Civilization #57: How Modernism Ruined Everything

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 came into competition with each other, and they started to war against each other. And this 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. We see this 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 there were Jews, or 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 And remember what the Holy Trinity is. 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. 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 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 read the Bible by yourself. You have to interpret it properly. Okay? And so, obviously, the most famous reformer is Martin Luther. Now this is important, because what will happen is, by limiting the church directly to God, this creates the idea of a crisis in faith.

The difference is with children. In order for you to reach it, you must first establish 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, 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 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 of jihad. You will die for your faith. You will 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 going to take some time to explain it for you, okay? This is the idea of transgression. So let me explain it to you slowly. The idea is this. You must demonstrate complete and absolute faith in God to be one of the elect, to go to heaven.

To do so you must demonstrate courage. You must demonstrate familism. The best way to do that is to prove yourself to God by rejecting the laws of man, by rejecting human morality, by rejecting social taboos, by breaking social taboos. You are Rocky contradicts me. lebih... actually demonstrate your faith in God all right now I know this sounds like a strange idea 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 you have to 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 acceleration liberation excitement and this will motivate you to do greater things in life by breaking taboos by transgression against society and showing a 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 this has always been a very 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 the religious practitioners practitioners practitioners have tried to resolve the issue of the crisis of the faith right wealth accumulation that's Calvinist jihad and but you and you also have transgression remember transgression it's very important for discussion okay so remember this idea now another way to resolve the crisis in faith is through philosophy epistemology epistemology epistemology it really just means means the theory of knowledge. How do ideas come together? Where does knowledge come from? How do we know what we know? Right, because the crisis of faith is essentially, how do we know? So epistemology is really 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? What is reality? And Kant doesn't know. In fact, he tells us it's 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. 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 the 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 reconciling itself with the world.

It's becoming the world and 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 struggle ceases and we all become equal in a workers paradigm. But the world is a paradise. Why? Because as capitalism becomes worse and worse, as the political increasing number but are exploited in greater, but are oppressed by the capitalist, eventually the political, you and me, will develop class consciousness. And we will unite, we will overflow the capitalist class through collective action. 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. 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 true 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. And 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 Aeschylus play, The Osteia. Freud was remarkably well -read in Greek mythology, as well as world literature.

So he argues these are the two fundamental bases of who we are. If you are a man, you have the Oedipal complex. If you're a woman, 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's this from? How did he develop this idea? All right, so we'll look at this question in great detail today. All right, so everyone sort of knew that Freud's theory of the unconscious, is problematic, and he had a very famous student, his best student, his heir apparent, 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, what Carl Jung will do is, he will systemize 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, it's unconscious, okay? Unconscious. So the personal and conscious are just our memories, our experiences. The collective unconscious is the collection of all of society's memories and experiences. And they are captured and expressed whenever we engage in society. When we eat the food, when we talk to people, when we watch movies, when we read books, okay? The collective unconscious is embedded through society. You breathe it like you would breathe air, okay? So, sorry, Jung 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. So, when we meet people, the ego projects a persona, okay? The persona is just basically our best self in a certain social context. So in school, you're a student, and you try to be the best student. At home, you're a daughter. At McDonald's, you're a friend, okay? So you are different personas in different social contexts. Now, we try to project our best self, but we are made up of a lot of bad memories, bad thoughts. So the ego suppresses the worst aspects of us in a shadow form, okay? So the shadow is really the alter ego of the ego. And this, Jung 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 self -exploration, guided by a psychotherapist, all right?

And this sounds 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. So, and it's strange because all Carl Jung is trying to do is improve Freud. So that gives us a second question. 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 feminism? popularity why was he 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 it's like what analyst 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 the evidence just 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 you just summarize the main ideas first we have the framework of the base Earth earningsienne the choicesmen continue to compete for the year interim 토 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. 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're 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, you know, as the clock, right? If you are late for class, if you're absent, then your grades get deducted. So it's the same concept as we have today.

All right, now, because of these social changes, two new fields, sociology and psychology, are developed in order to try to understand what these changes mean for us as humans. So in the fields of sociology, there are three major thinkers, of this time, Max Weber, Emil Durkheim, and this man, Georg Simmel. And Georg Simmel wrote a wonderful essay called 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, 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 food of 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 want to 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 like this. It's 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 9 to 5. You get up at 6 o 'clock in the morning, get on the subway at 7 o 'clock, then get to work at 9 o 'clock.

Then you get off at work at 5 and get home at 10 o 'clock, okay? So every day is the same, 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. Okay? 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 started 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. Etiologies 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 take substitution for their lack of satisfaction in this pathological manner, or, 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 this woman. 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 magnetic 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. And in his book, he presents the evidence, which are Freud's letters to friends. 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. 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. 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 remnants 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 very clear, as 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.

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. They started to... They basically refused to talk to each other anymore. And the reason why is Sandor Ferenczi continued to advocate for patients. Because he believed 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 encountered 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 infantile sexual activity represents an excuse, an exclamation thereof. The grain of truth contained in this fantasy lies in the fact that the father, by way of his innocent caresses in earliest 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 a 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.

Okay? 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, from the eyes of the male. 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 by claims of their love. Women represent the interests of a family and of sexual life. Women represent the interests of a family and of sexual life. They represent the interests of a 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 business civilization, of creating science, of creating literature, of creating philosophy, of politics, of administration.

But all women want is attention to be tilted 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. So now the question then is, okay, this is like really strange. It's 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 simple explanation, right? A simple explanation, which a simple explanation is... Okay. So 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. He wanted to change his story. He wanted to change his boy 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 this was actually a thing in Vienna in the late 19th century. So this is... 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.

Remember, the question 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. Okay? And they were bringing 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 Zevi, 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 in and 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... 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, all right?

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, okay? And this... 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. 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.

Okay? 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 the protocol was very simple.

We still use it today, exactly the same formula today. And so he tried this protocol, and it was a miracle, because after people start 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 he 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 a 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. 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? 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 abuse? Well, first of all, Freud's story is about sexual fantasies. And 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. So Freud pioneered a new way of hypnotizing his patients. So together, they would analyze their dreams. Because if you talk about their memories and their past, you're going to fight back. And he says, I remember very clearly. 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. Does that make sense? So the interpretation of dreams. So that is the story of Freud. But this leaves a question. The question is, why did this spread throughout the world? And that's something that we will look at in part three. A lot of influence of Freud has to do with Carl Jung, who will take his ideas of the unconscious and systemize it for popular consumption. So we already discussed his framework, where we are all dualities. We have an ego, but we also have a shadow. We have a conscious, but also a unconscious. A personal. A collective. An animist. An anima. Jung popularized ideas of personality types, introvert, extrovert, which is what we still use today. The main influence is in modernism, a transformative art movement beginning around the early 20th century. All right.

So arguably, the first great modern art movement. The first 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 and almost surpass Dante. And of course, Ulysses refers to Homer's Odyssey. Now we're going to read a passage. A passage from Ulysses to understand the power of writing. In irritable modality of the visible, at least that if no more thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I'm here to read, sea spawn and sea wrack, the nearing tide that rasps the boot. Stark green, blue silver 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 the greatest book ever written in human history. James Joyce is up there. 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 just spend the time to go over what he's writing 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. 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. James Joyce 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 Odyssey. 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. Okay. 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 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 sent relentlessly to that, and the bill for the greenhouse would be 50 pounds. Okay. So what she's doing is she's reading a book and she's thinking about the issues raised by a 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. Okay. 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.

The Lighthouse is 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 discussed Dostoevsky. Okay. 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. Okay. Our psychology responds to suppressed memories. We can be our own salvation and redemption. It's too optimistic. It's too positive. Okay. 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. Okay. This idea of positive psychology, right, that we have today. Carl Jung and Friedrich Schumann for it also had a major influence on Pablo Picasso. Okay. 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? 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 writes.

In the mid -20th century, modern art and design represented the liberalism, individualism, dynamic activity, and creative risk possible ineffectiveness. Modern art was really a political thing that could change the lives of every human being, Now during the Mecca of modern art, modern art wasn't necessarily a political thing. It wasn't. And so it's a big term. You can have a local art to which you can produce posterity, but modern art is, in particular, is a commercial art. There's a big discussion around it. There's a big discussion around it, and I think, from a character's perspective, it's the collective action. One of the things that happened is that we think that modern art can also be reformed for a common purpose. It can be reformed for the betterment of the world. Can be reformed for a better world. 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. 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. Does that make sense? All right, so why would that be bad? Why would the cult of the self be bad? Well, this is Mikhail Bukhanyan, 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, metaphysicians, who have replaced the society of humans by that of God, their phantom. To say that each person feels free in the presence of God, that is, the presence of absolute emptiness, nothingness, and freedom. 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 slaveries. So what he's saying is, the radical turning point in human history is the invention of Christianity, because it gives us the idea of individualism. And we think that's a good thing, because we're taught that individualism means free choice, it means freedom. But 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, but 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. Okay, so what he's saying is, Christianity is a slave religion. Alright, it was designed to make us all into slaves in this world.

And Buchanan lived in the 9th century, but if you read Freud, then you will 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'm 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 okay so what he's saying is this if you won't 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 self interest for further for the

greater good okay that is what that what that is that is what will make you really happy and that's generally true because think about this okay 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 many more in many ways you're more free person these are 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 to the self before only the wealthy could enjoy the call to the self right only the wealthy could take the time to self indulge but now with social media everyone can participate in the call to the self and that has led to a global epidemic of depression okay so look at look a little year 2015

you see this huge spike in depressive symptoms because 2015 is the year when it access with smartphones right so now young people feel they can 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 you know I had so many questions I have to answer right now I don't know what's羞 world not only in North America in Europe but also in Latin America and East Asia as well so the color cell 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 what if I get his idea some question what it for a quick review the third question why is for its idea so popular today okay well it's all to serve the interests of

a powerful and that's the world we live in today 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 change the world we are able to change the world we are able to change the world choose to kill the cult of itself okay all right so next class we will do nationalism right