource of instinctual drives are ID while super-ego is deciding good and evil ego is choosing realistic options.
Good and Evil thinks are subjective notions and they need to be taught by some authority. This authority will leave his place to super-ego day by day.
People are happy if they can act according to their ID, however civilization restricts their sexual desires. However, the love that founded the family, remains effective in civilization, both in its original form, in which direct sexual satisfaction is not renounved, and in its modified form as aim-inhibited affection. In both it continues to perform the function of binding together fairly large numbers of people.
After all, the sexual life of civilized man has been seriously damaged…
The other basic instinct of human which is restricted by civilization is aggresivity. While love combines people, aggresivity runs counter to this tendency and must either be repressed or be directed against a rival. (Coalition Theory – Age – Sex – CLASS, according to Freud this means Narcissism of Small Differences).
Human aggresive acts are repressed and punished by authority in his childhood and then by developed super-ego. Furthermore, while authority can not detect human's aggresive desire, super-ego Works like super police and it detects every desires of ID and taughts and as a result of this sense of guilt (need for punishment) is born. So there are two origins of sense of guilt fear of authority and fear of super-ego.
It also seems not good thing, many cultures especially which consists strong religious elements have been built on this sense. The religions have never ignored the part that a sense of guilt plays in civilization. Moreover they claim to redeem humanity from this sense of guilty, which they call sin, Or Fate is seen as replacing parental authority; if one suffers misfortune, this is because one is no longer loved by this supreme power, under the threat of such loss of love.
At the end of his working, Freud makes an anology and introduces new term Cultural Super Ego which is directed by civilization to individuals as an authority and the resource of sense of guilt and anxiety of civilization.
Think about a world, a brave new world, there is not any Cultural Super-Ego, people live according to their desires, no sexual restrictions, they can be happy by taking pills but healthy ones, all of their jobs are compatible with their powerful distractions which had been planned and organized before their birth in their genes. Would they be happy? If you wonder please visit New Brave World / Utopia or Dystopia ? entry.
