Anti Natalism | The dangers of Nature and Fate @antinatalism1 | Uploaded December 2021 | Updated October 2024, 15 hours ago.
“Nature rises up against us, majestic, cruel and inexorable.”
“It was precisely because of these dangers with which nature threatens us that we came together and created civilization. […] For the principal task of civilization, its actual raison d’être, is to defend us against nature”
—Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
It is nature herself that we seek to “to escape through the work of civilization” (Freud, 1962, p. 12).
psychoanalyzadnes.cz/2019/01/28/death-and-civilisation
In both works (Civilization and its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion), Freud mentions that it is other men that are a great source of sufferings for the individual; yet we form societies and put up with this kind of suffering, for human cruelty is preferable to the cruelty of nature. Moreover, compared to living in the state of nature, we are less likely to be violently harmed by other individuals in a civilised society.
Men form civilisations to escape nature, and then they wish to return to a state of nature to escape the discontents of civilisation. It seems that men view both nature and civilisation as threatening: this is the motivation behind forming religion as a way of psychological protection “against the dangers of nature and Fate, and against the injuries that threaten him from human society itself” (Freud, 1962, p. 14).
Not only does our fear of death explain why we form civilisations, but it also explains the means we develop to keep civilisations in place: it explains how religions come to be by humanising nature.
“Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached; they remain eternally remote. But if the elements have passions that rage as they do in our own souls, if death itself is not something spontaneous but the violent act of an evil Will, if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society, then we can breathe freely, can feel at home in the uncanny and can deal by psychical means with our senseless anxiety” (Freud, 1962, pp. 12-13).
By humanising nature and its forces, man “gives them the character of a father” (Freud, 1962, p. 13), and just as every child eventually learns to rebel against his/her father, so do we learn to rebel against our heavenly fathers. Consequently, a doctor is not just a healer in society; a doctor is a warrior who rebels against Death, for “it is in fact natural to man to personify everything that he wants to understand in order later to control it” (Freud, 1962, p. 18).
Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men. The unhappiness which has this last origin we find perhaps more painful than any other; we tend to regard it more or less as a gratuitous addition, although it cannot be any less an inevitable fate than the suffering that proceeds from other sources.
Another method operates more energetically and thoroughly; it regards reality as the source of all suffering, as the one and only enemy, with whom life is intolerable and with whom, therefore, all relations must be broken off if one is to be happy in any way at all. The hermit turns his back on this world; he will have nothing to do with it. But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create it. try to build up another instead, from which the most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others corresponding to one’’s own wishes. He who in his despair and defiance sets out on this path will not as a rule get very far; reality will be too strong for him. He becomes a madman and usually finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is said, however, that each one of us behaves in some respect like the paranoiac, substituting a wish-fulfilment for some aspect of the world which is unbearable to him, and carrying this delusion through into reality. When a large number of people make this attempt together and try to obtain assurance of happiness and protection from suffering by a delusional transformation of reality, it acquires special significance. The religions of humanity, too, must be classified as mass-delusions of this kind. Needless to say, no one who shares a delusion recognizes it as such.
Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
genius.com/Sigmund-freud-civilization-and-its-discontents-chap-2-annotated
“Nature rises up against us, majestic, cruel and inexorable.”
“It was precisely because of these dangers with which nature threatens us that we came together and created civilization. […] For the principal task of civilization, its actual raison d’être, is to defend us against nature”
—Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
It is nature herself that we seek to “to escape through the work of civilization” (Freud, 1962, p. 12).
psychoanalyzadnes.cz/2019/01/28/death-and-civilisation
In both works (Civilization and its Discontents and The Future of an Illusion), Freud mentions that it is other men that are a great source of sufferings for the individual; yet we form societies and put up with this kind of suffering, for human cruelty is preferable to the cruelty of nature. Moreover, compared to living in the state of nature, we are less likely to be violently harmed by other individuals in a civilised society.
Men form civilisations to escape nature, and then they wish to return to a state of nature to escape the discontents of civilisation. It seems that men view both nature and civilisation as threatening: this is the motivation behind forming religion as a way of psychological protection “against the dangers of nature and Fate, and against the injuries that threaten him from human society itself” (Freud, 1962, p. 14).
Not only does our fear of death explain why we form civilisations, but it also explains the means we develop to keep civilisations in place: it explains how religions come to be by humanising nature.
“Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached; they remain eternally remote. But if the elements have passions that rage as they do in our own souls, if death itself is not something spontaneous but the violent act of an evil Will, if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society, then we can breathe freely, can feel at home in the uncanny and can deal by psychical means with our senseless anxiety” (Freud, 1962, pp. 12-13).
By humanising nature and its forces, man “gives them the character of a father” (Freud, 1962, p. 13), and just as every child eventually learns to rebel against his/her father, so do we learn to rebel against our heavenly fathers. Consequently, a doctor is not just a healer in society; a doctor is a warrior who rebels against Death, for “it is in fact natural to man to personify everything that he wants to understand in order later to control it” (Freud, 1962, p. 18).
Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men. The unhappiness which has this last origin we find perhaps more painful than any other; we tend to regard it more or less as a gratuitous addition, although it cannot be any less an inevitable fate than the suffering that proceeds from other sources.
Another method operates more energetically and thoroughly; it regards reality as the source of all suffering, as the one and only enemy, with whom life is intolerable and with whom, therefore, all relations must be broken off if one is to be happy in any way at all. The hermit turns his back on this world; he will have nothing to do with it. But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create it. try to build up another instead, from which the most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others corresponding to one’’s own wishes. He who in his despair and defiance sets out on this path will not as a rule get very far; reality will be too strong for him. He becomes a madman and usually finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is said, however, that each one of us behaves in some respect like the paranoiac, substituting a wish-fulfilment for some aspect of the world which is unbearable to him, and carrying this delusion through into reality. When a large number of people make this attempt together and try to obtain assurance of happiness and protection from suffering by a delusional transformation of reality, it acquires special significance. The religions of humanity, too, must be classified as mass-delusions of this kind. Needless to say, no one who shares a delusion recognizes it as such.
Sigmund Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
genius.com/Sigmund-freud-civilization-and-its-discontents-chap-2-annotated
