Civilization #57： How Modernism Ruined Everything (Re-upload AUDIO FIXED -- Thanks to Gabriel Bessa)

Okay, good morning. Today we do Sigmund Freud. First, what I will do is I will put Freud in the context of the Western religious, intellectual, and literary tradition. All right, so in the beginning, the main religion for us humans during the Ice Age was animism. Okay, and the idea of animism is that we humans are no different from every other living conscious being in the world. We are like the trees. We are like the animals. We're all interconnected together, and life is just a cycle of life and death, birth and rebirth. All right, and this religion is still around today in many primitive societies, for example, in the Amazon. And then we transition to the mother goddess. So as we became more agricultural, fertility was more and more important. We need to have more children, and we need to grow more crops. And so we began to worship the mother goddess, and women were very high status at this stage in history.

But as populations grew and towns came into being, they came into competition. They started to have relationships with each other. And they started to war against each other. That's created polytheism. Polytheism is the idea that each place has its own god that's its patron. And when these places come into conflict and war, the way they settle disputes is the losing party, their god becomes their servant to the winning god. And this creates the idea of the pantheon that we see in Greek, Roman mythologies, as well as Norse mythologies. Now, the radical break from this tradition was the birth of monotheism. Now, there's going to be a lot of scholarly debate about which was the first monotheistic religion. Some say there are certain Egyptian cults that were monotheistic. Some say the Jews were. Some say the Zoroastrians were. In this class, what you learn is, actually, it was the Christians who were the first true monotheistic religion.

And the reason why is, the Christians introduced the idea of the Holy Trinity. Okay? And remember what the Holy Trinity is. The Holy Trinity, the idea is, the Holy Trinity, the idea is, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, these are different entities, but they are co -equal to each other. They are separate, but unified. They are different, but equal. And this idea, it's very hard for us to logically reconcile. The only way for us to understand this is if God is both nothing and everything. Therefore, it excludes everything. There can be no other God with our God. Okay? And this is the idea of monotheism. And the power of monotheism is that, for the first time in human history, it creates the idea of the individual. Because when God is everything, you have a direct connection with God. And it removes you from the community. Okay?

Now, this is the idea of monotheism. This will create a lot of problems in the future. But at this point in history, remember, monotheism is being promoted by the Roman Empire as a way to consolidate its rule over its vast territory. At this stage in history, this is not a problem. And the reason why is, mediating you and God is the Catholic Church. But not only that, the Catholic Church mediates God for everyone. So in this way, the Church creates its own community. Okay? So at this stage in history, this is not a problem. But remember, the Church becomes corrupt, and there are many religious reformers who believe that you don't really need the Church in order to access God. In fact, you have a moral imperative to access God directly through the Bible. You have to remove God from your Church. read about Bible by yourself you have to interpret it properly okay and so

obviously the most serious reformer is Martin Luther now this is important because what will happen is by limiting the church you create direct access to God and this creates the idea of crisis in faith the idea of crisis in faith is how do you truly know as a person whether or not you love God and how do you know God loves you think about your mother right you know your mother loves you and you know you love your mother but there are many days when you really hate your mother and you fight with your mother okay so it's hard for us not to doubt ourselves and so this creates the crisis in faith because in Protestantism you are required to show absolute faith and devotion in God if you doubt if you hesitate you will be condemned to hell all right so this creates the idea of crisis in faith historically there have been many

solutions to this problem different prophets have proposed different solutions so let's look at three different solutions all right so the first solution is the idea of wealth account accumulation all right so these are the Calvinists right they argue that to show your true faith in God and for you to prove to yourself God truly loves you you make a lot of money all right that is a testament to the power of your faith wealth accumulation so that's one solution it's a very popular solution it's what gives us capitalism today the second solution is that if jihad you will die for your faith you're sacrifice yourself to promote the truth of God all right that's also a solution and then there's one more solution that we will discuss today and it's hard for us to truly understand so I'm gonna take some time to explain it fully okay this is idea of transgression so um let

me explain it to you slowly the idea is this you must demonstrate complete and apt faith in God to be one of the elect to go to heaven to do so you must demonstrate courage um you must demonstrate financialism the best way to do that is to prove yourself to god by rejecting the laws of man by rejecting human morality by um rejecting social taboos by breaking social taboos as you demonstrate your faith in god all right now i know this sounds like a strange idea um but let me give an example to show you what this means let's just say that in school i decided to start a new class and this new class is called individual empowerment and my very first assignment to all my students is i want you guys to go shoplift i want you guys to go steal a piece of candy from a small store and of course you

are disgusted and you are appalled by this suggestion what do you get caught well you might get expelled from school you might be jailed your parents may punish you you may be outcast from society and then i tell you as and then i tell you have faith trust me when you do this and you break the social taboo that's preventing you from realizing your full potential you will feel an extreme sense of exaggeration liberation excitement and this will motivate you to do greater things in life by breaking taboos by transgression against society and showing your true faith in god you will master your destiny okay and so you guys go and you go steal something from the store you get away with it and guess what you feel excited you feel exhilarated you feel energized okay and that's the idea of transgression and um this has always been a very uh um this and this

has been around for us for like hundreds of years as well okay so these are the three main ways that historically um the religious practitioners practitioners have tried to resolve the issue of the crisis of faith right wealth accumulation that's a calvinist jihad and but you also have transgression remember transgression it's very important for discussion okay so remember this idea now um another way to resolve the crisis in faith is through philosophy epistemology epistemology epistemology it really just means the theory of knowledge how do ideas come together what does knowledge come from how do we know what we know right because the crisis of crisis of faith is essentially how do we know so epistemology is really um philosophy's attempt to resolve this crisis in faith remember before we discussed kant and kant proposed the idea of active subjectivity active subjectivity is the idea that we are not just passive consumers of information we actively

participate in reality we imagine reality in a way that allows us to understand it what Kant tells us is we imagine space and time onto reality which creates a world of appearance for us to understand the problem with Kant is what is reality and Kant doesn't know in fact he tells us it is impossible to truly understand reality and this creates a problem because if that's the case then how do we know if reality exists or not it's entirely possible that we are in a computer simulation right so Hegel comes along and resolves this issue by introducing the idea of the Geist okay the Geist the spirit the mind he argues that this is the manifestation of God that is the underlying basis of all reality and from this reality comes material world what will then happen is that Marx will come along and he will argue that Geist is really history Hegel believes that

the Geist is in a process of working itself with the world it's becoming the world it's bringing us along with it so that one day everyone will achieve full enlightenment Marx inverts Hegel and puts the material world before the world of ideas and he argues that history it is a movement of class struggle and the end of history is when all class class struggle ceases and we all become equal in a diverse paradise why because as capitalism becomes worse and worse as the political increase in number but are exploited in greater uh but but are oppressed by the capitalist eventually the polytheist you and me will develop class Consciousness and we will unite we'll overflow the capitalist class through collective action okay so this is Marx now today we will study Freud because what will happen is Freud will come along and he will present a completely different conception of the movement of history and

of the individual he argues that the individual is really just unconscious forces embedded within the brain okay so these three forces are the superego the ego and the id the ego is who we think we are the superego are these social forces that act upon us and the id are these hidden sexual urges and what he will argue is actually these hidden sexual urges are the two foundations of who we are as well as of civilization and he names two of them okay the first is what is called the Oedipal the Oedipal complex the second is electro complex so remember that Oedipus is a character from Greek mythology a king who killed his father and married his mother Electra is also a character from Greek mythology a woman who wanted to kill her mother and marry his father okay Electra is from the Greek mythology a woman who wanted to kill her mother and marry

his father okay Electra is also a character from Greek mythology so he argues these are the two fundamental basis of who we are if you're a man you have the Oedipal complex if you have if you're a woman you are the you have the electro complex okay now this is all strange because Kant makes sense Hegel makes sense Marx makes sense and they all seem to flow from each other and then you have Freud okay so the question then is where did he get this idea where where's this from how did he develop this idea all right so so so so we'll look at this question in great detail today all right so up so um everyone so knew that Freud's theory of the unconscious is problematic and he had a very famous student his best student his hair parent named Carl Jung and Carl Jung really saw Freud as a father and he worshiped

Freud and he wanted to improve on Freud's theory of the unconscious and over time or Carl Jung will do is he was systemized this idea okay so for Carl Jung we have the ego and the ego is made up of two forces the conscious force and the subconscious the subconscious is also divided into the personal as well as the collective sorry it's not subconscious unconscious okay unconscious so the personal conscious are just our our memories our experiences the collective unconscious is the collection of all societies memories and experiences and they are captured and expressed whenever we engage in society when we eat the food we talk to people and watch movies when we read books okay the collective unconscious is embedded through society you breathe it like you would breathe air okay so um can't i'm sorry yoon also says that we have the animus and the anima in other words we sorry in other

words we are made up of two opposing forces the male and the female there's a duality to us um so when when we meet people the ego projects a persona okay the persona is just basically our best self in a certain social context so so in school you're a student and you try to be the best student at home you're a daughter um at mcdonald's you're a friend okay so so you are different personas in different social contexts now we try to protect our best self but we are made up of a lot of bad memories bad thoughts so the ego suppresses uh the worst aspects of us in a shadow form okay so the shadow is really the ego of the ego and this yoon argues is what is called the self all right and what he tells us is life is a constant process of self -discovery if you truly want to master

yourself you must discover who you are and that will take a lifetime of um self -exploration got it by a psychotherapist all right and self operation got it by a psychotherapist all right and and this sounds much more Será denigradando el ego de ser lo que se acaba aprendiendo entonces nos ocupa la autoconferencia a ser lo que no sabe People think of ego se limitan tanto a los egoнос at a distancia a una persona que qinga el ego e o 첫 önce no podemos saber much more logical, right? And it's become really the standard model for modern day psychology. Now, you would think that Freud would be happy that Carl Jung came up with this new idea on how to improve his theory. But Freud was infuriated that Jung would question his theory. In fact, Freud was notorious for being a control freak. He excommunicated Jung, refused to have anything to do with him. In

fact, everyone in the community around Freud were now dissing themselves from Carl Jung, and there would be no reconciliation between the two ever. And that's why Carl Jung had to go and develop this theory, okay? So, and it's strange because all Carl Jung is trying to do is improve Freud. So that gives us a second question. What? Why? Why was Freud so afraid of criticism? Why was he so secretive, all right? And then the third question that we will look at today is, why did this idea become so popular? In fact, the ideas of Freud and Carl Jung will become the basis of a major cultural movement called modernism. And modernism is the cultural movement that we still live in today. Now, there are many different, definitions of modernism, but for us, the easiest definition is cult of the self. We live in a world, in a society, in a culture that's obsessed with ourselves, with self -improvement, with self -empowerment, all right?

So we will look at where this came from, okay? So the three questions we're looking at today is, first of all, where did Freud get this idea for the edible complex? Second is, why was Freud so secretive? And the third question is, what explains Freud's popularity? Why was he so influential? And why was his influence able to spread so quickly? And what I will show you today is, Freud became so influential and so famous, not because his psychoanalyst system was designed to help his patients. Ultimately, his system was designed to protect the interests of powerful interests, powerful men. Okay, that's my argument to you today. Okay, so having made the general argument, what I want to do now is look at the evidence to support the argument, okay? So again, this is a chart that summarizes the different perspectives of these four major thinkers, Kant, Hegel, Marx.

And Freud, okay? So to summarize the main ideas, Freud believes that our sexual urges is what underpins our identity as well as civilization. It's because we cannot control our sexual urges that gives rise to religion, which helps us cope with our guilt, okay? He also believes that truth lies in our suppressed memories. And in his framework, God has abandoned us. There's really no God in his system. We are left to fend for ourselves. We are left to deal with the trauma of being alone. All right, so let's put Freud in his historical context. So Freud lived and worked at the end of the 19th century, primarily in Vienna. And at this time, Europe was going through fundamental, social, cultural, economic, political change. We were transitioning from the pre -modern era to the modern era. Before, we lived primarily in towns and villages where we dealt with each other emotionally. And we had a purpose in our community.

But when we moved to the cities, it is money and the clock that regulates our life. And it's still true today, right? So when you come to school, what controls your behavior? It's your grades, as well as the clock, right? If you are late for class, if you're absent, then your grades get deducted. All right, so it's the same concept as we have today. All right. Now, because of these social changes, in two new fields, sociology and psychology, are developed in order to try to understand what these changes mean for us, as humans, as human beings, as humans. So in the fields of sociology, there are three major thinkers, pioneers of this time, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and this man, George Simmel. And George Simmel wrote a wonderful essay on the metropolis and mental life, in which he describes what the impact of moving to the city has on people, okay? So we'll just read a couple sentences.

Instead of reacting emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance through the intensification of consciousness, which in turn is caused by it. Thus, the reaction of the metropolitan person to those events is moved to a sphere of mental activity, which is least sensitive and which is further removed from the depths of the personality. Okay, so let's use a metaphor. Let's think of food. When you're in the village, you grow your own food, and then you make the food, and then you make the food, you eat it, and that's it, okay? You know exactly where the food comes from, you know how it's made, and you're not really curious about the food. But the wonderful thing about the city is, you get exposed to all different types of cuisine, all different types of flavors, and that excites your imagination. You're much more curious about it, right?

You wanna know where this food is made. The problem, though, of course, is this is all an abstraction. You have absolutely no idea where the food comes from. You have absolutely no idea where the food is made. And quite honestly, you don't even know if the food is healthy for you or not. Okay, so the city life is a higher abstraction. And of course, today we have the internet, which is even a higher abstraction, okay? So you go from the village to the city, now to the internet. Of course, this creates a lot of problems for people, because this transition causes psychological issues. And the three major psychological issues are enemy, okay? And what this means is, before in the village, you know exactly what to do. But when you move to the city, there are different rules, and it confuses you. For example, in the village, if someone punches you, you punch back.

And then afterwards, you become friends. In the city, if someone punches you, and you punch back, you both go to jail. So it's confusing for people, okay? Alienation means that you have absolutely no freedom in the city. You work from nine to five. You get up at six o 'clock in the morning, okay? You get up at seven o 'clock, then get to work at nine o 'clock. Then you get off work at five, and get home at ten o 'clock, okay? So everybody has the same regulated life. And you lack freedom, okay? And that causes alienation. The last idea is disenchantment, where you feel as though you are just a machine, and you have lost human agency, okay? So this creates lots of psychological issues. And that's why, at this time, psychology is becoming much more popular. This is Sigmund Freud. And he was a very ambitious medical student who became a psychologist.

And he started to see patients. And these patients were often young women who were historical. Historical is not a word we use anymore. But back then, it just meant that they couldn't control their emotions. They were prone to outbursts, crying. When they saw a man, when they were touched by a man, they screamed, they cried. They couldn't form healthy relationships. And so Freud was tasked with figuring out why this was happening and trying to help these women. And he spent a lot of time with these women. And he did something pretty novel at the time, which is he basically, he just won their trust and asked them directly, why are you like this? And the woman, after many sessions, after becoming friends with Freud, they start to confide in Freud. And they told him the truth, which is, I'm hysterical. I'm afraid of men touching me because when I was young, my father abused me.

And Freud at first was shocked. I think everyone would be shocked. But over time, he would hear this story from so many different patients with the same symptoms that he concluded that they must be telling him the truth. And he wrote a very famous paper in 1896 called The Etiology of Hysteria. Etiology just means origins, okay? And in it, he says, my previously communicated assumption that trauma, specifically sexual trauma, cannot be stressed enough as a pathologic agent was confirmed anew. Even children of respected, high -minded, parenteral families fall victim to real rape much more frequently than one had dared to suspect. Either the parents themselves seek substitution for their lack of satisfaction in this pathological manner, or else trusted persons such as relatives abuse the ignorance and innocence of children, okay? So he's arguing that abuse is much more common than we are led to believe. Even those that we think are pillars of society engage in this sort of abuse.

So what he's doing is that he's becoming an advocate for these women. He's telling the world they're not crazy, they're not being hysterical, they were traumatized, and that's why they're behaving like this. If you got hit by a car, your leg wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to walk. Well, these women are the same way. They were traumatized physically when they were young, and that's why they were behaving like this. That's why they have problems forming these emotional bonds with others. The symptoms of hysteria, are determined by certain experiences of the patients which have operated in a traumatic fashion and which are being reproduced in their psychological life in the form of mimetic symbols, okay? So what he's saying is this is not made up in the mind. This happened physically, and then it gets represented in the mind. So that's Freud arguing for his patients. Now, let me introduce you to a man named Jeffrey Masson.

And he wrote a book called The Assault on Truth. His story is this. He went to Harvard, and he became very interested in psychoanalysis. And he began to study it, and he became friends with Anna Freud, who is Sigmund Freud's daughter. Anna Freud thought very highly of him, and she trusted him with the letters of Sigmund Freud. And before, this was not open to the public, and no one knew about these letters. But Jeffrey Masson, spent years going over the letters. And what he discovered shocked him. The early Freud and the later Freud are two different people. They have two different theories about trauma and abuse, okay? And in his book, he presents the evidence, which are Freud's letters to friends. All right, so let's just read a couple. This is early Freud. I therefore put forward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria,

there are one or more occurrences of premature experience, occurrences which belong to the earliest years of childhood, okay? There are a whole number of other things that vouch for the reality of infantile sexual scenes. In the first place, there's the uniformity which they exhibit in certain details. So what he's saying is, I know that people don't believe me, but the evidence is clear. I've talked to different people. They don't know each other. And they're telling the same story. They're providing the same details. So either there's this giant conspiracy, or they're telling the truth. It is less easy to refute the idea that the doctor forces reminiscences of this sort on the patient that he influences him by suggesting to imagine and reproduce them. Nevertheless, it appears to me equally untenable. I've never yet succeeded in forcing on a patient a scene I was expecting to find in such a way that he seemed to be living through it with all the appropriate feelings.

Perhaps others may be more successful in this. When you read Freud, you see him as a very clear, as a very nuanced, as a very balanced thinker. He accepts there are different possibilities. It's possible that he himself is suggesting false memories to his patients. And he says, this is possible, but I have failed to achieve this goal. And there are others who may be better at this than I, but I haven't been able to do it. Okay? So based on this evidence, he argues that these patients must be telling the truth. This is the early Freud. This is Sandor Ferenczi. And for the longest time, they were colleagues. They were best friends. They were both advocates for patients. And then, they had a falling out. Okay? They started to, they basically refused to talk to each other anymore. Okay? And the reason why is, Sandor Ferenczi continued to advocate for patient rights, whereas Simeon Freud completely changed his attitude.

All right? So let's look at the new Freud. Since child masturbation is such a general occurrence and is at the same time so poorly remembered, it must have an equivalent in psychic life. And in fact, it is found in the fantasy encounter in most female patients, namely that the father seduced her in childhood. This is a later reworking, which is designed to cover up the recollection of infertile sexual activity and represents an excuse and explanation thereof. The grain of truth contained in this fantasy lies in the fact that the father, by way of his innocent caresses in earlier childhood, has actually awakened the little girl's sexuality. It is these same affectionate fathers that are the ones who then endeavor to break the child of the habit of masturbation. Okay. So what Freud is trying to say is young girls from very early age, they are sexual animals.

They have these urges and they have this longing for the father. And it's compounded by the fact that the father in his innocence hugs and caresses his little girl. It's made worse when the father notices that the girl is masturbating and tries to stop her. And this creates a sense of both resentment, hatred, and more longing. Okay. So now what Freud is saying is it's not the father. The father did nothing. He's innocent. The girl is the one who, because of these sexual urges, has all these sexual fantasies that she is no longer able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. All right. So this is from an essay, Fragments of Analysis of Hysteria. The love -hungry little girl, unhappy at having to share her parents' affection with her brothers and sisters, realizes that all that tenderness comes flowing back when her parents are made anxious by her illness. The girl now knows a way of calling forth her parents' love.

So now he's explaining why hysteria is so common in society. And the answer is very simple. Women are desperate for attention. It's that simple. They're fine. They have no issues. They just want attention. And that's why they are hysterical. Okay. Because they know that illness attracts attention from caregiving males. This is Sigmund Freud's book Civilization and its Discontents. And in it, he expresses his contempt for women in society. All right. Let's read it. Furthermore, women should soon come into opposition to civilization and display their retarding and restraining influence. Those very women who, in the beginning, laid the foundations of civilization like claims of their love. Women represent the interests of the family and of sexual life. The work of civilization has become increasingly the business of men. It confronts them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable.

All right. So Freud's saying this. We must thank women because without women there'd be no civilization. They give birth. They raise families. But men are smarter than women. And so men are tasked with the responsibility of building civilization, of creating science, of creating literature, of creating philosophy, of politics, of administration. Okay? And, but what all women want is attention to be dotted on. And that's why women hate civilization. First of all, because they're not smart and they can't really contribute to civilization, but also because it takes men away from them. Okay? So now the question then is, okay, this is like really strange because the Freud that we encountered earlier was a scientist. Very clear, very nuanced, very subtle in his thinking. This Freud, he's like a myth maker. He's almost like a priest. Okay? So what explains the transition? Okay, well, there's a very interesting very simple explanation, right?

A simple explanation, which a simple explanation is, he may be treating his patients who are young women, but who's paying the bills? The father, right? It's the father who's paying Freud. So if Freud went to the father and said, oh, I talked to your daughter, it's your fault that she's like this. Well, they wouldn't be very happy. Okay? So we can understand why at the end of the day, Freud decided that he needed to change his story if he wanted to maintain his clientele. So the question then is, okay, is there evidence to suggest that sexual trauma and abuse was common in Vienna at this time in history, the late 19th century? And the answer is, yes, there is some piece of evidence, okay? Not complete, okay? But there's some piece of evidence to suggest that this was actually a thing in Vienna in the late 19th century. So Vienna's part of the Austria -Hungary Empire, and there are lots of secret societies and religious cults at this time.

Okay? One of them is called Frankenism. And Frankenism rejected Jewish norms and believed they were obligated to transgress moral boundaries. Okay, remember, the crisis of faith, right? How do you demonstrate your faith in God? How do you know God loves you? How do you know you're faithful? Well, you break taboos. And they were breaking a lot of taboos. The Frankenists engaged in sexually promiscuous rites, such as the infamous 1756 incident where they were allegedly caught dancing around a half -naked woman. At its height, Frankenism claimed perhaps 50,000 followers. That's a lot. 50,000 followers is a lot. And a lot of them were powerful people, primarily Jews living in the Polish -Lutheran Commonwealth as well as Central and Eastern Europe. Later, Frankenists were encouraged to convert en masse to Catholicism, okay? And so who are these people? Well, they are followers of

a man named Sibetai Zefi who lived in 19th century, who was a Jewish rabbi who lived in 19th century Ottoman Empire. And for many, he was extremely charismatic and he was basically their messiah, okay? He was the Jewish messiah. And he preached a religion of transgression because transgression meant courage. It meant empowerment. It meant true faith. And he had a lot of followers. And that's why the sultan called him and then said, okay, I'll give you a choice. You can either continue doing what you do and I'll kill you or you convert to Islam. So he converted to Islam. But when he did so, he told his followers, I did so because God doesn't care about what you do. God cares about what's in your heart. As long as you're true to God, what you do in life does not matter, okay? And the religion he started is still around today, okay?

And this is from Wikipedia, okay? All this is from Wikipedia and you can look at it online to make sure that I'm just making this up, alright? So as part of this movement, I mean, you can read this, right? Sexual abuse was actually pretty common. So we have evidence to suggest that, yes, these women were probably telling the truth and Freud knew so. But Freud ultimately had to change his story in order to protect his livelihood. Okay, but there's also another reason why Freud had to change his story. And it has to do with a man named Ignat Simmelweis. Ignat Simmelweis, lived in 1840s Vienna. And he was a doctor who worked at Vienna General Hospital. And he was in charge of two maternity clinics, places where women gave birth. Same hospital, same staff, but the mortality rate at the second clinic was much higher than the first clinic. Women could die giving birth because of fever. So 10 % of women were dying in the second clinic.

And only about 3 % were dying in the first clinic. So Ignat Simmelweis, he was appalled by this. And so he launched an investigation as to what was happening. And he spent seven months, a long, long time, trying to figure out what happened, what was happening. And he looked at all different possibilities, including weather, including treatment, including personnel, everything, okay? And then he had a radical breakthrough. He had an insight, which is this. In the second clinic, it was a teaching hospital. So doctors would, in the morning, work with cadavers, okay? They would show students how to dissect cadavers. And then in the afternoon, they'd go and deliver babies. And Simmelweis, he didn't know why, because at this time, germs were not a thing. People didn't know about the existence of germs. He didn't know why, but he theorized that there could be connection. So he created a protocol.

He basically had everyone wash their hands using a formula of water, chlorine, and lime. And we still use it today, exactly the same formula today. And so he tried this protocol, and it was a miracle, because after people started to wash their hands, no one died in childbirth anymore. And Simmelweis, being a rigorous scientist, he collected all this data, conducted a lot of experiments to prove this had to be true, that washing your hands could save lives. And then we presented his findings to the staff, the doctors of Vienna General Hospital, believing that they would praise him and then promote this all throughout Europe in order to save as many lives as possible. Instead, the doctors told him they had to keep this quiet. They'll promote Simmelweis, they respect him, and he did amazing work, but if word came out that this was true, then people would know that they were responsible for the deaths of these women before, and their reputation would be in tatters.

And then Simmelweis of course responded by, yes, I understand that, but if we don't publish our findings, if we don't let the world know about this, more women are going to die in childbirth. And they fought for a long time, years and years, and then eventually Simmelweis, he was blacklisted, he was not allowed to work ever in hospital again, and then ultimately he was confined to an asylum where he was killed by the guards. And he died leaving a young family. And so that's what happens to you when you defy powerful people in Vienna in the 19th century. And Freud didn't want the same fate. And he also had a young family. So this story is horrible, but if you don't believe me, you can go on Wikipedia. He was institutionalized in an asylum by his colleagues, and in the asylum, he was beaten by the guards.

He died 14 days later. All right? So this is the fate that will happen to you in Vienna if you defy powerful people. So now we have an explanation for why Freud made the transition, why he changed his story. But now there's another problem, which is how does Freud convince his patients to go along? Right? Before he told his patients, I believe you, and they trusted him, and now he's changing his story. So how can he convince them that they in fact do suffer from sexual fantasies? And like this experience of sexual abuse, it's all just made up in the head. And that's a very hard job to do. So the solution is the interpretation of dreams. All right? So Freud pioneered a new way of hypnotizing his patients so together they would analyze their dreams. Right? Because if you talk about their memories and their past, you're going to fight back and say, I remember very clearly.

If you talk about your dreams, that allows you to suggest subtly new ideas and new memories, to basically implant new memories and basically gaslight that person. Okay? Does that make sense? All right? So the interpretation of dreams. So that is the story of Freud. Okay? But this leaves a question is, why did this spread throughout the world? All right? And that's something that we will look at in part three. So a lot of the influence of Freud has to do with Carl Jung, who will take his ideas of the unconscious and systemize it for popular consumption. Okay? So we already discussed his framework where we are all dualities. Okay? We have an ego, but we also have a shadow. We have a conscious, but also a unconscious, a personal, as well as collective, an animus, and an anima. Jung popularized ideas of personality types, right?

Introvert, extrovert, which is what we still use today. All right. The main influence is in modernism, a transformative art movement beginning around the early 20th century. All right. So arguably the first great modern artist is James Joyce, who in 1922 published Ulysses. James Joyce was Irish. He was an Irish expatriate, and he actually studied Dante in university. So he wrote Ulysses as a way to imitate, almost surpass Dante. And of course, Ulysses refers to Homer's Odyssey. Now, we're going to read a passage from Ulysses to understand the power of its writing. Okay? In irritable modality of the visible, at least that, if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, sea -spawn and sea -wrack, the nearing tide, that rapidly boot. Stark green, blue -siver rust, colored signs, limits of the diaphan, riads, embodies. Okay. What does this mean? I have no idea. All right. I have no idea.

I can explain to you Dante. I can explain to you Homer and Shakespeare. But I struggle with James Joyce. And there are two reasons why. Okay. The first reason is he was a singer. So you have to read what he writes as though it's music. Okay? It's meant to be read out loud. So it's musical. And that's really the power of his writing. He's more focusing on the style rather than the substance. Okay? That's the first thing. Second thing is that he was extremely well read. And everything that he writes, in every sentence, there are multiple allusions and references to other books. Okay? So you must have read what he read. You must have experienced what he experienced in order to understand him. And there are those who argue that Ulysses is the greatest book in the world. In fact, if you go online, you just Google the best book ever written in human history, James Joyce is up there.

Okay? Ulysses is either number one or number two on this list of 50 best books in human history. And there are many who tell me, yeah, James Joyce is hard. But if you spend the time to go over what he's writing and reading and connect the references, you will have a transformative intellectual experience. Okay? It's almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle. And that's all true. Okay? But think about what they're saying. They're saying, what they're really saying is that James Joyce believes that he is God. He has the mind of God. And if you spend the time to understand what he writes, and it might take you years, decades, okay, you will access the mind of God. That's very different from Dante, which is trying to use poetry to bring people into the mind of God, which is the truth of the world. Okay? Dante is a lot more accessible than James Joyce.

So let's look at the differences. Modern literature, as represented by Ulysses, it is elitist. It's self -referential. Okay? It just has a lot of allusions and references. But you actually don't know what the meaning is. Like, what is the bigger story here? And it's used in something called stream of consciousness writing, which is it's trying to capture the mind as it thinks and works. Okay? That's different from Homer, who was very democratic. He was trying to bring beauty and truth to the people through epic poetry. Okay? So starting with modern literature, we have this abrupt change in the nature of literature. Before, it was about empowering people to seek the truth for themselves. Now, modern literature, it's really just this very elite club of very arrogant, haughty people. James Joyce was good friends with Virginia Woolf. In fact, Virginia Woolf actually published James Joyce. In 1927, Woolf published a book called To the Lighthouse, and it's probably her most famous work.

And in it, she's also trying to respond to Joyce. To the Lighthouse, it's very much based on Homer's Odyssey. And it's a very, it's extremely well written. Okay? Let's just look at what she writes. There were the eternal problems, suffering, death, the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these children, you shall go through with it. To eight people, she had said relentlessly to that, and the bill for the greenhouse would be 50 pounds. Okay. So what she's doing, she's reading a book, and she's thinking about the issues raised by the book, but she's also thinking about life. Like, oh, I have to go and do something, okay? And that's really how our minds work. So this captures really well stream of consciousness thinking. And she's heavily influenced by Freud, right?

She's trying to go into the unconscious and trying to figure out how the unconscious works. To the Lighthouse, it's really about memory, about perception, about remembering. All right? But again, it's extremely self -indulgent. And it's inward looking. And it's very, and again, it's a radical departure from traditional literature. So let's compare modern literature with Dostoevsky. Remember, before we discuss Dostoevsky. For Dostoevsky, the heart, it's a deep impenetrable ocean, and our psychology responds to external events. We live in the world and respond to the world. We must surrender ourselves to others to seek salvation and redemption. We cannot rely on ourselves to forgive ourselves, to love ourselves. We must rely on others. We are in a community of people, okay? So these are the truths of Dostoevsky. When we get to modern literature, self -discovery will allow for self -mastery. Our psychology responds to suppressed memories. We can be our own salvation and redemption. It's too optimistic. It's too positive.

It's saying that, hey, if you're poor, don't worry about it. As long as you think happy thoughts, you'll be good. This idea of positive psychology, right? That we have today. Carl Jung and Friedrich Sömer and Freud also had a major influence on Pablo Picasso. And you can see it from his painting Head of a Woman, okay? Now, what you will notice is it's a cubist portrait of a woman, but if you look further, it's actually two people as well, okay? And so what this is doing is it's visually representing the theory of the self as presented by Jung, okay? So do you see the similarities? Great. Okay. So why is this art spreading throughout the world? Well, I mean, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but let's look at an article, right? Was modern art really a CIA psyop? All right. So this article is from JSTOR, which is an academic journal. Very mainstream.

And let's read what it says. But it writes, In the mid -20th century, modern art and design represented the liberalism, individualism, dynamic activity, and creative risk possible in a free society. Okay? So in other words, right now, the capitalist West is at war with communism. 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, communism is spreading all around the world. It's very popular among people. It calls for collective action. So the capitalist West, the powers that be, they're spreading Freud, they're spreading Joyce, they're spreading Wolf, they're spreading Pablo Castro, they're spreading all this art, this modernist art, in order to create a cult of the self. Because if you believe in the cult of the self, if you believe that you are the source of everything, then you're not capable of collective action. Okay? So in many ways, this is a response to a problem posed by communism. And this will be obviously most obvious during the Cold War. Okay?

Does that make sense? All right. So why would that be bad? Why would the cult of the self be bad? Well, this is Michael Buchanan, and he explains it very well in his writings. Okay? So let's read really quickly what he wrote. Having human in man and freedom above all is a product of a social collective labor. To be free in absolute isolation is absurdity invented by theologians, and beneficence who have replaced the society of humans by that of God. They're phantom. They say that each person feels free in the presence of God, that is, in the presence of absolute emptiness, nothingness. Freedom in isolation, then, is the freedom of nothingness, or indeed the nothingness of freedom, slavery. God, the figment of God, has been historically the moral source, or rather the moral source of all slavery. So what he's saying is the radical turning point in human history is the invention of Christianity because it allows, it gives us the idea of individualism.

And we think that's a good thing because we're taught that individuality, individualism means free choice. It means freedom. What he's saying is that's an absurdity. We only have freedom from our community. We only have freedom if others are free around us. If we are free when no one else is free, then we are slaves as well. So because individuality prevents us from working with others, from loving others, then that makes us slaves to ourselves. And that allows for the powers that be in society to better control us. And so what he's saying is Christianity is a slave religion. It was designed to make us all into slaves. And this world. And Buchanan lived in the 19th century, but if he read Freud, then he would also argue that the cult of psychoanalysis, it's really about entrapping yourself in your own emotions. As for us, we want neither phantoms nor nothingness but living human reality.

And we recognize that man can feel free, be free, and therefore can achieve freedom. In order to be free, I need to see myself surrounded by men, by free men, and be recognized as such by them. I am free only when my individuality, reflected in the mirror of the equally free consciousness of every individual around me, comes back to me strengthened by everyone's recognition. So what he's saying is this. If you want to be happy, if you want to be free, care about others. Be kind to others. Work with other people. Sacrifice your own self -interest for the greater good. That is what will make you really happy. And that's generally true because think about this. If you're by yourself, will you be happy? Probably not. But if you have a family, you have kids, you don't have any freedom, but you're a happier person. And in many ways, you're a more free person because you have better control of your emotions.

You have more purpose in life. All right. So let's bring this to the present day. Social media. What social media is, it is the democratization of the call of the self. Before, only the wealthy could enjoy the call of the self, right? Only the wealthy could take the time to self -indulge. But now with social media, everyone can participate in the call of the self. And that has led to a global epidemic of depression, okay? So look at the year 2015. You see this huge spike in depressive symptoms. Because 2015 is the year when we had access to smartphones, right? So now young people feel they can't do anything right. Life is not useful and I do not enjoy life, okay? This huge spike, which has led to a huge spike in suicide, all right? And this is happening throughout the

world, not only in North America and Europe, but also in Latin America and East Asia as well. So the call of the self, which originated in Europe, has now conquered the world through technology, all right? So that's it, all right? So the answer to the three questions. The first question is, where did Freud get his idea? Second question, why did Freud break with Jung? The third question, why is Freud's idea so popular today, okay? Well, it's all to serve the interests of the powerful. And that's the world we live in today. And the only solution moving forward is if we rediscover our humanity, if we are able to find the courage to care about others, and put the interests of others before our own interests, we ourselves must choose to kill the call of the self, okay? All right, so next class, we will do nationalism, all right?