I have been here before. I am back here again. This seems to be my creative starting point. And my point of creative return. Up the roller coaster. Down the roller coaster. Back to the finish line which then becomes the starting point for another roller coaster ride -- small or big. In my 'weaker' essays, it's a small roller coaster ride. In my 'stronger' essays, it's a bigger, better roller coaster ride.
I've been riding a whole string of essays, a whole group of roller coaster rides, that started with the dialectic tension between 'rationality and irrationality'. This is certainly one of the main dialectic tensions in man. But is also certainly not the only one.
Man probably has thousands of dialectic tensions in him -- and her -- especially when you combine the philosophical and psychological ones with the physical, biological, and biochemical ones.
Life vs. death. Freedom vs. determinism. Subject vs. object. Man vs. woman. Love vs. lust. Love vs. hate. God vs. Satan. Apollo vs. Dionysus. Ethics and morals vs. the transgression of ethics and morals. Law vs. crime. Peace vs. war. Dominance vs. submission. Sadism vs. masochism. Authoritarianism vs. democracy. Unilateralism vs. democracy. Eating vs. dieting. Exercising vs. not exercising. Plato vs. Aristotle. Hegel vs. Nietzsche. Hegel vs. Kierkegaard. Hegel vs. Schopenhauer. Hegel vs. Marx. Nietzsche vs. Christianity. Nietzsche vs. German Nationalism and the 'herd mentality'. Christianity vs. Science and The Enlightement. The Enlightenment vs. Romanticism. Contructionism, Structuralism, and Grand Narratives vs. Post-Modernism and Deconstruction. Foucault vs. Derrida. Freud vs. Adler. Freud vs. Jung, Freud vs. Klein. Freud vs. Fairbairn, Freud vs. Kohut. Freud vs. Bernes. Yin vs. yang. Masculine vs. Feminine. Righteousness vs. Rebelliousness. Righteousness vs. approval-seeking. Narcissism vs. Altruism. Giving vs. getting. Giving vs. taking. Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality. West vs. East. Black vs. White. Right vs. Wrong. Good vs. Bad. Good vs. evil. Science vs. Religion. Rationality vs. mysticism. Physics vs. metaphysics. Epistemology vs. mythology. Psychological health vs. psychopathology. Obsession vs. abstinence. Addiction vs. avoidance. Reason vs. emotion. Mind vs. body. The spiritual vs. the sensual. Pain vs. pleasure. Joy vs. grief. High blood sugar vs. low blood sugar. Fast metabolism vs. slow metabolism. Too acidic vs. too alkaline. High cholesterol vs. low cholesterol. Too high strung (hyperactive) vs. too low strung (hypoactive?, lazy? entropic?). High blood pressure vs. low blood pressure. Too many proteins vs. not enough proteins. Too many carbs. vs. not enough carbs. Too many fats vs. not enough fats...
Have I exhausted you yet?
There's no roller coaster ride here.
Can I make one?
How open-minded are you?
How open are you to exploring 'alternative truths'?
There's part of me that wants to finish my work on 'epistemology' (philosophy) and 'The Epistemological Ego' (psychology).
But this discussion is so tame and boring...One day I will take the time and finish my work off in this direction of 'healthy, rational' vs. 'unhealthy, irrational' thinking. 'Rational' and 'irrational' are dangerous words laden with the potential for all sorts of very different meanings. We would have to explor the 'semantics' of these two words before we go any further with them...
Language, semantics, and epistemology takes me to Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, and Hayakawa...important philosophers to know, understand, and learn from...but often so boring...not always but often...
The passionate, the narcissistic, the mythological, and the irrational take me to Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Adler, Perls, Bernes...and more...into the 'Obsession-Compulsion of the Transference Dialectic and Dialectical Complex', into the 'Games People Play' with each other...into the 'Id' and 'The Shadow', into the 'Heart of Darkness and Evil'...into the dialectics of love and hate, sex and violence, power and revenge...
Which sounds more interesting?
Let's talk a bit about Freud...
dgb, June 10th, 2008, modifed June 13th, 2008.
