Failure to Understand History

I am reading Freud's The Future of an Illusion.  He defines illusions as "Illusions need not necessarily be false--that is to say unrealizable or in contradiction to reality" (page 49).  They are not false, because they cannot be proven so.  An illusion is that I am going to win the lottery and become rich.  It is possible, but highly improbable.  To him, religious beliefs are illusions.  As in the case of God, the illusions of belief cannot either be proven or refuted.  

Believing in religious traditions to Freud are based on three things:

1.  We should believe them because our ancestors believed them.

2. These proofs have been handed down from ancient times.

3.  It is forbidden to question their authenticity.

I have heard numbers one and two being used as evidence for the historicity of the Exodus and the Revelation at Mt. Sinai.  It was witnessed and passed down from generation to generation.  Number three is seen in the rabbinic statement that a law without a logical explanation, known in Hebrew as a חֹק, chok, must be observed because God commands it and we have no permission literally to meditate upon it.  

The issue that he contends with is whether we can have morality without God.  As I stated, Kant believes that without a divine imperative, there would be chaos, since morality would be subjective and not objective.  Freud stated that this argument basically tells us that without the threat of divine punishment, we would revert back to our instincts which know no morality and that would be the end of civilization.  I will deal with my reactions to this in another installment.

For now, I would like to look at another statement in his book.  It clearly proves the statement of George Santayana, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".  Freud lived through the First and Second World Wars.  He saw how civilization was destroyed.  In their eyes, the Germans and Austrians were the most civilized of peoples, yet were capable of committing such horrendous atrocities.  Freud had hopes that civilization would endure, and religion was not necessary for the preservation.  He gave us this warning:

"There are countless civilized people who would shrink from murder or incest but who do not deny the satisfaction of their avarice, their aggressive urges or their sexual lust, and who do not hesitate to injure other people by lies, fraud, and calumny, so long as they can remain unpunished for it; and this, no doubt, has always been so through many ages of civilizations," (page 14).

Sounds like somebody we all know too well.  Freud had little faith in the masses, "For masses are lazy and unintelligent; they have no love for instinctual renunciation, and the individuals composing them support one another in giving free rein to their indiscipline." (page 6).  We just have to look at January 6 for proof of this.  Even though Freud was an atheist, he knew the Hebrew Bible well, and seems to agree with the prophets that the masses are foolish and unwise.  In the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom calls out to them, but they ignore her.

We seem inevitably doomed to repeat the failures of the past.  I hope that in November, I am wrong.