Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #57 - How Modernism Ruined Everything

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #57 - How Modernism Ruined Everything

Okay, good morning. Today we do C. McFroid. 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 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. And this is, this religion is still around today in many primitive societies, for example, in the Amazon.

And then we transitioned to the mother goddess. So as we became more agricultural, fertility was more important. We need to have more children and we needed 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 with each other. and they start to war against each other. Let's created polytheism. Polytheism is the idea that each place has its own God that it's patron.

And when these places come into conflict and war, the way they settle disputes is the losing party, their god becomes a 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 introduce the idea of the Holy Trinity. Okay, and remember what the Holy Trinity 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. 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 create its own community. 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 and you have to interpret it properly. Okay? And so obviously, the most similar reform is Martin Luther. Now, this is important because what will happen is by living in the church,

you create direct access to God, and this creates the idea of crisis in faith. The idea of Christ 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. So it's hard for us not to doubt ourselves.

And so this creates the question 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. So this creates the idea of crisis and faith. Historically, there have been many solutions to this problem. different profits 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 if jihad, you will die for your faith. You will sacrifice yourself to promote the truth of God. 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. folio okay this is the idea of transgression so let me explain it to you slowly the idea is this you must demonstrate complete and apt-wit faith in God to be one of the elect to go to heaven to do so you must demonstrate courage you must demonstrate fanatism 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 as you demonstrate your faith in God. 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 polled 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, 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 exact. exhilaration, 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 of it, And guess what? You feel excited. You feel exhilarated. You feel energized. And that's the idea of transgression. And this has always been a very,

and this has been around for us for like hundreds of years as well. So these are the three main ways that historically, the religious practitioners have tried to resolve the issue of the crisis of faith, right? Wealth accumulation, that's a communist. jihad, but you also have transgression. Remember transgression. It's very important for discussion. Okay? So remember this idea.

Now, another way to resolve the Christ in the faith is through philosophy, epistemology. Epistemology. Epistemology really just means the theory of knowledge. How do ideas come together? What does knowledge come from? what does not come from? How do we know what we know? Right? Because the question 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? 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 a 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, 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.

Hago believes that the Geis 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 worker's paradise. Why? Because as capitalism becomes worse and worse, as the politicate increase in number but are exploited in greater, but are oppressed by the capitalist, eventually the politariat, you and me, will develop class consciousness. And we will unite, will 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 super ego, 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. The first is what is called the Eipo. The Eidopal 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. Lecture is from the Ishlus play the Orsteia. Freud was remarkably well read in group mythology as well as world literature. So he argues these are the two fundamental basis of who we are. If you are a man, you have the IEPO complex. If you have, if you're a woman, you have the, you have the lecture 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 so we'll look at this question in great detail today. All right, so everyone knew that Freud's theory of unconscious is problematic. And he had a very famous student, his best student, his hair parent, named Carl Young. And Carl Young really saw Freud as a father, and he worshipped 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 a subconscious is. is also divided into the personal as well as the collective. Sorry, it's not subconscious, it's unconscious, okay? Unconscious. So the personal unconscious are just our memories or experiences.

The collective unconscious is the collection of all societies, memories, and experiences. And they are captured and expressed we engage in society when we eat the food when we talk to people when watch movies when we read books okay the collective unconscious is embedded through society you breathe it like you would breathe ear okay so um um sorry um um sorry um uh so you also says that we have the animus and the enema 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 when we meet people the ego projects a persona okay the persona is 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 your daughter at McDonald's your 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 the worst aspects of us in a shadow form okay so the shadows really the outer ego of the ego

And this, Yunn 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-exploitation, guided by a psychotherapist. All right. And this sounds much more. logical right and it's become really the standard model for modernity psychology

now you would think that Freud would be happy that Kho Yong came over this new idea on how to improve his theory but Freud was infuriated that young would question his theory in fact Freud was notorious for being control freak he we he excommunated you won refused to have any anything to do with him. In fact, everyone in the community around Freud were now, this is themselves from Koryong, and there would be no reconciliation between the two ever. And that's why Kauairo had to go and develop this theory. Okay. So, and it's strange because all Kau Young is trying to do is improve Freud. So that gives us the second question. What,

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 does this idea become so popular? In fact, the ideas of Freud and Kow Yun will become a 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 um we will look at where this came from okay so the three questions we're looking at today is first of all we did for it get this idea for the edible complex second is why was Freud so secretive and the third question is what explains for its 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 to

today is Freud became so influential and so famous, not because his psycho analyst system was designed to help his patients. Ultimately, his system was designed to protect the interests of powerful interests, powerful man. Okay, that's my argument to you today. Okay, so having made the general argument,

And what I want to do now is look at the evidence to support the argument. So again, this is a chart that summarizes the different perspectives of these four major thinkers, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud. So just 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 sexual urges that gives rise to religion, which helps us cope with our guilt. He also believes that truth lies on 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 all 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, we had to be We had a purpose in our community. But when we move 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. 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. So in the fields of sociology, there are three major thinkers, pioneers of this time.

Max Weber, Emil Dirkham, and this man, George Simmel. And George Simmel wrote a wonderful essay. say, from 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. Does 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 take the food. When you're in the village, you go your own food, and then you make the food, you eat it, and that's it. You know exactly where the food comes from.

You know how it's made, and you're not really curious about the food. But one of the 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're you want to know where this food is 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 how where the food is made and quite honestly you don't even know the food is healthy for you or not okay so so the city life is a higher abstraction and of course today with the internet which is even a higher abstraction okay so you go from the 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 the village you know exactly what to do but 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. Alienation means that you have actually no freedom in the city. You work from 9 to 5, you get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, get on 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 regulated life. And you lack freedom, okay? 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 these creates lots of psychological issues. And that's why at this time, psychology is becoming more popular. This is Simon 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 are 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 outburst, crying. When they saw a man, when they were touched by a man, they screamed, they cried. They couldn't form healthy relationships. So Freud was tasked with figuring out why there's some. happening and trying to help this woman. And he spent a lot of time with these women.

And he did something pretty novel at the time, which is 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. Iteologes means origins, okay?

And in it, he says, my previously communicated that trauma, specifically sexual trauma, cannot be stressed enough as a pathologic agent was confirmed anew. Even children of respected, high-minded parental 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 indurance, an innocence of children. So he's arguing that abuse is much more common than we are led to believe. Even those that we think are pillar of society

engage in the 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 historical, they were traumatized, and that's why they're behaving like this. If you got it 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 of 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 nematic symbols. 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 would have 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 became friends with Anna Freud, who is Simon Freud's daughter. Anna Freud thought very highly of him, and she trusted him with the letters of Simon Freud. And before, this was not open to the public, and no one knew about these letters.

But Jeffrey Mason 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 reality of infatile sexual scenes. In the first place, there's the uniformity which 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 probably 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 remnantsances of the fact that the doctor's of this sort on the patient that he influences him by suggesting to imagine and reproduce them. Nevertheless, it appears to be equally untenable. I've never yet succeeded in forcing on a patient as seen 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 and he and he says this 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 and this This is the early Freud. This is Sandor Forensi, and for the longest time, they were colleagues, they were best friends. They were both advocates for patients.

And then they had falling out. They started to, they basically refused to talk to each other anymore, okay? And the reason why is, Senor Forensi continue to advocate for patient rights, whereas Simon Freud completely changed his attitude. Alright, so let's look at the new Freud. Since child masturbation is such a general occurrence and is at the same time so poorly remember,

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 the later reworking, which is designed to cover up the recollection of infant, how sexual activity represents an excuse and exce initiation 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 the 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 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 from the 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 explained 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 Simon 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 the 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 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 about women, there be no civilization. They give birth. They raise families. But men are smarter than women. And so men are tasked with the responsibility of businessization, of creating science, of creating literature, creating philosophy, of politics, of administration. But 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. So now the question in is, okay, this is like really strange, because the four that we encounter, 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 so what explains to transition transition okay well there's there's a very simple explanation right the simple explanation which is simple explanation is um He may be treating his patients who are a young woman, but who's paying the bills? The father, right? It's a 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.

So we can understand why at the end of the day, Freud decided that he needed to change his story if you want to maintain his clientele so the question then is okay is your 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 just this was actually a thing in Vienna in the late 19th century so this is So Vienna is part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, and there are lots of secret societies and there are cults at this time. One of them is called frankism.

And frankism rejected Jewish norms and believed they were obligate 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. people get a lot of taboos. The fragnics engaged in sexually promiscuous rights, such as the infamous 1756 incident where they were allegedly caught dancing around, a half-naked woman. At its height

fragilism claimed perhaps 50,000 followers, that's a lot. Fifty thousand followers is a lot. And a lot of them were powerful people. Primally Jews living in the Polish Lutheran Commonwealth, as well in central and eastern Europe. Later, frankness were encouraged to convert in mass to Catholicism, okay? So who are these people? Well, there are followers of a man named Sibbethi, 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. 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 convert 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 um this is from Wikipedia okay all this is from Wikipedia and you can look look 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 all right sexual abuse was actually pretty common. So we have evidence suggests that, yes, these women were probably telling the truth, and Freud knew so, but Freud ultimately had to change the story

in order to protect his livelihood. Okay, but there's also another reason why Freud had to change his story. And this, it has to do with women named Ignisimilaries. Innesimoise lives 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 maternity but the mortality rate at the second clinic was much higher than the first clinic woman would 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 in this moment wise he was appalled by 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 had an insight which is this in the second clinic it was a teaching hospital so doctors when in the morning were

What were cadavers? They would show students how to dissect cadavers. And in the afternoon, they'd go and deliver babies. And similar, 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 your 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 start to wash your hands, no one died in childbirth anymore And similar wise being a rigorous scientist he collected all this data To conduct 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 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 Simulwise.

They respect him and he did amazing work. But if work 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, Simmer Wise, he was blacklisted. He was not allowed to work ever in hospital again.

And then ultimately, he was confined to an incident of 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, okay? He was institutionalized in an asylum by his colleagues, and in asylum, he was beating 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 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 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. 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. Does that make sense? So the interpretation of dreams. So that is the story of Freud. But this leaves a 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 Young, 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 always have a shadow. We have a conscious but also

a unconscious, a personal, as well as collective. Anonymous and an anima. Yong popularized ideas of personality types, right? Inverte, 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. So arguably the first great modern artist is James Joyce, who in 22 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 from Ulysses to understand the power of writing. In italymal modality of the visible, at least, that if no more thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I'm here to read, C-Spawn and C-Rack, the nearing tide that rasty boot. Stark green, blue-siver rust, colored signs. Limits of the dying plan, re-ads, in bodies. 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, so it's music.

Okay, it's meant to be read aloud. So it's musical. And that's really the power of his writing. He's more focusing on the style rather than a 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.

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 and number two on these 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 connect the references, you will have a transformative intellectual experience. 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. Dantes is a lot more accessible than James Joyce. So let's look at the differences. Modern literature, as represented by, it is elitist it's self-referential okay it just has a lot of illusions and references but you don't you actually don't know what the meaning is like what is the bigger story here and it's used to 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 from Homer who is who is very democratic he was trying to bring beauty and truth to the people through epic poetry So starting with modern literature, we have this a rough 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 Virginia Woolf. In fact, Virginia Woolf actually published James Joyce. In 1927, Wolf 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 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 what she's doing is she's reading a book and she's thinking about the issues raised by book but she's also thinking about life like oh i'd 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 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 discuss Dostoevsky for Dostoevsky the heart is a deep impenetra 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 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 suppress memories we can be our own salvation and redemption it's

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. Cole Young and Felix Semer & Ford also had a major influence on Pablo Picasso. And you can see it from his painting, head of a woman. Now what you will notice is it's 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, all right? Was modern art really a CIA sci-op? All right, so this article is from J-Store, which is a 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 in a free society. Okay? So in other words, right now, the capitalist West is at war with communism. 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, communists 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 public castle. They're spreading all this art. this modernist art in order to create a cold of 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 the problem posed by communism. And this will be obviously most obvious during the Cold War.

Does that make sense? All right. So what would that be bad? What would the cold of self be bad? Well, this is Macau 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 metaphysians

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. 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 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 a slave to ourselves and that allows for the powers I've been in society to better control us okay and so what he's saying is Christianity is a slave religion all right it was designed to make us all into slaves and this world and who in Pocanian lived in the next century but if he read Freud then he would also argue that the cult of psychoanalysis it's really a very

and trapping yourself and 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 man, 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 stringed by everyone's recognition. So what he's saying is this. 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 self-interest for for the greater good okay that is what that is 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 happier person In many ways, you're more free person, because you have better control of your emotions, and 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, social media ever, everyone can participate in the cold itself and that has led to a global epidemic of depression okay so look look at 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 in Europe but also in Latin America and East Asia as well so the color of the 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 did Freud get his idea? Second question, why did Freud break of yune? 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 rediscovered 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 cult of the self.

Okay? All right. So next class we will do nationalism. All right.