MDMD Chapter 5: Paranoia

[Terrance]

Freud explains his view of civilization:

And now, I think, the meaning of the evolution of
civilization is no longer obscure to us. It must present the
struggle between Eros and Death, between the instinct of
life and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out in
the human species. This struggle is what all life
essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization
may therefore be simply described as the struggle for life
of the human species. And it is this battle of the giants
that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about
Heaven. 


The Knight, the Order of the present dispensation,  of the Holy Ghost
locked in battle  with the impartial, fair-minded, rational just Knight
of the sea and the men of science? 

Did he the French ship run away because she had turned the Seahorse into
a hospital, an order of science she was not a war with--Medicine?  Or
did Brits come to the rescue her? 
Or did a Guardian Angel waft the hapless soldiers to shore?   

Now to Freud's 

The Future of an Illusion, 


Civilization has to be defended against the individual, and its
regulations, institutions and commands are directed to this task...to
protect everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and the
production of wealth against men's hostile impulses. Human creations are
easily destroyed, and science and technology, which have built them up,
can also be used for their annihilation. 

Did she only attack to make martyrs of Dixon and Mason? 




To put it briefly, there are two widespread human characteristics which
are responsible for the fact that the regulations of civilization can
only be maintained by a certain degree of coercion---namely, that men
are not spontaneously fond of work and that arguments are of no avail
against their passions. 

Ah Sloth, Deadly, 

Herman: I prefer not to, Sir. 

Jimmy: I prefer to  be an author of complicated fiction. 

Tom: Yeah me too Jimmy, and Ay, Jackson, I ain't no poor Irish language
tutor with a broken mirror.  


Religious ideas are teachings and assertions about the facts and
conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one something
one has not discovered for oneself and which lay claim  to one's belief. 

Yeah, like, you are alive, but all those other sailors are dead
(external reality). Feeling guilty (internal reality)? 

 

 

Firstly, these teachings deserve to be believed because they were
already believed by our primal ancestors; secondly,  we possess proofs
which have been handed down to us from those same primeval  times; and
thirdly, it is forbidden to raise the question of their authentication
at all. 

"we are surrounded by the Pious...MD.30

Thus we arrive at a singular conclusion that of all the information
provided by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might
be of the greatest importance to us and  which have the task of solving
the riddles of the universe and reconciling us to the sufferings of
life---it is precisely those elements that are the least well
authenticated of any. 

Him? 



Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> >From Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and its Discontents (Harmondsworth:
> Penguin, 1991 ed, p269).
> 
> "The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it. But
> one can do more than that; one can try to recreate the world, to build up in
> its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated
> and replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes. But
> whoever, in desperate defiance sets out upon this path to happiness will as
> a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman,
> who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his
> delusion. It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one
> respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world that is
> unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion
> into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this
> attempt to secure a certainty of happiness and a protection against
> suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a
> considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be
> classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who
> shares a delusion ever recognises it as such."
> 
> Hmmm ...