Roles Of Individuals And Societies :: essays research papers

Roles of Individuals and SocietiesThe early twentieth century marked a period of rapid industrial andtechnological change in a association which began to redefine the roles of the private and society. Max Weber and Sigmund Freud were two revolutionarythinkers of the time who recognized the importance of this relationship andtried to determine whether the power sense of balance between society and the individualwas tilted in one particular direction or the other. A world becoming anincreasingly complex and constrictive forced these thinkers to ask themselves ifsociety had indeed fin bothy become a force too dynamic for the individual tomanipulate that if in fact it was society that had mastered the man. Althoughboth thinkers provide radically different views of culture and society they areboth essentially trying to answer the same question does the individual controlsociety or does society control the individual?The relevance of such an argument might outset be debated, for one m ightfirst respond to this question with some doubt surely we have control ofourselves, do we all not have control of our receive faculties at this rattling 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 open-and-shut desire it isaccomplishing some sort of other goal. Likely this goal is to achieve aneducation but again we might ask ourselves why? Surely we all want to furtherour scholarly qualities and develop our minds but more likely this again has anunderlying goal to succeed in society. Society has shown us that in mostcases it requires a good deal of education in order to succeed. Therefore wemight entertain the question, is our presence here a product of our own desiresor that of societys? The pip of this reasoning is only to point outsomething we whitethorn not immediately recognize regardless of what our own freewill may dictate, we cannot help but be influenced by the values an d morals ofmodern-day society. And it is because of this influence, the rewards which itoffers and the punishments which it threatens, that the individual has foundhimself actually being manipulated by this larger body.Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud expresses this point in his greatestachievement, Civilization and Its Discontents. Pointing out this conflictbetween the individual and society Freud concludes, . . . the two processes ofindividual and of cultural development must stand in hostile opposition to eachother and mutually dispute the ground. (Freud, 106) And then after describingthe affects of civilization as a drastic mutilization of his desires, Freud