Sublimation can be sublime

Sublimation is the process described by Sigmund Freud in his theory of culture. He surmised that culture is not a basic urge or need of human beings, compared to sex, food and cover, but that culture evolved because those basic drives cannot be fulfilled all the time, so part of their energy is sublimated into civilized behavior leading to culture. This is my brief description of what I understand of Freud's thoughts. I do not think he included destruction of other "cultures" as a basic human drive, but that may be another subject.
As a retired person I have, of course, faced the need to occupy my time in other ways than work. Part of the time I endevor to be creative. Whether this is a form of sublimation of sexual energy I can only speculate, but certainly as one becomes older the sex drive lessens, and perhaps other creative impulses somewhat replace this basic urge. In this respect I have become more civilized.
I spend part of my time writing, as in this letter, and part painting. You may have seen my efforts at art on my web site, and I have until now had four individual shows, although only in marginal Netanya (and one in Jerusalem). Over the years I have also been writing stories and a putative novel and finally two of my stories are being published. They will appear in an anthology of Jewish writing, entitled "All our lives" to be published this year by Feldheim-Targum publishers. This came about by chance, but it was nice to finally find an editor who respected my work. The two stories are entitled "The East End of London" and "Death."
Now I am not writing this especially to tell you about this expected blessed event, but because I somewhat disagree with Freud's Theory. Now it is true that most writers and painters are men, presumably because men have more unfulfilled sexual needs than women. Perhaps that is also because women are by nature more creative, after all, giving birth is the most creative act, and then there is also nurturing and creating a nest. While by contrast men are naturally creative in other ways, such as designing and building objects, for example meccano sets, bridges and computers. It is also important for men that these objects fulfil a useful function, i.e. that they work.
My own theory of culture is that it is a disease, that something in the brain of certain men and women has gone somewhat haywire, or put more scientifically that certain genes have evolved the function of creativity in humans. Certain people as a result need to write and paint, or express their creative impulses in an attempt to communicate them to other humans (even abstract art is expressive).
In some people, this "disease" takes the form of graphologia, or excessive writing and painting. Vincent van Gogh had this disease (as well as painting constantly he wrote letters every day to his brother Theo). Now in Vincent's case he may have had other more serious nervous diseases, after all he was in an asylum and did cut off his ear. But, nevertheless one can conclude that the excessive production of reams of pages of words or of painted images is some kind of natural disease.
These thoughts came to me when I was at the dentist. When he was drilling my tooth very deeply and agonizingly it was good to have some distracting thoughts. As the dentist and his assistant were looming over my open mouth, with their faces covered by gauze masks, I realized this was very much what babies see when they first come into the world. Of course, the outcome is different, a new life instead of a filled tooth, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there is a kind of superficial similarity. Of course, the imagining of strange metaphors may also be a human disease.