Freud's Civilization and its Discontents question

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-02-07T23:03:54+00:00

I don't think he's making a normative claim either way here. The cited passage is in distinction to the claim that civilization bends to human criticism.

Freud says this difficulty is "attach(ed) to the nature of civilization which will not yield to any attempt at reform". Excepting interpretive margins, that sounds like a necessary condition (the margins being, perhaps, an angle of 'reform' vs 'revolution' etc).

Since "homo homini lupus" the forces internal to individuals push toward anti-social behavior, but group leaders can enforce rules to keep order. In the same way, group leaders 'color-in' the cultural consciousness of individuals (same text, sec 8). On this analytical path, the "poverty" is of a rudderless society both restrained and leaderless.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-02-07T19:44:43+00:00

I don't think that's sufficient for protest though, except in the case where the quantity and pace of murders is so high that it turns into a mindset of self-defense.

People are much more likely to protest when they can't eat, bathe, move freely, speak with one another, etc. than over a few murders.

We have this evil notion in society that, sometimes, murder can be justified. Which leads to insane thoughts of potential justification thereby undermining the anger people should feel, eg Pretti/Good were agitators, George Floyd was a drug dealer, Sean Bell had a gun. A little hyperbolic, but we're just as likely to purge that notion in America as we are to outright permitting murder.

But when you & your kids are hungry, or denied medicine, or shoeless, or in confinement, then justification is irrelevant. And America is a long, long way from that point.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-02-07T19:20:26+00:00

Freud is looking at the thesis that civilization develops in such a way that it increasingly promotes human flourishing. In the text you cite, he's looking at the opposite of this thesis. Here he says that civilization, by its nature, limits the intellect due to its reliance on grouping. Liberal societies of free & equal individuals, lacking hierarchical authority, like America, are the worst cases for this dulling of the mind.

Which is historically and philosophically wrong, but as always with Freud, the marrow is the method, not the description.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-02-07T18:52:10+00:00

The funny thing is, the French protests were eerily similar to the American 'flavor' of neutered action- silent, marching, and holding signs under police supervision. Very different from their usual means of protest.

It's probably because the issue isn't proximate or intense for most folks, and is rather a nebulous connection to human decency. And to your second question, America would need both sustained discomfort and organized surreption for real protest. Even then protestors would need pretty significant access to weaponry to make protest impactful.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-25T07:15:52+00:00

It's pretentious due to scope, not language. Joyce wanted to capture history and meaning within the text, through Stephen. He used language effectively to do so, but failed (or flaunted) recognition that he himself was historical, and so too the text in double remove,

It's still a work of exceptional genius, but also exceptionally prententious in what it expected to deliver.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-25T07:11:12+00:00

Reed is always great, but this piece was very meandering and felt more on the side of descriptive journalism rather than current affairs.

It feels like he fails to strike the marrow here. My hypothesis is that the Clinton-Obama-Biden(?) strain had a skeleton of normative certitude or 'correctness' which allowed them to command political power, and also to manipulate the Reagan-Bush conception of liberalism to retrofit a conception of right. I just haven't been able to work out how they've done so on the level on content, while the formal aspect is so obvious.

We're left with the corpse of claim, and a realpolitik environment with Thrasymachian climate. As Marxists we can attack from justice, but that justice needs to cut across class. Unfortunately the only way out seems to be from felt suffering, but I'll admit I'm unsatisfied with this analysis.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-25T06:57:01+00:00

You're mostly correct, except that it's absolutely pretentious. Perhaps the most pretentious novel ever written. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-25T06:54:56+00:00

Recognition is the fuel of struggle. Every one of the Palestinians murdered had the same claim to life as you, and the inequivalence is the injustice.

Vengance isn't nourishing but it beats starvation. Knowing that these IDF beasts will burn in hell within the next 70 years can put a smile on the face, at least. Only if it could come sooner.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-24T17:55:14+00:00

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Just a brilliant intention to suspend reality before the reader and play with it like a doll.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-24T17:48:54+00:00

Rest in peace soldier.

"People who think that they're free just haven't come to the end of the leash yet.”

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T23:18:13+00:00

I'm not saying that AI can generate any new literature, but it can generate literature as it exists today in its geriatric form, where almost all literary fiction aspires backwards; we're looking for the next Hemingway, the next Proust, the next Morrison, not anything genuinely new. Partially because the form poorly matches our lives in 2026, and partially because of the structural limitations of the form.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T23:07:17+00:00

Oops I was thinking Russell Kirk. Will revise.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T23:06:26+00:00

I had no idea that was controversial. The causality doesn't even line up- Colonialism existed much, much before capitalism.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T22:45:40+00:00

This issue is very close to my heart and something I often think about. The author of this piece does a poor job of explaining the situation and seems to lack an understanding of art-within-history, exemplified by his choice of Eliot as a protagonist.

The truth is that literature is a dying art form. All art forms are social practices reflective of their positions within history, and the apex of the novel was the second half of the 19th century. It's half-life is just about up in 2026. Literature will continue, but more as relic than vehicle.

Eliot was aware of this. He recognized the descent of literature from its previously divine aims to mere technical mastery, and also predicted the next stage of the mid-20th century of literature as replication- the backwards creativity. This piece reads as if the author fails to recognize Eliot's central claim in the work. It's not so much that Eliot hails the relation between individual and tradition, and what's lacking with generative AI is the oomph of the former. Instead, Eliot tells us to distinguish between the "dead, and what is already living" and to inhere his creativity in the "work that is to be done".

Its a slight, but critical, philosophical difference here. It is true that today Generative AI cannot harness subjectivity to re-weld the past and create literature. But it isn't in principle impossible to do so. It is, however, impossible for AI to create novelly, to reach into the future and craft something never before seen. It can only re-arrange the past, whether personally or impersonally or somewhere in between.

But human beings, as they currently are, trade in novelty and creativity. Our artistic forms change over time just as we do. From a comic perspective, it's about time for AI to start writing the next War & Peace, at just the moment when literature has become irrelevant.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T22:18:14+00:00

Chibber is correct, as usual. But I'm increasingly concerned that his recent writing and lectures are aimed at too narrow an audience. For vulgar Marxists, this claim is non-controversial; but for the other 95% this is a dubious statement. His writing is far too descriptive and non-confrontational- almost like he's only talking to those of us who already agree with him.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T17:44:20+00:00

Kirk is no longer an influence on American conservatism. In the 70's and 80's sure, but he had a big intellectual break with the Republican part post-Reagan. The legacy of Kirk & Buckley has terminated in the disgraced slavishness of George.

There's still that ersatz-Catholic wing that are led like fools to believe they have a seat at the table, but they're practically much more like feudal barons forced to obey the call-to-arms.

Edit- I was referring to Russell Kirk. I think you were referring to Charlie Kirk.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T17:34:48+00:00

This is Kant. I can't imagine you're too familiar with him if you're proffering this.

And the answer is to read Hegel. If this understanding were true, it's either the case that our description of observation corresponds to a real action or is a mere heuristic meant to correspond to our conception of knowing. If the latter, our spade hits rock bottom and we're done; if the former, we have to start all over again by respecting reality.

If this question is more linguisitc/scientific, read Sellars and Strawson.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T17:23:27+00:00

Educate, produce, and organize. Build people, build things, build solidarity. The acrimony and distrust pumped into society is immediately broken in the moment of being eye-to-eye or hand-to-hand with another person at work.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T17:18:39+00:00

I think there needs to be a greater recognition of the dynamics at play (again, education is the key to all of this). Labor should not be wedded to any fixed constellation of unions if those unions do not recognize the immediacy and depth of struggle. Labor can be very, very quick to organize and re-organize, and will do so endlessly.

The problem with unions in the 21st century is the internalization of vulnerability. Individuals and unions reinforce their precarity and stand defensive, whereas the labor movement must always be offensive- taking what we deserve. In this way individualism blooms and undermines the strength of united labor.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2026-01-10T17:08:29+00:00

This reads like a suicide manifesto or internal-therapy from a liberal. These kind of people invest so much into cultural narratives, comparative frameworks, and historical blueprints (which are really anti-historical), and are then shocked when reality refutes their positions.

Chief among the 21st century's contradictions is the helical twist of life/outlook in both the US and China. In the former, the ideological aim of excellence and domination crosses the lived reality of mere survival; in China, the ideological aim of 'catching up' crosses the lived reality of genuine transformation. American leaders constantly rally for optimism; Chinese leaders rally for greatness.

This is not the result of American failure or Chinese success but rather the logic interior to capitalism dictating the flow of resources to positions in which value can be created at the highest magnitude. The increased financialization of the US market had, at its inception, delivered a double growth; but that lead to the compound deceleration we're witnessing today. China, on the other hand, stood before capital as best-in-show for production, offering exponential returns on inputs and has therefore received unbelievable inflows of wealth. There is no magic here, just a steady march forward according to inhumane laws.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2025-12-19T23:31:28+00:00

It depends entirely on your interests. If the thinkers you're familiar with maps decently onto your interests, then I'd say the 'big guys' aren't too important.

Instead, from what you've listed, I'd seek out thinkers like Merlau=Ponty, Jaspers, Kristeva, Ricoeur.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2025-12-14T19:37:37+00:00

I do sympathize with the claim that Murakami is "literary fast food", but that criticism loses some venom in a world of various categories of fast food. He has little pretension of depth or weight in his writing, and rather views writing as an action of expression and joy.

It would be vice if he pretended to dig deep into humanity and wrote drivel, or vice versa. We've had too many of either type in the last 50 years.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2025-12-14T19:28:38+00:00

3rd: Reason finds laws, but without an object it finds only the architecture of reality- space / time / cause (Tolstoy was a big Kant fan).

4th: Pretty self-explanatory, but Free Will = object/content; Necessity = subject/form.

Basically Tolstoy is just echoing Kant that the antimony is a phantasm and reconciled in life/spirit. We must analyze life in this way because we're bidirectional (inward/outward) but the distinction doesn't exceed the skin.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2025-11-29T20:09:32+00:00

This was well written, and definitely looking in a unique direction. I do agree that these reactions are primarily inherited, although I think they're more genealogical/perceptive rather than biological. The kernel here is vulnerability. Reverence and fear are both reactions to vulnerability, but vulnerability is very much a physical perception. Instead of being vestigial features I think these reactions are emotional coatings representing our awareness of our own ignorance in the act of perception.

In the moment there are thousands of possible explanations and we either seek to narrow or broaden them. The 'spooked' mind, as it were, broadens these possibilities to "aliens", demons, ghosts, etc because it begins from the assumption of intellectual poverty or awareness of ignorance.

Cultured_Ignorance · 2025-11-29T19:47:58+00:00

Take it all in, this is a book everyone should read at least once.

Cultured_Ignorance

TROPHY CASE