0:00 A 2017 study found that infants, just six months old, consistently prefer 'helper' characters over 'hinderer' characters in simple puppet shows.0:11 They reach for the good guy.0:13 This brings us right back to the core of our last episode on Impossible Dialogues.0:20 We're staging another one today, putting two of history's most influential thinkers in the same room.0:28 And the question that baby-and-puppet show puts on the table is THE question, isn't it?0:35 Are we born good, and then broken by the world?0:39 Or are we born with a darkness inside us, that the world, for all its flaws, barely manages to contain?0:47 Today, we're giving voice to two figures who represent the poles of that very debate.0:54 In one corner, the philosopher of natural goodness, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.1:00 A pleasure.1:01 Though I find the metaphor of a corner...1:04 confining.1:05 Of course.1:06 And in the other, the father of psychoanalysis, who mapped our inner demons, Sigmund Freud.1:13 I'll be his voice today.1:15 The fundamental question is this: What is the true nature of a human being?1:21 Monsieur Rousseau, you believe we start pure.1:25 We do.1:26 The human in a state of nature is not 'good' in the moral sense you mean...1:32 not yet.1:32 But they are guided by two simple principles: self-preservation, and, uh, pity.1:39 A natural aversion to seeing any other sentient being suffer.1:44 Pity.1:44 A lovely sentiment.1:46 But I've spent my life listening to people's deepest thoughts in my office on Berggasse 19.1:53 And what I find in the unconscious mind is not pity.1:57 It's rage.1:58 It's forbidden desire.2:00 It's a cauldron of primal urges we call the Id.2:04 What you call the 'Id' is not our nature.2:07 It is the wound society inflicts upon our nature.2:11 You are a doctor who mistakes the symptoms for the disease.2:16 A person is born free, and everywhere they are in chains.2:20 Those chains—of property, of status, of envy—are what create the pathologies you observe.2:27 But those chains, as you call them, are what we call civilization.2:33 And civilization is a necessary bargain.2:36 We trade a piece of our primal happiness, our instinctual freedom, for a measure of security.2:43 Without that repression, we would destroy each other to satisfy our most basic drives.2:50 You see repression as the only answer to conflict.2:54 I see a different path.2:56 We must remake society based on the General Will, so that the chains serve everyone, and thus, are not chains at all.3:06 Your 'civilization' is just the triumph of the powerful few over the manipulated many.3:13 The General Will?3:14 Oh, that sounds wonderful.3:16 But who decides what it is?3:18 It's a fantasy.3:20 A dangerous one.3:21 It presumes a collective goodness that simply does not exist in the raw material of humanity.3:28 That's fair, except you have no proof of this 'raw material'.3:33 You only ever study people who are already, uh...3:37 damaged.3:38 Already living in the complex, neurotic societies of Vienna or Paris.3:44 Show me the man before the city, and I will show you a different creature.3:50 And I would say, show me the child in the nursery, trying to possess its mother and eliminate its father as a rival.3:59 That is the Oedipal drama.4:01 That is not taught by society.4:03 That is a fundamental, biological, and psychological reality.4:08 It's the blueprint for all future conflicts.4:12 An interesting theory, Doctor.4:14 A story you tell.4:16 But it is just that—a story.4:18 You've mistaken a myth for a mechanism.4:21 My 'noble savage' is an abstraction, I grant you, to help us think.4:27 But you present your myths as scientific fact.4:30 Alright, I'll give you that the term 'myth' can be applied.4:35 But these myths have explanatory power.4:38 They predict the anxieties, the dreams, the slips of the tongue that reveal the constant war within us.4:47 The war between the Id's desires, the Superego's restrictions, and the poor Ego, caught in the middle.4:55 The war is not within us.4:57 It is between us and a world that tells us we are not enough.5:02 A world that creates scarcity and then blames us for wanting more.5:07 Okay, but let's talk about morality.5:10 Where does it come from?5:12 For you, Monsieur Rousseau, it seems to spring naturally from this feeling of pity.5:19 Exactly.5:19 Empathy is the root of all social virtue.5:23 We feel the suffering of others, and so we wish not to cause it.5:28 It's that simple.5:29 Laws and governments should be built to amplify this natural sentiment, not to replace it with fear of punishment.5:38 No, no, no.5:39 Morality is not natural.5:41 It is...5:42 artificial.5:43 It is the internalization of the father's authority, of society's rules.5:49 We call this the Superego.5:51 It's a policeman in the head, constantly telling the Id "NO." So goodness is just fear?5:58 We are only good because we are afraid of a ghost in our own minds?6:03 That is a bleak and, I think, inaccurate picture of humanity.6:08 I see people sacrifice for others all the time.6:12 And I see those same people, in a moment of crisis, a panic, a war...6:18 I see them trample each other for a loaf of bread.6:22 Your 'pity' is a luxury, afforded by the very civilization you condemn.6:27 It's the first thing to go when the pressure is on.6:31 I hear you, but that's not a failure of human nature.6:36 That's a failure of a social structure that was so fragile it could be broken by a crisis.6:43 A well-ordered society, one that truly serves the General Will, would reinforce our natural solidarity, not shatter it.6:53 But we can't build a society on a 'what if'.6:56 We have to build it for the humans we actually ARE.7:00 Not the ones we might be in some pastoral fantasy.7:04 And the human we are is an animal, driven by the pleasure principle, that has learned to wear a mask.7:13 My work is about understanding the face behind that mask.7:17 And my work is about creating a world where we don't need a mask at all.7:23 Where our inner self and our outer self can be the same.7:27 That is the only true freedom.7:30 A world without masks...7:32 would be a world of pure, terrifying impulse.7:35 It would last for perhaps a day.7:38 You put too much faith in man, and not enough in the structures that save him from himself.7:45 And you, Doctor, put too much faith in the structures, and not nearly enough in the man.7:53 You've designed a prison and called it a home.7:56 So here is the sharpest point of disagreement.8:00 It's about the purpose of everything we build—our schools, our laws, our communities.8:07 Yes.8:07 For me, the goal of education is to protect the child's innate goodness from the corrupting influence of society.8:16 To nurture what is already there.8:19 To cultivate the seed.8:21 And for me, the goal of education, and indeed all of civilization, is sublimation.8:27 It is to take the raw, dangerous energy of our primal urges—aggression, sexuality—and redirect it into something productive.8:37 Something like...8:39 art, or science, or philosophy.8:41 So you admit this energy can create beauty!8:45 Yes!8:45 But only when it is dammed and channeled.8:48 Left to its own devices, it is a flood that destroys everything.8:54 It is not inherently good.8:56 It is just...8:57 powerful.8:58 Civilization is our hydroelectric dam.9:01 A dam that powers the homes of a select few, leaving the rest in darkness.9:07 You are defending a system that benefits from this so-called 'repression'.9:13 It keeps people orderly.9:15 It keeps them in their place.9:17 It keeps them from killing each other!9:20 That seems a rather significant benefit to me.9:24 What you call 'order' I call 'not descending into a war of all against all'.9:30 But the wars still happen, Doctor!9:33 On a massive, horrific scale.9:35 Your 'civilization' doesn't end conflict, it just organizes it.9:40 It gives us better weapons and more abstract reasons to hate.9:45 Alright.9:46 I'll give you that one.9:47 Civilization has certainly not eliminated our aggressive instinct.9:53 It has, perhaps, just given it a larger stage.9:56 So maybe the problem isn't the instinct.10:00 Maybe it's the stage.10:01 And that, I think, is where we land.10:04 We seem to have two profoundly different stories about who we are.10:10 One says we are fallen angels.10:12 The other says we are animals who learned to stand upright.10:17 Rousseau's story gives us a blueprint for hope.10:21 A way to build a better world, a more just society, to recover the goodness we lost.10:27 It's an optimistic project.10:30 It believes in us.10:31 It does.10:32 But Freud's story offers a kind of warning.10:35 It tells us to be suspicious of our own motives, to be wary of utopian promises, because the enemy is not just outside us, in society.10:46 The enemy is also within.10:48 It's a permanent part of our operating system.10:52 It's a pessimistic view, but maybe a more realistic one.10:56 It prepares us for the worst in ourselves and others.11:01 So the question they leave us with is one we have to answer every day, in how we build our families, our companies, our countries.11:11 Do we build for the noble savage, trying to set him free?11:16 Or do we build for the repressed beast, making sure its cage is strong?
