...“With every tool man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or is removing the limits to their functioning” (Freud, 64) This profound quote said by the famous neurologist Sigmund Freud, epitomizes the affect technological change have on human beings. In the text Civilization and its Discontent, Freud discusses one of the main purposes for civilization, which is to protect humans from the dangers of nature. This prerogative heavily drives the need for the development of tools. This quote expresses that as each new piece of technology is introduced to civilization, we find ourselves extending or finding ways to preserve the use and abilities of our body parts. As discussed in class, the inventions of tools such as the knife...
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...Article Review Your name： 陈露洁 31008121 Title of the article: Humanity's Common Values: Seeking a Positive Future Source of the article: By Wendell Bell;From The Futurist, Sep.-Oct.,2004. Briefly state the main idea of the article: （Maxim: 40 words） To overcome the discontents of globalization and the clashes of civilization and to realize the global peace, we should go to seek for those common, positive values of humanity with the principles of inclusion, skepticism and social control. Three important facts the author uses to support the main idea: (Maxim: 60 words) Cultural differences not only separate people between different civilizations but within a single culture or state. Religious groups are growing because of the loss of personal identity and group stability. Human societies and civilizations today mainly differ in how well they achieve those positive values and suppress negative values. List any examples of bias or faulty reasoning you found in the article and say why: Faulty reasoning: in para.7, the author sets McDonald's clean toilets in Hong Kong as an example. Why: I don't think the example here is proper. I don't understand why people in Hong Kong would have fear for the clean toilets. What were they afraid of? Having clean toilets should be a happy thing even for ancient people I think . List at least two new terms/concepts that were discussed in the article, and write a short definition: The origins and continued...
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...Carl Jung has a very broad interpretation of 'religion' and to understand it, one must first examine the concepts Jung puts forward to explain his theory- the collective unconscious and archetypes, as frameworks within the collective unconscious, and how they relate to the process of individuation, the process by which the conscious individual 'harmonises' their psyche (mind). Jung accounts for religion as an expression of the collective unconscious of the species (though Jung may not have agreed with speciation) - religion helps the individuation process. within Jung's concept of the psyche, a three tier system - the personal conscious, the personal unconscious (repressed memories) and the collective unconscious (the blueprint that 'religious' images emerge from, conditioned by the archetypes). The expression of this psyche is the 'libido' (desire), the 'life-force' or energy that is focused through the archetypes. The archetypes are 'conceptual' frames that are shared by the entire species, they are 'functional dispositions' that innately generate images; the archetypes date back to pre-man evolutionary stages. Some examples of these archetypes are the persona - which manifests in dreams as images of masked parties, or suits of armour, the persona represents the 'outward facing' part of the psyche, the extrovert, which interacts with people; the shadow - this generates 'wilderness' or 'woodland' type images, and represents the 'dark', withdrawn 'inwards facing' part of the...
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...positions regarding these areas of focus their answers to the following question will be evident and their reasoning explained. Is it possible for human’s to create a society that would not cause so much suffering and, therefore maximize the happiness of all individuals in society? Or in other words, is the desire for freedom and pleasure of the individual irreconcilable with the needs and demands of society? Freud’s response is no. Marx’s answer is yes. In the following paragraphs I will provide a synopsis of Freud’s main argument in Civilization and It’s Discontent and in doing so explicate his support for his answer, then I will do the same for Carl Marx in the Marx / Engels Reader, and lastly I will discuss which theory I find more persuasive and why. Since it is necessary to discuss and define key concepts and terms in order to understand Freud’s support for his answer I will give a synopsis of the book titled Civilization and It’s Discontents. Freud begins this book by defining the three parts of the psychic apparatus: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the unconscious; it includes everything at birth but later separates off an external world from itself. This external world or conscious is the ego. With the development or separation of the id and ego comes the development of the pleasure principle and reality principle. The id wants instant satisfaction of...
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...Freud once referred to the human nature in terms of repressed sexual desires for the safety of societies (Freud, 1950; 1973; 2003; 2005; 2006; Storey, 2012). According to Freud, living in community means humans abandoning their sexual instincts in order to coexist with others (Freud, 1973). Freud’s major contribution to psychology is the understanding of the unconscious as a place, in the human psyche, where repress desires exist and can only be fitfully repressed (Freud, 1973; 2003; 2005; 2006). Through the lens of Sigmund Freud, his work on Psychoanalysis (1973), The Dreamwork (2006), Totem and Taboo (1950), Civilization and Its Discontents (2005), and The Uncanny (2003); this paper will describe the foundations of the unconscious and how...
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...Conformity & Civilization in Huckleberry Finn A main issue in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the conflict of conformity and civilization. From the beginning of the novel, Huck struggles with what he thinks of society while living with Widow Douglas and Miss Watson. As the story elevates, Huck goes to live with Pap and develops further opinions about society. Many of Huck’s values are tested when he escapes to live with Jim on the river on the search for their freedom. Arguably, Huck learns the most about society from his adventures on the river with Jim. Huck’s moral development over the novel advances in many different stages, while different people and events influence Huck. Huck’s first exposure to the idea of trying to civilize someone is while living with Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas. Huck may have utterly despised the idea of living with them at first, but after a while Huck started to rather like the idea of having proper clothes and being clean. Although he started to like some aspects of living with them, it is not to say he completely enjoyed all the aspects of his new life. Huck found a lot of discontent in the moral convictions in his new life. The Widow told Huck “to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it.” Huck knew this wasn’t true, commenting “but it warn’t so. I tried it” (Twain 8). Additionally, Huck didn’t see how it was right for Miss Watson to say that smoking was bad while she snuffed. Huck did not know whether he agreed with...
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...issues of control of water. These issues of controls over water had arises from its need to fulfill the growing demand of power shortages and its ambition of supply on upstream and downstream. This paper aims to study the reasons behind the reemergence of this water dispute which had previously had been put through cooperation or arbitration for sharing. Also it will analyze the problem of managing the river transboundary in the South East Asia. INTRODUCTION RE EMERGENCE OF WATER DISPUTE IN SOUTH ASIA The presence of water has been an important element in the development of any civilization. The practice of transporting and managing ground water has led to the development of agrarian lifestyle making a shift from itinerant lifestyle of hunting and gathering. In fact it let to the development of invention of hydraulic engineering leading to a huge number of urban settlements in the Harrapan civilization . There has been evidence of water harvesting and management since the ancient times in this region. But there has been a serious decline in the advance in the culture in this region in later period. During the British rule it brought over a more serious challenge, the introduction of supply of water through pipelines has led to a better distribution of water but this led to the ignorance among the people about its importance of conservation. This led to the use of water without realizing about the need for sustainable use water without polluting the ecology of the region. It is...
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...In every generation, people wanted societal transformations based on their beliefs and morals. One of the ways, civil disobedience, has been practiced as a form of demonstrating one’s discontent with the society, therefore seeking a positive change. Both in Antigone, which was written two thousand years ago, and Letter from a Birmingham Jail of 1960 revolve around the idea of civil disobedience and attempt to justify such with logic, morals, and emotions. Civil disobedience is not a mere act of rebelling against the system in which all humans are subdued to, but rather a call for necessary changes. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone, the main character, breaks King Creon’s order to not bury Polyneices, her brother, and give him a proper funeral. Antigone is deeply upset and decides to demonstrate her civil disobedience by doing what Creon said not to do. When Creon finds out, he condemns her for disobeying the law. Antigone claims that she has followed the gods’ law, and chastise Creon, “apparently the laws of the gods mean nothing to you” (61). She is not only troubled by the fact that her brother is being humiliated, but firmly believes in the “laws of gods,” in other words, moral standards. As Sophocles...
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...KEY CONCEPTS Part I: Modern Politics: State and Citizens You will find listed below the key concepts for each lecture and chapters from the text. These concepts are what you will be tested on. They will appear on the midterm quiz, in the form of multiple choice questions and in the final exam will be the basis of both the short answer and longer essay questions. Please note that some of the concepts listed under lectures are also covered in the readings, sometimes in more than one chapter. Lec. 1-2 What is Politics? Concepts from the Lecture: Politics ‘Polis’ Plato Machiavelli Modern Age Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Concepts from the Texts: ‘Simile of the Cave’ ‘fortuna’ philosopher-king Behavioural Approach Class Analysis Elite theory Pluralism Institutionalism ‘Power to’ vs. ‘Power over’ Lec. 3 What is the State? Concepts from the Lecture: Treaty of Westphalia Social Contract Legal-institutionalism Branches of State Levels of State Elitism Pluralism Additional Concepts from the Texts: Night Watchman State Neo-liberal state Welfare State Liberal Democracy Lec. 4 The State: Power, Authority, and Sovereignty Concepts from the Lectures and Readings: Power Authority Sovereignty Weber’s Typology of Authority Concepts from Readings: See Lec. 3 concepts Lec. 5 Political Ideologies: Liberalism Concepts from the Lecture Ideology Left vs. Right ideologies John Locke/ Two Treatises of Government J.S...
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...The second one was Muhammad Qutb’s whose work depicted how Western civilization had led humanity “to corruption and irreligion from which only Islam can save it.” and the third one was Shaykh Abdullah Azzam, who taught at the King Abdul Aziz University when Osama attended. According to American terrorism analyst Steven Emerson, Al-Azhar-educated Azzam “is more responsible than any Arab figure in modern history for galvanizing the Muslim masses to wage an international holy war against all infidels and non-believers until the enemies of Islam were defeated” (Scheurer, page...
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...Keith Thorkildson Fall 2013 Humanities The Impact of WW1 and Freudian theories on Western Societies The twentieth century was a huge turning point for the entire world. Europeans were experiencing something that had never happened in their lifetimes before. Early in the twentieth century WW1 breaks out in Europe and a new way of looking at the human mind emerges. These events and people would really change cultures around the world. Beliefs in the Enlightenment would never be the same and modern day societies are still influenced at what was achieved and destroyed during this time. I am going to highlight the life of Sigmund Freud’s and how his theories impacted how we look at the human mind today. Then I will go over World War 1 and how it completely changed cultures of the west. Finally I will explain how WW1 and Sigmund Freud connected and changed western societies forever. Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia in 1856. There is not a lot of information on Sigmund Freud’s early life because he chose to keep it out of the public’s eye. “Little is known of Freud’s early life as he twice destroyed his personal paper, once in 1885 and again in 1907” (Psychologist, World). His personal papers were closely guarded in Sigmund Freud’s archives and only available to Ernest Jones his official biographer. Freud published countless theories that created a lot of controversy in his time and still in our modern world today. Sigmund published many works but most of them if not...
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...Question: What steps did Japan take to reform its system of feudalism to a more modern form of government? The 18th through 19th century was truly an imperialistic era orchestrated by military superiority by the West. In the interest of avoiding battles they undoubtedly would have lost, East Asian nations signed lopsided treaties that benefited the West. Not only did the treaties open East Asian ports for trade, a demand the West insisted on, but in some cases they included land cessions to the West. The Japanese, having witnessed the demise of the once great Qing Dynasty, were determined to avoid the same destructive folly in their homeland. Japan embarked on a thorough introspection and restructuring that resulted in a modern form of government. Japan was in a new era and they would soon become East Asia’s greatest power. The Shogunate unintentionally sparked the beginning of the restoration period in Japan when he reversed the nation’s long standing sakoku—closed door policy. Many of the samurai and nobles thought the Shogun was showing weakness when he conceded to America’s demands and signed an unequal treaty favoring the West. The first step towards reform began when Japanese troops seized the Imperial Palace and convinced the young Emperor that the Shogun must be overthrown in order to usher in a new imperial era of leadership in Japan. This led to the Boshin War which was a civil war led by imperial forces to uproot the Shogun and his supporters. The Shogun submitted...
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...Both of these civilizations the political leaders became religious leaders and held the most power. They used religion to justify expansion and to unite their people to prevent uprisings. Although religion had a significant role in both of these empires, the Byzantine Empire did not completely rely on it for their laws and legal systems. Differently, the Islamic Caliphates centered their laws and legal systems on their religious practices and beliefs. Both the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphates recognized the importance of religion in their society, although the Islamic Caliphates attempted to incorporate it in more aspects of their lives than that of the Byzantine...
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...Whitecloud, reveals distinctions between Indian and white cultures by examining his narrator’s view on civilization in order to show how identity is constructed and influenced by our societies. Moreover, the conflict is rooted in the narrators opposing views of the two cultures to which he belongs. His views are much more tranquil compared to those of the society where men strive for materialistic pleasures. Therefore, only by a reconciliation of these views will the narrator finally resolves his conflict. At the beginning of the story the narrator presents his views about life. He describes the peace that he feels when he is back home in Wisconsin. However, he also mentions how such peace is completely lost in the everyday life of a big city. It is evident that the narrator has been educated and has lived in a big city for a long time, at least long enough to judge the quality of life in such an environment. The narrator expresses dissatisfaction with society, especially white society. He bluntly states I am tired. I am weary of trying to keep up this bluff of being civilized. Being civilized means trying to do everything you don’t want to, never doing anything you want to. He makes a clear contrast between white society and Native America society. Clearly, the narrator feels as if he is not fit for white society, after all, he is a Native American. It is this discontent with his present environment and his present place in society that creates the conflict facing the narrator...
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...Eros is one’s desire for love that causes them to form relationships with other human beings. Civilization is formed from the instruction of Eros. It leads us to “combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity” (Freud, 81). This desire leads to the formation of families and relationships with others in which one can gain meaning and a better understanding of themselves. These results are what drives the development unique cultures with art, tradition, literature, and science. Contrastingly, Thanatos is the drive of death that comes in the form of aggression (Freud, 82). It works to divide cultures and led one into an instinctual selfishness. When Thanatos overcomes Eros, war and destruction of relationships and the community ensue. Therefore, because of the conflicting drives...
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