\u201cI believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our\nroots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a\nsociety that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in\nensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating\nunconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just\npassive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2015 Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to Hancock\u2019s (2018) statement on the unconsciousness, I\nbelieve instead that human society is deeply troubled by the vast amount of\ninformation that is granted to us through technology. We, as a result of this\ninformation overload, choose to stay within the privilege comforts of\nhedonistic society. We are largely conscious than we are unconscious. This\ndevelopment can be seen in the schools of psychology, each as a reaction to the\nformer: functionalism to structuralism, behaviorism to psychoanalysis, humanism\nto behaviorism, and cognitive behaviorism to humanism. This development may\nalso be blatant in social psychology as it progresses from the 60s to where we\nacclaim ourselves now with critical social psychology. How we rejected\nexperimentalism, rather I believe its discoveries, and turn towards an\nillusionary social constructivism, which asserts that all things existentially\nmatter, if not at all still within ambiguous identity-alienation (Jourard,\n1996; Sloan, 1996).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Social Psychology is defined as the normative study of people in\ngroups, their behaviors and interactions with other people. How we think and\ntherefore communicate is partial to the domain of social psychology. Our\ncultures and beliefs in association with the group\u2019s levies into this; further\nstill is what is discriminated upon as abnormal, or outside society. Its\npossible mechanisms and lauded causes grants insights in experimental\npsychology, the likes of which include the Milgram study and Stanford Prison\nexperiment. Critical social psychology would form in the latter years and break\naway from mainstream \u2018American\u2019 social psychology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Psychology surmises the mind and thus its conceptions through\nbehavior. As humans, we have the gift of reflection and choice. Our varied\nexperiences in line with our backgrounds and characteristics make for this\nvolatile spectrum of perspectives. To illustrate such a point, I shall use Freud\u2019s\nunconscious theory (Wollheim & Goutallier,\n1971, p.157-176; Journal Psyche, 2018) to\nsupport my claim. Freud asserts, while describing the iceberg: that the\nunconscious is the larger and unseen portion beneath the waves; whereas the\nsubconscious occupy a partial position beneath and above surface; and the\nconsciousness containing the least of portions, floating right above the\nsurface. According to Freud (Wollheim & Goutallier,\n1971, p.157-176; Journal Psyche, 2018), the unconsciousness governs most\nof our repressed memories and experiences, whereas the subconscious governs\nimportant circumstantial information, and the consciousness the data that would\nfreely be accessed and retrieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To put things into perspective, we may draw that the unconscious is\nrelated to the past and the consciousness to the present. Where Freud\u2019s model would\nhave work in his time, the context now is drastically different. The past is\nlargely irrelevant, we think little of it in our current time. Information is\npumped out into overdrive with technology, the media and society. Tod Sloan\n(1996, p.9) in his book the Damaged Life, listed an account for the main\nproblems people think about in modern life; It reports the pace of change, for\nwhich things are moving far too quickly; the decline of certainty and belief,\nwhere there are now numerous perspectives on a matter; unfulfilled\nexpectations, that draw upon feelings of helplessness and victimization; the\ndecay of morality, that feeds upon a nihilistic stance of life which follows; meaninglessness,\nan apparent empty or boring life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Consciousness surrounds waking society. Sloan in his report (1996)\nsurmises this apparent dissonance with the mechanic world that humanity is\ninclined into. Freud\u2019s iceberg has been overturned. The consciousness is now\nmuch broader, in part due to the information overload from the media and\ntechnology, a crippling cultural foundation (Habermas, 1970, p.114), and the\nlack of self-initiative through dependency on authority. The unconscious that\nwe may assume resonate from a time once of plentiful reflection has been\nshredded away, occupying but a portion of the now dominant and surface\nconsciousness. A sense of alienation (Jaeggi & Smith, 2014) defers from the\nloss of personal integrity, to that which is expropriated and exploited to perceived\npowers beyond the individual. Sloan (1996, p.10) himself relates this \u201c\u2026the\nstriking thing about modern confusion is that its locus is personal identity\u201d. If\nwe were to give further thought to Freud\u2019s Id Ego and Superego, we would see\nthat the societal narrative is driven by the superego\u2019s adherence to normative\nstructures, sought by hedonistic principle of comfort than pain; lo what is thus\negoistically celebrated normatively, is also aggressively acceptable for the Id.\nWhere the foundations of culture and tradition has been uprooted, we are\npresented a dissonance of conflicting roles; one towards the expectations of\nsociety and the latter towards our self-integrity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In lines of the work of McDougall and William James (Rogers, 2011,\np.13), the person that is at war to become the leviathan, finds himself a\nplayer amongst others on the board. A figurative chess piece that is socially\nconstructed to the determinants not even to themselves who lord it, as all who\nbelieve it are made redundant as a result of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps nothing may illuminate this concept of depersonalization\nmore than the experiments run by Milgram (McLeod, 2017) and Zimbardo (McLeod,\n2018). Where Milgram sought to understand why people were so willing to obey\nauthority, Zimbardo sought to investigate the tortures that follows a prison in\nAbu Ghraib. Supported by Asch\u2019s conformity studies, Milgram uncovered that many\npeople would relegate their moral obligations to authority figures, despite the\nsteady increase of voltage for shocking the unbeknownst confederate.\nAlternatively, Zimbardo discovered the power of the situation, context in\nextension to role perception. The students who participated were depersonalized\nof their identities and followed their assigned roles of being prison guards or\nprisoners; an echo to the Cave Robbers experiment where two groups acted in\nessence of Adler\u2019s inferiority and superiority complexes, a dichotomous complex\nof victim and aggressor that runs akin to Zimbardo\u2019s prison experiment. The\nidea of such estranged situations need not be truly realized. The foregone\nconclusion is constructed from fiction, as we pull in our memories and experiences\nand apply it to our worldview. The concept thus I\u2019m referring to refer to is\nAdler\u2019s fictional finalism (Mitchell, 2015). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Both the Second World War and the Iraq war were recent incidences.\nIt could be said that such tools of validity or ethics were not available then,\nthough it could also be argued that it was never necessary to begin with. Returning\nto Sloan (1996), the constant theme of modern problems resides in our identity.\nThese experiments highlight our role-confusion and depersonalization in suiting\nto the norm. The superego is thus the largest muscle, enforcing what is pleasurably\nattractive, and diverting our aggression through sublimation or displacement,\nFreudian defense mechanisms that entails us to show aggression in an acceptable\nmanner as is the state of war or self-harm. Do I believe that we have developed\nfrom the past? That the theories are a product of the times? Is it not too\ncomplicated to say? Would it not altogether rob the experiments of its message?\nOr perhaps rightly so, the experiments are an artificial bubble to a life we\ncan\u2019t ever hope to comprehend?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a famous story. A group of people are backed facing into\nthe depths of the cave, the light shinning from their back from its entrance.\nThey see on the walls an illustration of shadows they think to be of themselves.\nThey were later bewildered when the shadow takes another form. Our need for\nmeaning, contrives perception. The allegory is of Plato\u2019s Cave (), a priori\nthat ask of our senses if what we sensed is indeed so, being that what we are\ntaught has transformed what we claim to initially know. It suggests the need to\nbe partial, explicit to the perceived world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In relating back to Freud\u2019s iceberg (Journal Psyche, 2018), our\nawareness of what we sense has made us more critical of the information we\nreceive. What we may grasp out of all of this is possibly the ways we have\ndecided to excavate, as archeologists do – the falling remnants of late\ncapital. We are moved more by discomfort than we are comfort. The cause for\nmany personality assessments and thus its interest, its relative extremes in\npsychopathy and abnormal psychology, in relating back to social constructionism\nwhich takes the account of subject place and time, sees this development\ntowards a reclaimed self, a move to reclaim our fractured identities and to\nbuild upon a solid foundation that we realize was lost to us (Sloan, 1996). It\nis true that development is slow, yet it may also be that as we grow to be more\naware of something we can no longer, and thus become critical thinkers of\nconscious society, – the more we truly begin to realize where our priorities\nreally lie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/p>\n\n\n\n Graham H. (2018). I Believe We Are A Species With Amnesia. Retrieved from https:\/\/themindsjournal.com\/i-believe-we-are-a-species-with-amnesia\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jaeggi, R., & Smith, A. (2014). Alienation<\/em>\n(Neuhouser F., Ed.). Columbia University Press. Retrieved from\nhttp:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.7312\/jaeg15198<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jourard, S. M. (1996). The transparent self<\/em>. New\nYork: Van Nostrand Reinhold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Journal Psyche. (2018). Freud’s Model of the Human Mind.\nRetrieved from http:\/\/journalpsyche.org\/understanding-the-human-mind\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n McLeod, S. A. (2017). The Milgram shock experiment<\/em>.\nRetrieved from https:\/\/www.simplypsychology.org\/milgram.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n McLeod, S. A. (2018). Zimbardo – Stanford prison\nexperiment<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.simplypsychology.org\/zimbardo.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitchell, G. (2015). Alfred Adler & Adlerian\nIndividual Psychology. Retrieved from https:\/\/mind-development.eu\/adler.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sloan,\nT. (1996). Damaged life: The crisis of the modern psyche<\/em>. London:\nRoutledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wollheim,\nR., & Goutallier, M. (1971). Freud. Paris: Seghers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions.\u201d \u2015 Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 2018 Contrary to Hancock\u2019s (2018) statement on the unconsciousness, I believe instead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":2470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2471,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions\/2471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdis.edu.sg\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}