Is Civilization really Discontented?

By Melissa:

Freud takes a closer look at society in his book Civilization and Its Discontents. He starts his book by addressing the that our basic human instincts are to seek pleasure and that all the mind wants is happiness. The libido is then the lust for pleasure, which is no just a sexual drive but a drive towards something. Frued then states that there are two main drives within human beings:the life drive and the death drive. According to him, the life drive is the desire to be happy but this desire once obtained is only brief and then the cycle begins with a new desire. Meanwhile the death drive is this deep urge to die also known as the drive into the unknown. These drives are stored within the unconscious of all human beings. 

Death, in Freud's mind, was the greatest gift because it is the complete freedom from suffering. Also, unlike the life drive, it is not fleeting and is thus seen as the big picture. Life only occurs at the cost of death, in a way we live to die. Freud had been described a feeling once termed as the oceanic feeling which is the feeling of being one with the world. He believed that people only feel one with the universe after they die. 

The main purpose to life is then seeking pleasure and avoiding pain/suffering. There are four ways to do this: intoxication,illusion,insanity, and displacing libido: sublimation. Freud then addresses life as pleasure through the pursuit of beauty. There are three different ways of finding pleasure and thus there are three different types of people. The erotic person who finds pleasure in deep personal relationships with others. The narcissistic person who finds pleasure in themselves and their private experiences. The active person who find pleasure in their relationships with the external world and won''t give up on it. 

In order to belong to a civilization one must put off their own pleasure to please the whole which takes away their happiness. They then must experience delayed gratification. Sexual pleasure is seen as the highest form of satisfaction but due to civilization we must put it on hold. This is why families are formed, they are easy to make and accepted by society at large. In this love is an illusion and it is the modification of the truly sexual experience thus it is secondary to sex. Being apart of a civilization is to suffer: society and civilization is the price we pay for security. So anyone showing anxiety is actually showing discontent from their sexual life. This is just the beginning of Freud's look into SOciety and Its Discontents.