This question is brought to light by the philosopher Freud in his book called Civilization and Its Discontents. It’s an interesting question, considering that civilization has always been something that we are taught to strive for since we are brought into this world. We are taught to hold the lives of others in the same value that we hold our own, which is then how we maintain a healthy society around us. If you ask anyone what the purpose of life is, with the exception of the possible religious answer, most people would agree that it is happiness. However, why would we attempt to make other people happy if the purpose of life is our own contentment? Freud starts off with saying there is no answer to the question of the meaning of life, because it is based off the false presumption that there is a purpose of human life. No one asks the purpose of an animals life is; therefore, it is only our own minds that leads to the idea that there is such a thing as a purpose to life.
Young doesn’t think this logic is as airtight as he seems to think it is, because since we can talk why wouldn’t we make goals and purpose for ourselves? And if animals could do the same, why wouldn’t they? But moving on, he does agree that we set goals for ourselves to pursue, even ultimate goals for our lives. This wouldn’t necessarily be considered a purpose, but rather just a task sought after. A purpose would entail a higher power greater than ourselves, that may or may not exist (it is obvious what Freud believes on this topic). This overall pursuit is usually universally agreed upon to be the pursuit of happiness. Freud defines happiness as the absence of pain combined with strong feelings of pleasure. According to Freud, the existence of civilization makes it impossible for true happiness to occur, because happiness does not account for the happiness of others.
Basically, if you are making any effort to help someone other than yourself, you can’t be experiencing true happiness. There are three principle sources of suffering: external nature, one’s own body and other human beings, the sacrifices we have to make to cohabit with them, the constraints placed on us by civilization. No matter how hard we try, these constraints that adjust the mutual relations among human beings in the family, the state and society, will always be inadequate to prevent our interaction with other human beings to not be a source of suffering. In other words, anything that you do to live with other humans peacefully that wouldn‘t do otherwise is a source of suffering because you are having to comply with doing something that you do not want to do, According to Freud, there is an aspect of us that is an unconquerable nature that is always at odds with the entire idea of civilization. It is the primitive nature within us that goes against the restrictions that must be imposed on us for civilization and society to exist at all.
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Therefore, social life is the source of all suffering, because the other sources have been dealt with sufficiently. This brings us back to the central question, which is “Is civilization worth it’? Many people would think it is worth it. He says there must have been a negative feeling towards civilization during the victory of Christianity over the heathen religions in the Roman Empire. They seemed to consider their religion superior to a human life, which completely revolts the whole concept of civilization and functioning society Freud believes that the concept of civilization goes against our two most prominent primal instincts, sexuality and aggression. It comes from his belief that to have a functioning society, you have to dissipate sexuality and aggression to some extent, to an uncomfortable extent at that. Freud believes that there is an incompatibility between civilization and a life of rich sexual satisfaction.
Civilization is the incorporation of small into larger social unities, the basic unit of social life being the family. But the family cannot come into existence without a diversion of the sexual instinct. If one only cared about the object of sexual pleasure then one would not care for one’s children. Therefore, the love of sexual pleasure has to be aimed towards an object to love rather than its immediate, natural object of the sexual pleasure itself, Young then comments that it is odd that Freud thinks that this an effect of civilization, because love of offspring seems to be a natural feeling in most species. However, Freud then goes on to explain that this protectiveness of family will not by itself create a functional society. If we only care for our own families, this isn’t really civilization, but just going by the primal instinct to protect our family. So the sexual instinct must be sublimated further into a generalized concern for others, or at least a friendliness towards the members of their society.
But why can’t we live a life that is both full of sexual pleasure and engaged in the works of Civilization? Freud’s answer is that it is a matter of economic necessity, there is only a limited quantity of libidinal energy that civilization uses up completely, and can’t be used for natural sexual behavior. For this reason, society has oppressed the individual with respect to the sexual instinct. It has done this by surrounding sexuality with taboos, which are instilled into us at a young age. Sex is to be restricted to monogamous contact between one man and one woman, and even then it should not happen often, but ratherjust for the purpose of reproduction. Anything else- such as homosexuality or incest- is labeled as a perversion because any use of sex besides reproduction is considered counterproductive from the point of view of civilization. Civilization is built around families of a man, a woman, and their children.
Therefore, this is the only place sex has in society. Sexuality has been so oppressed, that one cannot fully enjoy a life of rich, sexual pleasure, The second major instinct that is at ends with civilization is aggression. Basically, in the pre-civilized world where there was private property, aggression reigned because we are naturally possessive and aggressive. Freud believes that we have a death instinct, or that we have a primal pull to destroy. This is interesting, because it is quite the opposite of the other instinct of sexuality, since its main purpose is to create, It basically insinuates that we have strong opposing forces within ourselves that want to create life yet destroy it at the same time. This View also goes strongly against the idea of a God, because we are supposed to be created in his image, which makes it a very controversial concept, All one has to do to see that ‘men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves’ is to free one’s mind of sentimental preconceptions. The civilization deals with aggression is through rules and regulations, and raising children with the correct preconceptions.
There is no innate sense of good and evil, like most seem to believe, Rather, we are taught from a young age to distinguish between the two so that we have an internal monitor our behavior, or our conscience There are many advantages to this tactic, because it nips a lot of the person’s aggression in the bud, When they act out as a child, the parent withdraws love from them The child will then redirect their aggression towards themselves through the feeling of guilt, which they create themselves to force themselves to behave the way their parent sees fit. This also makes it to that we aren‘t getting rid of aggression, but rather directing it into a harmless resource, this could hold detrimental effects on individual happiness though, for we have not dispelled the feelings that create aggression. We still hate and condemn, and wish for death, which we will then feel guilty for, because this is not the feeling we are supposed to have, or so we have been taught.
Freud does not directly answer his own question in the end, but he does make it clear what his answer would be if you were to ask it of him He says that he can listen without indignation to someone that says that civilization isn‘t worth it, He also states that we are better off in our years of pie-civilization, when we could achieve happiness at least for a little while He does make it clear that he doesn’t think you can live this lifestyle for long, for many obvious reasons. However, we have chosen to sacrifice our fulfilled happiness for time security. Or in other words, we have decided to give up our happiness to live longer in a civilization. There are several parts of his argument that I wouldn’t entirely agree with, but I think the main thing is that he apparently thinks that happiness means not having to control ones urges. He believes that since civilization dictates that we control our urges for sexuality and aggression that we can’t live life of happiness. There are so many reasons why this is not the case, one of them being that those aren’t the only two urges that a human being experiences.
Those are indeed are two of the most primal instincts that a person can have, but there are many urges that I would consider stronger because they are more individual to human beings For instance, the feeling of comradery is a very strong feeling and dictates most of the decisions we make in life. We are willing to do many things for a friend or a potential friend that we wouldn’t usually even consider. Freud might say that this is because we think we have to do it, therefore sacrificing another facet of our happiness. However, this is stilljudging happiness off the basis of not controlling our urges, I also don’t see how controlling an urge means not being happy; on the contrary, I have seen many instances where controlling an urge has made me happier than I would’ve been. For instance, I have the urge to eat anything with sugar in it, but if I control that urge and eat something healthy instead I will physically feel much better, and be happier. I also don’t see how people naturally want to death to occur.
Even animals don‘t have that, unless they need to kill for food, but that is just a survival instinct. In general, people don’t like death; in fact, almost no one likes death. There are the freaks that murder people for no reason, but even some murderers have an incentive for it other than wanting to murder, Also, he says that we are taught to believe that anything fun- such as homosexuality or incest— is considered perverse because it does not fulfil the qualifications of civilization. First of all, this doesn’t make any sense, because sex between a man and a woman is a lot of fun. How do you explain the concept of rape if it‘s not fun for someone? Furthermore, the reason these have been considered perverse is mainly because of religious bias. However, there are practical reasons too, such as birth defects seen in cases of incest, or the sexually transmitted diseases created from homosexuality. His logic on this topic is ill-conceived, which doesn’t necessarily make it wrong, but it definitely isn‘t going to convince anyone with a logical mind. Overall, his arguments are valid, as in the structure of the argument itself. However, there are too many holes in the reasoning and logic behind the argument.
