Freud presents his essay as a critique of the assumption that as humans we are drawn innately to gaining as much happiness and pleasure as we can. Freud disagrees with this assumption. He argues that we all have a mental perception of displeasure or pain. Our minds or perception is more drawn to dealing with the pains we experiences and this helps us to gain pleasure or happiness as a byproduct. Freud was writing after the time of WWI. At the time that event was the most displeasurable things humans had experienced.
Gaining pleasure is not our dominant trait but most of the processes of our mind do end up in pleasure. He explains this concept with his investigation of “Fort Da” or “Child’s Play.” Freud experienced and analyzed the actions of a little boy who was constantly throwing away his toys in a bid to say Fort Da or gone away. The boy was not throwing away his toys and picking it back again because he found pleasure in that experience but instead, he was dealing with the painful things in his life that is his mother who was constantly away and his father who was off to war. Dealing with the pain was what brought the young kid happiness or pleasure. So the boy’s happiness had to deal with his own perception of what happiness was.
In the same way, Plato’s Allegory of the cave is very similar to Fort Da. In the Allegory, Plato compares men in a state of ignorance to prisoners in a cave unable to turn their heads. Directly behind the prisoners, fire burns. Between the fire and the prisoners, puppeteers who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners cannot see the real objects but all they see are shadows. In the minds of the prisoners, the shadows are real objects but when released they see that their perception of reality was different. Plato’s allegory also shows that what is considered as happiness is different for different people in different situations. Pain can be seen as pleasure or happiness by another person.
I totally agree with the views of Freud and Plato. A person’s definition of pleasure or happiness is all perceptive. What is good for the goose is not always good for the gander so to speak. For example, a religious martyr who goes through torture and death because of his/ her beliefs will be viewed by another person as experiencing displeasure and in no way happy. However, even through that pain, the martyr might be happy inside knowing and believing that he is doing God’s will. Still a question remains, which kind of happiness is superior, gaining happiness by dealing with pain or gaining happiness through pleasurable things?
from Joseph Dabo
