Civilization and Its Discontents
Passage One

As one who enjoys stepping back and analyzing the how and why behind our thoughts and emotions, I have found myself naturally drawn to Freud and his teachings. I am writing this article (along with more to come) in an effort to explore his text, “Civilization and Its Discontents”, where we examine the inherent needs and values of humanity. We uncover what it is we do to fulfill our desires, and further, why we are driven to satisfy these desires in the first place. I have found these passages to be illuminating as Freud explains his reasoning behind our deepest sources of motivation and inner fulfillment.
We begin with our focus set on the disparity in values among all humans, in that most admire those who are successful in attaining wealth and status while only a minority care for the successes made in “the mental life”. Freud considers the contrast of values among humanity as likely much more complex, and then transitions us to the ideals of a man he had previously befriended. A man who surfaces the idea of an existential feeling, described as a “sensation of eternity” or something “oceanic”. As a side note, he briefly suggests that religion channels this feeling and by doing so, extorts our personal spirituality, or at least he leads the reader into this frame of mind. We revisit this thought further on.
Our focus continues on this spiritual feeling, described again as “boundless” or “limitless”, and we look to the possibility of how it connects us to the environment around us. He delves further, quoting Christian Grabbe who wrote:
“Indeed, we shall not fall out of this world. We are in it once and for all.”
In other words, the world as we know it is inseparable from us; we and it are one, harmonized in both a material and a spiritual sense. He describes this idea as “in the nature of intellectual judgement” and suggests that it “characterizes other equally far-reaching reflections”. I found his statements to imply that the idea of this unity requires a subjective vantage point of one’s life experience and therefore cannot be confined to such broad stroke reasoning. He then goes to say that we cannot deny, however, that this feeling does occur, but we may question if it has been correctly interpreted. The idea that man should have an intimate connection with the surrounding world is “incongruous with the structure of our psychology”, which he writes with no definite intention, but rather to say it is hard to perceive ourselves as one with our environment because we believe to hold certainty in our egos, or better, our individuality. He connects our ego to our personal ID and states that we as individuals are “sharply or clearly outlined” from the outer world. He suggests that there is only one prevalent emotion within us all that can contradict our sharp outline from the external. The egos we embrace can only be quelled by a state of mind we know as love. In essence, love is what erodes the barriers between the internal (ego) and the external (the world). It is what pushes us to tolerate disturbances and to accept foreign ideas. He states that this causes a meshing of inner and outer thought, which may eventually result in one not recognizing his/her own thoughts or emotions because in actuality, they originated in and were perceived from the outside world. He concludes this thought by stating “the boundaries between it (ego) and the outer world are not immovable”, meaning there is no definite barrier between the ego and the world. From this reasoning, we may infer that there is no distinct source of original thought, where a notion conceived by an individual rests upon a conceptual framework built by the idea’s predecessors. We may make this inference because if we cannot determine the boundaries between the individual and the environment, then we cannot source a definite origin to an individual’s thought. The opposite of this effect may occur as well, where the true originating thoughts of an individual are accepted and used as common knowledge amongst others.
Freud reflects further, stating the possibility that the ego of the adult is not the same from when it was at the beginning (childhood) and that it must undergo trials to predicate a basis. For instance, an infant gradually exposes the stimuli it perceives either from within or from the surrounding environment and builds on his/her impressions to eventually form an ego. The child naturally looks to the “primitive pleasure-ego” and is drawn away from “a threatening outside” where it “cannot escape readjustment through experience.” This is to say that one cannot grow past their pleasure-ego without experiencing what lies outside. In contrast, one may find through experience that many disturbances to him/herself originate from the ego within and that many pleasure-giving aspects originate from “the object” (the outside world). From this, we begin to see the emergence of the “reality-principle”. Freud believes it can be used for further development of the individual in that he/she can learn to “defend against painful sensations” coming from both within and outside the ego. This defense holds the same guard against pain coming from either direction. In this learning process we begin to accept and/or reject the outside pains as we learn cope with our internal pains, allowing us to embrace “an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.” Because our ego development originated with our primitive ego, we may hold it as a counterpart to our matured ego (the developed ego we have created in response to our environment). He tells us that the existence of our primitive and matured egos together may have the capacity to bear “the notion of limitless extension and oneness with the universe”, which he relates to the existential, “oceanic” feeling brought to light by his friend. A fair assumption, but we question if it is possible for both egos to exist at the same time. Or generally, can something original exist alongside its more developed form? And if it cannot, what is the source of this awesome feeling we experience?
Our investigation begins with the findings of Charles Darwin, where the more adapted species survives and the lesser species dies off as they compete for resources. Freud combats this with the lineage of crocodiles, who exist today with similar anatomy as to those swampland reptiles belonging to the suborder of Sauria from millions of years ago. Other instances are brought forward that further suggest the possibility of both original and developed entities surviving together. We continue with Freud as he introduces the “problem of conservation in the mind”, where he claims it is an error to think that something forgotten is lost forever and that once something is formed in the mind, it never truly perishes from our thoughts. He alludes to the Eternal City, Roma quadrata, and how aspects of the city that were predominate then still remain alive and true today. We compare this city to the mind, where nothing once constructed has truly perished, although new formations may be built where old towers now resemble ruins. We compare old and new architectures to find that one extends from another, but Freud then remarks that this entire comparison is too simple and should not be taken any further so to avoid absurd inferences. He acknowledges the issues with this comparison and looks to biology instead. Still, there are discrepancies here. We dissect the growth stages of an embryo from a physical standpoint so to realize that one stage perishes as a new one begins. The adult form of an organism in many cases does not resemble any original characteristics of its embryo. “Perhaps we are going to far with this conclusion”, he states after delving a little further. From here we conclude,
“It is always possible that even in the mind much that is old may be so far obliterated or absorbed — whether normally or by way of exception — that it cannot be restored or reanimated by any means, or that survival of it is always connected with certain favorable conditions.”
In short, it is difficult to determine the exactness of or even the existence of an original concept juxtaposed alongside a developed one. Due to this, “we are entirely willing to acknowledge that the ‘oceanic’ feeling exists in many people”, and that it may or may not originate from our early stage ego.
Freud ends the passage by questioning religion’s claim to this feeling we get and that there is little reasoning for it. He implies that religion simply fills a gap by harnessing this feeling and then fortifying it with “the fear of what the superior power of fate will bring”. He compares the individual to a helpless child and the spiritual feeling we get to a protective father, which suggests that we are comforted by this feeling through gaining a sense of security. We may deduce that religion exists to act as a palpable defense against our helplessness, whereas some of us may not need this garment, but rather, only the raw spiritual feeling in itself. Freud then goes to say that he confesses his difficulty in working with these “intangible quantities”. We conclude by drawing from the Yogi, who perform “peculiar methods” to “diffuse feelings in themselves which he (his friend) regards as regressions to primordial, deeply buried mental states.” We unravel with some obscurity as there is a “wisdom of mysticism”, and so a final quote apprises us to remain open-minded and optimistic –
“Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad!”
