Eros and the Death Instinct

Sophie Here.

In Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he argues that our existence is a struggle between Eros, the sexual drive, and a death instinct.  This is an interesting argument to consider when examining human existence because those are two omnipresent aspects of life.

Sex and pleasure are exploited in almost every aspect of our society.  The media delves into sex in ads such as this Calvin Klein ad or this one It is even sometimes difficult to figure out what the ad is actually supposed to be advertising because of, for example, a lack of clothing or even the positioning of the models.

As for the death instinct, this is present in many ways.  The reason people enjoy roller coasters, for example, is because of that "close-to-death" feeling that they employ.  There is something about human nature that draws us to the death instinct when we know that we can get that rush, that adrenaline, but also know we will be okay.

Freud's argument is intriguing and seeing how much sex and the death instinct are present in our culture, it seems that he might have a point.  He also says that humans possess an instinctual drive to experience pleasure and shield the self from pain.  This makes sense to me, especially in our individualistic society in which we are taught that if we work hard we will succeed and we are taught to shield ourselves from experiencing pain.  This is an interesting contrast to some other societies in which it is taught that life is suffering and, unlike in our culture, the goal of life is not to achieve pleasure because there is too much human suffering.