Technology and Morals in Isben's An Enemy of the People and Freud's Civilization and its Discontent

Technology and Morals in Isben's An Enemy of the People and Freud's Civilization and its Discontents

As technology increases do the morals of society degrade? This is a very scientific question to ask about quite an emotional subject. A scientist would ask for a set of data correlating points of increasing technology with corresponding points of moral standards. The brutal truth is that you can't know. No one can be certain about the moral standards of a people at a certain time in the past, let alone the present. And how do you face a period of time when the technological standards and ideas actually fell in relationship from the previous time period. Did their moral standards improve? I doubt it. Arguing for the code of chivalry and the honor of knights falls apart when you look away from fairy tales, that and the fact that most of the population of Europe was peasants, anyways. But seriously, a person really can't know. The only problem technology brings forth is that people can find a more efficient way of getting what they want. Because after all, isn't that all human nature is? And morals are defined by human nature. So if one person wants to kill people, technology will aid that person in doing so. Of course there's a monetary price to that technology, so you'll be able to kill people only as efficiently as your budget constraint allows. However, it's still not that hard or expensive to buy a gun and shoot someone. What I'm leading up to is that technology does not affect the morals of a people. It affects how efficiently they can carry out their goals, not their goals directly. Of course you can say that the possibility of doing something creates a desire to do it, but is someone going to commit genocide if they don't want to kill a single person in the first place?

Technology does not affect people's morals directly: it allows people to follow their nature (to carry out their goals) more efficiently. Henry Ibsen gives the best argument for this case. In his play, An Enemy of the People, the mayor of the town, Peter Stockmann, only wants what is best for the town and his public image. His brother, Dr.