Seeking Pleasure And Agression Is Part Of

Human Instinct Essay, Research Paper

Seeking Pleasure and Agression Is Part of Human Instinct

Name: Mohamed Fakhry A.Wahab

Based on Freud concepts of pleasure and aggression, discuses Hay Ibn

Yaqzan and The Island of Animals

It is said to be that seeking pleasure and aggression are a part of our

human Instinct. We seek pleasure to shorten the time of our unhappiness. We

live in a constant struggle to be always happy, and we use all the ways that

take us to happiness. Aggression, on the otherhand, is a part of our human

nature, which can be hidden deep down in our subconcousnes and explodes in

certain situations, or it can be on the surface of our behavior and inconstant

use. Sources of happiness may differ from one person to another, but the one

source of our human gratification that we all agree upon, is the happiness

derived from sexual pleasure. Our souls strive for sexual pleasure to be

elevated from one degree of human happiness to another. Freud said that .what

we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the … satisfaction of

needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only

possible as an episodic phenomenon.. (25). At the sametime, we explore those

human instincts in the presence of civilization which set some rules and

regulation that are surpassingly acting as guidelines for the survival of

humanity. Hay Ibn Yaqzan and The Island of animals, are two different human

experiences that discover our two core human instincts, pleasure and aggression.

In Hay, we will find that his journey with his own instincts is different from

our own human instincts, but it is the same when it comes to the roll of

civilization with dealing with them. On the otherhand, The Island of Animals

tends to dig in our human aggression, and shows how humanity uses civilization

as a curtain to hide behind it.

Freud concept of pleasure and happiness is related to Hay in only one

way. It is not in the kind of happiness itself , whether if is sexual or

spiritual, but it is similar in the procedure and the definitions of happiness

or pleasure. In other words, pleasure to Freud is basically in sexual terms, .

Sexual gratification is the prototype of all forms of individual happiness…..

On the otherhand, Hay Ibn Yaqzan’s happiness or his pleasure is found in totally

different kind of human instinct, which is the substitute gratification for

sexual pleasure, because religion and science are included in Freud’s lists for

intellectual replacements for the lost sexual happiness. So Hay, according to

Freud, is someone who favored the substitutes of sexual happiness. But, did not

experience sexual pleasure in the first place. Therefor, we cannot say that Hay

is someone who escaped the sexual pleasure to the intellectual replacements,

because of civilization. The concepts of Freud equation does not suit Hay’s

case. At the sametime, we can make the link between Hay and Freud’s concept

from the civilization point of view. According to Freud, our sexual instincts

are operates by civilization, and it does not serve the requirements of

civilization. In Hayy’s case civilization oppressed his spiritual happiness

where he found it on the island. In this sense civilization stood against his

human instinct, as civilization is standing against our human desires

represented in the sexual form. Opposite, Hay escaped from civilization in

search for his basic human desires. This escape was confirmed by his

reinhabiting the Island with Absal. Hayy found that civilization grab his

desires from him, actually from his fellow man. Hayy knew that .what misery

moreburdeing than recounting all you do from the time you get up to the time you

go to bed without finding a singal action that did not amount to seeking one of

these vile, sensory aims:…pleasure seeking…venting rage….(71) As we can

see pleasure for Salaman and his friends is totally different from Hay’s

pleasure. The difference between Freud’s concept and Hay, is that in reality we

do not fight or even escape to reach our basic human instinct, but rather we

create substitute gratification’s. According to Freud .Civilization compensates

the individual by redirecting his libidinal energies into socially acceptable

forms of amusement and diversion.. But as we see those acceptable forms are

substitutes for the real thing, instinctual happiness. But, they are not a

substitute for Hayy, they are his core source of happiness. So he did not stay

with Salaman and create for himself substitute kind of pleasure, instead, he

left civilization for its seekers and he went back in search for his higher

degree of happiness. On the otherhand, civilization for us, becomes the

constant attempt to divert the individual from sexual gratification into

socially productive and acceptable activities. We on the contrary, do not have