freud
A civilized people may be defined as a group of persons tied together by a common ethical code who systematically predict and control their collective ability to predict and control. The essential difference between civilized and uncivilized people is that among the latter there is no systematic group effort by its members to create machines for the benefit of the group as a whole, machines which require several persons to operate and which may not be used for several months or even several years after construction is begun on them. It is this notion of long-range planning and concern for the creativity of future generations which distinguishes the civilized person from the barbarian, who typically never has any vision beyond tomorrow, or the savage, who lives entirely in the present. The longer into the future the planning is projected, the more civilized is the society. Therefore, a civilization never comes into being or survives unless it is guided by a cooperative group of! persons who have a vision of and concern for the generations yet unborn. The vision of the future is always tied to the ethical code. You will recall that fundamental to Freud's view of civilization is the idea that human beings are essentially biological
In Civilization and its Discontents Freuds asserts that people derive their desires from an unconscious part of their mind called the id. The ego, or self, deals with the external world to give the id as much pleasure as possible which simultaneously avoiding pain. Freud decided that these desires are of two types: Eros (creative, desire for sex) and Thanatos (a desire to break/kill things). As a result of this idea, Freud concieves of people as having a terrible dilemma because they have two incompatiable goals: safety on the one hand, and sex and violence on the other. Freud says that civilizations are started to provided safety, but that they deprive us of sex and violence (and thus presumably happiness) by creating superegos which threaten us with bad feelings (e.g. guilt). Freud says that this means that too much civilization might not be worth it, and seems to hope that we can invent a society that give both safety and satisfaction to the desires of the id, but he thinks that this is unlikely. How does Freud deal with the fact that people seem to want other things? Freud decided that both Eros and Thanatos give people some kind of "energy" which can be diverted (not repressed: that is something else) into other areas, giving some kind of satisfaction. However, the energy that you expend on hobbies (or whatever) is "really" sexual energy, so you can neve
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Approximate Word count = 925
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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