First published in 1927, this book illustrates how to think from one of the greats, who was writing at a time when despite political upheaval prominent thinkers were more able to speak their minds than today. In this thread I will gradually work through the most interesting ideas in The Future of an Illusion with commentary.
Sigmund Freud wrote:
When one has lived for quite a long time in a particular civilization and has often tried to discover what its origins were and along what path it has developed, one sometimes also feels tempted to take a glance in the other direction and to ask what further fate lies before it and what transformations it is destined to undergo. But one soon finds that the value of such an enquiry is diminished from the outset by several factors. Above all, because there are only a few people who can survey human activity in its full compass. Most people have been obliged to restrict themselves to a single, or a few, fields of it. But the less a man knows about the past and the present the more insecure must prove to be his judgement of the future.
The opening words of The Future of an Illusion illustrate that logical analysis of big questions regarding human culture is restricted to a very small group who have interest and capacity in such topics. Freud sets out a prophetic agenda, asking how the past constrains the future. His scientific attitude means that his ideas on this topic are framed within an empirical context, but an empiricism that is augmented by his close scientific analysis of the nature of human irrationality, instinct, obsession, drives, and other subconscious psychological factors.
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And there is the further difficulty that precisely in a judgement of this kind the subjective expectations of the individual play a part which it is difficult to assess; and these turn out to be dependent on purely personal factors in his own experience, on the greater or lesser optimism of his attitude to life, as it has been dictated for him by his temperament or by his success or failure. Finally, the curious fact makes itself felt that in general people experience their present naïvely, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it—the present, that is to say, must have become the past—before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future.
This difficulty is that everyone has opinions on religion, but most are based on prejudice, childhood suggestion, mythical assumptions, etc. Freud attempts to rise above unconscious irrationality to analyse religious attitudes from an objective scientific viewpoint. Of course, many will say this is impossible, and Jung was to criticize Freud for making his theory of infantile sexuality into a new dogma, but despite such limits, it is an amazing endeavour that few would attempt these days. The popular naivety which Freud describes is the fact that people who are within a tradition cannot assess it. The question now, as we move towards a post-Christian world, is to what extent we now have the freedom to discuss religious ideation from a scientific angle that still respects the role of religion in psychological formation.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud wrote:
Thus anyone who gives way to the temptation to deliver an opinion on the probable future of our civilization will do well to remind himself of the difficulties I have just pointed out, as well as of the uncertainty that attaches quite generally to any prophecy. It follows from this, so far as I am concerned, that I shall make a hasty retreat before a task that is too great, and shall promptly seek out the small tract of territory which has claimed my attention hitherto, as soon as I have determined its position in the general scheme of things.
So, the uncertainty of prophecy means that Freud will limit his speculation on the future of religion to factors that arise directly from his scientific psychological analysis of human culture and identity.
Sigmund Freud wrote:
Human civilization, by which I mean all those respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal status and differs from the life of beasts—and I scorn to distinguish between culture and civilization—, presents, as we know, two aspects to the observer. It includes on the one hand all the knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs, and, on the other hand, all the regulations necessary in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and especially the distribution of the available wealth. The two trends of civilization are not independent of each other: firstly, because the mutual relations of men are profoundly influenced by the amount of instinctual satisfaction which the existing wealth makes possible; secondly, because an individual man can himself come to function as wealth in relation to another one, in so far as the other person makes use of his capacity for work, or chooses him as a sexual object; and thirdly, moreover, because every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization, though civilization is supposed to be an object of universal human interest. It is remarkable that, little as men are able to exist in isolation, they should nevertheless feel as a heavy burden the sacrifices which civilization expects of them in order to make a communal life possible. Thus civilization has to be defended against the individual, and its regulations, institutions and commands are directed to that task. They aim not only at effecting a certain distribution of wealth but at maintaining that distribution; indeed, they have to protect everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and the production of wealth against men's hostile impulses. Human creations are easily destroyed, and science and technology, which have built them up, can also be used for their annihilation.
Freud's equation between culture and civilization recognises that culture, like civilization, is the factor in life that separates us from nature. Civilized culture presents itself as rational, using law to control the wayward instincts of the individual and to combine social forces to control nature. The heritage of knowledge informs the process of regulation. Civilization aims to protect its power by distributing wealth and ensuring harmonious social relations. But Freud points out that individuals are driven by instinct and hostile impulse, so the forces which created civilization, including science and technology, can also become agents of annihilation.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud wrote:
One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion.
Here we see the basic purpose of mass religion, to instill conformity and obedience in a restive population, allied to the state goal of legitimate monopoly of violence.
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It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed. And in fact it is not difficult to indicate those defects. While mankind has made continual advances in its control over nature and may expect to make still greater ones, it is not possible to establish with certainty that a similar advance has been made in the management of human affairs; and probably at all periods, just as now once again, many people have asked themselves whether what little civilization has thus acquired is indeed worth defending at all.
The 'defects' in human psychology make religion necessary, in the sense that Gibbon suggested that all religions are equally useful to the magistrate, as supporters of social stability. Freud points to a basic problem in modernity, that technological progress leads people to imagine that social progress is keeping track, whereas the suspicion remains that our social organisation remains rather primitive.
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One would think that a re-ordering of human relations should be possible, which would remove the sources of dissatisfaction with civilization by renouncing coercion and the suppression of the instincts, so that, undisturbed by internal discord, men might devote themselves to the acquisition of wealth and its enjoyment. That would be the golden age, but it is questionable if such a state of affairs can be realized.
This 'Golden Age' is a sort of ideal communism, each for all, no private property, from each according to ability and to each according to need. Freud rightly suggests it is impossible, so we need law to regulate impulses to steal and cheat. People are dissatisfied with civilization because it represses their wishes, but put up with it because the anarchic alternative would be much worse.
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It seems rather that every civilization must be built up on coercion and renunciation of instinct; it does not even seem certain that if coercion were to cease the majority of human beings would be prepared to undertake to perform the work necessary for acquiring new wealth. One has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural, trends and that in a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behaviour in human society.
This theme of the conflict between civilization and instinct is basic to progress and development. Although Freud was radical in his atheism, we see here that this validation of the need for coercion indicates a strongly conservative political outlook.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
So, in your first post, does it seem that Freud is saying indirectly that he can surmount the limitations in vision and the handicap of naivete that beset people in general? I can't tell this from the excerpts. I would guess this is more in the way of an apology before he begins, saying that he, too, has these human barriers to omniscience. Even he cannot be master of enough knowledge to comprehensively view human civilization; even he is affected by that overconfidence that our own place in the forefront of time gives us ability to view the past unobstructed. Whether Freud intends it or not, I would like to see his analysis as applying in general to our ability to make any kind of sure summary judgments. My view is that saying that one is adopting a scientific attitude toward religion or any other major question doesn't remove the strong influence of boundedness within our egos and time. If we believe we are now outside of a tradition and therefore have objectivity, our detachment could also result in a lack of deep knowledge about the tradition being assessed. What we can expect, though, is writing and thinking that is more cogent and informed than the run of the mill.
His start in the second post leads me to believe my assessment is accurate. Prophecy is uncertain because no one, no matter how he or she might feel fortified by science, can fully assess the past or present, which is a prerequisite to foretelling the future. One can only feel some confidence, perhaps, within a small area of study in which he is an acknowledged expert.
If you recall our discussion of de Waal's Primates and Philosophers, you might agree that Freud is expressing the "veneer theory," by which humans' agreement to live under social constraints is granted grudgingly, in resistance to their individualistic, selfish desires to maximize their own welfare. De Waal believes that animal studies point rather to the primary, instinctual importance of the social behaviors, since they account more for our lineage's ability to survive than do our strictly selfish instincts.
In the third post, has Freud zeroed in yet on religion? His assumption about civilization still conforms to "veneer theory." You are applying this to mass religion as well. I would only say that studies such as Robert Wright's indicate more of a two-way street in the development of mass religion. The view you take corresponds to Wright's "Marxist" idea of the purpose of religion.
You diverge from Freud, a pessimist on the state of our civilization, who says that it is possibly the cultural forms that are defective, not human psychology. He is still talking about civilization, broadly, as well. We can perhaps develop new cultural forms that serve us better, but it appears that in this area, conservatism applies to a much greater extent than it does in technology.
Surely, the removal of "internal discord" from any population does have its scary aspects, for all that people yearn for John Lennon's "Imagine" to come true. Shades of "Brave New World"?
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
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You diverge from Freud, a pessimist on the state of our civilization, who says that it is possibly the cultural forms that are defective, not human psychology.
Defective compared to what ideal? This smacks of teleology, though I may be misunderstanding him. I don't think either are defective, but that we are simply in an environment where we didn't evolve. We can make it work with our big ole brains, but we could certainly be better equipped to deal with modern problems than we are. Freud writes about men's hostile impulses and the duty of civilization to protect each other from them.
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Freud's equation between culture and civilization recognises that culture, like civilization, is the factor in life that separates us from nature.
Freud scorns to distinguish between culture and civilization. It seems he sees culture as an aspect of civilization rather than separate from it.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
DWill wrote:
So, in your first post, does it seem that Freud is saying indirectly that he can surmount the limitations in vision and the handicap of naivete that beset people in general? I can't tell this from the excerpts. I would guess this is more in the way of an apology before he begins, saying that he, too, has these human barriers to omniscience. Even he cannot be master of enough knowledge to comprehensively view human civilization; even he is affected by that overconfidence that our own place in the forefront of time gives us ability to view the past unobstructed. Whether Freud intends it or not, I would like to see his analysis as applying in general to our ability to make any kind of sure summary judgments. My view is that saying that one is adopting a scientific attitude toward religion or any other major question doesn't remove the strong influence of boundedness within our egos and time. If we believe we are now outside of a tradition and therefore have objectivity, our detachment could also result in a lack of deep knowledge about the tradition being assessed. What we can expect, though, is writing and thinking that is more cogent and informed than the run of the mill.
Thanks DWill for these perceptive comments. Sigmund Freud is a very interesting thinker, but his reputation has descended into mythic territory with the shift in psychiatry from narrative to chemical methods of treating mental illness. This book, like Civilization and its Discontents and Jung's Modern Man in Search of a Soul, attempts to psychoanalyze western civilization. This is obviously a big ask, and Freud provides the appropriate caveats, but you have to start somewhere. I would not agree that this project is impossible in principle.
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His start in the second post leads me to believe my assessment is accurate. Prophecy is uncertain because no one, no matter how he or she might feel fortified by science, can fully assess the past or present, which is a prerequisite to foretelling the future. One can only feel some confidence, perhaps, within a small area of study in which he is an acknowledged expert.
A partial and methodical assessment is better than nothing. If Freud provides groundwork for method of historical analysis, he helps to put prophecy on a scientific footing. The problem that you rightly raise is that knowledge is specialised while prophecy is generalist. The challenge is whether a generalist can have enough knowledge of various specialities to start to put them together into a bigger picture.
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If you recall our discussion of de Waal's Primates and Philosophers, you might agree that Freud is expressing the "veneer theory," by which humans' agreement to live under social constraints is granted grudgingly, in resistance to their individualistic, selfish desires to maximize their own welfare. De Waal believes that animal studies point rather to the primary, instinctual importance of the social behaviors, since they account more for our lineage's ability to survive than do our strictly selfish instincts.
Yes, De Waal presents an interesting update on Freud's theory of instinct and the unconscious. It seems to suggest that civilization builds on the instinct for cooperation, recognising that teamwork is adaptive, in primates and in humans.
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In the third post, has Freud zeroed in yet on religion? His assumption about civilization still conforms to "veneer theory." You are applying this to mass religion as well. I would only say that studies such as Robert Wright's indicate more of a two-way street in the development of mass religion. The view you take corresponds to Wright's "Marxist" idea of the purpose of religion.
Remember, it is only "Marxist" in the sense of providing a materialist explanation for how the epiphenomena of the cultural superstructure emerge from the economic base, not in terms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. You are right that I am jumping ahead to how Freud sees religion as central to civilization.
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You diverge from Freud, a pessimist on the state of our civilization, who says that it is possibly the cultural forms that are defective, not human psychology. He is still talking about civilization, broadly, as well. We can perhaps develop new cultural forms that serve us better, but it appears that in this area, conservatism applies to a much greater extent than it does in technology.
I'll have to think more about your distinction between culture and psychology. I had the impression Freud saw them as intertwined. You are correct about the conservatism, which sees building on proven precedent as essential to avoid the risks of innovation.
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Surely, the removal of "internal discord" from any population does have its scary aspects, for all that people yearn for John Lennon's "Imagine" to come true. Shades of "Brave New World"?
Yes, and that is why Freud presciently implies communism is impossible, because of its failure to recognise the natural springs of human motivation. His distinction between the conscious and the unconscious is essential here. Projects to move to a secular rational framework for culture contain high risks of tyranny, in their failure to understand the depths of unconscious motivation that drive human priorities.
The following user would like to thank Robert Tulip for this post: DWill
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Interbane wrote:
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You diverge from Freud, a pessimist on the state of our civilization, who says that it is possibly the cultural forms that are defective, not human psychology.
Defective compared to what ideal? This smacks of teleology, though I may be misunderstanding him. I don't think either are defective, but that we are simply in an environment where we didn't evolve. We can make it work with our big ole brains, but we could certainly be better equipped to deal with modern problems than we are. Freud writes about men's hostile impulses and the duty of civilization to protect each other from them.
Thanks for joining this discussion Interbane. Freud is looking at people against the modern myth of reason, the idea that rational organisation of society is possible. There is an inherent teleology here, with the steady evolution of humanity from isolated primitive tribes to a modern global civilization. What is rational for a tribe is not always rational for a planet. If we want civilization to continue, then we naturally have to make it more rational, because irrational behavior is destructive and dangerous. But he rightly warns of the risk of superficial theories of reason, such as communism, that fail to understand the real defects in human culture and psychology against the imagined rational ideals.
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Freud's equation between culture and civilization recognises that culture, like civilization, is the factor in life that separates us from nature.
Freud scorns to distinguish between culture and civilization. It seems he sees culture as an aspect of civilization rather than separate from it.
Perhaps I should have said 'culture, as civilization'. This idea that uncivilized life lacks culture is quite controversial. Civilization gets a bad rap in some circles for its record of oppression and slavery. But Freud has a good point here, that civilization represents the effort to confine life within ideals, narrative visions of how to improve common practice. The usual assumption is the higher the ideals, the more rational the civilization, and the further removed from the Hobbesian primitive war of all against all under the tyranny of nature. This is all quite contestable, because it plays into some old stereotypes about colonialism. There is a lot that so-called modern culture can learn from societies that have not gone so far down the track of alienation from nature.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud wrote:
This psychological fact has a decisive importance for our judgement of human civilization. Whereas we might at first think that its essence lies in controlling nature for the purpose of acquiring wealth and that the dangers which threaten it could be eliminated through a suitable distribution of that wealth among men, it now seems that the emphasis has moved over from the material to the mental.
The fact is the pervasive existence of destructive trends. The idea is that by creating wealth through reason, instinctive impulses can be controlled.
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The decisive question is whether and to what extent it is possible to lessen the burden of the instinctual sacrifices imposed on men, to reconcile men to those which must necessarily remain and to provide a compensation for them. It is just as impossible to do without control of the mass by a minority as it is to dispense with coercion in the work of civilization. For masses are lazy and unintelligent; they have no love for instinctual renunciation, and they are not to be convinced by argument of its inevitability; and the individuals composing them support one another in giving free rein to their indiscipline.
You don't get much more elitist than that. As Miranda said, 'O Brave New World, that has such people in't.' Civilization requires fair distribution, but it seems Freud thinks that leadership is essential to achieve fairness and stability, because the ideas that rise up from mass opinion are unreliable.
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It is only through the influence of individuals who can set an example and whom masses recognize as their leaders that they can be induced to perform the work and undergo the renunciations on which the existence of civilization depends. All is well if these leaders are persons who possess superior insight into the necessities of life and who have risen to the height of mastering their own instinctual wishes.
Here Freud endorses the great man theory of history. Sacrifice is essential for stability. Untrammeled instinct causes war. Peace and development are grounded in far sighted strategic understanding as a basis of governance.
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But there is a danger that in order not to lose their influence they may give way to the mass more than it gives way to them, and it therefore seems necessary that they shall be independent of the mass by having means to power at their disposal.
Freud expresses the dilemma of leadership, which must steer a narrow course between the risks of demagogery and detachment.
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To put it briefly, there are two widespread human characteristics which are responsible for the fact that the regulations of civilization can only be maintained by a certain degree of coercion— namely, that men are not spontaneously fond of work and that arguments are of no avail against their passions.
In one sense, Freud is recognising that the sword is mightier than the pen, that force is required to deliver improvement. And yet, his emphasis on legitimacy, through mass recognition, shows that consent is essential to civilization, and that argument does indeed avail against passion.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Robert Tulip wrote:
If Freud provides groundwork for method of historical analysis, he helps to put prophecy on a scientific footing. The problem that you rightly raise is that knowledge is specialised while prophecy is generalist. The challenge is whether a generalist can have enough knowledge of various specialities to start to put them together into a bigger picture.
I would prefer that prophecy not be a goal at all. It's an olden-times idea that belongs with alchemy. Acting wisely implies a view toward future consequences, and only if that consideration of the future is what you mean by prophecy, would I want to spend any energy on it.
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Remember, it is only "Marxist" in the sense of providing a materialist explanation for how the epiphenomena of the cultural superstructure emerge from the economic base, not in terms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I remember that book (TEoG) perhaps better than some I've read, because at the time you may recall we had "passionate debate" going on with a former BT member! Wright's use of "Marxist" reflected Marx's view that the elite used religion to get the compliance it wanted from the masses. This was in distinction to "functionalism," by which the people themselves mainly chose or adapted the forms that served their psychological and other needs. I mean that your view of the flow of influence in religion appears to be top-down.
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Yes, and that is why Freud presciently implies communism is impossible, because of its failure to recognise the natural springs of human motivation. His distinction between the conscious and the unconscious is essential here. Projects to move to a secular rational framework for culture contain high risks of tyranny, in their failure to understand the depths of unconscious motivation that drive human priorities.
Yes, that's a great point. To present a completely rational plan may be universally accepted as the thing to do, but if that plan rationalizes away those unconscious needs of people, it comes a cropper.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Regarding your last post, Robert, my god, do you think Freud realized he was cribbing directly from Plato's Republic? It comes off as very elitist, as you say, but this was not a negative for men of the time such as Freud, T. S. Eliot, or Yeats.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
DWill wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:
If Freud provides groundwork for method of historical analysis, he helps to put prophecy on a scientific footing. The problem that you rightly raise is that knowledge is specialised while prophecy is generalist. The challenge is whether a generalist can have enough knowledge of various specialities to start to put them together into a bigger picture.
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I would prefer that prophecy not be a goal at all. It's an olden-times idea that belongs with alchemy. Acting wisely implies a view toward future consequences, and only if that consideration of the future is what you mean by prophecy, would I want to spend any energy on it.
Remember, it is only "Marxist" in the sense of providing a materialist explanation for how the epiphenomena of the cultural superstructure emerge from the economic base, not in terms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
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I remember that book (TEoG) perhaps better than some I've read, because at the time you may recall we had "passionate debate" going on with a former BT member! Wright's use of "Marxist" reflected Marx's view that the elite used religion to get the compliance it wanted from the masses. This was in distinction to "functionalism," by which the people themselves mainly chose or adapted the forms that served their psychological and other needs. I mean that your view of the flow of influence in religion appears to be top-down.
Yes, and that is why Freud presciently implies communism is impossible, because of its failure to recognise the natural springs of human motivation. His distinction between the conscious and the unconscious is essential here. Projects to move to a secular rational framework for culture contain high risks of tyranny, in their failure to understand the depths of unconscious motivation that drive human priorities.
Yes, that's a great point. To present a completely rational plan may be universally accepted as the thing to do, but if that plan rationalizes away those unconscious needs of people, it comes a cropper.
DWill, I should note for others, you have inserted comments from yourself here that were not the ones I quoted. Not sure if that was accidental or deliberate.
And yes, I think that Freud and Eliot and Yeats regarded themselves as philosopher kings on the model of Plato. Jung too. They all knew Whitehead's 1929 comment that all philosophy is footnotes to Plato. Eliot and Yeats and Jung also probably had a sense of Christian election, following Calvin, but I'm not sure how Freud's residual Judaism sat against that meme.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Freud wrote:
I know the objections which will be raised against these assertions. It will be said that the characteristic of human masses depicted here, which is supposed to prove that coercion cannot be dispensed with in the work of civilization, is itself only the result of defects in the cultural regulations, owing to which men have become embittered, revengeful and inaccessible.
Freud is engaging here with utopian claims that a society can exist without coercion, essentially in an anarchist situation where no law is required because social norms are internalised and universally followed. Maybe in ten thousand years time, but human psychology will have to evolve considerably, grounded in universal abundance, before anything like that will have any practical political meaning.
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New generations, who have been brought up in kindness and taught to have a high opinion of reason, and who have experienced the benefits of civilization at an early age, will have a different attitude to it. They will feel it as a possession of their very own and will be ready for its sake to make the sacrifices as regards work and instinctual satisfaction that are necessary for its preservation. They will be able to do without coercion and will differ little from their leaders.
We see this sort of vision in socialist millennialism. Going back to the Anabaptists of Munster, Christians took the primitive communism of Acts as a realistic model. Karl Marx and the anarchists such as Bakunin imagined that turning social norms upside down through communist revolution was a way to accelerate the achievement of this utopia. But Freud sees that this political revolutionary vision fails to grapple with the reality of instinct and what he calls defects. It is interesting to consider this debate against the Christian doctrine of sin.
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If no culture has so far produced human masses of such a quality, it is because no culture has yet devised regulations which will influence men in this way, and in particular from childhood onwards.
Communists believed they had devised such regulations that would allow individuals to achieve their potential, but they were extremely wrong, deluding themselves and their followers, with the inevitable result of tyranny when they achieved state power and found that reality did not conform to the dream. I find it interesting to psychoanalyze Joseph Stalin against this Freudian framework of utopian delusion. It is hard to tell if Stalin actually believed that his means, such as the forced collectivisation of agriculture and shock industrialisation of Russia, would produce the ends he claimed, or if he cynically exploited the communist fervor just to gain unprecedented personal power as dictator. In any event, Russia is still reeling from the psychological and economic debris of Stalin's insanity.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
I can't tell from the excepts whether SF is reporting a point of view that he disagrees with--that with the proper tutelage, people can do what is required to have a civilization without needing to be coerced--or whether he himself believes this can be the case. I suppose the unlazy way to find out would be for me to read the essay.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
DWill wrote:
I can't tell from the excepts whether SF is reporting a point of view that he disagrees with--that with the proper tutelage, people can do what is required to have a civilization without needing to be coerced--or whether he himself believes this can be the case. I suppose the unlazy way to find out would be for me to read the essay.
Lets continue.
Freud wrote:
It may be doubted whether it is possible at all, or at any rate as yet, at the present stage of our control over nature, to set up cultural regulations of this kind.
Here we see the idea that rational culture may be possible in the distant future.
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It may be asked where the number of superior, unswerving and disinterested leaders are to come from who are to act as educators of the future generations, and it may be alarming to think of the enormous amount of coercion that will inevitably be required before these intentions can be carried out.
I am not sure if this alarming amount of coercion is simply a recognition that coercion is with us to stay for a very long time, or that changing from an instinctive to a rational culture would require coercion.
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The grandeur of the plan and its importance for the future of human civilization cannot be disputed. It is securely based on the psychological discovery that man is equipped with the most varied instinctual dispositions, whose ultimate course is determined by the experiences of early childhood. But for the same reason the limitations of man's capacity for education set bounds to the effectiveness of such a transformation in his culture.
ie, Freud thinks that people are too stupid to be rational, whatever grand dreams may be imagined by enlightened philosophes.
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One may question whether, and in what degree, it would be possible for a different cultural environment to do away with the two characteristics of human masses which make the guidance of human affairs so difficult, the experiment has not yet been made. Probably a certain percentage of mankind (owing to a pathological disposition or an excess of instinctual strength) will always remain asocial; but if it were feasible merely to reduce the majority that is hostile towards civilization to-day into a minority, a great deal would have been accomplished—perhaps all that can be accomplished.
This has the appearance of rather idle speculation, as to whether pathological asocial instinct can in fact be tamed. Freud has still not really given us his view on the ethics of breaking the wild human spirit. I'm not sure why he thinks the majority are hostile to civilization, given that most people are law abiding. Maybe he detects an inner shaman beating in the breast of the modern conformist, and sees acquiescence to law as a veneer held in place by schools, police, courts, armies and jails. Still, he seems to imagine a gradual shift towards internalising trust in society and its values.
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Re: Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Sigmund Freud wrote:
I should not like to give the impression that I have strayed a long way from the line laid down for my enquiry [p. 5]. Let me therefore give an express assurance that I have not the least intention of making judgements on the great experiment in civilization that is now in progress in the vast country that stretches between Europe and Asia. 1 [1 [See, however, some remarks in Chapter V of Civilization and its Discontents (1930a), p. 112 ff. below, and at two points in Why War? (1933b) and a long discussion in the last of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a).] I have neither the special knowledge nor the capacity to decide on its practicability, to test the expediency of the methods employed or to measure the width of the inevitable gap between intention and execution. What is in preparation there is unfinished and therefore eludes an investigation for which our own long-consolidated civilization affords us material.
Freud is saying that in the 1920s it was too early to tell if the communist experiment in Russia might succeed. In one sense this is an admirably scientific withholding of judgment, but with hindsight we can now see that many of the instinctive impulses that Freud describes are incompatible with the communist vision, meaning that from the outset communism contained the seeds of its own destruction. I have not read the other sources footnoted, but would be quite interested to see them to better understand Freud's considered views on communism.
Quote:
- 9 - II We have slipped unawares out of the economic field into the field of psychology. At first we were tempted to look for the assets of civilization in the available wealth and in the regulations for its distribution. But with the recognition that every civilization rests on a compulsion to work and a renunciation of instinct and therefore inevitably provokes opposition from those affected by these demands, it has become clear that civilization cannot consist principally or solely in wealth itself and the means of acquiring it and the arrangements for its distribution; for these things are threatened by the rebelliousness and destructive mania of the participants in civilization. Alongside of wealth we now come upon the means by which civilization can be defended—measures of coercion and other measures that are intended to reconcile men to it and to recompense them for their sacrifices. These latter may be described as the mental assets of civilization.
Chapter Two. Here Freud presents a basic critique of materialism. Creation and distribution of material wealth relies on what he calls "mental assets". Property is continually threatened by "mania", so has to utilize cultural ideals in order to hold this destructive popular rebellion in check and reconcile the community to its limited situation.
Law alone is not sufficient: stability requires the consent of the governed, and to secure that consent in a way that will produce further growth in wealth is no easy matter. Encouraging widespread internalisation of the value of stability is one key. Here we find a first inkling of Freud's understanding of the political role of religion, and of his complex recognition that even illusions and myths may have positive social value. By celebrating tradition, religion helps the state to maintain political stability, giving the community a cultural recompense for its material want. The risk in this alliance of church and state is that it can easily be exploited by unscrupulous kings, who take advantage of fundamentalist gullibility to exploit the poor and ignore the need for fair distribution as a prid quo quo of consent for legitimacy.
Ancient Rome sought to buy consent of the masses through bread and circuses. Christianity showed that this failed to provide the 'spiritual food' that Freud describes as a key 'mental asset' of civilization. This is a big part of why Rome turned to Christ in a final attempt to secure the stability of the empire, after the Invincible Sun had proved insufficiently attractive to mass emotion. Only the incarnation of the sun in the son could satisfy the popular thirst for a redemptive myth.
One myth that is worth bearing in mind in this context of deliberate manipulation of popular opinion is the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Perhaps Rome imagined it could control Christian faith, but the long detour via the Dark Ages before the church became ascendant in Christendom shows that unleashing spiritual ideas through the power of the state is highly risky. Just as the magic spell turned the mop into a living thing, the failure to know the next spell brought disaster. Rome gained social stability through conversion to Christianity, but at the price of key parts of its soul, notably the suppression of the rational empirical enquiry conducted by Greek philosophy.
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