Civilization and its (ruinous) repetitions

When Sigmund Freud wrote of the psychic discontentments (in Civilization and Its Discontents) we experience when we consent to live our lives according to the rules and boundaries of civilization, he spoke of civilization as something confining, an enemy, as it were, of our natural beings, our tribal instincts.

Freud meant to suggest, I believe, is that civilization is something we settle for though internally we writhe in discontent wishing that we could live a life of our instincts.

As film critic Anthony Lane writes in his excellent review of the movie, The Kings of Summer, civilization may also be something we unconsciously reproduce and repeat as a fundamental structure of living, when we are in the midst of nature.

So used are we to the fact of living inside civilization that civilization has become our instincts.

This is a cause for concern, as is revealed ever so subtly in the film.

The story of The Kings of Summer revolves around a few teenagers who decide to flee their families and go back to nature. They begin to build a makeshift house with drift materials. No sooner than they sit down to observe the daily rituals of life, civilization starts to creep back in:

As they sit at their makeshift dinner, complete with candlelight and alcohol, we realize to our horror (as they do not) that these rebellious souls are already turning into their (conformist) parents. [Joe] even brings along a Monopoly set and one of his father's cigars. Run all you like, the movie suggests; you will never escape.

There is a serious Western artistic tradition of exploring the nagging permanency of civilization and Lane does well to mention Daniel Defoe's 16th century novel, Robinson Crusoe, in this context.

Defoe's hero is shipwrecked on an island of "savages," but instead of adopting to the ways of the savage, he can't help reconstructing the tidy existence of a gentleman farmer despite being alone on a desert isle. But of course, Crusoe wants to leave the stamp of civilization on the isle, in keeping with the spirit of rising imperialism and industrialism of the Western world.  

What about those who seek to escape civilization in the modern world? I think, we are all innately imperialistic, as we go around visiting nature, only to stamp our civilizational imprints on it.