Civilization And Its Discontents

Modern humans often blame civilization for human suffering. Explorers discover primitive peoples who appear happier than current Europeans, and they wish humanity would return to a seemingly simpler age. Others point to the neuroses that modernity imposes: Science and technology have improved people’s health and provided conveniences, but these developments haven’t “made them feel any happier” (27). For example: “If there were no railway to make light of distances, my child would never have left home, and I should not need the telephone to hear his voice” (27). It is hard to put ourselves in the shoes of those who preceded us, so we cannot really know how happy they were or how hard their privations struck them. In short, there is no assurance that past civilizations are better or worse than ours, Freud concludes.

Instead, to make headway on this question, first we must define “culture”: It is “all the activities and possessions which men use to make the earth serviceable to them, to protect them against the tyranny of natural forces, and so on” as well as “regulating the relations of human beings among themselves” (29). Modern culture has achieved so much that it becomes, for an individual, “a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales” (30).