Curtis' /Happiness Machines/ and Freud's /Civilization and its Discontents/ Topic # 1:the reason why it's impossible to happy for Sigmund Freud,

       Happiness for Freud  
After reading the book Civilization and its Discontents, I think that it’s impossible for us to obtain happiness.

On Freud’s opinion, “what decides the purpose of life is simply the programmer of the pleasure principle” (Freud 43). This principle shows that what people “demand of life and wish to achieve in it” is happiness. “They want to become happy and to remain so”. And they struggle not only for “an absence of pain and unpleasure” but also for “the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure”. (42)

But what does happiness come from? “We can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things”. (43) So comparing with the unhappiness from “our own body”, “the external world” and “our relation to others”, “our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution”. (44) And “under the pressure of the possibilities of suffering”(44), “the programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled” (54), so we have to moderate the claims of happiness to the “more modest reality principle” that “if a man thinks himself happy merely have to escape unhappiness or to have survived his suffering, and if in general the task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background”(44). We can make choice from several paths: to get satisfaction from the external world, to make ourselves independent of it, or to alter the world to suit our wishes. However, any choice may expose us to the dangers if “a technique of living that has been chosen as an exclusive one should prove inadequate”. (55)

For protecting ourselves from unhappiness, we create civilization. However, it also seems to be the largest source of unhappiness. People become “neurotic” because they “cannot tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural ideals, and it was inferred from this that the abolition or reduction of those demands would result in a return to possibilities of happiness” (59). For Freud, the characteristics of civilization are order and cleanliness, “a sublimation of instincts” (74) and “a renunciation of instinct” (75). For the repression of instinct, civilization creates discontent.

        Though love, as “one of the foundations of civilization” (80), bring people satisfaction of happiness, when taboos, laws and customs appear with the development of civilization, further restrictions appears, too. “Sycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate” (89) Men are “creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressive”(94) .And though love can bring people together, the aggressive instinct ,which represented the death instinct, prevent the tendency. “The evolution of civilization” presents “the struggle between Eros and Death” (111).And guilt and neurotic repression of instinct are simply the price we have to pay for not losing love. We still can’t escape from the discontent of civilization.

        As long as we cannot deny the development of civilization, we have to repress some of our instinct.Just like people today are too busy to relax, we do not have the same freedom like the people in the past. We cannot do whatever we want to do because we are civilized people. We should keep rational and clam. But to make a choice between civilization and savageness, we can never quit the present life to go back to primitive society, so happiness still is far from us.

Plato topic#1 Do you think these charges are legitimate? Is this a fair trial?

                      A wise man’s death

I have to say that I was astonished when I read the Apology. How could such a great person be found guilty for these ridiculous charges in a state well-known for its democracy?

Socrates has two kinds of accusers, the old ones and the present ones. His first accusers accused him for engaging in inquiries into things beneath the earth and in the heavens, of making the weaker arguments appear the stronger and of teaching others for the same things (Plato, 23). And his present accusers impeach him of corrupting the young, and of believing not in the gods whom the state believed in, but in new divinities (29).However, in my expression all these charges are illegitimate.

 For Socrates’ first accusers, who hold of most of the people when they were children and indicted Socrates for never believed in the gods (22), are doing so because of the Socrates’ wisdom. After Chaerephon asked the oracle which said that no one was wiser than Socrates (25), Socrates began to investigate at god’s command. He cross-examined others whom are reputed to be wise, and from this examination, indignation and prejudices arose. These people who didn’t admit their ignorance had been accusing him for many years.

And for his present accusers, Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, their charges are approximately the same with the former ones, but there are still some little differences. Firstly, has Socrates corrupted the young voluntarily? If he has, he must make his companions evil, and then these bad citizens would do harm to himself. But no one likes to be injured, so does Socrates. So he couldn’t corrupt the young voluntarily or he hasn’t corrupted them at all. (31) Secondly, Meletus says that Socrates doesn’t believe in the gods in any way by teaching” the sun is a stone and the moon is earth”. However, these words are from others’ works and everyone could buy these works from the theater (32). And this is also contradicted to the charge that Socrates believes in new divinities (33). Otherwise, Socrates never teaches anyone knowledge, instead he teaches people critical thinking. How could he corrupt the young by leading them to think themselves (40)?

Overall, I have to say these charges are all absurd and illegitimate. And the trial is unfair, too. On one hand, the process of the trial isn't just enough. Socrates cannot let everyone who accuses him to spar with him in court, and if he put qustions, no one could answer (23).And on the other hand, the people who vote for the verdict are unjust, too. As I have mentioned above, Socrates’ first accusers got hold of most of the people when they were children. This prejudice has rooted deeply in their mind and I don’t think it can be changed immediately. And what's more, the law is unjust. To finish a trial of life and death in a single day is so careless. The time is not enough for Socrates to clear himself of great prejudice. Though Socrates has the chance to defend for himself, the trial is still unfair.

                     Work Cited

Plato. Euthyphro, Apology,Crito. Upper Sadder River: Prentice Hall, 1948