ABSTRACT
Freud starts Civilization and its discontents (1930) with what, at first, seems an odd turn for an essay on humanity’s discontent with civilization—he begins with a critique of religious experience, or what his friend, the polymath Romain Rolland calls oceanic feeling, the psychic experience of eternity. Upon further inspection, however, Freud’s decision to start here makes sense, as religion and religious experience, like all other forms of civilization, including global civil society, inevitably fail to deliver fully on their promise to humanity, as they do not ultimately free us from (or shore us up against) the myriad sufferings of life. Equally important, oceanic experience seems to point to a global view that we, presently, may find useful. In other words, one must wonder, is Rolland’s oceanic feeling only about religious commitment? Or, is it about something else, in the form of a wider set of commitments more multiply determined and global? Something one might call a complex systems view of the world, similar to C. Wright’ sociological imagination.
