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Contemporary Worldviews The relation between person and society has always been a topic of philosophical exploits of great many authors. The realization humankind is highly social species has even led to referring to man as homo social by many contemporary psychologists. In this respect it interesting to compare the ideas of Sigmund Freud and George Simmel, whose views on the issue of mens interaction with society, used to be very popular at the beginning of twentieth century. Back than people felt certain alienation from the culture, with which they used to associate themselves, as it started to be defined by technical western civilization, rather than by pursuit of perfection.
Oswald Spengler in his Decline of the West said: The fact that people begin to look for the purpose of their existence within society, points out to the decline of every particular culture, where such process begins to take place (Spengler, p. 137). At the beginning of twentieth century philosophers became preoccupied with psychological matters, they no longer talked of acquiring knowledge but about the ways to percept knowledge that being already acquired. The issue of mans place within the society became very popular, as it corresponded to the peoples subconscious feeling of having their personal interests opposed to the interests of societies where they lived. This trend within modern psychology is viewed by Spengler as a true sign of western civilization entering the time of its dusk's. Im personally dont share his pessimistic outlook, because he considers every socio-political trend to be irreversible and adopts position of passive observer.
In my opinion, there is clearly the problem of alienation between individual and society, yet now this issue progressed to a whole new quality. It will be mentioned at the end of this research paper. But let as analyze briefly the works of Freud and Simmel first, so itll be easier for us to come to conclusion whether their ideas are relevant to our present day situation. When we talk of Freud's understanding of how individuals relate to the societies where they live, we need to mention his meta psychological essay Civilization and its Discontents, which was written at the end of his life.
In it Freud views the history of civilization through the prism of how people and civilization influence each other. The most important factor in defining role of every individual within society is its sexuality. Freud says that people are driven by two impulses death and love instincts in their perpetual pursuit of pleasure that cant ever be attained. He points out to the fact that in primitive societies individuals strive for happiness could only realize itself in the form of sexual release.
Back than, there werent any limitations of sexual activity imposed on people, as such activity never threatened the foundations of primitive societies. Situation has changed since Western civilization became more complex. Obviously enough, peoples unrestricted sexuality would be unacceptable in order for society to normally function. Thats why society imposes restrictions, offering other ways of attaining pleasure, so called Substitute Gratifications that is to replace sexual satisfaction as the main goal of Pleasure principle. In this respect Freud refers to drugs, alcohol and tobacco as nothing else but a physical pleasure substitutes, while such things as religion, art and politics Freud lists among intellectual pleasure substitutes. According to Freud, the purpose of civilization is a continuous attempt to divert individual from finding gratification in sex, as it is anti-social, to realizing it in more acceptable social activities.
Society might succeed in reaching its objectives, yet Substitute Gratifications will never be able to make individual happy, which ultimately means that people can never be happy within the society as they will never be able to become sexually liberated: So far, we can quite well imagine a cultural community consisting of double individuals who, libidinally satisfied in themselves, are connected with one another through the bonds of common work and common interests. If this were so, civilization would not have to withdraw any energy from sexuality. But this desirable state of things does not, and never did, exist. Reality shows that civilization is not content with the ties we have so far allowed it. It aims at binding the members of the community together in a libidinal way as well and employs every means to that end. It favors every path by which strong identifications can be established between the members of the community, and it summons up aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale to strengthen the communal bond... (Freud, p. 108).
If we follow Freud's logic, it becomes clear to us that society's laws and limitations are not strong enough to fully suppress mens sexuality or to make people be satisfied with Substitute Gratifications. Still how come people dont rebel? Freud tells us that this is because individual in love, while being made sexually happy, is also being very miserable, as he loses his ability to think rationally. He loses his ability to distinguish physical reality from the reality, created in his mind and this makes him vulnerable: We are never so defenseless as when we are in love (Freud, p. 112).
From this arises the principle of the conflict between societies and individual while trying to preserve itself, society imposes sexual limitations but this is the exact reason why society is bounded together. Being unable to get sexual satisfaction, people become aggressive towards each other, making their peaceful coexistence within the society even more problematic. From this derives the concept of Death Instinct. In my opinion, Freud's vision of principles according to which society works, is one-sided to say the least.
He applies his theory of human sexuality to explain socio-political trends. Yet, it has to be remembered that Freud based his famous theory on the cases of sexual deviations among people, which he observed while working as psychiatrist in Vienna. In another words his vision of sexuality is sexuality of mentally sick people. In my opinion, this theory cannot be applied to answer what forces lie behind historical process in Western societies, although many of his points do need to be taken into consideration. The name of George Simmel is not quite as known as Freud's, yet mentioning here his theory is going to be well in place, as he deals with the same issue what is individuals place within society? How do they reflect upon each other?
His social philosophy is best described as compound of cultural pessimism and liberal progressivism. Simmel argues that in primitive societies mans horizons were limited to a particular village or town where he lived. Individuals personal agenda and interests commonly never existed and if they did, they could never find its realization, as men could not imagine their existence outside of particular group or clan to which they belonged. Thus, primitive social forms occupied the whole man; they did not only serve an objectively determined purpose, but were rather a form of unification en globing the total person of those who had gathered together in the pursuit of that purpose (Simmel, p. 57).
The concept of hierarchy was very strong in medieval times, so the subordination back than often stood for domination over whole personality. Slave trade was a commonplace occurrence primarily not because it was profitable, but because it corresponded to how people used to percept surrounding reality and their role within the society. According to Simmel, in ancient societies individuals were organized in the manner of linked concentric circles. For example, peasant could be dependant on his feudal, whos in its turn, would be dependant on his king, who would often also have a higher authority above him a Pope. Modern man exists on many different levels; his religious, political and creative activities often dont interact. Simmel use the example or circles to make easier for us to get his point: The number of different circles in which individuals move, is one of the indices of cultural development.
The subordination of individual to social mechanism is still present in our society, but in Simmel's opinion, we cant really talk of total domination over ones life. This Simmel's statement describes him as very naive philosopher, so say the least. He also considers proletariat as being really free; because capitalists cannot own workers physically. Yet, we need to give Simmel a credit because he was able to foresee how individual would find itself related to society in the future: The cultural objects become more and more linked to each other in a self-contained world which has increasingly fewer contacts with the subjective psyche and its desires and sensibilities (Simmel, p. 101). Simmel points out that increase number of realms where individual participates, enjoying relative freedom, will inevitably lead to situation where person will find itself being unable to cope with those realities that were created by him. This will cause him to feel alienated from society, as he will lose his ability to understand the essence of ideas by which society is being ruled.
Hes only going to be able to orient in them without understanding why these ideas are there in the first place. Simmel doesnt see how liberated individual can find itself also free from the bonds of traditions. He thinks that person in the future might just have to be functioning in inertial mode, with his actions being regulated by society's standards of what is appropriate and what is not. We need to recognize that Simmel was right in this respect.
It becomes increasingly difficult for the person in modern society to exercise its rights and freedoms, to which he officially entitled by the society. Today we can talk of alienated abstract forms totally taking control over peoples real lives. Some philosophers refer to it as domination of emptiness or domination off soulless social machine, which seem to be operating on its own. In our modern society priests of emptiness- lawyers enjoy privileged life styles. What they do is operating with emptiness, as laws are highly abstract category that doesnt exist in physical form. Yet, these laws are what regulate our real lives.
Our society descends in the state when it required less and less on our part to manifest any physical signs of our existence. The last refuge of individuals freedom, up until recently, used to be paper money. But now we witness their gradual replacement with credit cards. Banks operate with millions of dollars that are actually nothing but combination of ones and zeroes inside computer. It is nothing else but operating with nothingness, which dominates peoples physical reality. In my opinion, such situation is not normal.
We, as individuals are expected to make certain sacrifices for the sake of common good and this is quite natural. Yet, there is a new third force has arisen that also requires our sacrifices an abstract social machine. It appears that if this trend is allowed to pursue its course, we will soon find ourselves becoming a nuisance. With computer technology rapidly progressing we become more and more dependant of this system we had created.
It wont be too daring to suggest that scenario of artificial intelligence taking over isnt too fantastic. In my opinion, in order for us to resist this social alienation trend, we need to strive to limit powers of our burocracy. We might have to come back to living in tight communities, in order to be able to effectively oppose this social machine. In small communities people will regain the sense of their real actions being more important then those abstract values, imposed upon us. The process of Globalization and proposed New World Order are nothing but attempts of representatives of machine to undermine our value as real people.
In my opinion, they have to be resisted at any cost if we dont want to ultimately turn into robots. The value of Freud's and Simmel's ideas about how society and individual interact, lies not in the fact that their theories address the problems that we face nowadays, but in the fact that they were the first to analyze this issue.
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Research essay sample on Members Of The Community Sexual Satisfaction
