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Yes, pretty much correct.
It turns-out that 'everything' is, pretty much, explained by sex - at least so far as secular modern societies go.
Specifically, it seems that libido, the sex drive, is - in the absence of religion - the most powerful of human drives.
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In particular when we consider not only the primary sex drive - the drive, that is, to have sex; but also the sublimated sex drive - which is the sex drive transformed into other motivations.
Freud never satisfactorily defined the specifics of sublimation (presumably because he was talking and writing utter nonsense 99% of the time) - but from an evolutionary psychology perspective it seems obvious that the major sublimations of the sex drive are onto those behaviours which are associated with greater sexual opportunity - for men, primarily high status (relative to other men), and also masculine physique and masculine-typical dominant behaviours; for women the appearance of youth and health; for both sexes the signals of sexual availability.
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As society has progressively, step-by-step, eliminated religion - then sex has come to the fore as the primary remaining motivation - the only strong motivation left-over under atheism; and conversely, the sexual impulse has been perhaps the primary motivation for the elimination of religion.
Thus we live in by far the most sexualized environment in the history of the world - with extraordinarily widespread actual sexual licence and a vastly greater scale of sexual depictions; but a great deal more of behaviour primarily-motivated by sexual goals - plus, in addition, very clear and widespread sublimations of the sex drive with wholesale fake signalling of status and masculine physique and behaviour among men; fake signalling of youth and health among women; and massive advertisement (also often fake) of sexual-availability among men and women.
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Secular modernity is very obviously mostly, therefore, a matter of the libido and its sublimations - presumably because this is what most powerfully motivates secular Man, what gets things done in a world without religion.
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So Freud was right! - in a way...
Or rather, when a society becomes degraded and corrupted by secular, materialist and selfish influences - such as those of Freud himself - then, indeed, libido and its sublimations do come to the fore and begin to explain most of what goes-on.
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4 comments:
My older brother is reading St. Augustine's City of God. He told me that, according to Augustine, there are two sins which can be indulged infinitely: wrath and lust.
Don Giovanni might be an example of a character's attempt at infinite lust.
-Aegis
@Aegis - True enough - and I would add Envy to that list (which is a type of Pride).
"...when a society becomes degraded and corrupted by secular, materialist and selfish influences - such as those of Freud himself - then, indeed, libido and its sublimations do come to the fore and begin to explain most of what goes-on."
Thank you for that insightful analysis. I understand, then, that Freud was a kind of false prophet. As such he was wrong most of the time, but occasionally right, in this case on the overall main point.
@SDR - Yes, I would say Freud was sometimes right - but for the wrong reasons; and because he was influential there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy about him.
(viz: Freud became a prophet - to some extent - only because lots of people believed him and acted accordingly. Which is almost the opposite of a real prophet!).
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