The Importance Of Happiness

Throughout the rest of the book, Freud addresses the conflict between civilization and the individual. He starts with the fundamental paradox of civilization: we created civilization as a tool to protect ourselves from unhappiness; however it is our largest source of unhappiness. He also points out that contemporary technological advances have been a mixed blessing for human happiness. He also asks what the purpose of civilization is if it is not to satisfy the pleasure principal. He later concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationships with each other, by making them subject to a higher, communal authority.

     Another argument Freud makes is how religion is an attempt to fill in the gaps where civilization and the pursuit of life cannot make individuals happy. "The urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt" is fulfilled by religion. (Freud,

Have you ever truly sat and considered what makes you truly happy? Often times, people answer directly with the response of money. We say this without deeply considering all that we have to be grateful for. Happiness is not achieved through wealth instead through experiences, the family we love, and the nature that surrounds us, literature has created a great impact upon the ideals we consider to create our happiness.

In chapter 8, Freud analyses the relationship between civilization and individual further. In his view, personal fulfillment still can be achieved under the community culture. He explains, “ Here by far the most important thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background”(Freud 105). In other words, community formed with every single individual and forming a community is the most important objective in the process of society development. Personal satisfaction can be achieved maximize if it is assumed that personal development is independent. However, the fact is not that simple. Individuals were born in community and they grow up in the environment that surrounded by their families and friends. They developed themselves along with the improvement of community. Individual and society are inseparable. So when individual considers about achieving personal fulfillment, the community culture is the first and the most primary restriction because they live in the community and they must obey community rules first. That is why Freud writes that personal happiness is always people pursuing but it is pushed into background when it intersects with community culture. For this reason, individual

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud composes essentially to look at the relationship between the individual and society. Through Freud's examination of the relationship, a more profound comprehension of the intricacy of mental life is figured it out. Freud starts to add to the relationship ahead of schedule in the work by portraying the most primitive acknowledge of self and the most primitive acknowledge of the outside world. He further adds to this relationship through the pondering of sexual yearning and its associations with adoration, which he claims, lead to the arrangement of families and after that later gatherings of humankind that came to include development all in all. Through inquiries raised concerning society, society, history and the self, Freud has the capacity portray a kind of guide of the brain. This guide Freud delineates further empowers him to build up a comprehension of the relationship in the middle of human advancement and the person.

But by pleasing society is that what really makes us happy? Freud’s perspective of humans is interpreted as negative. But I am not saying he is completely wrong, he has points behind what he says. But not quite sure, I agree with him completely about what he is saying. Because, how can he back up everything, what evidence does he have to back up his theory.

Freud mainly focuses on human nature and questions the desire, ideas ,and beliefs that shape a human, he then further analyses them. We see in his literature, Civilization and its Disconnect, that he questions religion and the belief in God. He himself does not believe in God, but wants to know why many people follow and trust something that they cannot see. He also questions the concept of human relationships. Knowing that a two person relationship and interaction is inevitable and that it is a part of life, but he does not know if a third relationship, and further on, is necessary. Regardless, human relationships are a part of society, and one of causes of civilizations, which Freud defines as “the whole some of achievement and the regulations which distinguish our lives” (Freud). With one of the achievements

Freud states that mankind's main goal in life is to find happiness and reasoning for that statement can be found through religion. People have adopted religions to give more meaning in their life and a belief that they are a

The Bible is a sacred text that has guided men and women in life to stay on this path of goodness and selflessness. According to Freud the Bible may be the cause of civilization’s unhappiness. Mankind’s freedom has been stifled because of the restrain society has put on our “primal nature”. Anything that goes against the structure the Bible has made in society has been repelled and ignored because it is no longer something that can be thought of as real or taken seriously. Freud believes that the happiness we cannot attain is due to the freedoms we lack. This belief of lacking in freedom is not correct based on the Bible’s chapters. Mans inability to be happy or remain happy is due to his or her need of having something to prove. This

Freud referred to the Hobbes argument that humans are naturally hostile to one another, humans depend on their own man made devices and hostile nature, leading humanity into a war where a man will be against each other (Hobbes 1906, 96). Human civilization is an effort to set up limitations for man’s aggressive

In his ground-breaking book Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud postulates that society, despite ostensibly being set up to protect us from unhappiness, has a net negative impact on human happiness.  According to Freud, the three most important causes of suffering are the natural world, our own bodies, and our interactions with other people (Freud 44).  In addition to identifying these as the main causes of suffering, Freud also states that the suffering that comes from other people is the worst of the three.  Given how civilization has changed since Civilization and Its Discontents was published, however, this belief simply no longer holds true.  Freud’s belief that interaction with other people in society is the worst cause of human suffering is no longer valid in today’s world because of the net benefits of society’s protection, because of society’s benefits to the human body, and because of advances in society’s ability to satisfy human happiness.

This misery of the oppressed class arises from multiple factors. First, the people in this class are forced to submit to bourgeois greed through exploitation. Since the proletariat depend on wage labor for basic survival, they are forced into hard labor with minimal payment- no more than required to entice them to work. This system fulfills the capitalists’ greed, but subjects the proletariat to miserable living conditions, because they have no alternative. Marx is concerned with oppression, while Freud is concerned with repression. However, both reflect on the principle that this stifling of the individual creates misery and discontent in society. While Marx believes this misery can be overcome by overhauling the pattern of social order, Freud seems to believe that the maladies found in society are more or less unavoidable. In Freud’s view, suffering comes from three sources: “the superior power of nature, the feebleness of our own bodies and…family, state and society” (Freud 37). He believes that the first two causes of suffering are unavoidable. However, what he refers to as “the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings” (37) are avoidable. This is what he refers to as civilization, and we feel a “strange attitude of hostility toward civilization” (38). Citizens begin to harbor aggressive hatred

Freud proposes the Principle of Satisfaction when aiming to be happy, in other words "a problem of satisfying a person's instinctual wishes (Freud 263)." Consequently, he concludes that because our "appetite" can never be fulfilled, the attainment of happiness will be nothing else than pessimistic. Also, he notes, that not all pleasures or wishes can be satisfied as soon as they are conceived. Freud presents the example of a baby, who, initially, believes that all his/her wishes should be gratified, and only later learns, form the Reality Principle, the harsh truth, that the wishes can not be satisfied instantaneously. More than that, life teaches men that in order to experience happiness one must sacrifice the instant gratification of his/her desires in order to achieve happiness in future. A simple example would be when a businessman decides to work overtime in order to receive more money and, thus, receive more pleasure, of course temporary and in future.

     Freud recognizes on one level that there is an innate conflict between the individual and society. So even at the first level, there is a conflict which will hinder happiness. Freud states that the norms of society are much too rigorous for the common person because they are in conflict with the inner desires of the psyche. Keep in mind, this has nothing

It is in this way that Freud described what he believed to be the conflict that occurs within the human mind, the conflict that dictates human action. His ideas, however, met and continue to meet with opposition from other thinkers. His ideas rule out the possibility that humans have total control of their