Assignment 3 - Ella Franklin

On a certain level, no human is good. We are greedy, dirty, capitalist pigs with no heart for anyone but ourselves.

Thank god for Freud! Freud blessed us with a place to store all of our greediness and hatred for the world - the lovely subconscious! A haven for the evil that exists within us. I hate to be such a cynic about humanity - what a spectacle to be cynical about!

Some people have said that, at the core, people are good. But think about it. Just think about the absolute most evil person you know. Not a friend who said something bad behind your back or a boyfriend who cheated on you or something. Think of someone really bad. Osama bin Laden. When Osama bin Laden died, America celebrated. Why would we celebrate the death of someone who we genuinely felt at the core was a good person?

The first person who comes to my mind is Martin Shkreli, CEO of a pharmaceutical company who jacked up prices for medicine just for his own gain. I watched a video of his testimony before Congress where the only answer he gave to any questions was a canned "On the advice of council, I invoke my fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question." For every question! Even when asked if he bought a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, which he made a video about him buying and opening, so everyone knew he did, but he still gave the same answer! And with each question, he would have a bigger smirk when he spit out his canned answer. You just want to smack him through the screen.

This is an example of someone, like bin Laden, or Hitler, or whoever comes to mind, whose subconscious evil has surfaced into the conscious. Everyone you consider "good", your family, friends, celebrities, etc. are evil, but only within the subconscious. And the whole point of the subconscious is for it to be beneath the surface. So, as it appears, they aren't evil. But some people haven't mastered the Freudian technique of suppression as well as others. Shkreli hasn't fooled with hiding his evil subconscious. He let it rise right to the surface and sat in front of a Congressional committee with a dumb smirk on his face waving his fifth amendment rights like a patriot's flag. But we are not all evil like Shkreli, because we can suppress our evil subconscious for the greater good of humanity. But does that make us good, to not be evil only so that humanity is good? Or are we just not wanting to be evil because we don't want humanity to think we're evil, which falls under the same principle of greed that we do consider evil? Gosh, I digress. In conclusion, thank god for Freud.