The Pressures Applied by Civilization: a Choice to Happiness - Essay Example

– YASH MERCHANT SECTION – 151-G – 03/05/2008 TOPIC – A CHOICE TO HAPPINESS A Choice to Happiness What makes you happy? Is it accomplishingyour dreams? Or getting acceptance from your elders? Is it the fact that you are fighting for something? Or is it the fact that you are contented? Regardless of the pressures applied by civilization it is the individual that ultimately decides to be happy. Kayla Williams on the other hand has seen a staggering degree of cruelty. According to her “We called them hajjis, but we also called them sadiqis… or habibis…. We called them towelheads. Ragheads. Camel jockeys. The fucking locals. Words that didn’t see our enemy as people – as somebody’s father or son or brother or uncle.” (Williams) She was also forced to comply with a certain mode of order and has experienced the discrimination against women in the military. "Sometimes, even now, I wake up before dawn and forget I am not a slut.... The only other choice is bitch. If youre a woman and a soldier, those are the choices you get" she said. And yet she prefers it over the apathetic outside world. The gypsies in Fonseca’s book were severely illiterate harshly discriminated. They “were incarcerated with Jews … The total number of gypsies brought into a ghetto was eleven dead and 4,996 living. Of those, 2,686 were children." Fonseca further narrates that as the gypsies “were marched, others joined our group, more Gypsies and more gendarmes. Some babies died along the way, and some would-be escapees were shot, left by the roadside. We were in a camp about two weeks with hardly any food. More people died as typhus broke out, and others were killed. The dead were thrown into a huge pit covered with quicklime. There were layers and layers of dead. We were herded into cattle cars." And yet they do not depart from their culture and traditions. And though they do want acceptance from our society, they do not fall head over heals to embrace our norms. They are happy as they are if we just leave them be. For the average Joe, it would seem that gypsies’ and William’s sense of happiness is beyond understanding. How can you be happy when you cannot even read, you do not belong and certain societies treat you as second class humans? How can you be happy living in a rigid community with strict rules that command you on every detail of your living? According to Freud, civilization is what "describes the whole sum of achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations" And what makes this civilization to continue to evolve is the "struggle between Eros & Death, between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out in the human species. “ (Freud) This means that for a civilization to continue to exist there must be a balance of the two instincts. Now this ‘balance’ is not only for continued existence. Freud also applies it to attaining happiness – the balance between the accomplishment of the id and the superego: the ego. For one cannot address to the need of the id alone. If everyone was to yield to primitive desires alone, it would result in chaos. If everyone would succumb to what society demands, it would result in displeasure. To a certain degree, Freud’s argument is valid. It now becomes important to compare the gypsy experience and the Williams experience side by side with Freud’s theory of happiness. For Williams, in my opinion, the superego is represented by the military standards. It demands that they dress accordingly, wake up accordingly, eat accordingly and act accordingly. It requires them to follow orders, the chain of command. For the gypsies, we can say that the demanding superego is represented by the norms of what claims to be the more civilized society in Europe. In reality, it is the civilization that we live in. Society demands, that they meet their standards. They are required to be literate, to use society’s technology, to adopt society’s way of living. Otherwise, they are considered inferior, undeserving to live in this society and in extreme cases, not even worthy of living at all. As was mentioned, Freud’s theory of happiness involves the balance of accomplishing the superego and the id. William’s preference of the military atmosphere would suggest that she submits to her superego at the extreme. Being in the military involves a great degree of displeasure. From the training, the strict rules of conduct and the blind obedience that is demanded, it certainly is not comfortable much less pleasurable. She narrates, "We find three locals on the ground, bleeding.... One guy ... worse off.... I reassure him in Arabic.... Im holding the badly hurt guys legs, covered in drying blood" She sees the most unpleasant sites of mass injury and deaths. And yet she likes this better than the ordinary way of living. In reference to Freud’s theory of happiness, there is no balance of accomplishment of the superego and the id in this situation. On the contrary, the superego is accomplished much further than the id. If that is the case, Williams is not supposed to be happy. But why is she happy? She is happy because despite the discomforts of military life, she is able to attain something much more important to her: the sense of belongingness. In her book, she narrates how prior to her enlistment, she always felt that she never fit in. And even after she returned from Iraq, she still feels like she does not belong in this civilian world. She thinks that people in general do not understand what is going on, what is being fought for. It is in the military that she found this sense of belongingness. In Iraq, she was part of something. And that to her, is important enough for her to forego all comforts and pleasure. In the case of the gypsies, the superego is represented by the norms of the civilized society. We can see in Fonseca’s book that gypsies are in a way similar to us. They cook, they clean and they raise families. It is just that they have a different way of doing things. Beside the fact that they are discriminated against, they don’t find it extremely necessary to change their ways and conform to the norms of society. They are happy as they are. In the context of Freud’s theory of happiness, this situation shows an extreme non-accomplishment of the superego. Again, there is no balance. But despite that, why are the gypsies happy as they are? Following Freud’s theory, the accomplishment of the id tantamount to a failure to accomplish the superego and vice versa. But in the case of the gypsies, their non-accomplishment of the superego meant a severe pursuance of the id. But this does not mean that they revert back to only satisfying their primitive desires. With the gypsy community, there exists a certain degree of civilization. They are able to co-exist peacefully with each other. This negates the idea that they only address the primitive desires. However, this does not mean that Freud’s formula of superego and id does not apply. In our society, we think that the standards of civilization are literacy, style and knowledge. But it is not the same with the gypsies. They have a standard of their own which they follow - their own version of a superego. If we consider this version of superego, we see the balance that Freud is talking about. And this is how they are able to live peacefully and happily amongst themselves. To follow the superego may lead to discomfort but it does not necessarily lead to unhappiness. And who’s to say what our superego should be in the first place? Thus, in seeing both William’s disregard to her id for something more important to her and the gypsies’ other version of superego, it led me to conclude that even if Freud’s formula applies, ultimately, we choose our own happiness. Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. W. W. Norton & Company. Reissue edition July 1989. Williams, Kayla. Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army. W. W. Norton & Company. 2005 Fonseca, Isabel, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. Vintage Books. 1996. Read More