Curtis' /Happiness Machines/ and Freud's /Civilization and its Discontents/

In response to Adam Curtis' documentary "Century of the Self" episode one, Happiness Machines, I believe we cannot be trusted to take care of ourselves, instead selected individuals should be given power to watch over humanity. Mainly the reason for my belief is that not everyone is capable of managing on their own, some people are better at other things then others.
For example, a CEO of a very busy company cannot be expected to manage everything by himself, things such as keeping track of meetings and sorting out minor things are done by the secretary. Similarly in modern society, not everyone is capable of taking part in maintaining a functional society, some like Freud and Bernays are better educated and naturally talented in this field. Taking care of ourselves is quite a heavy responsibility, it may sound great to the average person if offered the chance to be break free from government and society's chains, however then you also lose all the benefits you may within your current lifestyle, the protection from police, the medical support from paramedics and hospitals, the assistance from firefighters.
I am actually quite satisfied with the current lifestyle I have now, perhaps i might be deemed as stupid by Sigmund Freud if he was still around, but since birth till now, my whole life has been setup for me. Educational systems, health and dental benefits, even meal systems were all preset either by government or massive companies. Perhaps some people may actually be capable of taking care of themselves, however most of the people I know are unlikely to be able to take care of themselves. For example, I currently am having much trouble with selecting courses for university and that only requires me to pick four courses. Now imagine if I was to be held accounted for in making decisions that would change the way society functioned. Unlike others, I much rather have someone who is capable of directing parts of my life than having me make decisions at every point of life
.

1.Do you think these charges are legitimate? Is this a fair trial?

Do you think these charges are legitimate? Is this a fair trial?

The charges laid on Socrates for corrupting the young by corrupting the youth, introducing new gods and denying old ones and being impiety is clearly a illegitimate charge seeing it from the perspective from a student growing up in the 21^st century. However for the people back in around 400 BC, religion was something that they believed in with no doubt. If this case was in the 21^st century, this charge would not even make it to the courts with all the laws that ensure the freedom of speech and opinion. In comparison to the people of the 400BC, they believed that doubting the gods was a very serious offense and would cause them trouble with the gods and for that the person must be punished.

Meletus claims that “[Socrates] invent new gods and deny the existence of old ones” ("Euthyphro" 1-15), however this is highly questionable. “Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to Cronos or Uranus, and what is acceptable to Hephaestus but unacceptable to Here, and there may be other gods who have similar differences of opinion.”("Euthyphro" 1-15) , from this we can see that Socrates does in fact, respect the old gods. In some cases he does indeed make reference to a new god, but that is only to make sense of the flaws of the old gods. Meletus also claims that Socrates was “corrupting his young friends “, once again, this claim is questionable as this is a highly bias claim. Indeed Socrates was most likely distracting the young people with his endless and confusing conversations from their proper work and corrupting, however in no way is distracting a person from their work a crime.

There trial was not fair in anyway as everyone at the time of this trial was heavily religious. The people of the court believe that they are serving under the gods in order to punish those who are impiet, and with the charge that Socrates is charged with, the people of the court would without a doubt form a bias judgement and punish Socrates for such a crime.

In my opinion, the charges laid on Socrates was in no way legitimate, to judge someone for thinking differently and questioning the unknown is just unreasonable in the perspective of someone from the 21^st century where people are encouraged to do such a thing. In a way the arrogance of the people in the past was what delayed the advancement of humanity and if people like Socrates had not existed we might still be worshipping the Greek gods and punishing people that have committed “crimes” because they did something that the people think the gods will not like. 

 Euthyphro. 1-15. Web. <http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/lange/ch201/Texts/Euthyphro.pdf>.