Civilization

I reread Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents today. I could cite anywhere in the essay, but I’ll try three.

But there is one question which I can hardly evade. If the development of civilization has such a far reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in resolving the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilization—possibly the whole of mankind—have become ‘neurotic’?

And then:

One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man’s judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness—that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.

And then:

The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.

Civilization and its attendant conscience places heavy demands upon us. If civilization makes us neurotic, then might there be a breaking point where the disturbance becomes too much to handle and a door opens through which our more aggressive tendencies escape?

Civilization lulls us into a false sense of security. It absolves of us of the need to think because we count on civilization to make everything right no matter how severe our outbreaks of aggression. We play a fool’s game.