Life's All About Sex and Death. Gotta Love Freud.

Setting: the modernist era. A time when individual interests were both emphasized and degraded, art became virtually unrecognizable, and survival of the fittest permeated society. Thinkers began to explore the idea of humans as irrational beings, abandoning the conventions of the Enlightenment to explore the darker side of the psyche. This new intellectual sensibility was manifested in Nietzsche's nihilism, a singular doctrine which lacked the optimism of religion and the (rather ridiculous) approach of perspectivism. However, Nietzsche's philosophy is not untouched by the reaches of imperialism and Romantic exoticism. His theories about repeated lives and divine death echoed Hindu and Buddhist doctrine; thus, western philosophy began to take on a distinctly eastern feel.

Although Nietzsche influenced many high profile people, only one literally internalized his teachings--Sigmund Freud. Freud, a pop culture icon in his own right, is commonly associated with sex, death, and therapists. These associations are not altogether incorrect, but Freud's thoughts are (naturally) more complex, and he probably had quite a few unconscious philosophies which he failed to share with us. Unconsciousness aside, Freud attempted to use his theories to define "the human." Freud's human is base, unthinking, aggressive, repressed, governed by intricate levels of consciousness and egotism. On a superficial level, Freud doesn't seem to have missed the mark. We all have socially unacceptable thoughts and feel the influence of social conditioning. However, between all the uncontrollable forces that govern the human psyche, Freud somehow loses sight of the physical, real individual. A human is much more than a series of synapses and warring instincts. Freud was so caught up in the complex terrain of the psyche that he lost sight of the overall delicacy of the body. He does not explain the physical actions that seem automatic, like blinking and breathing, perhaps attributing them to the activity of an infinite subconscious. He trivializes conscious thinking and self-consciousness--the very qualities that define the human condition. After all, are we not afraid of dying because we consciously acknowledge the inevitability of our death? Don't we define humanity as impermanent because we recognize death? If Thanatos governed our non-erotic selves, as Freud suggests, we would not understand mortality, and our death instincts would simply lead us to "simplicity." Yet, this is not the case. We are painfully aware of our time, and we think we understand what it means to die. Instincts do not allow such lucidity. Freud seems to have forgotten, momentarily, that we are not wolves, and that the anxiety of the human condition comes from knowing what we are.