The early twentieth century marked a period of rapid industrial and technological change
in a society which began to redefine the roles of the individual and society. Max Weber
and Sigmund Freud were two revolutionary thinkers of the time who recognized the
importance of this relationship and tried to determine whether the power balance between
society and the individual was tilted in one particular direction or the other. A world
becoming an increasingly complex and restrictive forced these thinkers to ask themselves
if society had indeed finally become a force too dynamic for the individual to
manipulate; that if in fact it was society that had mastered the man. Although both
thinkers provide radically different views of culture and society they are both
essentially trying to answer the same question: does the individual control society or
does society control the individual?
The relevance of such an argument might first be debated, for one might first respond to
this question with some doubt; surely we have control of ourselves, do we all not have
control of our own faculties at this very moment? At this moment you are reading or being
subjected to a reading of this paper, therefore if this indeed is not fufilling some
immediate obvious desire it is accomplishing some sort of other goal. Likely this goal
is to achieve an education but again we might ask ourselves why? Surely we all want to
further our scholarly qualities and develop our minds but more likely this again has an
underlying goal: to succeed in society. Society has shown us that in most cases it
requires a good deal of education in order to succeed. Therefore we might entertain the
question, is our presence here a product of our own desires or that of society's? The
point of this reasoning is only to point out something we may not immediately recognize:
regardless of what our own free will may dictate, we cannot help but be influenced by the
values and morals of modern-day society. And it is because of this influence, the
rewards which it offers and the punishments which it threatens, that the individual has
found himself actually being manipulated by this larger body.
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud expresses this point in his greatest achievement,
Civilization and Its Discontents. Pointing out this conflict between the individual and
society Freud concludes, ". . . the two processes of individual and of cultural
development must stand in hostile opposition to each other and mutually dispute the
ground." (Freud, 106) And then after describing the affects of civilization as a
"drastic mutilization" of his desires, Freud goes on to conclude that ". . . the price we
pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the
sense of guilt." (Freud, 97) Again we see a sharp contrast as the desires of the
individual and those of civilization. Now it seems that the term "free will" could be
grossly misunderstood because everyone's will is in some way bound by society.
Freud describes this overbearing consciousness of society as the "superego." In his
studies, Freud has dissected the mind into three separate spheres, the "id", where
instinct and desire resides; the "ego", which is ones conscious self; and the "superego",
the origin of morals and of the conscience. Regardless of the physiological relevance of
this schism of the mind, what Freud is trying to theorize is how the human being thinks.
But the implications of this model are unique because Freud takes it a step further and
applies it to society as well. "It can be asserted that community, too, evolves a
super-ego under whose influence cultural development proceeds." (Freud, 106.) This
super-ego of society is the basis for the conflict between society and the individual.
What Freud is pointing is that society is controlled by a conscience, just as the
individual is. "Another point of agreement between the cultural and individual super-ego
is that the former, just like the latter, setes up strict ideal demands, disobedience to
which is visited with 'fear of conscience'. (Freud, 107.) So if individual and cultural
development are in opposition to eachother and each has its own conscience, where does
that leave us? As civilization becomes more complicated and engrosses more of our life
and through Freud we can see that indeed it is the society whose conscience comes first
over the individual.
Sociologist Max Weber used the relationship between society and the individual to
explain the evolution of capitalism in terms of social development. A value system that
was originated in Christian ascetic idealism, gradually found itself becoming embedded
into Western society. This system of values, or rationalism, was based on concept of a
"peculiar ethic", which Weber identified as "an economic spirit, or the ethos of an
economic system." (Weber, 27.) It is this spirit that has embodied society and it is
this spirit, rather than the will of the individual, that wields the weapon of
capitalism. "Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life,
educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic
survival of the fittest." (Weber, 55.) Regardless of who accepts or rejects this
economic system imposed by society, those who posess the instinct to survive will have no
choice but to accept it.
While this religiously-influenced economic system may have once been desirable, Weber
now labels it an "iron cage." In essence, the conscience of society has superceded that
of the individual. "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.
For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to
dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the
modern economic order." (Weber, 181.) But what this "Protestant ethic" has really done
is force the individual to embrace capitalism and the morals which surround it as a way
of life. Society has dictated that in order to succeed we must be employed and we must
earn as much money as possible, even if it does not coincide with our own happiness. So,
in essence, Weber is portraying society in much the same way as Freud. Weber concludes
that the Protestant Ethic that society has enveloped has succeeded today in reducing
employment to strictly a means of acquisition. "Specialists without spirit, sensualists
without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never
before achieved" (Weber, 182.) Capitalism has been absorbed into the mainstream of
society and accepted not only as a norm, but the only acceptable mode of acquisition.
The question of the exact nature of the relationship between the individual and society
exists even today. Regardless of whether we are talking about the individual's psyche or
about his sociological development it appears that man may not have been all that
difficult to master; that perhaps we can simplify our existence into terms of sexual
urges or economic needs. Whether or not one subscribes to the complete hypotheses of
Weber and Freud though, there is no doubt that both authors describe a society that
exercises considerable control over the individual. Now as we approach the turn of the
century and again experience another surge of technological development we might do good
in asking ourselves how much power over our lives we have as individuals, and how much
power has been subverted from us by a society which has its own "individual" needs.
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