civilization and its discontents by sigmund freud

The commandment is impossible to fulfil such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty. “The commandment, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', is the strongest defence against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the unpsychological of the cultural super-ego. Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will increase man's likeness to a god still more.” Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times. Not completely in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. All these possessions he has acquired through culture.

is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. “It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant.

Civilization and its discontents by sigmund freud