Yeats and Freud on civilization's decline and human discontent

Humanities
Introduction
The two works that have been chosen for this paper are The Second Coming (1919) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), by William Yeats and Sigmund Freud. This paper commences with an analysis of the first paper’s religious context and then offers a comparison against several themes such as individuality, arrogance, and violence as described in the second paper. The Second Coming poem was chosen due to the fact that its prominent religious context decries the state of civilization and argues that things are breaking down and then attempts to explain why and the cause. It refers to several major texts and events over the last thousands of years in both Eastern and Western civilization. In contrast, Sigmund’s essay was chosen because instead of dealing with things on a global nature like Yeats, the work focuses on individuals and groups in civilizations. The essay is one of Sigmund’s thought-experiment essays. It is an attempt to determine if the same subconscious impulses that determine or drive personal behavior could be utilized to create a civilization. In the essay, Sigmund Freud also investigates whether human civilization is progressive and good: whether it has resulted in freer, healthier, and happier human beings than what was the case before it.
Lastly, both works were chosen due to the fact that they look at human life and civilization from different angles. It is the intention of the author of this current work to look at both the negatives and the positives of civilization that have been described by Freud as being cyclic in nature same as what Yeats describes in the rise and the fall of civilizations. Both The Second Coming and Civilization and Its Discontents are part of capstone texts since they have got a lot of the knowledge that is taught in this course including the fact that they look at the same crisis from varying perspectives and are, therefore, more valuable when used together (Brooker, 1986). Description, Analysis, and Interpretation of Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) In this work, Sigmund Freud investigates the neurosis he believes affects both individuals and entire cultures and species. Human beings are born in a pre-civilized state having inherited aggression. And in this state we would happily humiliate, torture, or enslave another for pleasure. Beyond ego, we relate to others with hatred and enmity and we fear others because we know they are like us. Considering the constant hostility of people towards one another, the civilized society is always at the brink of disintegration. Thus, to prevent the disintegration, civilization puts restrictions on some of those natural human instincts such as enmity. And the psychic cost of those restrictions are plenty. We are painfully prevented from expressing out true nature and guilt-tripped into continuing to repress our instincts because it is a price we must be ready to pay civilization or progress; that unhappiness is okay when what we are paying for is civilization. And as if the situation couldn’t be worse, there is a “death drive” below all the above. Death drive is Freud’s most divisive idea and it suggests a will to extinction that is inbuilt in organic life (Doyle, 2019).
In his work, Freud looks at both “savage” and “civilized” human lives for the purpose of finding out the general meaning of civilization. Like several of his other works, the work also includes the use of psycho-sexual theories like sexual impulses theory, Oedipus conflict, sublimation, displacement, and repression. While Freud is generally known for investigating specific neurotics, it can be argued that in this work his interests are expanded to find out society or cultural neurotic aspects. So it is an extension of investigation of neurotics from the individual to the society.
In tone, Freud’s work is quite pessimistic. A number of commentators argue that the pessimism is because of the negative experiences surrounding World War I around the time the essay was written. The negative experiences seem to have been the reason behind Freud’s insistence that humanity is cruel and violent by nature. This work came after another Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) where Freud had argued that humans are partly driven by their desire to destroy. An update or an improvement from well-known Freudian argument that all humans are driven by their desire to get erotic fulfillment. The desire to destroy or cause death is what informs Freud’s “death-drive” theory or notion.
The essay first looks at the issue of human suffering and the manner in which many work hard to find pleasure and avoid suffering or pain. There are three key sources of suffering for mankind: social conflicts, harsh nature, and old age. And typically, humans usually respond in one of the three ways below when they face suffering: fantasies, intoxication, and distractions. Those individuals who not respond to their suffering end up neurotic and display anxiety or its symptoms and can end up abusing substances or insane.
The essay captures Freud’s beliefs on religion. He thinks religion does not exactly solve human problems and the problem of unhappiness.
In the essay, Freud then explains how civilizations improved to deal with suffering. He noted that early civilizations slowly transformed their desire for sexual urges and the individual selfishness of the members into love for others. This resulted in rules of conduct on how people were to relate to one another. Sometimes the rules ended up causing distress and unhappiness in a bid to foster love and order in the society. This is why many modern people who do value their cultures usually remark that older generations must have been happier because there were less rules. This shows while modern societies have become more civilized, they have not really enhanced satisfactions.
In the next section of the essay, Freud looks at how societies resolve conflicts. In the Western Civilization, people are urged to love their neighbors as they love themselves. While this is a great ideal, Freud believes it is a situation difficult to achieve and that it only causes more dissatisfaction as it is difficult to implement. While some humans love themselves, Freud also believes that every human being has an inherent “death instinct” that is an urge to destroy. This is why Freud believes it is frustrating for people to love yet they want to destroy. Description, Analysis, and Interpretation of William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming (1919) The Second Coming is a book that borrows its title from prophesized events in the Christian Bible. In the Bible, the first coming of Jesus Christ was his birth and it ended one historical dispensation and ushered in another. The second coming of Christ, according to the Bible, will mark the end of the World as we know it and the start of a new age. The Bible says that one will know the time is near when troubles and sorrows fill the earth. The new age will have Christ in power and the world will be at peace. This notion that the second coming of Christ will be a turning point for the World is found in the Book of Mathew 24 in the Bible and in several other Bible texts. William Yeats believed that civilization and the world were ending. He posited a theory of history that is somewhat similar to that posited by Spengler. The theory is that history of the world alternates between cycles of growth and decay. According to Yeats, each cycle is about 2,000 years long and the present one which commenced with the first coming of Christ is ending now.
Traditionally, Christian theologians and believers have considered the second coming of Jesus Christ as an event marking the end of one age and ushering a new age. The opening stanza of Yeats’s poem begins with a little story about a falconer who no longer has control of their hawk. They have lost control and communication and things become a little chaotic. This story is followed by Yeats’s description of a historical scenario where things have also fallen apart and there is barbarism and violence. Yeats is probably describing some of the experiences which he has seen firsthand including the Irish Civil War in his country, the Russian Revolution, and the First World War. The writing in the Book of Matthew describes some of the events that will indicate that the second coming of Christ is close as including great tribulations, wars, shorter days, and a situation where it will be difficult to save flesh. This is why Yeats reasons that all the moral collapse, the violence and the anarchy have to be signs that Christ is very nearly coming for a second time.
When talking about the second coming, the event automatically triggers a specific vision that comes from the “Spirit of the World.” According to Yeats, the “Spirit of the World” is a store of archetypal and primitive images e.g. the famous image of the Egyptian Sphinx. The image or vision that comes to mind when one mentioned the second coming of Christ would be expected to be the same as the vision detailed in the Book of Matthew including the tribulations and the coming down of Christ from the heavens in all his power and glory. One would also expect a vision of the new age being exactly as that which was detailed in the Bible with no more war and where love overcomes hate. However, Yeats' vision of a new age is not the same as that captured in the Bible. He argues that the event that will turn the history of the world will not be the actual second coming but will be the emergence of a new god who will be the successor to Jesus Christ (Spacey, 2019). Yeats argues in the poem that like Jesus, this new god will also emerge from the Middle East. But that unlike Jesus who is a combination of a human and a divine being, the new successor god will be the combination of a human and a monster. That the head will have human intelligence but the body will have the instincts, urges, and passions of a lion. In his vision, Yeats notes that the god will have slow-moving thighs and a blank gaze and that he will be the antithesis of love with no pity. Yeats also believes he will be radically democratic and morally very neutral.
The “blind” god will smile both at the starvation of children and at the gluttony of despots. Yeats argues that his vision is similar to that of the first coming of Christ which he said surprised the Greek and was not welcome by everybody. His interpretation of contemporary history leads him to conclude that the Christian era has been a nightmare. In the end, Yeats paints an image of the new god slouching towards Bethlehem to end one era and usher another (Brooker, 1986).
In Sigmund Freud’s essay, he described his lack of religious feeling. Although his good friends are religious, Freud himself is not. However, he believes that religion is important to how societies are functioning. Freud tries to understand the drives of societies and people in general rather than those of individuals including ego and superego. And he wonders how the societal level drives move people ahead. Reflection and Future Learning An important lesson was that both the essay and the poem have various similarities. In Freud’s essay, the superego comes from the psychic function that is a result of tensions between one’s ego and the rules and disciplinary settings of a society that the ego must interact with (Gray, 2019). This tension and struggle are akin to that which Yeats describes as the cycles and circles in his poem. For example, there is a part of the poem where the poet describes birds circling the sky. The tension and struggle are also seen now where technological changes have resulted in an increase in individuality and violence, both of which were themes in Sigmund Freud’s essay. Yeats' poem twists the Christian image of the second coming of Christ and implies that the world is going back to its pre-Christian state where there was no religious morality to act as a guideline or moral compass.
Bibliography Brooker, J. S. (1986). The Second Coming" and "The Waste Land": Capstones of the Western Civilization Course. College Literature, 13(3), 240-253. Doyle, R. (2019, July 6). Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) by Sigmund Freud, translated by David McLintock. Retrieved from The Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/civilisation-and-its-discontents-1930-by-sigmund-freud-translated-by-david-mclintock-1.3925875 Gray, R. (2019). Freud and the Literary Imagination. Retrieved from Washington: http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Civilization.Notes.html Spacey, A. (2019, March 5). Summary and Analysis of the Poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. Retrieved from Owlcation: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Summary-and-Analysis-of-Poem-The-Second-Coming-by-William-Butler-Yeats