Civilization And Discontent

On April 12th, I conducted a field experiment sitting at the tables outside of the Walmart on Apache Boulevard. Since this area is part of ASU’s campus, I was expecting to see mostly students and employees of the university. However, I was surprised to see several people that did not fit my expectation of a student or faculty, and I thought looked out of place as a result. In his book Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argues that our expectations in society are influenced by our superego, that is, a conscience formed by the internalization of societal values passed on from our parents. The society also maintains a superego, like that of the individual, that guides the expectations and standards of society. In her stage play, Real Women
Freud explains that the cultural superego, in the way that it maintains ideal demands, creates difficult and even unattainable goals for the society to value and strive for. He says that the cultural superego encourages us to strive after these difficult goals by convincing us that “the harder it is to obey the precept the more meritorious it is to do so” (Freud 146). In this way, we convince ourselves that society’s standards are worth adhering to, even if they are difficult or impossible, as the goal is worth the effort. This is how the cultural superego wields so much influence on the ideals of the populace even with such difficult demands; society is convinced that the prize will make the difficulty worth it. One of the difficult goals set by the cultural superego is the pursuit of self-improvement through a college degree. This shared value is one of the binding factors that create the distinct “student demographics” that persisted through my observation area (Perdue 2). While the ASU population is very diverse, all students fit into the larger collective identity of what it is to be a student based on how we value our education as worth the time and effort. In this way, university students internalize
Because I am a student here at ASU, I participate in the value system that the cultural superego poses for education, and it shapes my perception of campus as a result. I noted in my field experiment that because of my role as a student on campus, I did not feel like I stood out there, but I did feel wary of anyone who was not a student (Perdue 3). I did not feel like an outsider in my experiment because I felt that as a student, the campus was a place for people like me who bought into society’s expectations, and therefore not a place for those who rejected it. It is this that made me wary of those who did not look like students, the establishment of an in-group based on the adherence to society’s values to which I belonged. What made those who were not students stand out, however, was the fact that they were resisting the societal pressure to further their education, which calls into question both the ideals that I adhere to as a student and the ideals that the University is based on. In this way, it was “strange not to be a student in this area,” as it defies the expectations of society as well as those of the students for the area (Perdue 5). What made those who were not students seem strange then, was not just the fact that they were not a student, but the fact that they also call into