What is 'conceptual narcissism'? It is a private obsession with an idea -- and/or an ideal. This specifically human phenomenon can have both an inspirational-heroic and/or a dark side attached to it...It all depends on the unique context and dynamics of the situation...
For me, my conceptual narcissism -- and obsession -- revolves around two connected ideas: 1. 'the dialectic' -- which has a long philosophical and psychological history before me revolving mainly around the creative masterpiece of G.W. Hegel's --'The Phenomnenology of Spirit-(often alternatively translated as 'Mind').
And 2. -- that of 'Hegel's Hotel' -- which is my own private, creative baby, inspiration, and lifeblood -- some 35 years in the making starting with two motivational books I read in the early 1970s (Hayakawa's 'Language in Thought and Action', and Maxwell Maltz's 'Psycho-Cybernetics'), a series of university essays I wrote finishing with my Honours Thesis in Psychology, 'Evaluation and Health', 1979, and later a series of underground, self-inspired and inspiring, home-made essays in the early 1980s ('Conflict in The Personality', and a series of unfinished essays on the subject of 'Transference'), and then again in the early 2000s, now buried in my writing archives, some of which I wish to re-cycle -- all moving towards this final crescendo, this 'wholistic-dialectic-integrative-humanistic-existential network of essays and blogsites' that I have named -- 'Hegel's Hotel'.. .
Hegel's Hotel is a very large integrative 'philosophy-psychology-political-economic-romantic-spiritual-artistic-natural health...' work consisting of a network of some 50 plus blogsites in various stages of development from 'not started' to 'finished' or 'almost finished'.
The full name for the project is 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy-Psychology...'. Each 'floor' (blogsite) of Hegel's Hotel will have a varying number of essays on/in it -- ranging from about 10 to 30 essays. Using simple multiplication, that means I am now shooting to finish about 1000 philosophical essays -- or let us say more modestly, 500 to 1000 essays -- before or by the time I reach 60 years old, touch wood, God willing.
I do not say this lightly or easily because right now I do not take my health and my life lightly or easily. I am an 'aging baby boomer' like many of you fellow baby boomers out there -- myself, born in 1955 -- grudgingly I admit to being three years into my 50s this year. I have already had one major health scare in which I walked away from a liver biopsy partly because I was scared of what they might find, but also because I was tired of seeing the inside of Southlake Hospital, tired of seeing liver and blood specialists, tired of taking diagnostic tests and 'partly invavsive operations (ERCPs)', tired of being 'yellow', tired of just starting to feel better -- only to go down for the count again in another relapse, after a first and second ERCP operation...
So I walked away from the liver biopsy, for better or for worse, stuck mainly to a raw fruit and vegetable diet, started taking milk thistle (which is an herb that is supposed to help re-generate the liver)...and at least I can say today, about a year after the start of this whole ordeal, 8 or 9 months after the end of it last August, that I am back to normal colour and able to write this piece...I don't expect any miracles, I will be more than happy if I have 3 to 5 good writing years ahead of me...I will be more than happy if I make 60. I do not expect to see old age -- unless I start seriously working out to get this aging body of mine into a lot better shape than it is right now... And when it comes to physical fitness...talk is cheap...Either you do it or you don't...That's an 'existential decision' that each and every one of us has to make each and every day...
I say all this not to be or sound morbid but rather to accentuate the existential reality that we are all sooner or later facing: the reality of being chased by death.
There comes a point where life is no longer just about life but rather it is about the conflicting dialectic between life and death. Freud's 'dialectic playoff between the life and death instinct' takes centre stage here. Only it is not a completely 'deterministic dialectic playoff here' -- partly it is, based on genes, random life experiences, and the aging-dying process.
However, the struggle between life and death is also an 'existential dialectic playoff' where we can make individual and/or collective choices, and do individual and/or collective things to either embrace life and/or to play into death's hands.
For me, I view and experience 'the creative building of Hegel's Hotel' as an important individual choice for me to embrace life to the fullest capacity in my writing.
Call this my obsession with conceptual narcissism if you wish but hopefully my writing will inspire, motivate, bring new awarenesses and education, provoke controversies and differences of opinion -- and new integrations -- in you, my most esteemed readers, whether you be academically and/or pragmatically inclined. I seek to dialectically bridge the gap between academia on the one side and day-to-day, common sense pragmatic living on the other side. As well, I seek to dialectically bridge the gap between the polarities of narcisisism and altruism -- when life is working best we are both giving to others and getting for ourselves at the same time what we both need in terms of incorporating fresh life and energy into our respective individual and collective existence(s).
Existentially, I view the building of Hegel's Hotel -- to my personal satisfaction relative to the quality of its essays and its relative completion -- as a race for me between life and death. God-Nature give me 3 to 5 years of good writing energy and I should finish Hegel's Hotel -- at least in its main essence, dynamics, and structure.
In the meantime, I think of others younger than me who have not been so lucky. My ex-common-law wife's sister dead at about 39 from serious drug abuse; a good friend's husband dead at 49 (last year) from a massive heart attack. Life didn't give either of them any more chances than they had already been given...
And I also think of my cousin, a few years older than me, battling on death's doorstep with some sort of very serious, mysterious virus that the medical community can't completely figure out and/or reverse. I pray for the grace of God and/or some sort of a miracle here. I cringe that any morning I will get an email from my dad expressing the worst of bad news...that there was no such miracle left for her to grab onto... Again, I hear the haunting tune of an old song in my head by some old if not deceased band members of The Jefferson Airplane/Starship (their 'alter-ego' band was called 'Hot Tuna' for those few of you who may remember...).... The tune was called: 'Death Don't Have No Mercy in this Land'...
In situations such as this, concepts suddenly become hollow and shallow when a loved one suddenly or not so suddenly comes close to, and/or passes through 'death's door'...
I cannot write with the same kind of passion and internal solidarity when I come home to an empty house, estranged -- and/or just physically absent from -- the loved ones who are most important to me...I write best in the morning with the fresh optimism of a new day -- and the chance for fresh life, fresh, inspirational, new encounters...either with people, ideas, or preferrably both.
Hegel's Hotel is a metaphor -- a metaphysical construct -- that we can conceptually carry around in our individual and/or collective mind(s) if we wish -- either in its entirety or in any smaller piece or portion, unmodified, or integrated with your own 'personal stuff'...
When I write about this philosopher, or that psychologist, or this mythological God...I am creating a 'room' in Hegel's Hotel for that person/God. Why? Because from my vantage point, that philospher-psychologist wrote something about life-existence-man that had important meaning which still carries significant relevance for us today. Or this mythological God was a projection/reflection of ancient man that again still carries significant meaning and relevance for us today.
Now each one of these 'rooms' in Hegel's Hotel which has 'functional meaning and value' for us today can be carried around in our minds as a source of inspirational and motivational reference. 'Internalized' or 'introjected' -- call any particular 'room' in Hegel's Hotel a 'self-ego-functional-value-energy centre'. A place in our mind of functional value and importance -- and driving energy to get there.
View the 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Working Model of The Psyche' as a model of the 'ego-self as it does function, can be functioning, and/or should be functioning. To repeat, it is only a model, a metaphysical construct, a piece of conceptual narcissism that hopefully has altruistic, functional value and meaning and can be 're-constructed' or 'deconstructed at a moment's notice. Everything is subject to change including how you may modify the model to suit your own private, functional purposes. The model -- or models -- will offer a summarized, reduced rendition of the full contents of every room of Hegel's Hotel.
With this in mind, let's look at such a summarized model...
P.S. This evening I went to the kettle to make a cup of tea. Unlike most days where I just throw a Tetley tea bag into a cup, today I pulled out a tea pot. I proceeded to throw in a green tea bag. Then a black tea bag. Then a ginseng tea bag. Then an Earl Grey tea bag...
My son is very wary of my 'kitchen concoctions'. He has seen some pretty strange ones over the years of my 'single fatherhood' -- from the time he was about 5 years old. Very rarely has he gathered the courage and sense of adventure to actually try one one of my concoctions. He just looks at me and shakes my head. He's now 23. I think I must be preparing in my head for the introduction of my 'DGB Super-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Integrative Model' of the human psyche'. Try getting the words out on that one out. Sounds like a word from the movie 'Mary Poppins'...
I can feel the creative juices flowing in my head. They just need to brew a bit longer...Hopefully, the model will be a little better than most of my kitchen concoctions...
-- dgb, May 4th, 2008.
