Discontent
Paraphrasing and quotations from Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud Civilization, or at least the aspect that Freud thinks is a socialized super-ego, is merely a cultural metaphor for the psychic fulfillment in each of us of a narcissistically thrilling wish to destroy the world, a wish "fulfilled" in a monstrously ingenious phantasmatic scenario of self-destruction. Interestingly, it is difficult to determine a proper definition for the word "civilization". I remember this always being a complicated topic in school, and during my studies (particularly of Literature, English, and Sociology) the question often arose: what makes people that much better than others? Colonization, for example, notoriously comes with disdainful notions that one people deserve or rightfully should be ruled by another. The definition that seems to be ultimately settled on in this book is actually quite poetic compared to any definition I was ever taught (or ever disc...