Freud Plus; 11-22-2019

 [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written.Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 4/21/2025]

The crew finished Netflix's Daybreak (lots of meta pop culture references; Matthew Broderick as a cannibal; damsel in distress turns villain; I'm thinking it's brilliant), started on HBO's The Watchmen (first two episodes - confusing but left wanting more), and now working on my notes. Finished with Sigmund Freud's Civilization and it's Discontents (1930; W.W. Norton & Co; James Strachey, translator).

... And now, I think the meaning of evolution of civilization is no longer obscure to us. It must present the danger between eros and death, between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out in the human species. The struggle is what all life essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life of the human species....

 VI; p. 69 (footnote omitted)

I strongly suspect climate change deniers are of two sorts: the ones who do not want to give up the profits of life as is, and those who think destruction of the climate shall bring on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ; the first group manipulating the second.

And is this not common sense?

... If he loses the love of another person upon whom he is dependent, he also ceases to be protected froma variety of dangers. Above all, he is exposed to the danger that this stronger person will show his superiority in the form of punishment....

This state of mind is called a 'bad conscience' ... Consequently, such people allow themselves to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only of being found out. Present-day society has to reckon in general with this state of mind. 

VI; pp. 71-72

With the internet, society needs to reckon even more with this state of mind, I was thought of as a potential [a bit of editing here to get past my monitoring software that will deny me access to this blog. sch] danger to children when all I was doing consisted of nothing than blundering my way through a bunch of illegal pornography in a bid to get arrested, to flame out in such a way suicide would be the only option left me. Are there people serious in their criminality? Yep. I still say most are bullshitters looking for a cheap thrill who run away from what they found, either out of Freud's fear of discovery or what Freud denies - a conscience that knows this is too far.

I want to toss in this from Laszlo Krasznahorkai's The World Goes On (New Directions Books, 2017; John Batki, translator):

... And savoring the taste of a new found freedom, he understood that his life would be a full life, a fullness that was not made of its parts, the empty fiascos and empty pleasures of minutes and hours and days, and not at all, he shook his head, while in front of him the TV set kept running, the fullness of his life, would be something completely different, he could not as yet know in what way, and he would never know, becuase the moment when this fullness of his life was born would be the moment of his death - ... and he streaked away at a speed of pmm KM per hour, at an altitude of approximatley ten thousand meters in a orth by northwesterly direction, high above the clouds - in the blindingly blue sky toward the hoipe he would die some day.

"Nine Dragon Crossing", p. 127

 Freud wrote about self-destructiveness. He does not see this as a peaceful resolution, as does Laszlo K:

 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 agression and self-destruction... Men have gained control over the forces of nature, to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man....

VIII, p. 92

And what if we as a species have become lemmings hell-bent on self-destruction. I can say as one once in the throes of self-destructive behavior, self-destruction is a state of mind enticing in its potential for peacefulness.

 ... Ethics is thus regarded as a therapeutic attempt - as an endeavor to achieve by means of a command of the super-ego, something which has so far not been achieved by means of any other cultural activities. As we already know, the problem before us is how to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization - namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another,

VIII, p. 89

And that is what I got from reading Sigmund Freud over the past two days. Thanks to Willingboro Public Library, 220 Willingboro Parkway, Willingboro, NJ for lending Freud through the interlibrary loan program.

sch