@spendius,
spendius wrote:
In Freudian terms we are either all neurotic or in jail/madhouse or not been caught yet. Civilisation and Its Discontents. Civilisation makes people sick.
Then there's Reich.
I think civilization/culture as the Germans call it, is a step toward wellness, but it can go back the other way...Rome and Greece in their decline and fall were simply mad, and some of it can be put on lead which they used in great qualntity and literally blanketed the earth with in their smelting.... But all forms in their breakdown and decline are terrible and sad in the damage they do and the victims they create... They consume themselves as we see Western Society consuming itself, being replaced in this world by dark skinned immigrants, unnable to stop the tide or hold their ground.... But as sickness goes and madness too; nothing compares to the condition of primitives who all live in a bizzare world of ignorance and beliefs -given life and terror by their fears... It is likely that left to themselves, that such people were much less ill, but when primitives had their whole worlds tramatized by contact with advanced strangers from Europe, their neurosis floated to the surface for all to see...
Look at the madness of the dark and middle ages in Europe... The unschooled mind, and the unscientific man is capable of any outrage against humanity... What we should not forget is that civilization too can become a mask for all of our ignorance and prejudice, and that we can behave, act out of our ignorance, fears, and pain, just as the cultured people of Germany once did, with the support of one or more of their noted philosophers... The form and formal behavior can conceal so much of madness, and when the form can no longer control the neurosis, the pent up frustrations of an ignorant people can master them...
And look at us... We may have more than primitives, but life is no more certain, and for our lives we work longer and with less social reward than primitives... There is only one good reason why people are reverting, really, digressing into older forms like magic and religion, spirituality and fate for guidence of their lives which really make them the slaves of charismatics no less ignorant or more sane than themselves.... We do not know the blessing of technology and knowledge... We have not went to the moon... A few people have went, and now people can hold in their hand more technology than was in the whole expedition to the moon, but is that a true blessing, or benefit to them???...
How many of us actually understand the technology we hold, the computers we use, that use us as much as we use them???... It is not ours until we master it, and much of it from nuclear bombs to cell phones is at the service of people governed by belief, prejudice, and ignorance... One President has taken the country to war with a whim, with no more support than religious reactionaries could give him, and he found it was enough...And no one asks: What part in a democratic, rational government should those who reject reason and pray for the last days hold???
They have the show of civilization, but not the substance, and the substance is only enjoyed by a few; and that substance would be, to not suffer want, or fear, or ignorance, or hate; and those who can say they know this hope as reality are fewer and fewer because where the poor must live with uncertainty the rich must too... Where the world suffers insecurity at our hands we must suffer at theirs... Where the poor know slavery so must the rich suffer slavery... We are dragging ourselves into another dark age where the edifices of luxury and opulence cannot be supported by the foundation of poor and uneducated.... It is madness...
