ies it to society as well. “It can be asserted that community, too, evolves a super-ego under whose influence cultural development proceeds.” (Freud, 106.) This super-ego of society is the basis for the conflict between society and the individual. What Freud is pointing is that society is controlled by a conscience, just as the individual is. “Another point of agreement between the cultural and individual super-ego is that the former, just like the latter, sets up strict ideal demands, disobedience to which is visited with ‘fear of conscience’. (Freud, 107.) So if individual and cultural development are in opposition to each other and each has its own conscience, where does that leave us? As civilization becomes more complicated and absorbs more of our life and through Freud one can see that indeed it is the society whose conscience comes first over the individual. Sociologist Max Weber used the relationship between society and the individual to explain the evolution of capitalism in terms of social development. A value system that was originated in Christian ascetic idealism, gradually found itself becoming embedded into Western society (Gramsci’s HEGEMONY). This system of values, or rationalism, was based on concept of a “peculiar ethic”, which Weber identified as “an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system.” (Weber, 27.) It is this spirit that has embodied society and it is this spirit, rather than the will of the individual, that wields the weapon of capitalism. “Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest.” (Weber, 55.) Regardless of who accepts or rejects this economic system imposed by society, those who posess the instinct to survive will have no choice but to accept it. While this religiously-influenced eco...
