SCIENTIFIC GLORY AND HUMANITY’S STORY
Sigmund Freud and human happiness
TOPE ORIOLA STAFF
“Why is it hard for people to be happy?” The question so often asked today, first posed by Sigmund Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents, appears to have no answer.
Human society has come a very long way on a journey marked with turbulence, joy, sadness, successes and failures. It is astonishing that there seems to be no destination in sight. As the world enters the post-industrial era, the question arises whether human beings are “better off” today than they were before the phenomenal growth of science. Has human society made progress in accomplishing tasks methodically and more efficiently using state-of-the-art technology? Do the benefits of technological advancement outweigh its costs such as boredom and excessive individualism, occasioned by breakdown of familial and communal ties and high suicide rates?
From a skeptical standpoint, Freud asserted that there are three sources of human suffering: the superior power of nature, the feebleness of the body and the inadequacy of the regulations aimed at controlling human behaviour.
Freud argued that we must acknowledge those sources and submit to the inevitable. He said humanity would never completely master nature — our body organism inclusive — and would always remain a “transient structure” with a limited capacity for adaptation and achievement.
In respect of regulations, Freud wrote that humans have been unsuccessful in that regard and the failure of law and order in the society is an “unconquerable nature.”
Freud examined Western “civilization,” wondering why people had adopted a hostile attitude toward it. He opined that our civilization is largely responsible for human misfortune and would be much happier if it returned to primitive conditions.
Freud’s pessimistic view of human life in the West was best articulated when he wrote: “If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if traveling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him.”
A long list of “ifs” can be added to the above: if there had been no institution and institutionalization of marriage, the involuntarily unmarried would need not worry themselves, there would neither be separation nor divorce, widowhood would be nonexistent; young married men statistically proven to be more susceptible to suicide by Emile Durkheim would not kill themselves early in marriage and young women would not become subservient to strange men, to whom they have been co-joined on the altar of holy (or unholy) wed-lock. If there had been no institution of education, young men and women would not need to cudgel their brains about equations and formulae they would never apply in real situations. The consequence of the latter would, of course, be unbridled ignorance, but a blissful one!
The situation in the world of industry is incredibly monotonous. The individual feels completely helpless: “alienation” is the word Karl Marx used. The solution does not lie with the family — it is a preparatory school that does a mediocre job preparing people for the real life. Religion too is at sea because it depends on the predominant value in the society. The political system is far from being the remedy because it is too remote and bureaucratic to be a safety valve for the individual.
Consequently, an unimaginably high level of individualism pervades our “lifeworld.” Children in the West now learn more from the television and the Internet than from their parents, since the latter must perform their own roles to keep the organic whole moving. Smart cards, passwords and codes have diminished human contact. There has been an unprecedented spread of impersonality, depersonalization, anonymity and pervasive loss of sense of belonging, especially with the rise of the machines. People are so close to each other, yet so far away in a supposed ”global village” where peace is maintained by the recognition of mutual capacity for destruction.
Human beings have become mere statistics in our highly scientific world, lost in the crowd of life. Little wonder social scientists refer to their (supposedly human) respondents as “elements.” Science has overwhelmingly become the measure of all things in the human arena, but has not advanced man’s happiness beyond crass materialism, sheer consumerism and the ephemeral joy they bring.
While multi-religious societies battle with religious fundamentalism, multi-racial societies contend with racism; women feel marginalized, youths feel isolated from the current of events, workers feel alienated, children cannot wait to grow up; men have no control over the cut-throat competition in which they are involved in the West’s largely laissez-faire society; individuals consequently depend solely on themselves. What further impetus for suicide does society need?
Max Weber, the great German sociologist, at the twilight of his life having observed the “iron cage” — which he claimed man had entered into with increasing rationalization of life — concluded that science is meaningless in that it could not answer “the only important question for us: what shall we do and how shall we live?”
Like Sigmund Freud, Max Weber also had a pessimistic view of this apparent human progress. It may be, then, that virtually everyone in modern society is, in reality, tottering dangerously on the precipice of self-annihilation. With the incessant reign of scientific terror in various parts of the world, we might all be moving closer to whence we came.
Tope Oriola is Comment Editor of the Manitoban. He is pursuing a mater’s degree in sociology.
