Essay/Term paper: Roles of individuals and societies

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Social Issues

Roles of Individuals and Societies


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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