The human psyche is divided into rational and irrational drives. Courtesy of Sigmund Freud, it is divided into Id, Ego, and Superego. According to Freud, although the superego controls the other two to present us in a rational state within society, the id often tends to be out of complete control by the conscious, making it an unconscious action. For Freud it is the recognition that the irrational exists and that it must be controlled to take over. Man's aggressive nature tends to overwhelm the mind, leading to irrational actions. Both Freud's The Discontents of Civilization and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground show how human beings are controlled by their irrational drives and that, as a result, attempts to create a utopian society are futile. To have a different vision of irrational actions in humans, a cinematic frame of reference was introduced, Joss Whedon's science fiction film, Serenity, which tells of a civilization that has been controlled by aggressive groups, the Alliance and the Reavers. Both factions take the form of an antagonistic society, maintaining a sense of fear in all who oppose or stand in their way. Actions to make a civilized society utopian lead to the creation of a dystopia due to man's irrational drives. Through his writings and research, Freud outlined that man was initially driven by his irrational impulses, particularly his aggression. The aggression he was referring to concerned man's primitive instincts. Freud's views and established philosophies moved away from earlier Enlightenment ideologies of the rationality of the mind. Freud's ideas contradicted “the essential goodness and rationality of the individual” and sided with the idea that the human mind is guided by “irrati…… middle of paper……id, and symbolizes the universe in its entirety being a dystopian society. Thus concluding that actions to make a civil society utopian lead to dystopian reactions due to man's irrational impulses. This statement is supported based on examples in the film Serenity, as well as on the theoretical analysis of Freud and Dostoevsky. Works Cited Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the underground. Lawall 1250-1327.Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its ailments. Lawall 1693-1699.Lawall, Sarah, ed. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. vol. 2. NewYork: Norton, 2006. Print.Perry, Marvin, ed. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society. 9th ed. Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print.Serenity. Joss Whedon directed. Perf. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin and Adam Baldwin. Universal, 2005. DVD.