Material condition and Ideology
According to Sigmund Freud’s theory, some drives are evident throughout the life of everyone. There are two categories of interpretation of instincts that is life instincts and death instincts (Freud, 64). Life instincts can also be referred to as sexual instincts; they deal with reproduction, pleasure, and basic survival. These instincts are fundamental for life sustenance and continuation of a generation. The life instinct focuses majorly on the preservation of life for people and other species (Freud, 89). The individuals cared for their health and governed by positive emotions, which include love, social cooperation, and affection. Death instincts, on the contrary, are those instincts which may lead to destruction can be hidden but can eventually result in suicide and self-harm. The theory concludes that the ultimate objective of all life is death (Freud, 102). He further found that the desired pressure towards end stands in a very sharp contrast than the instinct to live.
The social implication of life instincts includes a concern for everyone in society (Freud, 132). People can relate well and ensuring that there is cohesion in a community. The individuals ensure that there are procreation and survival. On the contrary, death, instincts can lead to aggression, risk behaviors, and the use of death as a form of releasing the trauma. These death instincts can lead to a society full of crimes and instability.
The material condition is the production exchange and the organization in the society we are currently living in. Different people living in different communities have different material conditions. Ideology is the ideas that are present in society. According to Rifkin, at the end of the work, the current material condition is advanced compared to the past. The introduction of new machines in the industry has led to the production of more products in society. The human workforce needed in the sectors has become limited because of the advancement in technology. The author added that the improvement in technology today has led to a reduction in the cost spend to pay the workforce and an increase in production.
The improvement in technology has caused unemployment among many people in the world; the machines have taken the task of the human being, leaving most of them without jobs. Rifkin predicted that global unemployment would eventually increase in the coming years as information technology improves. Millions of people will be eliminated from workplaces, especially in the manufacturing industries, the agricultural sector, and service sectors. Though the advancement in technology as made work more manageable, many people are not benefiting from it because it took away their jobs from them.
In Rifkin’s article, he said that people in the past had their knowledge and ways of producing their goods and services before the introduction of technology to satisfy their products. With the introduction of education, many people have become innovative in getting rid of the traditional way of production. This statement shows the fact that workers were ancient knowledge while the machines are the new knowledge in society.
Rifkin suggests that there is a need to introduce voluntary and community-based service organizations that will open a job opportunity for people who lost their jobs due to the introduction of new technologies. The government should be in a position to support the communities and provide social services to them. This alternative will help many people to be innovative, and they will improve the economic sector of the country. Technology will also give room to young people in society to be creative and improve it what we do in the current community, worth the knowledge that we implemented.
According to Roszak in the article Where the wasteland end, it shows the present Ideology in the world. He stated that knowledge grows and how tomorrow’s learning is predicted. Just like Rifkin, the author shows that with the advancement in technology, many people are coming up with many ideas. The present knowledge in terms of ideas reflects how tomorrow’s expertise will be. The people in the past had limited ideas; that is why they did less innovation, and they always depend on the knowledge they possess at that time (Snell and Tristan, 106). The present ideas are technological because people have advance knowledge-wise, and they are competing in implementing the plans. With new ideas among people, it has enabled the world to grow very fast and made it be as a global village.
The new ideas that young people come up every single day have made the generation to be smarter than the previous generation. The views and new knowledge that people come up with have promoted more self-employment because people are coming up with new ways of doing something, and at the end of the day, they benefit from it eventually. The condition of the current ideas is good because it is making the world to overgrow. The best alternative for improving knowledge today is exposing people to the world of completion.
Both the material condition and the Ideology go hand in hand. As the two authors indicate in the article with the new ideas, there is advancement in the technology. The expansion in knowledge leads automatically to the invention of more the machine and increase in the production. Another author, Wright Mills, who was a sociologist, believes that education has a crucial element in social change. Just like Roszak, with ideological knowledge, there is a significant improvement in social change. Wright, through his article on Social power, he brings out that there is a need for the society to change, and the people who will bring changes in the community are those people with knowledge. The sociologist found out that with good ideas from the people, there will be a more significant improvement. He saw that the condition of Ideology was not that good, and he gave an alternative that people with knowledge should use it to bring social change in society (Walton and John, 685). He felt that critical thinking was the best way of obtaining crucial knowledge, and thus productively used the experience. He terms it as social imagination because he was mainly focusing on social change.
The author John Stuart Mill in his work on liberty indicates that individuals can have their freedom. He argues that the government in authority first of its goal is to protect its citizens and give them their freedom. According to Mill, people should be given the freedom to do what they one provided they are not harming anyone. Mill feels that when people are left free, they will have the opportunity to highlight the ideas that they have and will improve their thing capacity and may end up leading to advancement in technology. The liberty that Mill had in mind was the freedom of thought and emotion, which will enable people to expand their way of thing and to end up coming with ideas. Freedom to pursue taste this will allow them to be more innovative. Lastly, the freedom to unite, and this will enable people to come together with different ideas and help each other to implement those ideas.
In conclusion, all the four authors indicate in their works the relationship in ideology and material conditions. They show that with new ideas, the material condition will be good; that is, it results in good productivity.
Work Cited
Freud, S. “The dual instinct theory. In: J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), Group psychology and the analysis of the ego”. The complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press (1921) (International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1962, Vol. 18, pp. 60–143).
Rifkin’s, Jeremy. “The end of work.” (1995).
Snell, Tristan L., Janette G. Simmonds, and R. Scott Webster. “Spirituality in the work of Theodore Roszak: Implications for contemporary ecopsychology.” Ecopsychology 3.2 (2011): 105-113.
Walton, John. “Discipline, method, and community power: A note on the sociology of knowledge.” American Sociological Review (1966): 684-689.