Francis Bacon and Darwin

Bacon

Bacon uses the term idols in a negative way. He doesn't mean people worship them but rather that they obstruct a person's ability to correctly perceive the world around them. This is bad word choice and does not convey his meaning very well. To me the Idols of Marketplace would have the most effect on people because we seem to take seriously the things others say. A good piece of our personality and views are shaped by the people we know. It's hard to judge an idols' distortion of the truth so we can only estimate.
The Idols of Tribe and Cave are the ones created by inner reflection and those of Marketplace and Theater are made by social interactions. To truly be free of idols you would have to be more open to all ideas no matter where the come from to gain the most true view of life. A hermit would be to consumed with Idols of the Cave and would never have them corrected by other people.

Darwin

Darwin's survival of the fittest means exactly what it says, that the strong will survive and thrive while the those not strong will fail. Natural selection is part of this theory because it is a tool to achieve maximum strength in the species. If there were two different colors of butterflies in the woods one brown and one pink which one would survive? The brown would have the best chance because it blends in better. As a consequence more brown butterflies would reproduce giving you a stronger group as a whole that can survive against predators.

Breeding is a direct and more efficient method of creating a stronger species. Scary as it is, humans are on their way to being able to select which genes they want for their child. This would create a super-species with disease resistance, smarts, and strength. Although this is not breeding per say it is very close. This would be an opportunity to create ultimate survival traits without the drawbacks such as long amounts of time and trial and error. Gene manipulation and cloning are very different though. Cloning would be a detriment to survival of the fittest because you would lack certain beneficial aspects than the non-cloned animal has but would never get to acquire.

Human social policy does have an effect on the survival of the fittest theory. If we prop up those who fail we will not be much closer to better genetics. Most of the reason why humans no longer adapt is because, in my opinion, we have what we need. In order to gain the benefit of natural selection you have to have the need to survive, humans already have that. Consider how little we've changed over the last couple thousand years. The only reason we've changed at all is because of a protein and nutrient rich diet.

Plato & Sigmond Freud

Plato

Our senses give us a very effective perception of the world and are our only means of grasping anything that happens around us... If anything is actually happening at all. It could be that we are all in the matrix and our senses are all being deceived, but most likely not. Our senses are sometimes unreliable but not very much. Optical illusions trick our eyes and hallucinations can fabricate things that aren't even there but mostly our senses will be correct most of the time. Two peoples entire perception of the world could be different, however. As long as peoples' senses are different enough their realities would be different; one person's orange may be red, another may have pink for green, and some could have no color at all.

Our materialism is in part because of our senses. A blind man can sit in any house, big or small, and as long as he was comfortable wouldn't care about the size or condition of the house because he wouldn't be materialistic. A lack of senses would probably produce closer bonds to living things than anything material. Since senses are our only means of having a reality whatsoever it is to me impossible to fathom anything but a sensory world, just as it is impossible to conjure a new color or smell in the mind.

Freud

Dreams, in my opinion, have no specific use to people. Dreams can have emotional usefulness like reuniting a person with a loved one or creating an interesting story but to say they have a specific purpose like to advise or guide you doesn't seem realistic. Your mind can create the most intriguing and/or horrifying dreams like being chased by someone or gaining supernatural powers. I have very few dreams that I ever remember but one in particular involves me exploring the jungle with a group of people. The only horrifying dream I remember are the ones where you fall of a cliff. Most people forget their dreams because they aren't important. They are usually very random and with everything people do during the day if just doesn't matter. Of course the answer is probably more scientific than just saying that it's unimportant and we're busy but we'll have to wait for science to advance enough to answer the question. Dreaming is a purely mental activity and occurs in REM sleep stages of your sleep. There is heightened mental activity during those stages as well.

V. Woolf & M. Mead

Woolf is aware of her audience and purposely leaves out any good aspects of female life. She takes special care to highlight the bad parts to get her message across to the women. She describes men laughing at women for trying to act and atrocious domestic abuse.She would say that talented women threaten their male counterparts if they are successful so men purposely attempt to keep them out. If she could convince them otherwise, women could have much larger roles in society.

Women are naturally polite and nurturing whereas men are dominating and cruel. Anytime you restrict people from doing what they love, whether it be on the basis of sex or not, you lose out on any creations they may have. There is no telling how many pieces of art or drama we have lost by restricting women from participating or keeping men away from the home.

Women are often frustrated because it's acceptable for men to be stern and order people around when in high positions. Women are looked down upon when they act domineering. We need to take notice of the flaws of old world culture and the good aspects. We should not carry any oppressive actions because of it either.

Wollstonecraft's Gender & Culture

The pernicious effects against women are numerous according to Wollstonecraft. She begins by saying women are deprived of a sense of duty if they cannot work. Men feel bad when they cannot work and she says women feel the same way and should not be always shackled to the home. She argues that women are unfairly held with contempt when they have a position of power causing many women to succumb to normal feminine role rather than living to their full potential. Realizing that a male dominated society is established through the legislature, she dislikes the laws put in place to purposefully hold women back.

Reading this essay it seems that Wollstonecraft knows women historically have always been considered property and that this is immoral. She is trying to get women to realize that their worth more than just property and that there is only minor, unimportant differences between the sexes.

The "unnatural distinctions" effectively hold women's mind captive. Things that separate people always lead to an oppressing superior class and that class always maintains its power however possible. Mindsets embedded into oppressed classes are the most successful tool of oppression that men or any other oppressor can employ.