Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

The phrase widely used in literature and sometimes in the public domain is from Freud: Civilization and its malaise, however, is not only in the field of psychology, the author clarified to be: “impossible to despise the extent to which civilization is built on the renunciation of instinct , how much exactly does it presuppose the non-satisfaction (by oppression, repression, or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This “cultural frustration” dominates the vast field of social relationships among human beings. … It is not easy to understand how it can be possible to deprive an instinct of satisfaction. This is not done with impunity. If the loss is not economically compensated, one can be sure that serious disturbances will result from it”. (Freud, 1930/1997, p. 118).

See that “oppression, repression or some other means” belongs to the author, who could hardly imagine a digital world capable of this, and cultural frustration placed in quotation marks by the author dominates relationships, and who states even more curiously that the search for “economic compensation” is a refuge.

But this was registered in other areas as well, Edmund Husserl wrote about the crisis of the sciences: “In the urgency of our life – we have heard it said – this science has nothing to say to us. It initially excludes precisely the questions that, for men of our unfortunate times, abandoned to the most fateful revolutions, are the pressing questions: the questions about the meaning or absence of meaning of all human existence” (The crisis of the European sciences ), one can also speak of the crisis or night of God, of the identity and the oblivion of Being.

Thus, in Postmodernity, if we dispense with superegoic resources in the Freudian sense, what assures us a cultural mask is the dispute between nations and a new form of defense of honor, for example, which are disguises for the various types of urban violence, the drug addiction, the new presence now of psychopolitics that drives us to consumption and polarization and angers us.

This omnipresence of violence camouflaged in different social relations is what characterizes the end of respect that characterizes a healthy distance between I and the Other, or we include the equal that is my mirror, or we violently repel as an Other.

FREUD, S. (1997). O mal-estar na civilização. In Obras psicológicas completas de Sigmund Freud: edição standard brasileira (Vol. 21, pp. 75-174). Rio de Janeiro: Imago. (Original publicado em 1930). (Civilization and its Discontents)