Rationality and Irrationality, Man and Gods: Which God(s) Would You Like To Study?
Every time I start an essay on man's rationality,
Or at least his capability for rationality,
I get stuck,
And hit the brakes.
Why?
Because there is much more excitement and drama,
In pursuing man's irrationality...
Or at least his or her seeming irrationality...
However, irrationality is a very relative concept.
Irrationality becomes completely rational,
Or at least understandable,
And maybe sometimes 'bizarrely rational',
As soon as you understand,
Which God a person is worshipping,
Which God a person is pursuing,
Which God a person wants to be.
Which God would you sooner learn about?
Apollo -- the Greek God of rationality and ethics, light, and truth?
Or Dionysus (Nietzsche's infatuation -- and mine) -- the Greek God of pleasure and dance, and wine and group celebration, and sexuality and orgasm...pretty much everything Freud summed up in 'The Id'?
Or Freud's later infatuation: Narcissus -- the God of Ego, and Self-Inflation, and Self-Assertion, and Self-Absorption, and 'Will to Power', and 'Will to Fame and Ambition', and 'Will to Possess and Conquer', and 'Will To Revenge', and 'Will To Selfishness'...
Dionysus and Narcissus usually get along pretty well together...
Even throw Eros and Aphrodite into the mix (God and Goddess of Love and Romance),
And you can still have a pretty good party...
It's Apollo who puts the main damper on things,
God of ethics, morals, integrity...
The other Gods are often looking to transgress...
Such ethics, morals, integrity.
Particularly when it starts to get completely out of hand,
And threatens to run uncontrollably amok,
Throwing chaos into law and order, prim and proper...
Eros and Aprhodite -- these are interesting Gods too...
If you've been hit by the 'love bug',
And can feel that famous 'flutter' in your heart...
Then you are chasing
Eros or Aphrodite -- both Gods of love and romance, male and female version...
In contrast, to the more sensual and sexual 'down-to-earth' agendas of Dionysus and Narcissus.
All three/four may get along fine together...
Or not.
Dionysus and Narcissus don't need to have Eros and Apphrodite...
Join in the festivities...
To still have a great party...
Indeed, sometimes Eros and Aphrodite...
Like Apollo,
Only spoil the party...
Bringing possessiveness and jealousy into or onto the scene...
And anger and aggression, that may come with it...
At which point Narcissus and Dionysus may both say...
Go back home, Eros and Aphrodite!
Your spoiling the party...
Eros/Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Narcissus,
Swarming Together,
To lift us up,
And/or bring us down,
What do we call them?
'The Terrific Threesome'?
Or 'The Terrible Threesome?
Or Both?
Obsession, compulsion, addiction, love, lust, sexuality, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, jealousy, envy, anger, grief, rage, aggression, violence, crimes of passion, crimes of transference, identification, projection, compensation, inferiority feelings, superiority striving, the 'darkness of the shadow', sexual fetishes, power and sex, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, seduction, manipulation, coercion, force, serial crimes, serial rapes, serial killings...
Who would you sooner learn about?
Apollo?
Or Dionysus, Narcissus, and Eros/Aphrodite?
Wrapped together in one chemically charged package...
Transference. Transference Complexes, Transference Games, The Exciting Object, The Rejecting Object, Narcissitic Traumacies, Narcissistic Compensations, Narcissistic Identifications, Identification with The Aggressor, Identification With The Rejector, Identification With The Abandoner, Identification With The Distancer, Identification With The Betrayor, Identification With The Violator, Identification With The Abuser...
The first God -- Apollo -- was the God of The Enlightenment Period,
But I think you can begin to understand why,
Apollo, by himself, was not enough,
To define or describe or summarize,
Human Behavior...
Enter the Dragon,
The Transference Dragon,
Enter...The last three/four Gods -- Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros/Aphrodite...
Who did much to help describe...
The 'Other Side of Human Nature'...
The darker,
Sexier,
Seedier,
More romantic,
More sensual,
More unpredictable,
Side of human behavior...
Which God(s) would you like to study?
Or would you like to study them all?
Which God are you chasing?
Or are you chasing them all?
-- dgbn, Dec. 17th, 2008, modified and updated Dec. 30th-31st, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
An Overview of The DGBN 'Sun-Planet-Moon' Personality Model as a Homeostatic-Super-System
Let us briefly peruse The DGBN 'Sun-Planet-Moon' Personality Model and explain the general gist of how it works, where it came from, and where we are going with it.
.................................................................
1. 'The Central Executive Ego' is mythologically represented by either 'The Sun' and/or 'Zeus'.
2. 'The Nurturing Topdog-Ego' is represented by the two female Goddesses 'Hera' (Zeus's wife, protector of marriage) and 'Gaia' (Goddess of Mother Earth, Mother Nature).
3. 'The Righteous-Topdog-Ego' represented by Apollo (son of Zeus, God of music, healing, light, and truth)
4. 'The Dionysian Topdog-Ego' represented by Dionysus (another -- 'anti-thesis' -- son of Zeus, God of wine, inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, mass celebrations, sexuality, blessed and/or cursed with the divine mission of freeing people from care and worry, able to preside over communications between the living and the dead...)
5. 'The Narcissistic Topdog-Ego' represented by Narcissus (God of self-absorption, self-infatuation, egotism...)
6. 'The Approval-Seeking Underdog Ego' represented again by Hera and Gaia.
7. 'The Narcissistic Underdog-Ego' represented once again by Narcissus.
8. 'The Rebellious-Underdog-Ego' represented again by Apollo.
9. 'The Dionysian Underdog-Ego' represented again by Dionysus.
10. 'The Enlightenment Ego' represented by Apollo.
11. 'The Romantic Ego' represented by 'Eros' and 'Aphrodite'.
12. 'The Liberal-Humanistic Ego' represented by Gaia and Hera again.
13. 'The Conservative-Existential Ego' represented by Apollo again.
14. 'The Constructive, Life-Enhancing Ego' represented by Zeus, Eros, Gaia, Hera...
15. 'The Destructive, Death-Enhancing Ego' represented by Ares, Thanatos, the extremes of Dionysus, more so by the evil of Satan...
16. 'The Subconscious, Dynamic, Symbolic, Creative Ego' unrepresented at this moment (I am looking for a God or Goddess of Creativity, Dreams...)
17. 'The Subconscious, Structural Memory Template'( Home of Transference Complexes, Lifestyle Complexes, and Archetypes) unrepresented at this moment.
18. 'The Subconscious, Potential and Evolving Self' represented by 'The Moon'.
...............................................................................
The model is large -- larger than any other personality theory model in existence right now as far as I am aware of. This has some advantages and disadvantages of which I will talk about at another time.
Firstly, as far as the model's influential foundations, it has most of my main philosophy and personality theory influencers and their work incorporated into the model -- Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Cannon, Kohut, Berne, Korzybski, Fromm, Perls and more...
The model can be either expanded and/or compressed to fit customized, contextual needs.
Specifically, the mind and body is full of hundreds, if not thousands, of 'bi-polarity value and feedback systems all aiming for a particular type of homeostatic balance' relative to particular 'sub-functions' each serving the overall homeostatic functioning of the 'organism-as-a whole'.
Metaphorically speaking, you can almost view each and everyone of these 'bi-polar-homestatic systems' in the mind and body as being similar in nature to the workings of 'special interest' and/or 'lobbyist' groups in government and parliament circles.
For example, 'the blood-sugar level' in the body is one such 'bi-pplar homeostatic sub-system' in the 'system as a whole' -- which is the overall healthy functioning of the body. One 'whistle-blower' in the body screams, 'Too much sugar in the blood, more insulin, more insulin!'; and another opposing (bi-polar) whistle-blower screams, 'Not enough sugar in the blood, not enough sugar! Get some orange juice in the body, quick, before I faint!
Another bi-polar body-whistle-blower screams, 'Too much heat in the body, too much heat! Open a window, open a window!'; while the opposing body-whistle-blower screams, 'Not enough heat in the body, not enough heat! Turn the temperature up in the room!'
As I said, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of these 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-sub-systems' in the body alone before we even start to talk about the mind: metabolism is too fast, metabolism is too slow (hyper-thyroid problems vs. hypo-thyroid problems); too much zinc, not enough zinc; too much iron, not enough iron, too much selenium, not enough selenium; too much potassium, not enough potassium...and on and on we could go...too much water, not enough water, too much food, not enough food...
The 'brain' is the container of the 'mind' -- the 'gateway into the mind' if you will -- and also functions according to the same type of 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-principles-and-sub-systems' as the rest of the body with some contextual differences.
This brings us to the 'mind' -- the point at which 'physiology' interacts with 'psychology' -- and the two integrate together while still holding onto the same basic life and death, living and dying principles of 'homeostatic-whistle-blowing-sub-systems' that serve the overall functioning of the 'organism-as-a-whole.
Before we get to the model of the human mind or psyche above, it should be recognized that this 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing system' can be found in all aspects of human life and culture -- socially and politically as well as 'inter-psychically' and 'inter-physically'.
In parliament, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of 'special-interest' or 'lobbyist' groups that all function as parts of homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-sub-systems'. The problems in Ottawa and Washington start when only one side of a homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing system is working properly or worse -- is basically 'bribing' government officials' to be given special attention, special privileges, special rights. And that is not right. That is 'Special Interest-Lobbyist-Government-Collusion-and--Socio-Political-Pathology' Two other problems with the way these systems work in government are: 1. there lack of transparency; and 2. their 'narcissistic-behind-the-scenes' nature. The unstated motto for this type socio-political pathology is: 'Let Wall Street and Government Officials both get rich while we use and abuse Main Street.' Or the other colluder -- other than the government -- can/could be any other 'special-interest-lobbyst group' that is looking for undemocratic 'special rights, special privileges, special favors'. That too is Socio-Political Collusion and Pathology.
But this is getting off topic -- other thant the similarity in process -- a thesis for another essay in another section -- another floor of Hegel's Hotel (See American Politics and Economics).
I can tell I am going to need some short forms here -- one in particular: 'HBPWBS' standing for 'Homestatic-Bi-Polar-Whistle-Blowing-Systems'..
Maybe we can do even better: 'HWBS' stands for 'Homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing-Systems'.
Thus, when we are talking about the 'unscrupulous, un-homeostatic activities' of 'narcissistic-special-interest-lobbyist groups' invading, harrassing, persecuting, bribing, extorting politicians in either Ottawa or Washington -- or anywhere else in the world -- we are no longer talking about Homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing Systems' (HWBNBC); rather, we are talking about 'UHWBBS' -- Un-homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing-Narcissistic-Bull-Crap' (if you pardon the expression in this context).
Enough on politics.
Let us move on to DGBN Sun-Planet-Moon Personality Theory.
The 'Sun' is 'The Central-Mediating-Executive Ego'.
The 'Planets' are all the 'Gods', 'Idols', 'Archetypes' that make up the different 'special-interest-lobbyist groups' in the personality. They are all striving for their own particular, narcissistic 'Will-To-Power'.
And The Central Executive Ego has to preside over all 'government' activities in the personality.
The 'Moon' is 'The Subconscious-Genetic-Potential-and-Evolving-Self'.
And in the end, our Central Executive Ego has to answer to 'The Board of Directors' of the Personality -- The Moon -- The Subconscious-Genetic-Potential-Self.
Either we are being true to our Genetic-Potential-Self.
Or we are not.
And that is where I will leave things today, one day before the last day of 2008.
-- dgbn, Dec. 30th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Briding-Negotiations...
Are still in process...
...............................................................
.................................................................
1. 'The Central Executive Ego' is mythologically represented by either 'The Sun' and/or 'Zeus'.
2. 'The Nurturing Topdog-Ego' is represented by the two female Goddesses 'Hera' (Zeus's wife, protector of marriage) and 'Gaia' (Goddess of Mother Earth, Mother Nature).
3. 'The Righteous-Topdog-Ego' represented by Apollo (son of Zeus, God of music, healing, light, and truth)
4. 'The Dionysian Topdog-Ego' represented by Dionysus (another -- 'anti-thesis' -- son of Zeus, God of wine, inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, mass celebrations, sexuality, blessed and/or cursed with the divine mission of freeing people from care and worry, able to preside over communications between the living and the dead...)
5. 'The Narcissistic Topdog-Ego' represented by Narcissus (God of self-absorption, self-infatuation, egotism...)
6. 'The Approval-Seeking Underdog Ego' represented again by Hera and Gaia.
7. 'The Narcissistic Underdog-Ego' represented once again by Narcissus.
8. 'The Rebellious-Underdog-Ego' represented again by Apollo.
9. 'The Dionysian Underdog-Ego' represented again by Dionysus.
10. 'The Enlightenment Ego' represented by Apollo.
11. 'The Romantic Ego' represented by 'Eros' and 'Aphrodite'.
12. 'The Liberal-Humanistic Ego' represented by Gaia and Hera again.
13. 'The Conservative-Existential Ego' represented by Apollo again.
14. 'The Constructive, Life-Enhancing Ego' represented by Zeus, Eros, Gaia, Hera...
15. 'The Destructive, Death-Enhancing Ego' represented by Ares, Thanatos, the extremes of Dionysus, more so by the evil of Satan...
16. 'The Subconscious, Dynamic, Symbolic, Creative Ego' unrepresented at this moment (I am looking for a God or Goddess of Creativity, Dreams...)
17. 'The Subconscious, Structural Memory Template'( Home of Transference Complexes, Lifestyle Complexes, and Archetypes) unrepresented at this moment.
18. 'The Subconscious, Potential and Evolving Self' represented by 'The Moon'.
...............................................................................
The model is large -- larger than any other personality theory model in existence right now as far as I am aware of. This has some advantages and disadvantages of which I will talk about at another time.
Firstly, as far as the model's influential foundations, it has most of my main philosophy and personality theory influencers and their work incorporated into the model -- Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Cannon, Kohut, Berne, Korzybski, Fromm, Perls and more...
The model can be either expanded and/or compressed to fit customized, contextual needs.
Specifically, the mind and body is full of hundreds, if not thousands, of 'bi-polarity value and feedback systems all aiming for a particular type of homeostatic balance' relative to particular 'sub-functions' each serving the overall homeostatic functioning of the 'organism-as-a whole'.
Metaphorically speaking, you can almost view each and everyone of these 'bi-polar-homestatic systems' in the mind and body as being similar in nature to the workings of 'special interest' and/or 'lobbyist' groups in government and parliament circles.
For example, 'the blood-sugar level' in the body is one such 'bi-pplar homeostatic sub-system' in the 'system as a whole' -- which is the overall healthy functioning of the body. One 'whistle-blower' in the body screams, 'Too much sugar in the blood, more insulin, more insulin!'; and another opposing (bi-polar) whistle-blower screams, 'Not enough sugar in the blood, not enough sugar! Get some orange juice in the body, quick, before I faint!
Another bi-polar body-whistle-blower screams, 'Too much heat in the body, too much heat! Open a window, open a window!'; while the opposing body-whistle-blower screams, 'Not enough heat in the body, not enough heat! Turn the temperature up in the room!'
As I said, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of these 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-sub-systems' in the body alone before we even start to talk about the mind: metabolism is too fast, metabolism is too slow (hyper-thyroid problems vs. hypo-thyroid problems); too much zinc, not enough zinc; too much iron, not enough iron, too much selenium, not enough selenium; too much potassium, not enough potassium...and on and on we could go...too much water, not enough water, too much food, not enough food...
The 'brain' is the container of the 'mind' -- the 'gateway into the mind' if you will -- and also functions according to the same type of 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-principles-and-sub-systems' as the rest of the body with some contextual differences.
This brings us to the 'mind' -- the point at which 'physiology' interacts with 'psychology' -- and the two integrate together while still holding onto the same basic life and death, living and dying principles of 'homeostatic-whistle-blowing-sub-systems' that serve the overall functioning of the 'organism-as-a-whole.
Before we get to the model of the human mind or psyche above, it should be recognized that this 'homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing system' can be found in all aspects of human life and culture -- socially and politically as well as 'inter-psychically' and 'inter-physically'.
In parliament, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of 'special-interest' or 'lobbyist' groups that all function as parts of homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing-sub-systems'. The problems in Ottawa and Washington start when only one side of a homeostatic-bi-polar-whistle-blowing system is working properly or worse -- is basically 'bribing' government officials' to be given special attention, special privileges, special rights. And that is not right. That is 'Special Interest-Lobbyist-Government-Collusion-and--Socio-Political-Pathology' Two other problems with the way these systems work in government are: 1. there lack of transparency; and 2. their 'narcissistic-behind-the-scenes' nature. The unstated motto for this type socio-political pathology is: 'Let Wall Street and Government Officials both get rich while we use and abuse Main Street.' Or the other colluder -- other than the government -- can/could be any other 'special-interest-lobbyst group' that is looking for undemocratic 'special rights, special privileges, special favors'. That too is Socio-Political Collusion and Pathology.
But this is getting off topic -- other thant the similarity in process -- a thesis for another essay in another section -- another floor of Hegel's Hotel (See American Politics and Economics).
I can tell I am going to need some short forms here -- one in particular: 'HBPWBS' standing for 'Homestatic-Bi-Polar-Whistle-Blowing-Systems'..
Maybe we can do even better: 'HWBS' stands for 'Homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing-Systems'.
Thus, when we are talking about the 'unscrupulous, un-homeostatic activities' of 'narcissistic-special-interest-lobbyist groups' invading, harrassing, persecuting, bribing, extorting politicians in either Ottawa or Washington -- or anywhere else in the world -- we are no longer talking about Homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing Systems' (HWBNBC); rather, we are talking about 'UHWBBS' -- Un-homeostatic-Whistle-Blowing-Narcissistic-Bull-Crap' (if you pardon the expression in this context).
Enough on politics.
Let us move on to DGBN Sun-Planet-Moon Personality Theory.
The 'Sun' is 'The Central-Mediating-Executive Ego'.
The 'Planets' are all the 'Gods', 'Idols', 'Archetypes' that make up the different 'special-interest-lobbyist groups' in the personality. They are all striving for their own particular, narcissistic 'Will-To-Power'.
And The Central Executive Ego has to preside over all 'government' activities in the personality.
The 'Moon' is 'The Subconscious-Genetic-Potential-and-Evolving-Self'.
And in the end, our Central Executive Ego has to answer to 'The Board of Directors' of the Personality -- The Moon -- The Subconscious-Genetic-Potential-Self.
Either we are being true to our Genetic-Potential-Self.
Or we are not.
And that is where I will leave things today, one day before the last day of 2008.
-- dgbn, Dec. 30th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Briding-Negotiations...
Are still in process...
...............................................................
Monday, December 29, 2008
Gods, Idols, Archetypes, Humans - and The Shifting Dialectic
The dialectic is nice when people are on the same page, have good will, respect, empathy, and/or chemistry together...Lennon/McCartney at their best.......Dylan/Mike Bloomfield/Al Kooper on Highway 67 Revisted...
However, times change and the dialectic does not always work smoothly.
The dialectic does not usually work as smoothly when people lose their good will, respect, empathy, and/or chemistry towards each other -- and struggle coming to terms with whatever the dialectic problem or conflict is...
Overt and/or covert strife often results, including small or large wars, hot and/or cold tempers, impasses, alienation, aggression, coercion, manipulation, force, intimidation, provocation, retaliation, and so on...
The dialectic process has changed from a smooth, creative one, to a hostile destructive one.
The same husband and wife can work beautifully together when everything is going well together...especially in the earlier stages of their relationship... But can they sustain their good will for each other, their mutual respect and empathy after they have come to know each other's flaws, 'dialectic extremes' and 'dialectic avoidances'...
That is the 50 million dollar dialectic and existential question -- and the mark of whether a long term relationship stays together and can sustain itself in healthy fashion or not...
Same with business partners, co-workers, or employers and employees at work who may or may not be on the same page with each other depending on the context and the history of the situation.
Introduce people's ambitions, greed, selfishness, anal retentiveness, and the opposite...no ethics, no boundaries, no respect -- and the smooth-sailing dialectic starts to falls apart, and with it, the ability to problem solve, conflict-resolve, and worst of all, even the wish and the will to be together to try to sovle and/or resolve things.
Which brings us back to a fundamental question:
Which God(s)/Idol(s)/Archetype(s)/values....does each person most prioritize and/or worship...
Which 'ego-state' is running -- or at least dominating -- each person's individual ship?
Are the different Gods/Values/Priorities compatible?
Or is there a 'core nuclear conflict' in the relationship,
That is just buried under the surface, perculating, waiting to boil to the top --
And then boil over,
To become a huge, dramatic soap opera?
Greek soap operas from ancient days gone by...
Spilling over in the sky and on the ground...
As described in Greek myths like The Iliad and The Odyssey...
Are all too human...too human...
Pointing to only one, two, or three conclusions,
God made man in his/her own image,
Or, man made God in his/her own image,
Or, Gods are human and humans are Gods...
And they both meet on the shores of Personality Theory...
-- DGBN, Dec. 28th-29th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
However, times change and the dialectic does not always work smoothly.
The dialectic does not usually work as smoothly when people lose their good will, respect, empathy, and/or chemistry towards each other -- and struggle coming to terms with whatever the dialectic problem or conflict is...
Overt and/or covert strife often results, including small or large wars, hot and/or cold tempers, impasses, alienation, aggression, coercion, manipulation, force, intimidation, provocation, retaliation, and so on...
The dialectic process has changed from a smooth, creative one, to a hostile destructive one.
The same husband and wife can work beautifully together when everything is going well together...especially in the earlier stages of their relationship... But can they sustain their good will for each other, their mutual respect and empathy after they have come to know each other's flaws, 'dialectic extremes' and 'dialectic avoidances'...
That is the 50 million dollar dialectic and existential question -- and the mark of whether a long term relationship stays together and can sustain itself in healthy fashion or not...
Same with business partners, co-workers, or employers and employees at work who may or may not be on the same page with each other depending on the context and the history of the situation.
Introduce people's ambitions, greed, selfishness, anal retentiveness, and the opposite...no ethics, no boundaries, no respect -- and the smooth-sailing dialectic starts to falls apart, and with it, the ability to problem solve, conflict-resolve, and worst of all, even the wish and the will to be together to try to sovle and/or resolve things.
Which brings us back to a fundamental question:
Which God(s)/Idol(s)/Archetype(s)/values....does each person most prioritize and/or worship...
Which 'ego-state' is running -- or at least dominating -- each person's individual ship?
Are the different Gods/Values/Priorities compatible?
Or is there a 'core nuclear conflict' in the relationship,
That is just buried under the surface, perculating, waiting to boil to the top --
And then boil over,
To become a huge, dramatic soap opera?
Greek soap operas from ancient days gone by...
Spilling over in the sky and on the ground...
As described in Greek myths like The Iliad and The Odyssey...
Are all too human...too human...
Pointing to only one, two, or three conclusions,
God made man in his/her own image,
Or, man made God in his/her own image,
Or, Gods are human and humans are Gods...
And they both meet on the shores of Personality Theory...
-- DGBN, Dec. 28th-29th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, December 28, 2008
More Changes in The Structure of Hegel's Hotel -- As Well As in The Structure of The DGBN Model Of The Psyche
December 28th -- 4 days left to go in 2008 -- and Hegel's Hotel has another change in it's 'architectural plans', a change that will propel us into 2009 and probably take most, if not all, of 2009 to write. This change is reflected in its new Table of Contents, which is getting closer and closer to what the final Table of Contents will look like. There are still some 'gaps' left in Hegel's Hotel's final structure but these should be filled out as we move deeper into 2009.
Looking back at 2008, there are a number of essays that have dictated this change in direction, this change in Hegel's Hotel's structure. I didn't expect to go as deep into mythology and the philosophy and psychology of 'Gods' and/or 'Idols' as I did.
I certainly do not profess to be any type of expert in the area of mythology and symbolism.
But that is where Hegel's Hotel took me, and that is where we still are. This theme will be continued to be developed in 2009, particularly as we move more and more into the history and study of psychology as opposed to philosophy.
I view my essay 'Rationality and Irrationality in Man' as a major turning point in the direction of Hegel's Hotel.
This essay was followed up by a whole string of 'Gods, Myths, Philosophers, and Psychologists' essays, all of which were/are important in the upcoming construction of Hegel's Hotel for 2009.
Another essay that surprised me but which will now become a focal point and a starting point for my psychological writing in 2009 is the essay:
'DGB Sun-Planet Theory and The Eighteen Mythological Idols of Personality Functioning and Dysfunctioning'.
We are going to modify the contents of this essay somewhat and build off of it in the transition from 2008 to 2009.
The newer version of this essay will now be reflected in the newest -- and I think final -- version of The DGBN Model of The Personality.
There is a strong Jungian influence here, which at least partly surprises me even though I have been carrying this influence around with me for quite a while now. Still, I used to call my integrative theory of psychology -- GAP Psychology -- which reflected my three main influences back in the 1980s: Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalyis. Still, Carl Jung, in my mind, fully deserves to be a member of what I will call 'The Big Four' when it comes to clinical psychology and psychotherapy: Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls.
...............................................................................
Retitled, the newer version of the essay I am talking about -- which hasn't even been written yet -- will be called:
'DGBN Sun-Planet-Moon Theory and The Sixteen Mythological Gods (Ego-States) of Personality Functioning and Dysfunctioning'.
1. 'The Central Executive Ego' is mythologically represented by either 'The Sun' and/or 'Zeus'.
2. 'The Nurturing Topdog-Ego' is represented by the two female Goddesses 'Hera' (Zeus's wife, protector of marriage) and 'Gaia' (Goddess of Mother Earth, Mother Nature).
3. 'The Righteous Topdog-Ego' represented by Apollo (son of Zeus, God of music, healing, light, and truth)
4. 'The Dionysian Topdog-Ego' represented by Dionysus (another -- 'anti-thesis' -- son of Zeus, God of wine, inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, mass celebrations, sexuality, blessed and/or cursed with the divine mission of freeing people from care and worry, able to preside over communications between the living and the dead...)
5. 'The Narcissistic Topdog-Ego' represented by Narcissus (God of self-absorption, self-infatuation, egotism...)
6. 'The Approval-Seeking Underdog Ego' represented again by Hera and Gaia.
7. 'The Narcissistic Underdog-Ego' represented once again by Narcissus.
8. 'The Rebellious-Righteous Underdog-Ego' represented again by Apollo.
9. 'The Dionysian Underdog-Ego' represented again by Dionysus.
10. 'The Enlightenment Ego' represented by Apollo.
11. 'The Romantic Ego' represented by 'Eros' and 'Aphrodite'.
12. 'The Liberal-Humanistic Ego' represented by Gaia and Hera again.
13. 'The Conservative-Existential Ego' represented by Apollo again.
14. 'The Constructive, Life-Enhancing Ego' represented by Zeus, Eros, Gaia, Hera...
15. 'The Destructive, Death-Enhancing Ego' represented by Ares, Thanatos, the extremes of Dionysus, more so by the evil of Satan...
16. 'The Subconscious, Dynamic, Symbolic, Creative Ego' unrepresented at this moment (I am looking for a God or Goddess of Creativity, Dreams...)
17. 'The Subconscious, Structural Memory Template'( Home of Transference Complexes, Lifestyle Complexes, and Archetypes) unrepresented at this moment.
18. 'The Subconscious, Potential and Evolving Self' represented by 'The Moon'.
.................................................................................
Much of 2009 will be spent developing this model.
We will leave it as it is for now....
And now for the new and updated architecture (Table of Contents) of Hegel's Hotel for 2009.
................................................................................
Hegel's Hotel: New Table of Contents (updated December 27-28th, 2008).
Floor/Blog
1. Table of Contents
2. Most Recent Essays
3. Introductory Essays on DGBN Post-Hegelian (Dialectic) Philosophy
4. More on The Dialectic
5. History: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, and The Han Philosophers
6. History: The Sophists, Socrates, and Parmenides
7. History: Plato and Aristotle
8. History: Post-Aristolean Roman Philosophy
9. History: Early Religious (Scholastic) Philosophy
10.History: Early Scientific (Empirical) Philosophy
11.History: Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza
12.History: Later Empirical Philosophy: Locke, Hume
14.History: Enlightenment Philosophy
15.History: The Rise of Capitalism: Adam Smith
16.History: German Idealism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel
17.History: Irrationality, Dionysianism, Narcissism: Schopenhauer
18.History: The Rise of Socialism, Communism: Marx
19.History: The Birth/Evolution of 19th Century Romanticism
20.History: The Birth of Existentialism: From Hegel to Kierkegaard
21.History: The Evolution of Nietzsche's Existentialism
22.History: Sartre's Existentialism
23.History: Freud and The Birth/Evolution of Freudian Psychoanalysis
24.History: Adler and Adlerian Psychology
25.History: Jung and Jungian Psychology
26.History: On Narcissism
27.History: On Identification, Projection, Compensation, and Transference
28.History: From Object Relations to Self Psychology to Transactional Analysis
29.History: Language Philosophy: Russell, Wittgenstein
30.History: General Semantics: Korzybski, Hayakawa
31.History: American Pragmatism: James, Dewey
32.History: The Wisdom of The Body: Homeostasis (Cannon)
33.History: More on The Philosophy of Science/Medicine (Popper)
34.History: The Philosophy of Power (Foucault)
35.History: The Philosophy of Deconstruction(ism)(Derrida)
36.History: Perls and Gestalt Therapy
37.History: Idealistic Capitalism Revisited (Rand, Branden)
38.History: Idealistic Humanisitic-Socalism (Erich Fromm)
39.DGBN Psychology: Gods, Myths, Philosophers...
40.DGBN Psychology: Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar)Personality Theory: The Model
41.DGBN Psychology: Central Ego Functioning (Zeus, The Sun)
42.DGBN Psychology: 12 Conscious/Subconscious Subsidiary Ego-States
43.DGBN Psychology: The Subconscious, Dynamic, Creative Ego
44.DGBN Psychology: The Memory Template (Transference-Lifestyle-Archetype Complexes)
45.DGBN Psychology: The Self (The Moon)
46.DGBN Psychology: Homeostasis, Dialectic-Democratic Balance, and Health
47.DGBN Psychology: Psychopathology as Unbalanced, Ego-State Extremism
48.DGBN Psychology: Pschopathology, Transference Complexes, and Serial Compulsions
49.DGBN Psychology: Philosophy, Psychotherapy, and Health
50:DGBN Politics/Economics: Dialectical Debates in American Politics/Economics
51.DGBN Politics/Economics: Dialectic Debates in Canadian Politics/Economics
52.DGBN Politics/Law: Equal Rights, Equal Responsibilities
53.DGBN Politics/Law: The Problem with Lobbyists and Special Interest Groups
54.DGBN Politics/Law: Domestic Family/Sexual Justice and The Battle of The Sexes
55.DGBN Politics/Law: Towards A Better Balanced Bill of Equal Rights and Responsibilities
56.DGBN Politics/Economics: Towards a More Idealistic, Integrative, Humanistic-Existential, Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism
57.DGBN Spirituality, Religion, Humanism, Pantheism...
58.DGBN Romantic Philosophy: 21st Century Canadian Romanticism
59:DGBN Philosophy: Family, Community, Altruism
60.DGBN Philosophy: Concluding Essays
This Table of Contents will be changed again, to be sure. However, it gives me -- and us -- a good, solid working foundation for 2009.
Best wishes for each and every one of you in the New Year.
May your health and happiness be invigorated, vitalized -- or reinvigorated, re-vitalized.
Let hope and optimism reign supreme for the New Year, 2009, despite all of our economic and political trials and tribulations.
-- DGBN, Dec. 28th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
..............................................................................
Looking back at 2008, there are a number of essays that have dictated this change in direction, this change in Hegel's Hotel's structure. I didn't expect to go as deep into mythology and the philosophy and psychology of 'Gods' and/or 'Idols' as I did.
I certainly do not profess to be any type of expert in the area of mythology and symbolism.
But that is where Hegel's Hotel took me, and that is where we still are. This theme will be continued to be developed in 2009, particularly as we move more and more into the history and study of psychology as opposed to philosophy.
I view my essay 'Rationality and Irrationality in Man' as a major turning point in the direction of Hegel's Hotel.
This essay was followed up by a whole string of 'Gods, Myths, Philosophers, and Psychologists' essays, all of which were/are important in the upcoming construction of Hegel's Hotel for 2009.
Another essay that surprised me but which will now become a focal point and a starting point for my psychological writing in 2009 is the essay:
'DGB Sun-Planet Theory and The Eighteen Mythological Idols of Personality Functioning and Dysfunctioning'.
We are going to modify the contents of this essay somewhat and build off of it in the transition from 2008 to 2009.
The newer version of this essay will now be reflected in the newest -- and I think final -- version of The DGBN Model of The Personality.
There is a strong Jungian influence here, which at least partly surprises me even though I have been carrying this influence around with me for quite a while now. Still, I used to call my integrative theory of psychology -- GAP Psychology -- which reflected my three main influences back in the 1980s: Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalyis. Still, Carl Jung, in my mind, fully deserves to be a member of what I will call 'The Big Four' when it comes to clinical psychology and psychotherapy: Freud, Adler, Jung, and Perls.
...............................................................................
Retitled, the newer version of the essay I am talking about -- which hasn't even been written yet -- will be called:
'DGBN Sun-Planet-Moon Theory and The Sixteen Mythological Gods (Ego-States) of Personality Functioning and Dysfunctioning'.
1. 'The Central Executive Ego' is mythologically represented by either 'The Sun' and/or 'Zeus'.
2. 'The Nurturing Topdog-Ego' is represented by the two female Goddesses 'Hera' (Zeus's wife, protector of marriage) and 'Gaia' (Goddess of Mother Earth, Mother Nature).
3. 'The Righteous Topdog-Ego' represented by Apollo (son of Zeus, God of music, healing, light, and truth)
4. 'The Dionysian Topdog-Ego' represented by Dionysus (another -- 'anti-thesis' -- son of Zeus, God of wine, inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, mass celebrations, sexuality, blessed and/or cursed with the divine mission of freeing people from care and worry, able to preside over communications between the living and the dead...)
5. 'The Narcissistic Topdog-Ego' represented by Narcissus (God of self-absorption, self-infatuation, egotism...)
6. 'The Approval-Seeking Underdog Ego' represented again by Hera and Gaia.
7. 'The Narcissistic Underdog-Ego' represented once again by Narcissus.
8. 'The Rebellious-Righteous Underdog-Ego' represented again by Apollo.
9. 'The Dionysian Underdog-Ego' represented again by Dionysus.
10. 'The Enlightenment Ego' represented by Apollo.
11. 'The Romantic Ego' represented by 'Eros' and 'Aphrodite'.
12. 'The Liberal-Humanistic Ego' represented by Gaia and Hera again.
13. 'The Conservative-Existential Ego' represented by Apollo again.
14. 'The Constructive, Life-Enhancing Ego' represented by Zeus, Eros, Gaia, Hera...
15. 'The Destructive, Death-Enhancing Ego' represented by Ares, Thanatos, the extremes of Dionysus, more so by the evil of Satan...
16. 'The Subconscious, Dynamic, Symbolic, Creative Ego' unrepresented at this moment (I am looking for a God or Goddess of Creativity, Dreams...)
17. 'The Subconscious, Structural Memory Template'( Home of Transference Complexes, Lifestyle Complexes, and Archetypes) unrepresented at this moment.
18. 'The Subconscious, Potential and Evolving Self' represented by 'The Moon'.
.................................................................................
Much of 2009 will be spent developing this model.
We will leave it as it is for now....
And now for the new and updated architecture (Table of Contents) of Hegel's Hotel for 2009.
................................................................................
Hegel's Hotel: New Table of Contents (updated December 27-28th, 2008).
Floor/Blog
1. Table of Contents
2. Most Recent Essays
3. Introductory Essays on DGBN Post-Hegelian (Dialectic) Philosophy
4. More on The Dialectic
5. History: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, and The Han Philosophers
6. History: The Sophists, Socrates, and Parmenides
7. History: Plato and Aristotle
8. History: Post-Aristolean Roman Philosophy
9. History: Early Religious (Scholastic) Philosophy
10.History: Early Scientific (Empirical) Philosophy
11.History: Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza
12.History: Later Empirical Philosophy: Locke, Hume
14.History: Enlightenment Philosophy
15.History: The Rise of Capitalism: Adam Smith
16.History: German Idealism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel
17.History: Irrationality, Dionysianism, Narcissism: Schopenhauer
18.History: The Rise of Socialism, Communism: Marx
19.History: The Birth/Evolution of 19th Century Romanticism
20.History: The Birth of Existentialism: From Hegel to Kierkegaard
21.History: The Evolution of Nietzsche's Existentialism
22.History: Sartre's Existentialism
23.History: Freud and The Birth/Evolution of Freudian Psychoanalysis
24.History: Adler and Adlerian Psychology
25.History: Jung and Jungian Psychology
26.History: On Narcissism
27.History: On Identification, Projection, Compensation, and Transference
28.History: From Object Relations to Self Psychology to Transactional Analysis
29.History: Language Philosophy: Russell, Wittgenstein
30.History: General Semantics: Korzybski, Hayakawa
31.History: American Pragmatism: James, Dewey
32.History: The Wisdom of The Body: Homeostasis (Cannon)
33.History: More on The Philosophy of Science/Medicine (Popper)
34.History: The Philosophy of Power (Foucault)
35.History: The Philosophy of Deconstruction(ism)(Derrida)
36.History: Perls and Gestalt Therapy
37.History: Idealistic Capitalism Revisited (Rand, Branden)
38.History: Idealistic Humanisitic-Socalism (Erich Fromm)
39.DGBN Psychology: Gods, Myths, Philosophers...
40.DGBN Psychology: Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar)Personality Theory: The Model
41.DGBN Psychology: Central Ego Functioning (Zeus, The Sun)
42.DGBN Psychology: 12 Conscious/Subconscious Subsidiary Ego-States
43.DGBN Psychology: The Subconscious, Dynamic, Creative Ego
44.DGBN Psychology: The Memory Template (Transference-Lifestyle-Archetype Complexes)
45.DGBN Psychology: The Self (The Moon)
46.DGBN Psychology: Homeostasis, Dialectic-Democratic Balance, and Health
47.DGBN Psychology: Psychopathology as Unbalanced, Ego-State Extremism
48.DGBN Psychology: Pschopathology, Transference Complexes, and Serial Compulsions
49.DGBN Psychology: Philosophy, Psychotherapy, and Health
50:DGBN Politics/Economics: Dialectical Debates in American Politics/Economics
51.DGBN Politics/Economics: Dialectic Debates in Canadian Politics/Economics
52.DGBN Politics/Law: Equal Rights, Equal Responsibilities
53.DGBN Politics/Law: The Problem with Lobbyists and Special Interest Groups
54.DGBN Politics/Law: Domestic Family/Sexual Justice and The Battle of The Sexes
55.DGBN Politics/Law: Towards A Better Balanced Bill of Equal Rights and Responsibilities
56.DGBN Politics/Economics: Towards a More Idealistic, Integrative, Humanistic-Existential, Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism
57.DGBN Spirituality, Religion, Humanism, Pantheism...
58.DGBN Romantic Philosophy: 21st Century Canadian Romanticism
59:DGBN Philosophy: Family, Community, Altruism
60.DGBN Philosophy: Concluding Essays
This Table of Contents will be changed again, to be sure. However, it gives me -- and us -- a good, solid working foundation for 2009.
Best wishes for each and every one of you in the New Year.
May your health and happiness be invigorated, vitalized -- or reinvigorated, re-vitalized.
Let hope and optimism reign supreme for the New Year, 2009, despite all of our economic and political trials and tribulations.
-- DGBN, Dec. 28th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
..............................................................................
Friday, December 26, 2008
On Central Ego Functioning: Part 2: Philosophical Foundations for a DGBN Model of 'The Central Ego' and 'Central Ego Functioning'
Let us start here with our purpose of what we are trying to accomplish.
Firstly, we are dealing here with a 'metaphysical' (beyond physics), 'metaphorical' ('as if'), and/or 'mythological' (symbolic) model of a 'portion' of the human personality or 'psyche'. We can and will talk of an assortment of different 'ego-states' with different 'ego-functions', of which we will refer to 'The Central Ego' as being 'The King or Queen -- or Conductor -- of all Ego States and Ego Functions'. Like the planets revolve around the sun, all the other different ego-states and functions revolve around The Central Ego, and Central Ego Functioning. The Central Ego is the negotiator, arbitrator, and executor of all problems, conflicts, problem-solutions, and conflict-resolutions. The Central Ego is the direct precursor and initiator of all action.
Let me explain.
If you are studying to be a doctor, your education, in some fashion (I have never been to Medical School) is going to involve an intense education of physiology, biology, and chemistry, as well as some of the 'integrative elements' of scientific and medical study -- such as 'bio-chemistry'.
Dialectically speaking, bio-chemistry is of particular interest to us here, as is the category of 'bio-physics' because these categories represent 'dialectically integrative areas of life and the study of life' -- two 'distinguishable' structual categories in the body coming together to both function, and to be studied, dialectically as one.
In medicine, we can also differentiate between the study of 'life-structures' (such as 'the different parts, structures, and/or organs of the body) as contrasted with the study of 'life processes' (such as breathing or bleeding or eating or running or any of a thousand other such processes).
For 'structures' or 'categories' or things that seem to be moving significantly less quickly in the body than 'processes', in the English language, we tend to use 'nouns' as opposed to 'verbs' for processes.
Structures and categories are usually represented by nouns.
Processes and actions are usually represented by verbs.
However, this is not a foolproof 'classification or categorical system' in the study of the human body or anything else in life because life is always throwing 'gray areas' at us such as 'dialectical hybrids' and 'structural processes' or 'process-structures'.
For example, we can talk about the 'heart' as a 'body organ part' (which is very different than using 'heart' metaphorically such as in the expression 'Have a heart'), and in using 'heart' as meaning a 'body part organ', we are also using the word 'heart' as a 'noun' to describe it as a 'structure' rather than as a 'process' such as 'bleeding' which is a 'verb' describing a life and/or death 'process'.
However, in describing the heart as a 'structure' we need to fully understand that this structure has literally hundreds of smaller, minute life and death processes going on within it, that makes up the internal dynamics of 'the heart as a structure'. And we better hope that there are more 'living processes' going on in our heart than 'dying processes' because the minute the dying processes start to significantly exceed the living processes, unless things get turned around fast, we are probably looking at the prospect of 'exiting' to another better or worse world -- or no world at all, just a world of dirt or ashes -- and/or some other organism's food.
Now, throughout this whole medical study process, for the most part, we are talking about 'observable, empirical body structures and processes' -- either visible to the naked eye, or visible to the naked eye with the aid of a microscope, an X-ray machine, or a wide assortment of other types of 'diagnostic tools and processes' that doctors now have available to them.
Even so, this 'observable, empirical' part of medical study, scientific investigation, and diagnosis is far from perfect and many life and death processes still go on beneath the doctor's eye, and/or are not completely understood, or even understood at all, by the medical world.
But still in the world of science and medicine, everthing starts and ends with 'observable, empirical' processes and structures. You can see a 'beating heart' or a heart that has 'stopped beating'.
Argue with me if you think I am wrong, but almost all medical theories start with observable, empirical observations and work 'upward' beyond observations into the world of 'perceptual interpretations', 'inferences', 'interpretive evaluations', 'generalizations', 'associations', 'distinctions', 'abstractions', 'value judgments', 'diagnoses', 'potential courses of action', 'choices of course of action', 'execution of action', and hopefully at the end, a 'solution' to the 'medical problem'.
In DGBN terminology, these elements of 'thinking' listed above, are all properties of 'The Central Ego' and 'Central Ego functioning'.
Now there are a number of different potential places to go with this, only one of which is really relevant to the direction I want to go here. But I will list a couple of these different places for future discussion in future blogsites (or 'floors' of 'Hegel's Hotel').
Firstly, which came first: science and medicine, or philosophy and psychology? Which is built upon which? Does science and medicine provide the foundation for the study of philosophy and psychology? Or does philosophy and psychology provide the foundation for the study of science and medicine? Or is it a 'dialectical process' again where both the study of science and medicine affect the study of philosophy and psychology -- and visa versa.
I have five things to say in this regard:
1. DGBN Philosophy is a 'post-Hegelian, dialectic' philosophy that believes in the 'dialectic' -- meaning 'mutual-two-way' -- influence of all life and death, living and dying processes;
2. Philosophy precedes all other areas of human thinking, human behavior, human culture, human study, life and death study, living and dying study;
3. Philosophy creates the perspective by which all other branches of human knowledge (epistemology) and ethics are studied.
4. You can't study human psychology without having an underlying philosophy (editorial perspective) by which you study it;
5. You can't study science and medicine without having an underyling philosophy (editorial perspective) by which you study it.
For example:
Let us take 'The Hippocratic Oath' by which I believe all doctors are still sworn in as 'rookie doctors'.
'First, do the patient no harm.'
Sounds good. Sounds nice and ethical. Sounds like a nice 'philosophical foundation' for the study and practice of medicine.
However, I have come to view it as the 'Hypocritical Oath'.
In my opinion, no doctor in Western Medicine comes close to adhering to The Hippocratic Oath anymore.
Otherwise, there would be no use of radiation, no use of chemotherapy, no use of cortisteroids, and at least a much, much more careful screening, monitoring, and usage of all vaccines, anti-biotics, anti-viral medications.
Stated another way, today's practice of conventional, orthodox Western medicine -- both good and bad -- needs to be fully investigated philosophically in terms of the biasing effects of 'Modern, Narcissistic Capitalism' on the medical profession as a whole -- diagnostically, pharmaceutically, and surgically. You can call this influence if you will -- 'The Wall Street Effect'.
So at the very least we can say that the Hippocratic Oath -- to be ethically consistently with today's medical standards should read something like this:
'First do the patient less harm than good.'
We will take up this discussion on another day when we start to investigate the philosophy of science and medicine.
........................................................................
For our purpose here, if we are going to investigate the world of man's 'mind' or 'psyche' -- as opposed to his 'brain' -- then we have one major philosophical problem that we have to deal with -- specifically:
We can't really 'see' what we are talking about.
..............................................................................
'And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.'
-- Bob Dylan
Copyright ©1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music
....................................................................................
Thus, we are no longer talking about 'observable, empirically-based physical models'.
Rather, we are talking about 'metaphysical, metaphorical and/or mythological models' in all the different ways -- good and bad -- that I have talked about the use of metaphysical-metaphorical-mythological models in all my other essays on this subject matter and its relationship to human psychology.
Again, we are talking about metaphysical-metaphorical-even mythological ways of representing the human personality in a 'structural-process model' that may or may not better help us to understand what types of 'invisible and metaphysical structures and processes' really interact -- or not -- in the human personality.
If the model works for us, then let's use it until it stops working.
If the model doesn't work for us, then let's trash the model, and start again until we find a better model that does work.
Here, in DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, we will use an assortment of other psychological models -- Freud, Jung, Adler, Perls, Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Bernes, Fromm...that have already shown that they work to greater or lesser extents.
Like all motivated philosophers, psychologists, theorists, model-builders, I am just aiming to do what thousands, if not millions, have done before me -- build a bigger, better -- and more integrative -- model with more benefits and assets attached to it than costs and liabilities. That is what 'model-building' and 'theory-making' is all about. Pushing human evolution forward in the domains of my subject-matter -- philosophy, psychology, politics, science, medicine, spirituality, religion, and beyond...
The fact that this model -- or any of these 'classical psychology models' -- deals with an 'invisable subject matter' leaves the whole philosophical discussion about man's psychology just as open and ripe for dialectical debate as the connection and/or non-connection of the Hippocratic Oath with today's actual practice of Western Medicine.
But that doesn't mean that the answer to this philosophical and psychological conundrum is to try to take an 'invisible subject matter' (like 'thinking' and 'feeling') and manipulating, reducing, eliminating the subject matter until it becomes 'visible' ('observable behavior') which is definitely not the same thing as 'thinking' and/or 'feeling'. This is what Behaviorism has built their so-called 'science' on -- externally visible behavior; not the millions of thought-feeling-impulse-and/or-restraint processes that go on inside our 'minds' and 'propel' the behavior outside our minds (unless you buy into 'external conditioning' as opposed to 'internal associating'). Freedom vs. determinism. This argument will probably still go on for centuries. I argued the subject matter with one of my first blogsite readers here, and we went back and forth with our arguments for almost a year without really finding any 'dialectical meeting ground' for our respective foundational and starting philosophical premises. It was an exhausting exchange. Did it accomplish anything? I'm not sure. Maybe more of an understanding of how differently different people can think.
Anyway, the best way to protect ourselves from the 'abuse' of metaphysical- metaphorical-mythological ('Triple M') models' is to fully know and understand the potental dangers of the territory we are moving into.
1. We may be trying to describe something that doesn't exist.
2. We may be tryng to turn something that is not 'empirical and visible to the naked eye' into something that suggests that we are trying to do exactly this -- by saying that a Triple M Model an 'empirical, observable, scienftific model' -- when it is not.
3. Connected to the last danger, is the danger of 'over-objectifying' and 'robotizing' the model -- making it seem like we are 'human robots' when we are not. Regardless of how many 'compartments' we divide the human psyche into, we have to fully understand that these are only different ways of 'categorizing', 'classifying', and 'segmentizing' the different parts and functions of the human psyche; they are not designed to turn us into 'robots' that no longer have an 'I' or a 'self'. In DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, we will 'subjectify' and 'existentialize' our models; not turn humans into deterministic robots.
This was -- and still is -- one of the main criticisms of Freud and Psychoanalysis, where 'pseudo-scientific language' was -- and still is -- used in a very 'non-scientific study of the human mind'. All models, in terms of my way of looking at the human psyche should retain their 'subjective-existential' element and foundation.
Thus, if I want to use 'The Central Ego' as a part of my psychological model, then each and everyone of us who use this model have to be able to say:
I am my 'Central Ego',
And my Central Ego is me.
That is called proper 'subjective, existential ownership and accountability' for what we are talking about.
I take ownership and accountability for what happens in my Central Ego. I determine the contents and dynamics of my Central Ego. And it -- beware the 'objectification', 'externalization' and 'alienation' of this 'it' ('it' meaning my Central Ego) determines me. My 'self' and my 'Central Ego' are 'dialectically inseparable' -- unless we 'dissociate' ourselves from all personal responsibility.
This is one of the first steps into 'psychopathology'.
Don't go there.
And that is where I will leave you,
At noon on Boxing Day on my first take through this essay.
At 6:00pm on my second take through this essay.
Have a great dialectical-humanistic-existential evening.
-- dgbn, Dec. 26th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process...
Firstly, we are dealing here with a 'metaphysical' (beyond physics), 'metaphorical' ('as if'), and/or 'mythological' (symbolic) model of a 'portion' of the human personality or 'psyche'. We can and will talk of an assortment of different 'ego-states' with different 'ego-functions', of which we will refer to 'The Central Ego' as being 'The King or Queen -- or Conductor -- of all Ego States and Ego Functions'. Like the planets revolve around the sun, all the other different ego-states and functions revolve around The Central Ego, and Central Ego Functioning. The Central Ego is the negotiator, arbitrator, and executor of all problems, conflicts, problem-solutions, and conflict-resolutions. The Central Ego is the direct precursor and initiator of all action.
Let me explain.
If you are studying to be a doctor, your education, in some fashion (I have never been to Medical School) is going to involve an intense education of physiology, biology, and chemistry, as well as some of the 'integrative elements' of scientific and medical study -- such as 'bio-chemistry'.
Dialectically speaking, bio-chemistry is of particular interest to us here, as is the category of 'bio-physics' because these categories represent 'dialectically integrative areas of life and the study of life' -- two 'distinguishable' structual categories in the body coming together to both function, and to be studied, dialectically as one.
In medicine, we can also differentiate between the study of 'life-structures' (such as 'the different parts, structures, and/or organs of the body) as contrasted with the study of 'life processes' (such as breathing or bleeding or eating or running or any of a thousand other such processes).
For 'structures' or 'categories' or things that seem to be moving significantly less quickly in the body than 'processes', in the English language, we tend to use 'nouns' as opposed to 'verbs' for processes.
Structures and categories are usually represented by nouns.
Processes and actions are usually represented by verbs.
However, this is not a foolproof 'classification or categorical system' in the study of the human body or anything else in life because life is always throwing 'gray areas' at us such as 'dialectical hybrids' and 'structural processes' or 'process-structures'.
For example, we can talk about the 'heart' as a 'body organ part' (which is very different than using 'heart' metaphorically such as in the expression 'Have a heart'), and in using 'heart' as meaning a 'body part organ', we are also using the word 'heart' as a 'noun' to describe it as a 'structure' rather than as a 'process' such as 'bleeding' which is a 'verb' describing a life and/or death 'process'.
However, in describing the heart as a 'structure' we need to fully understand that this structure has literally hundreds of smaller, minute life and death processes going on within it, that makes up the internal dynamics of 'the heart as a structure'. And we better hope that there are more 'living processes' going on in our heart than 'dying processes' because the minute the dying processes start to significantly exceed the living processes, unless things get turned around fast, we are probably looking at the prospect of 'exiting' to another better or worse world -- or no world at all, just a world of dirt or ashes -- and/or some other organism's food.
Now, throughout this whole medical study process, for the most part, we are talking about 'observable, empirical body structures and processes' -- either visible to the naked eye, or visible to the naked eye with the aid of a microscope, an X-ray machine, or a wide assortment of other types of 'diagnostic tools and processes' that doctors now have available to them.
Even so, this 'observable, empirical' part of medical study, scientific investigation, and diagnosis is far from perfect and many life and death processes still go on beneath the doctor's eye, and/or are not completely understood, or even understood at all, by the medical world.
But still in the world of science and medicine, everthing starts and ends with 'observable, empirical' processes and structures. You can see a 'beating heart' or a heart that has 'stopped beating'.
Argue with me if you think I am wrong, but almost all medical theories start with observable, empirical observations and work 'upward' beyond observations into the world of 'perceptual interpretations', 'inferences', 'interpretive evaluations', 'generalizations', 'associations', 'distinctions', 'abstractions', 'value judgments', 'diagnoses', 'potential courses of action', 'choices of course of action', 'execution of action', and hopefully at the end, a 'solution' to the 'medical problem'.
In DGBN terminology, these elements of 'thinking' listed above, are all properties of 'The Central Ego' and 'Central Ego functioning'.
Now there are a number of different potential places to go with this, only one of which is really relevant to the direction I want to go here. But I will list a couple of these different places for future discussion in future blogsites (or 'floors' of 'Hegel's Hotel').
Firstly, which came first: science and medicine, or philosophy and psychology? Which is built upon which? Does science and medicine provide the foundation for the study of philosophy and psychology? Or does philosophy and psychology provide the foundation for the study of science and medicine? Or is it a 'dialectical process' again where both the study of science and medicine affect the study of philosophy and psychology -- and visa versa.
I have five things to say in this regard:
1. DGBN Philosophy is a 'post-Hegelian, dialectic' philosophy that believes in the 'dialectic' -- meaning 'mutual-two-way' -- influence of all life and death, living and dying processes;
2. Philosophy precedes all other areas of human thinking, human behavior, human culture, human study, life and death study, living and dying study;
3. Philosophy creates the perspective by which all other branches of human knowledge (epistemology) and ethics are studied.
4. You can't study human psychology without having an underlying philosophy (editorial perspective) by which you study it;
5. You can't study science and medicine without having an underyling philosophy (editorial perspective) by which you study it.
For example:
Let us take 'The Hippocratic Oath' by which I believe all doctors are still sworn in as 'rookie doctors'.
'First, do the patient no harm.'
Sounds good. Sounds nice and ethical. Sounds like a nice 'philosophical foundation' for the study and practice of medicine.
However, I have come to view it as the 'Hypocritical Oath'.
In my opinion, no doctor in Western Medicine comes close to adhering to The Hippocratic Oath anymore.
Otherwise, there would be no use of radiation, no use of chemotherapy, no use of cortisteroids, and at least a much, much more careful screening, monitoring, and usage of all vaccines, anti-biotics, anti-viral medications.
Stated another way, today's practice of conventional, orthodox Western medicine -- both good and bad -- needs to be fully investigated philosophically in terms of the biasing effects of 'Modern, Narcissistic Capitalism' on the medical profession as a whole -- diagnostically, pharmaceutically, and surgically. You can call this influence if you will -- 'The Wall Street Effect'.
So at the very least we can say that the Hippocratic Oath -- to be ethically consistently with today's medical standards should read something like this:
'First do the patient less harm than good.'
We will take up this discussion on another day when we start to investigate the philosophy of science and medicine.
........................................................................
For our purpose here, if we are going to investigate the world of man's 'mind' or 'psyche' -- as opposed to his 'brain' -- then we have one major philosophical problem that we have to deal with -- specifically:
We can't really 'see' what we are talking about.
..............................................................................
'And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.'
-- Bob Dylan
Copyright ©1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music
....................................................................................
Thus, we are no longer talking about 'observable, empirically-based physical models'.
Rather, we are talking about 'metaphysical, metaphorical and/or mythological models' in all the different ways -- good and bad -- that I have talked about the use of metaphysical-metaphorical-mythological models in all my other essays on this subject matter and its relationship to human psychology.
Again, we are talking about metaphysical-metaphorical-even mythological ways of representing the human personality in a 'structural-process model' that may or may not better help us to understand what types of 'invisible and metaphysical structures and processes' really interact -- or not -- in the human personality.
If the model works for us, then let's use it until it stops working.
If the model doesn't work for us, then let's trash the model, and start again until we find a better model that does work.
Here, in DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, we will use an assortment of other psychological models -- Freud, Jung, Adler, Perls, Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Bernes, Fromm...that have already shown that they work to greater or lesser extents.
Like all motivated philosophers, psychologists, theorists, model-builders, I am just aiming to do what thousands, if not millions, have done before me -- build a bigger, better -- and more integrative -- model with more benefits and assets attached to it than costs and liabilities. That is what 'model-building' and 'theory-making' is all about. Pushing human evolution forward in the domains of my subject-matter -- philosophy, psychology, politics, science, medicine, spirituality, religion, and beyond...
The fact that this model -- or any of these 'classical psychology models' -- deals with an 'invisable subject matter' leaves the whole philosophical discussion about man's psychology just as open and ripe for dialectical debate as the connection and/or non-connection of the Hippocratic Oath with today's actual practice of Western Medicine.
But that doesn't mean that the answer to this philosophical and psychological conundrum is to try to take an 'invisible subject matter' (like 'thinking' and 'feeling') and manipulating, reducing, eliminating the subject matter until it becomes 'visible' ('observable behavior') which is definitely not the same thing as 'thinking' and/or 'feeling'. This is what Behaviorism has built their so-called 'science' on -- externally visible behavior; not the millions of thought-feeling-impulse-and/or-restraint processes that go on inside our 'minds' and 'propel' the behavior outside our minds (unless you buy into 'external conditioning' as opposed to 'internal associating'). Freedom vs. determinism. This argument will probably still go on for centuries. I argued the subject matter with one of my first blogsite readers here, and we went back and forth with our arguments for almost a year without really finding any 'dialectical meeting ground' for our respective foundational and starting philosophical premises. It was an exhausting exchange. Did it accomplish anything? I'm not sure. Maybe more of an understanding of how differently different people can think.
Anyway, the best way to protect ourselves from the 'abuse' of metaphysical- metaphorical-mythological ('Triple M') models' is to fully know and understand the potental dangers of the territory we are moving into.
1. We may be trying to describe something that doesn't exist.
2. We may be tryng to turn something that is not 'empirical and visible to the naked eye' into something that suggests that we are trying to do exactly this -- by saying that a Triple M Model an 'empirical, observable, scienftific model' -- when it is not.
3. Connected to the last danger, is the danger of 'over-objectifying' and 'robotizing' the model -- making it seem like we are 'human robots' when we are not. Regardless of how many 'compartments' we divide the human psyche into, we have to fully understand that these are only different ways of 'categorizing', 'classifying', and 'segmentizing' the different parts and functions of the human psyche; they are not designed to turn us into 'robots' that no longer have an 'I' or a 'self'. In DGBN Philosophy-Psychology, we will 'subjectify' and 'existentialize' our models; not turn humans into deterministic robots.
This was -- and still is -- one of the main criticisms of Freud and Psychoanalysis, where 'pseudo-scientific language' was -- and still is -- used in a very 'non-scientific study of the human mind'. All models, in terms of my way of looking at the human psyche should retain their 'subjective-existential' element and foundation.
Thus, if I want to use 'The Central Ego' as a part of my psychological model, then each and everyone of us who use this model have to be able to say:
I am my 'Central Ego',
And my Central Ego is me.
That is called proper 'subjective, existential ownership and accountability' for what we are talking about.
I take ownership and accountability for what happens in my Central Ego. I determine the contents and dynamics of my Central Ego. And it -- beware the 'objectification', 'externalization' and 'alienation' of this 'it' ('it' meaning my Central Ego) determines me. My 'self' and my 'Central Ego' are 'dialectically inseparable' -- unless we 'dissociate' ourselves from all personal responsibility.
This is one of the first steps into 'psychopathology'.
Don't go there.
And that is where I will leave you,
At noon on Boxing Day on my first take through this essay.
At 6:00pm on my second take through this essay.
Have a great dialectical-humanistic-existential evening.
-- dgbn, Dec. 26th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process...
Monday, December 22, 2008
On Central Ego Functioning and Its Rational-Irrational Dialectical Relationship With The Personality-As-A-Whole: Part 1: Introduction
'Mental', 'psychological' and/or 'emotional' disturbances of the type we are interested in here are all 'cognitive' disturbances. Or worded otherwise, they are disturbances of ideas.
A broader diagnosis of mental or psychological disturbances can be broken down into 5 different but often connected areas of classification:
1. Physiogenic Causes: Causes pertaining to biology, physiology, and/or chemistry.
2. Psychogenic Causes: Causes pertaining to learned ideas.
3. Sociogenic Causes: Causes pertainng to social encounters.
4. Traumogenic (my word): Causes pertaining to physiogenic and/or psychogenic and/or sociogenic and/or narciogenic traumacy.
5. Narciogenic (my word): Causes pertaining to narcissistic impulse and/or traumacy.
Now there are at least three different directions we can go here that come easily to mind with this essay.
Each different direction pertains to a different 'floor' (a different section, a different blogsite) on/in Hegel's Hotel.
There is no such thing as a perfect 'classification system' where nothing overlaps. Everything always overlaps. Life is one collosal overlap of harmonious and non-harmonious, co-operative and/or competitive assortment of billions of different things and processes.
From a psychology, personality theory, psychopathology, and psychotherapy point of view, we need to approach this problem from several points of view.
We need to have an understanding of the generally more conscious, and all else being equal, more rational, problem-solving, and conflict-resolving processes in the personality. To this we, give the names: 'Central Ego Functioning', 'The Central Mediating, Executive Ego', 'DGB Cognitive Theory', and 'Supplementary DGB Apollonian-Enlightenment Theory'. Furthermore, we can talk about the different types of cognitive-psychopathologies and psychotherapies associated with this area of cognitive functioning.
Beyond this, there is what we might call the 'rest of the personality' which is extremely significant to overall functioning, tends to generally be less conscious, less rational, more deterministic, more dependent on early childhood learning, more prone to high degrees of early childhood traumacy, and more prone to severe personality dysfunctioning and psychopathology...
Associated with both the more rational and more irrational sides of the personality, there is also the genetic and biological factor, both good and bad, including sexuality and violence, and all of the other different types of physiological, chemical, and emotional mood swings...
Here is the game plan.
We will seek first to exhaust the cognitive-emotional, problem-solving, conflict-resolving, decision-making and action parameters of The Central Ego.
Then we will delve deeper into the parameters of other ego states and functions, including The Dionysian and Narcissistic Ego States and Functions, along with all of the 'distinctive-associative, projective, identification and compensatory transefrence elements' -- made up mainly, but not entirely, of childhood encounters, relationships, and memories, childhood learning, childhood traumacies, narcissistic fixations, narcissistic fantasies, the beginning and escalating evolution of obsessive-compulsive serial behavior patterns, and the like.
I think it is a fascinating ride...
But like the Romantic, Dionysian and Humanistic-Existential Periods of Western Philosophy followed the more Apollonian, rational, reasonable period of Western Philosophy...
So too, in DGBN Philosophy, we will precede the Dionysian, Narcissistic, Romantic, and Humanistic-Existential elements of the human personality with the generally more Apollonian, reasonable-rational-ethical elements, although even these elements can easily become 'distorted, exasperated, and pathologized'.
One of Plato's best ideas (obviously, in my opinion) was a simple '3-Chakra (3 Mind-Body Energy Centres)' model of the human psyche, which can be compared and contrasted with both Nietzsche's 'Apollonian-Dionysian 2 Chakra model (The Birth of Tragedy) and Freud's classic '3 Chakra Superego-Ego-Id' model...
..........................................................................
From the internet...Greek Medicine...
DID THE GREEKS HAVE CHAKRAS?
One of the well-known and salient features of yogic philosophy is its doctrine of the seven chakras, or spinal energy centers. The chakras are also the focus of many forms of holistic healing practiced today.
But did the ancient Greeks have any notions of the chakras or any chakra system? The answer is yes. Classical Greek ideas about the chakras are contained in the writings of Plato, and alluded to in the teachings of Pythagoras and in the Hermetic traditions of Western esotericism.
Plato and the Chakras
The clearest Greek ideas on the chakras come from Plato, who writes about them in his dialogue Timaeus. Basically, Plato considered the chakras to be subtle organs that the soul, or psyche uses to relate to the gross physical body.
According to Plato's philosophy, the soul has three basic parts, or levels of expression:
Nous or Logos - This is the highest part or level of soul expression, which Plato called the psyche, or immortal soul. Its attributes are reason, wisdom and spiritual insight. It finds expression through the Crown and Brow centers.
Thymos - This is the middle level of soul expression, or what Plato called the mortal soul. Its basic attributes are passion, fight and drive. It finds expression through the middle three chakras: the Throat, Heart and Gastric centers.
Epithymia - This is the level of desire and instinct, and is the lowest level of soul expression. It is also concerned with basic survival needs and appetites, and finds expression through the two lowest chakras: the Generative and Root centers.
Obvious parallels can be drawn between Plato's three levels of soul expression and the three Gunas of yogic philosophy, as well as the ego, id and superego of Freudian psychology. The correspondences are:
Nous, Logos - the Sattva Guna and the superego.
Thymos - the Rajas Guna and the ego.
Epithymia - the Tamas Guna and the id.
.............................................................................
From the internet...Greek medicine...
APOLLO
The Source of Health and Healing
Apollo, a solar deity, was also the god of archery, music and healing. Apollo personifies the active, Yang path to healing through self betterment and physical culture. The solar principle he represents manifests in the body as the Vital Force - that which the Chinese call Qi and the Hindus call Prana.
Called The Bright One, Apollo is an eternal youth, and the bringer of enlightenment and higher consciousness to all mankind. Advocating order, balance, harmony, personal discretion and conscious living, Apollo's two basic health mottos are: Know thyself. and, Nothing in excess.
Apollo's bow symbolizes the concept of tone and the need for physical conditioning. Tone is the dynamic tension between opposite yet complementary forces within the human organism. The higher the level of tone, the greater this dynamic tension is, and the greater the capacity of the organism to respond with decisiveness, strength, and vigor. When we exercise, we're toning up our muscles; we also feel more vital and alive, responsive and energetic.
Stringing Apollo's bow means bringing these powerful opposing forces into the proper relationship or alignment. Until this happens, the system is non-functional, or dysfunctional, and unable to respond properly.
Apollo's lyre symbolizes the gift of music, which is the harmony of sounds. To have health and healing, there must be a harmonious ordering of all the vital forces within the organism; all the strings must be in tune. There's a deep therapeutic relationship between music and healing.
In Greek mythology, Apollo is acknowledged as the original source of health and healing. He is the first god addressed in the Hippocratic Oath. He was also the father of Asclepius, the god of medicine.
Acknowledgements:
Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology by Jenny March
Copyright 1998 by Cassell and Co. in the UK
Entry on Apollo - pg. 110
...................................................................
I would argue that neither Nietzsche nor Freud really had a 'romantic' (heart) element of the human psyche like Plato did in his 3 chakra model but this we can maybe take up at a different time. In the mean time, we will go with Plato's model here, and develop the essays according to the following game-plan...
We will start first with the main elements of: 1. man's 'conscious mind-brain functioning' (central ego functioning, sensory awareness, perception, interpretation, evaluation, problem-solving, conflict-mediating, conflict-negotiating, conflict-resolving, preparation and execution of action)...
Then we will work down the human mind-body empirically, physically, emotionally, and metaphorically to the influence of man's 2.'romantic-humanistic-existential heart'...
And then finally we will focus on the psychological and philosophical influence of man's 3. 'Narcissistic-Dionysian loins and associated sensory-sexual-pleasure functions' and its influence as a chakra/energy centre on his/her existence..
That way I should be guaranteed that you will pull through this next 'rather dry cognitive' phase of my writing....to get to the more passionate, dramatic -- healthy and pathological -- stuff later...
How does that Pink Floyd song end?
'How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat'?
Ladies and gentlement,
We will first explore the more rational components of the personality -- or at least the highest potential for rationality in the personality -- before we more fully engage in exploring the 'darker, more irrational' components of the personality as described partly in Freudian language, Jungian language, Adlerian language, Gestalt language, Transactional Analysis language, Nietzschean language, and 'multi-integrative' DGBN language.
On with a greater and more detailed idealistic, and less idealistic, description of Central Ego Functioning.
-- dgbn, Dec. 14th, 2008, updated Friday morning, Dec. 19th, 2008, Monday Dec. 22nd, 2008, Tues. Dec. 23rd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
(But narcissism is good up to a point...)
(And Dionysianism is good up to a point...)
(Just not up to the point of unbridled greed, lack of reciprocity, destruction...
And self-destuction...)
(Apollo must always maintain his power...)
(And Zeus must keep every potential anarchist and usurper under control and in balance...)
Not like the Mexican Drug Cartel...
And The Wall Street Bankers...
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations Are Still In Process...
.................................................................................
A broader diagnosis of mental or psychological disturbances can be broken down into 5 different but often connected areas of classification:
1. Physiogenic Causes: Causes pertaining to biology, physiology, and/or chemistry.
2. Psychogenic Causes: Causes pertaining to learned ideas.
3. Sociogenic Causes: Causes pertainng to social encounters.
4. Traumogenic (my word): Causes pertaining to physiogenic and/or psychogenic and/or sociogenic and/or narciogenic traumacy.
5. Narciogenic (my word): Causes pertaining to narcissistic impulse and/or traumacy.
Now there are at least three different directions we can go here that come easily to mind with this essay.
Each different direction pertains to a different 'floor' (a different section, a different blogsite) on/in Hegel's Hotel.
There is no such thing as a perfect 'classification system' where nothing overlaps. Everything always overlaps. Life is one collosal overlap of harmonious and non-harmonious, co-operative and/or competitive assortment of billions of different things and processes.
From a psychology, personality theory, psychopathology, and psychotherapy point of view, we need to approach this problem from several points of view.
We need to have an understanding of the generally more conscious, and all else being equal, more rational, problem-solving, and conflict-resolving processes in the personality. To this we, give the names: 'Central Ego Functioning', 'The Central Mediating, Executive Ego', 'DGB Cognitive Theory', and 'Supplementary DGB Apollonian-Enlightenment Theory'. Furthermore, we can talk about the different types of cognitive-psychopathologies and psychotherapies associated with this area of cognitive functioning.
Beyond this, there is what we might call the 'rest of the personality' which is extremely significant to overall functioning, tends to generally be less conscious, less rational, more deterministic, more dependent on early childhood learning, more prone to high degrees of early childhood traumacy, and more prone to severe personality dysfunctioning and psychopathology...
Associated with both the more rational and more irrational sides of the personality, there is also the genetic and biological factor, both good and bad, including sexuality and violence, and all of the other different types of physiological, chemical, and emotional mood swings...
Here is the game plan.
We will seek first to exhaust the cognitive-emotional, problem-solving, conflict-resolving, decision-making and action parameters of The Central Ego.
Then we will delve deeper into the parameters of other ego states and functions, including The Dionysian and Narcissistic Ego States and Functions, along with all of the 'distinctive-associative, projective, identification and compensatory transefrence elements' -- made up mainly, but not entirely, of childhood encounters, relationships, and memories, childhood learning, childhood traumacies, narcissistic fixations, narcissistic fantasies, the beginning and escalating evolution of obsessive-compulsive serial behavior patterns, and the like.
I think it is a fascinating ride...
But like the Romantic, Dionysian and Humanistic-Existential Periods of Western Philosophy followed the more Apollonian, rational, reasonable period of Western Philosophy...
So too, in DGBN Philosophy, we will precede the Dionysian, Narcissistic, Romantic, and Humanistic-Existential elements of the human personality with the generally more Apollonian, reasonable-rational-ethical elements, although even these elements can easily become 'distorted, exasperated, and pathologized'.
One of Plato's best ideas (obviously, in my opinion) was a simple '3-Chakra (3 Mind-Body Energy Centres)' model of the human psyche, which can be compared and contrasted with both Nietzsche's 'Apollonian-Dionysian 2 Chakra model (The Birth of Tragedy) and Freud's classic '3 Chakra Superego-Ego-Id' model...
..........................................................................
From the internet...Greek Medicine...
DID THE GREEKS HAVE CHAKRAS?
One of the well-known and salient features of yogic philosophy is its doctrine of the seven chakras, or spinal energy centers. The chakras are also the focus of many forms of holistic healing practiced today.
But did the ancient Greeks have any notions of the chakras or any chakra system? The answer is yes. Classical Greek ideas about the chakras are contained in the writings of Plato, and alluded to in the teachings of Pythagoras and in the Hermetic traditions of Western esotericism.
Plato and the Chakras
The clearest Greek ideas on the chakras come from Plato, who writes about them in his dialogue Timaeus. Basically, Plato considered the chakras to be subtle organs that the soul, or psyche uses to relate to the gross physical body.
According to Plato's philosophy, the soul has three basic parts, or levels of expression:
Nous or Logos - This is the highest part or level of soul expression, which Plato called the psyche, or immortal soul. Its attributes are reason, wisdom and spiritual insight. It finds expression through the Crown and Brow centers.
Thymos - This is the middle level of soul expression, or what Plato called the mortal soul. Its basic attributes are passion, fight and drive. It finds expression through the middle three chakras: the Throat, Heart and Gastric centers.
Epithymia - This is the level of desire and instinct, and is the lowest level of soul expression. It is also concerned with basic survival needs and appetites, and finds expression through the two lowest chakras: the Generative and Root centers.
Obvious parallels can be drawn between Plato's three levels of soul expression and the three Gunas of yogic philosophy, as well as the ego, id and superego of Freudian psychology. The correspondences are:
Nous, Logos - the Sattva Guna and the superego.
Thymos - the Rajas Guna and the ego.
Epithymia - the Tamas Guna and the id.
.............................................................................
From the internet...Greek medicine...
APOLLO
The Source of Health and Healing
Apollo, a solar deity, was also the god of archery, music and healing. Apollo personifies the active, Yang path to healing through self betterment and physical culture. The solar principle he represents manifests in the body as the Vital Force - that which the Chinese call Qi and the Hindus call Prana.
Called The Bright One, Apollo is an eternal youth, and the bringer of enlightenment and higher consciousness to all mankind. Advocating order, balance, harmony, personal discretion and conscious living, Apollo's two basic health mottos are: Know thyself. and, Nothing in excess.
Apollo's bow symbolizes the concept of tone and the need for physical conditioning. Tone is the dynamic tension between opposite yet complementary forces within the human organism. The higher the level of tone, the greater this dynamic tension is, and the greater the capacity of the organism to respond with decisiveness, strength, and vigor. When we exercise, we're toning up our muscles; we also feel more vital and alive, responsive and energetic.
Stringing Apollo's bow means bringing these powerful opposing forces into the proper relationship or alignment. Until this happens, the system is non-functional, or dysfunctional, and unable to respond properly.
Apollo's lyre symbolizes the gift of music, which is the harmony of sounds. To have health and healing, there must be a harmonious ordering of all the vital forces within the organism; all the strings must be in tune. There's a deep therapeutic relationship between music and healing.
In Greek mythology, Apollo is acknowledged as the original source of health and healing. He is the first god addressed in the Hippocratic Oath. He was also the father of Asclepius, the god of medicine.
Acknowledgements:
Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology by Jenny March
Copyright 1998 by Cassell and Co. in the UK
Entry on Apollo - pg. 110
...................................................................
I would argue that neither Nietzsche nor Freud really had a 'romantic' (heart) element of the human psyche like Plato did in his 3 chakra model but this we can maybe take up at a different time. In the mean time, we will go with Plato's model here, and develop the essays according to the following game-plan...
We will start first with the main elements of: 1. man's 'conscious mind-brain functioning' (central ego functioning, sensory awareness, perception, interpretation, evaluation, problem-solving, conflict-mediating, conflict-negotiating, conflict-resolving, preparation and execution of action)...
Then we will work down the human mind-body empirically, physically, emotionally, and metaphorically to the influence of man's 2.'romantic-humanistic-existential heart'...
And then finally we will focus on the psychological and philosophical influence of man's 3. 'Narcissistic-Dionysian loins and associated sensory-sexual-pleasure functions' and its influence as a chakra/energy centre on his/her existence..
That way I should be guaranteed that you will pull through this next 'rather dry cognitive' phase of my writing....to get to the more passionate, dramatic -- healthy and pathological -- stuff later...
How does that Pink Floyd song end?
'How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat'?
Ladies and gentlement,
We will first explore the more rational components of the personality -- or at least the highest potential for rationality in the personality -- before we more fully engage in exploring the 'darker, more irrational' components of the personality as described partly in Freudian language, Jungian language, Adlerian language, Gestalt language, Transactional Analysis language, Nietzschean language, and 'multi-integrative' DGBN language.
On with a greater and more detailed idealistic, and less idealistic, description of Central Ego Functioning.
-- dgbn, Dec. 14th, 2008, updated Friday morning, Dec. 19th, 2008, Monday Dec. 22nd, 2008, Tues. Dec. 23rd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
(But narcissism is good up to a point...)
(And Dionysianism is good up to a point...)
(Just not up to the point of unbridled greed, lack of reciprocity, destruction...
And self-destuction...)
(Apollo must always maintain his power...)
(And Zeus must keep every potential anarchist and usurper under control and in balance...)
Not like the Mexican Drug Cartel...
And The Wall Street Bankers...
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations Are Still In Process...
.................................................................................
Friday, December 19, 2008
Subjectivity, Objectivity, Accountability -- and 'The Self' -- 'My Self' -- 'Your Self'
Under Construction...
.............................
Different philosophers and psychologists, philosophies and schools of psychology, use the 'concept-phenomenon' of 'The Self' differently.
David Hume believed that 'The Self' was only a 1. 'man-made concept': with no corresponding 2. 'objectively real phenomenon' that the man-made concept of 'Self' represents.
In other words, according to David Hume, 'the Self' does not exist. It is just another useless, man-made generalization and concept that effectively stands for 'nothing'; just a lot of human hot air and hot speech with no corresponding 'structural-empirical real object' to back up what the concept is supposed to -- but doesn't -- stand for.
Come on Mr. Hume. Spoil the 'epistemological party', why don't you? Are you trying to tell me that the word 'I' has no meaning? That the word 'me' has no meaning? That the word 'ego' has no meaning? That the words 'ego-state' and 'ego-function' and 'Central, Mediating Ego' have no meaning?
Blasphemy! Go start your own epistemological party. Nobody will come. Or correction. Take Nietzsche with you. And Socrates. and Derrida. And you can all talk about what does and doesn't exist in the world. You can 'deconstruct' each other's arguments until their is no epistemology -- no knowledge -- left in the world. Just a million or a billion 'deconstructed concepts'.
I will take the 'idealists' and the 'constructionists' and the 'structuralists' and the 'objectivists' out there amongst you -- and start a different party. At least we might have something to talk about. And something build.
You hard-line deconstructionists out there -- you can spend your hours of each day continually tearing down the few things and processes that the other deconstructionists in your party actually begrudgingly try to admit are real -- that have some 'objectivity' attached to them.
My group, my party, should actually have a 'full-blown philosophy' by the time we are finished building what we start. You full-blown deconstructionists will have nothing. No philosophy other than your 'philosophy of the negative'. Just a lot of 'would have been, could have been ideas' that are deconstructed before they lead anywhere. Effectively, your philosophy takes you nowhere. Just down a lot of philosophical blind alleys and dead ends. Ending at Nowheresville. Even Nietzsche had the philosophy of 'The Superman'. And that was worth something. He wasn't completely all about tearing down everything.
Hume, if I understand my history right, was a more Liberal political philosopher than he was an epistemologist. I will have to check that. Anyways, he was probably the hardest line epistemologist in the history of Western philosophy. For Hume -- like the Behavioral Psychologists who would eventually follow him and his deconstructionist epistemological ideas -- 'if you coudn't see it, then it didn't exist'. Too bad there was no one back then to explain to him about 'bacteria' and 'viruses'. Probably he would counter-argue -- 'Yes, they are indeed invisable to the naked eye, but they are very much alive and visable under a good microscope.'
Whatever. What many psychologists call the 'Self' is invisable; therefore it doesn't exist. According to Hume.
DGBN Philosophy counter-argues that 'The Self' may indeed be invisable; it may even be described as a speculative, metaphysical concept -- like 'God'. But still, it is worth talking about. There is value in talking about the Self, about 'my Self', about 'your Self' -- that goes beyond 'empirically observable processes'.
First we have to talk about 'Ego-State Functionality, Awareness, and Accountability..
.............................
Different philosophers and psychologists, philosophies and schools of psychology, use the 'concept-phenomenon' of 'The Self' differently.
David Hume believed that 'The Self' was only a 1. 'man-made concept': with no corresponding 2. 'objectively real phenomenon' that the man-made concept of 'Self' represents.
In other words, according to David Hume, 'the Self' does not exist. It is just another useless, man-made generalization and concept that effectively stands for 'nothing'; just a lot of human hot air and hot speech with no corresponding 'structural-empirical real object' to back up what the concept is supposed to -- but doesn't -- stand for.
Come on Mr. Hume. Spoil the 'epistemological party', why don't you? Are you trying to tell me that the word 'I' has no meaning? That the word 'me' has no meaning? That the word 'ego' has no meaning? That the words 'ego-state' and 'ego-function' and 'Central, Mediating Ego' have no meaning?
Blasphemy! Go start your own epistemological party. Nobody will come. Or correction. Take Nietzsche with you. And Socrates. and Derrida. And you can all talk about what does and doesn't exist in the world. You can 'deconstruct' each other's arguments until their is no epistemology -- no knowledge -- left in the world. Just a million or a billion 'deconstructed concepts'.
I will take the 'idealists' and the 'constructionists' and the 'structuralists' and the 'objectivists' out there amongst you -- and start a different party. At least we might have something to talk about. And something build.
You hard-line deconstructionists out there -- you can spend your hours of each day continually tearing down the few things and processes that the other deconstructionists in your party actually begrudgingly try to admit are real -- that have some 'objectivity' attached to them.
My group, my party, should actually have a 'full-blown philosophy' by the time we are finished building what we start. You full-blown deconstructionists will have nothing. No philosophy other than your 'philosophy of the negative'. Just a lot of 'would have been, could have been ideas' that are deconstructed before they lead anywhere. Effectively, your philosophy takes you nowhere. Just down a lot of philosophical blind alleys and dead ends. Ending at Nowheresville. Even Nietzsche had the philosophy of 'The Superman'. And that was worth something. He wasn't completely all about tearing down everything.
Hume, if I understand my history right, was a more Liberal political philosopher than he was an epistemologist. I will have to check that. Anyways, he was probably the hardest line epistemologist in the history of Western philosophy. For Hume -- like the Behavioral Psychologists who would eventually follow him and his deconstructionist epistemological ideas -- 'if you coudn't see it, then it didn't exist'. Too bad there was no one back then to explain to him about 'bacteria' and 'viruses'. Probably he would counter-argue -- 'Yes, they are indeed invisable to the naked eye, but they are very much alive and visable under a good microscope.'
Whatever. What many psychologists call the 'Self' is invisable; therefore it doesn't exist. According to Hume.
DGBN Philosophy counter-argues that 'The Self' may indeed be invisable; it may even be described as a speculative, metaphysical concept -- like 'God'. But still, it is worth talking about. There is value in talking about the Self, about 'my Self', about 'your Self' -- that goes beyond 'empirically observable processes'.
First we have to talk about 'Ego-State Functionality, Awareness, and Accountability..
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Rationality, Irrationality, Man and Gods: Which God Would You Sooner Study? Apollo? Dionysus? Narcissus? Eros? And/Or Aphrodite?
Rationality and Irrationality, Man and Gods: Which God(s) Would You Like To Study?
Every time I start an essay on man's rationality,
Or at least his capability for rationality,
I get stuck,
And hit the brakes.
Why?
Because their is much more excitement and drama,
In pursuing man's irrationality...
Or at least his or her seeming irrationality...
However, irrationality is a very relative concept.
Irrationality becomes completely rational,
Or at least understandable,
And maybe sometimes 'bizarrely rational',
As soon as you understand,
Which God a person is worshipping,
Which God a person is pursuing,
Which God a person wants to be.
Which God would you sooner learn about?
Apollo -- the Greek God of rationality and ethics?
Or Dionysus (Nietzsche's infatuation -- and mine) -- the Greek God of pleasure and dance, and wine and group celebration, and sexuality and orgasm...pretty much everything Freud summed up in 'The Id'?
Or Freud's later infatuation (and mine): Narcissus -- the God of Ego, and Self-Inflation, and Self-Assertion, and Self-Absorption, and 'Will to Power', and 'Will to Fame and Ambition', and 'Will to Possess and Conquer', and 'Will To Revenge', and 'Will To Selfishness'...
Dionysus and Narcissus usually get along pretty well together...
Even throw Eros and Aphrodite into the mix (God and Goddess of Love),
And you still have a greaty party...
It's only Apollo who puts a damper on things,
And aims to spoil the party, spoil the fun,
Particularly when it starts to get completely out of hand,
And threatens to run completely amok,
Throwing chaos into law and order, ethics and morality...
Eros and Aprhodite -- these are interesting Gods too...
If you've been hit by the 'love bug', then you are chasing
Eros and/or Aphrodite,
While Dionysus and Narcissus are the Gods of...
Shall we say, the more sensual, sexual, and seedier side of love...
I.E. 'Lust'?
Or is it a complicated chemical mix of...
Sensuality, sexuality, love and lust, obsession, compulsion, addiction...
When all three or four of them come together in the same ignited package,
Eros/Aphrodite, Dionusus, and Narcissus,
Swarming Together,
To lift us up,
And/or bring us down,
What do we call them?
'The Terrific Threesome'?
Or 'The Terrible Threesome?
Or Both?
Obsession, compulsion, addiction, love, lust, sexuality, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, jealousy, envy, anger, grief, rage, aggression, violence, crimes of passion, crimes of transference, identification, projection, compensation, inferiority feelings, superiority striving, the 'darkness of the shadow', sexual fetishes, power and sex, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, seduction, manipulation, coercion, force, serial crimes, serial rapes, serial killings...
Who would you sooner learn about?
Apollo?
Or Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite?
Wrapped together in one chemically charged package...
Transference. Transference Complexes, Transference Games, The Exciting Object, The Rejecting Object, Narcissitic Traumacies, Narcissistic Compensations, Narcissistic Identifications, Identification with The Aggressor, Identification With The Rejector, Identification With The Abandoner, Identification With The Distancer, Identification With The Betrayor, Identification With The Violator, Identification With The Abuser...
The first God -- Apollo -- was the God of The Enlightenment Period,
But I think you can begin to understand why,
Apollo, by himself, was not enough,
To define or describe or summarize,
Human Behavior...
Enter the Dragon,
The Transference Dragon,
Enter...The last four Gods -- Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite...
These were the Gods of The Romantic Period
The Fascinating Four,
Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite...
Did much to help describe...
The 'Other Side of Human Nature'...
The darker,
Sexier,
Seedier,
More romantic,
More sensual,
More spiritual,
More unpredictable,
Side of human behavior...
Which God(s) would you like to study?
Or would you like to study them all?
-- dgbn, Dec. 17th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
Every time I start an essay on man's rationality,
Or at least his capability for rationality,
I get stuck,
And hit the brakes.
Why?
Because their is much more excitement and drama,
In pursuing man's irrationality...
Or at least his or her seeming irrationality...
However, irrationality is a very relative concept.
Irrationality becomes completely rational,
Or at least understandable,
And maybe sometimes 'bizarrely rational',
As soon as you understand,
Which God a person is worshipping,
Which God a person is pursuing,
Which God a person wants to be.
Which God would you sooner learn about?
Apollo -- the Greek God of rationality and ethics?
Or Dionysus (Nietzsche's infatuation -- and mine) -- the Greek God of pleasure and dance, and wine and group celebration, and sexuality and orgasm...pretty much everything Freud summed up in 'The Id'?
Or Freud's later infatuation (and mine): Narcissus -- the God of Ego, and Self-Inflation, and Self-Assertion, and Self-Absorption, and 'Will to Power', and 'Will to Fame and Ambition', and 'Will to Possess and Conquer', and 'Will To Revenge', and 'Will To Selfishness'...
Dionysus and Narcissus usually get along pretty well together...
Even throw Eros and Aphrodite into the mix (God and Goddess of Love),
And you still have a greaty party...
It's only Apollo who puts a damper on things,
And aims to spoil the party, spoil the fun,
Particularly when it starts to get completely out of hand,
And threatens to run completely amok,
Throwing chaos into law and order, ethics and morality...
Eros and Aprhodite -- these are interesting Gods too...
If you've been hit by the 'love bug', then you are chasing
Eros and/or Aphrodite,
While Dionysus and Narcissus are the Gods of...
Shall we say, the more sensual, sexual, and seedier side of love...
I.E. 'Lust'?
Or is it a complicated chemical mix of...
Sensuality, sexuality, love and lust, obsession, compulsion, addiction...
When all three or four of them come together in the same ignited package,
Eros/Aphrodite, Dionusus, and Narcissus,
Swarming Together,
To lift us up,
And/or bring us down,
What do we call them?
'The Terrific Threesome'?
Or 'The Terrible Threesome?
Or Both?
Obsession, compulsion, addiction, love, lust, sexuality, rejection, betrayal, abandonment, jealousy, envy, anger, grief, rage, aggression, violence, crimes of passion, crimes of transference, identification, projection, compensation, inferiority feelings, superiority striving, the 'darkness of the shadow', sexual fetishes, power and sex, domination and submission, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, seduction, manipulation, coercion, force, serial crimes, serial rapes, serial killings...
Who would you sooner learn about?
Apollo?
Or Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite?
Wrapped together in one chemically charged package...
Transference. Transference Complexes, Transference Games, The Exciting Object, The Rejecting Object, Narcissitic Traumacies, Narcissistic Compensations, Narcissistic Identifications, Identification with The Aggressor, Identification With The Rejector, Identification With The Abandoner, Identification With The Distancer, Identification With The Betrayor, Identification With The Violator, Identification With The Abuser...
The first God -- Apollo -- was the God of The Enlightenment Period,
But I think you can begin to understand why,
Apollo, by himself, was not enough,
To define or describe or summarize,
Human Behavior...
Enter the Dragon,
The Transference Dragon,
Enter...The last four Gods -- Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite...
These were the Gods of The Romantic Period
The Fascinating Four,
Dionysus, Narcissus, Eros, and Aphrodite...
Did much to help describe...
The 'Other Side of Human Nature'...
The darker,
Sexier,
Seedier,
More romantic,
More sensual,
More spiritual,
More unpredictable,
Side of human behavior...
Which God(s) would you like to study?
Or would you like to study them all?
-- dgbn, Dec. 17th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
From The DGB Archives: Towards A New (And Old) Philosophical, Political, and Business Renaissance (Originally written Jan. 19/08; updated Dec. 16/08)
For me -- and for DGB Philosophy -- life is basically about three types of choices:
1. Making 'either/or' decisions such as Obama vs. McCain in the past election; going to dinner and a movie vs. staying home and saving money with your honey; staying single vs. getting married; staying in a job or leaving it; and so on...
2. 'Juggling pie plates' -- meaning juggling value priorities, and/or attending to our first, most immediate and/or most important priorties first. In this scenario, other value-priorities are not excluded or rejected entirely but rather are left behind for the time being until they become more figural and/or at some point reach our threshold/pedestal of becoming top priority.
3. Integrating our choices, ideas, theories, lifestyle in a fashion that partly compromises our 'either/or choices' but also allows you to split the difference and 'take the edge off of each either/or choice solely by itself' giving you in its place 'good elements' from both parts of your potential either/or choice while not totally 'committing you in either particular direction of your potential either/or choice.
In an 'integrative choice', elements of your two potential choices 'integrate somewhere in the middle' and ideally give you at least part of the the best of both worlds while minimizing the 'repetitive negative side effects' that may be attached to one strict side or the other.
If you are a 'hard-line conservative', you may be accused of having no heart or compassion whereas if you are a 'socialist-oriented liberal', you may be accuse of having a 'bleeding heart' that encourages people to take advantage of you, left, right and centre.
Which is why -- as Aristotle stated -- 'the middle path is usually the best path'.
(Although perhaps not always the most exciting. The extremes in life do tend to generate more drama and excitement but also more 'hard falls'. Choice and degree of risk becomes relevant.)
Still, the most successful and healthy people seem to be the ones who 'integrate their potential bi-polar extremes the best'.
For example, the most successful and psychologically healthy people tend to be both strong-willed, assertive people -- and good listeners at the same time, able to put forth their own points of view with force and conviction while being open-minded enough to attend to other points of view as well.
These are two important pie plates amongst numerous others that people need to juggle. Very few people know how to juggle these two pie plates equally well. Usually people are either too strong-willed and close-minded or they are too passive and inassertive. These polar extremes - without the balance - is what keeps therapists and counsellors, ministers and priests, police offices, human rights activists and lobbyists, legal councils, unions, and politicians busy.
Again, the most successful people - and particularly the most successful leaders - can juggle both these 'plates' equally well, knowing how and when to be assertive and forceful with their ideas, while staying attentive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of others who may think differently and/or have important opposing viewpoints to offer. Our parliaments and our courts are generally too adversarial - putting on a 'dog and pony, smoke and mirrors' show that may make our lawyers, judges, and politicians rich but defies a more objective and integrative search for truth, justice, and civil balance. (added Jan. 26th, 2008, modified and updated again, Dec. 16th, 2008.)
DGB (Dialectic-Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology - my own unique, personal brand of integrative philosophy-psychology which aims to combine some 2700 years of philosophy and 100 plus years of psychology - builds upon these two basic principles over and over again but only as each is appropriate and relevant to the context: 1. making 'either/or' decisions'; 2. juggling philosophical and lifestyle 'pie plates'; and 3. integrating things, ideas, processes, and people.
Finally, sometimes when seemingly practically everyone else is being 'politically correct' and not talking or writing about particular overt and/or covert injustices -even politically and legally sanctioned injustices - it is necessary to take a strong, forceful polar perspective in the name of helping to move this corruption of justice, democracy, and equality, back towards the centre balancing point of the pendulum of justice so that all people can receive equally fair treatment in the name of the law, not just this or that privileged group of people who have gained an 'inside presence and power of influence' that is not democratic and fair to others who have not had their opinions, interests, and/or needs voiced - and who may be paying a heavy civil cost for this unfair treatment.
'Collusion' is when two or more groups of people conspire together - in private places and/or on private phone calls - to make a deal amongst themselves that benefits each other but excludes outsiders in the process who are being marginalized and hurt in the deal and have had no say in this collusion.
Collusion is undemocratic and unhealthy when striving for a fair and equal democracy but at the same time very common-place in narcissistic capiitalist environments where greed and selfishness rules. The corruption, pathology, and toxicity of collusion needs to be made transparent in a healthy democracy.
This is where 'Narcissistic - everyone for themselves - Capitalism' needs to evolve into a more humane and environmentally friendly form of 'Democratic-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism.' How do you have a democratic country when the economic and business philosophy and foundation of the country - in both Canada and The USA - is authoritarian; not democratic? It is my opinion that the best companies generally make significant use of some sort of compromised attitude - where workers with less authoritative power still do get well-heard and properly respected for their individual opinions, even if it does goes against the Corporate Status-Quo.
DGB Philosophy intends to put more and more ideas forward over time relative to what kind of changes might be needed to turn Narcissisitic Capitalism into a more Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential form of Capitalism.
Again, some innovative, enlightened companies have already moved in this direction. Perhaps we can do more. Correction: We need to do more.
Narcissistic (Conservative) Governments and Narcissistic Big Business are often too interconnected in ways that are collusive and non-transparent to the general public.
So too are narcissistic Liberal-Socialist minded Governments who often spend to much time behind closed doors with 'socialist, special interest, lobbyists). Again, 'political-special' interest collusion can result.
When two out of three groups of people have their hands in the 'money-pie' and the third group of people is being marginalized, left out of the equation, uninformed or misinformed, their money in effect being fraudulently used and/or stolen - it is time to start charging and/or keep turning over the politicians who keep practising 'collusion, corruption, and dirty politics' - and likewise in the world of business.
Corporate greed and gouging - including unions - will never be brought under reasonable control until it is confronted by the people being gouge.
DGB Philosophy has important humanistic-existential elements of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm in it, but also important elements of Adam Smith, John Locke, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and my Corporate father in me to run away from my evolving integrative form of idealistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential capitalism.
I -- and hopefully you -- want the workplace to be a place where people are happy to go to and work in; not 'alienating prisons' that people are running to get away from.
We are all guilty of this corruptive mess called politics because we keep letting our politicians get away with fraud - and don't do anything about it. These practises will continue until 'dirty politicians' finally start going to jail. These same politicians would send you or I to jail in a heart beat for conducting the same type of business so why do we continue to let our politicians get away with the illegal behaviors they would send us to jail for?
Why do we allow political narcissism and hypocrisy bring down our democratic nation? We can sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can do more to not let politicians get away with 'the dirty stuff' they get away with. Democracy starts with the people and ends with the people and how willing they are to be politically active.
When 'Big Government' and 'Big Business' become an end in themselves where huge amounts of money come from the people and don't go back to the people, when the middle and lower class get marginalized, abandoned, and gouged...it is time for the people to take back their government from the politicians who are running it corruptively - or to keep putting new politicians in their until the situation improves. If we continue to do nothing about this situation, then we at least partly deserve what we get - a corrupt government. ('Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.')
Accountability and transparency - these are 'buzz words' that we hear all the time from politcians themselves, especially those on the election circuit. But until politicians start meaning what they say and saying what they mean, until we actually start seeing the types of ethical changes that politicans continually preach about, words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Maybe we should have 'politicians on probation' for one or two years before they are elected in for longer terms.
The more politicians have to answer to the people, the more they behave themselves. They are like athletes - the longer the contracts they get, the less they perform and the more they misbehave. Shorter 'contracts' might breed better politicians.
Politician cannot be trusted to be left alone -- or in cahoots with Big Business or Big Union or Big Socialist Special Interest Groups -- to function in the dark.
Because then the darker side of human nature will take over. Human narcissism - greed and selfishness - will prevail. Hobbes, Machiovelli, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and William Golding (the writer who wrote 'Lord of The Flies'), will be shown to have been the best judges of human nature - i.e., those that wrote about the darker side of human nature or human behavior, because unconfronted, the darker side of human nature or human behavior will rule.
We need a new vision, a new spirit, a new idealism, a new code of ethics. We need some new Enlightenment Philosophers, some new Romantic Philosophers (to compensate for the Enlightenment Philosophers), even some new 'Grand Narrative' Philosophers to compensate for all the 'Post-Modernist' and 'Deconstructionist' philosophers these days. (That is, we need 'Constructionist Philosophers' as well as 'Deconstructionist Philosophers'.)
I know this is asking a lot but we need a fascimile of a new Jefferson, a new Franklin, a new John Locke, a new Diderot, a new Voltaire, Montesque and Tom Paine...We need a new Renaissance. We need a new culture not based strictly on personal narcissism...and we need more people worried about the state of the planet we live on.
We need more idealists who say what they mean and mean what they say - and don't use their 'professed ideology' as a way of winning votes from the public, then do what they want and bend their ideology to their hearts content once they get into power for however many years. The Canadian - and I assume the American - people are sick and tired of 'fraudulent ideology' whether it comes from a politician and/or a businessman.
The paradox of the situation is that Corporate America - while trumpeting the virtues of 'individualism' and the pursuit of 'The American Dream' - are far too often helping to squash this type of idealism and reality. That's what Marx called (fake, narcissistic capitalist) ideology'. (He just called it 'ideology'.)
The '30 hour work week' - a projected idealistic vision back in the 70s and early 80s - is looking more and more like a '50 and 60 hour week' for many today trying to balance their 'expense and stress-laden budget as they strive to just break even without collapsing from exhaustion. (I am presently working a 55 to 60 hour work week in a stress-laden dispatching job so (projectively) I know something of what I am talking about. And there are many, many others who have it much worse than me. At least I make enough money to partly justify my hours even if the rest of my life is paying for it. This past two months - December and January - a 40 hour week would not have come close to meeting my expenses.)
We need to keep encouraging the work of social-political activists like Lou Dobbs even if we don't fully agree with all his opinions. He is offering a new form of political idealism and economics - he calls himslf a 'middle class populist' which I like the sound of. I also like many of his ideas, his delivery, and his courage to not water down or sugar coat his delivery. More power to him!
- dgb, jan. 19th, 2008, updated jan. 26th, 2008 updated again Dec. 16th, 2008.
I found this site on the internet full of quotes that I like. (See below for some of them.)
........................................................
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
-
Milton Friedman, PhD, Nobel Laureate, 1912-2006: Rest in Peace.
"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." - Milton Friedman
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." -Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p479
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans
"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist no. 51.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." - Thomas Paine
"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency." - James Bovard in Voting is Overrated
(See the internet site for these and other similar quotes...just google the title: 'Eternal Vigilence is The Price of Liberty')
1. Making 'either/or' decisions such as Obama vs. McCain in the past election; going to dinner and a movie vs. staying home and saving money with your honey; staying single vs. getting married; staying in a job or leaving it; and so on...
2. 'Juggling pie plates' -- meaning juggling value priorities, and/or attending to our first, most immediate and/or most important priorties first. In this scenario, other value-priorities are not excluded or rejected entirely but rather are left behind for the time being until they become more figural and/or at some point reach our threshold/pedestal of becoming top priority.
3. Integrating our choices, ideas, theories, lifestyle in a fashion that partly compromises our 'either/or choices' but also allows you to split the difference and 'take the edge off of each either/or choice solely by itself' giving you in its place 'good elements' from both parts of your potential either/or choice while not totally 'committing you in either particular direction of your potential either/or choice.
In an 'integrative choice', elements of your two potential choices 'integrate somewhere in the middle' and ideally give you at least part of the the best of both worlds while minimizing the 'repetitive negative side effects' that may be attached to one strict side or the other.
If you are a 'hard-line conservative', you may be accused of having no heart or compassion whereas if you are a 'socialist-oriented liberal', you may be accuse of having a 'bleeding heart' that encourages people to take advantage of you, left, right and centre.
Which is why -- as Aristotle stated -- 'the middle path is usually the best path'.
(Although perhaps not always the most exciting. The extremes in life do tend to generate more drama and excitement but also more 'hard falls'. Choice and degree of risk becomes relevant.)
Still, the most successful and healthy people seem to be the ones who 'integrate their potential bi-polar extremes the best'.
For example, the most successful and psychologically healthy people tend to be both strong-willed, assertive people -- and good listeners at the same time, able to put forth their own points of view with force and conviction while being open-minded enough to attend to other points of view as well.
These are two important pie plates amongst numerous others that people need to juggle. Very few people know how to juggle these two pie plates equally well. Usually people are either too strong-willed and close-minded or they are too passive and inassertive. These polar extremes - without the balance - is what keeps therapists and counsellors, ministers and priests, police offices, human rights activists and lobbyists, legal councils, unions, and politicians busy.
Again, the most successful people - and particularly the most successful leaders - can juggle both these 'plates' equally well, knowing how and when to be assertive and forceful with their ideas, while staying attentive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of others who may think differently and/or have important opposing viewpoints to offer. Our parliaments and our courts are generally too adversarial - putting on a 'dog and pony, smoke and mirrors' show that may make our lawyers, judges, and politicians rich but defies a more objective and integrative search for truth, justice, and civil balance. (added Jan. 26th, 2008, modified and updated again, Dec. 16th, 2008.)
DGB (Dialectic-Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology - my own unique, personal brand of integrative philosophy-psychology which aims to combine some 2700 years of philosophy and 100 plus years of psychology - builds upon these two basic principles over and over again but only as each is appropriate and relevant to the context: 1. making 'either/or' decisions'; 2. juggling philosophical and lifestyle 'pie plates'; and 3. integrating things, ideas, processes, and people.
Finally, sometimes when seemingly practically everyone else is being 'politically correct' and not talking or writing about particular overt and/or covert injustices -even politically and legally sanctioned injustices - it is necessary to take a strong, forceful polar perspective in the name of helping to move this corruption of justice, democracy, and equality, back towards the centre balancing point of the pendulum of justice so that all people can receive equally fair treatment in the name of the law, not just this or that privileged group of people who have gained an 'inside presence and power of influence' that is not democratic and fair to others who have not had their opinions, interests, and/or needs voiced - and who may be paying a heavy civil cost for this unfair treatment.
'Collusion' is when two or more groups of people conspire together - in private places and/or on private phone calls - to make a deal amongst themselves that benefits each other but excludes outsiders in the process who are being marginalized and hurt in the deal and have had no say in this collusion.
Collusion is undemocratic and unhealthy when striving for a fair and equal democracy but at the same time very common-place in narcissistic capiitalist environments where greed and selfishness rules. The corruption, pathology, and toxicity of collusion needs to be made transparent in a healthy democracy.
This is where 'Narcissistic - everyone for themselves - Capitalism' needs to evolve into a more humane and environmentally friendly form of 'Democratic-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism.' How do you have a democratic country when the economic and business philosophy and foundation of the country - in both Canada and The USA - is authoritarian; not democratic? It is my opinion that the best companies generally make significant use of some sort of compromised attitude - where workers with less authoritative power still do get well-heard and properly respected for their individual opinions, even if it does goes against the Corporate Status-Quo.
DGB Philosophy intends to put more and more ideas forward over time relative to what kind of changes might be needed to turn Narcissisitic Capitalism into a more Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential form of Capitalism.
Again, some innovative, enlightened companies have already moved in this direction. Perhaps we can do more. Correction: We need to do more.
Narcissistic (Conservative) Governments and Narcissistic Big Business are often too interconnected in ways that are collusive and non-transparent to the general public.
So too are narcissistic Liberal-Socialist minded Governments who often spend to much time behind closed doors with 'socialist, special interest, lobbyists). Again, 'political-special' interest collusion can result.
When two out of three groups of people have their hands in the 'money-pie' and the third group of people is being marginalized, left out of the equation, uninformed or misinformed, their money in effect being fraudulently used and/or stolen - it is time to start charging and/or keep turning over the politicians who keep practising 'collusion, corruption, and dirty politics' - and likewise in the world of business.
Corporate greed and gouging - including unions - will never be brought under reasonable control until it is confronted by the people being gouge.
DGB Philosophy has important humanistic-existential elements of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm in it, but also important elements of Adam Smith, John Locke, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and my Corporate father in me to run away from my evolving integrative form of idealistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential capitalism.
I -- and hopefully you -- want the workplace to be a place where people are happy to go to and work in; not 'alienating prisons' that people are running to get away from.
We are all guilty of this corruptive mess called politics because we keep letting our politicians get away with fraud - and don't do anything about it. These practises will continue until 'dirty politicians' finally start going to jail. These same politicians would send you or I to jail in a heart beat for conducting the same type of business so why do we continue to let our politicians get away with the illegal behaviors they would send us to jail for?
Why do we allow political narcissism and hypocrisy bring down our democratic nation? We can sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can do more to not let politicians get away with 'the dirty stuff' they get away with. Democracy starts with the people and ends with the people and how willing they are to be politically active.
When 'Big Government' and 'Big Business' become an end in themselves where huge amounts of money come from the people and don't go back to the people, when the middle and lower class get marginalized, abandoned, and gouged...it is time for the people to take back their government from the politicians who are running it corruptively - or to keep putting new politicians in their until the situation improves. If we continue to do nothing about this situation, then we at least partly deserve what we get - a corrupt government. ('Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.')
Accountability and transparency - these are 'buzz words' that we hear all the time from politcians themselves, especially those on the election circuit. But until politicians start meaning what they say and saying what they mean, until we actually start seeing the types of ethical changes that politicans continually preach about, words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Maybe we should have 'politicians on probation' for one or two years before they are elected in for longer terms.
The more politicians have to answer to the people, the more they behave themselves. They are like athletes - the longer the contracts they get, the less they perform and the more they misbehave. Shorter 'contracts' might breed better politicians.
Politician cannot be trusted to be left alone -- or in cahoots with Big Business or Big Union or Big Socialist Special Interest Groups -- to function in the dark.
Because then the darker side of human nature will take over. Human narcissism - greed and selfishness - will prevail. Hobbes, Machiovelli, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and William Golding (the writer who wrote 'Lord of The Flies'), will be shown to have been the best judges of human nature - i.e., those that wrote about the darker side of human nature or human behavior, because unconfronted, the darker side of human nature or human behavior will rule.
We need a new vision, a new spirit, a new idealism, a new code of ethics. We need some new Enlightenment Philosophers, some new Romantic Philosophers (to compensate for the Enlightenment Philosophers), even some new 'Grand Narrative' Philosophers to compensate for all the 'Post-Modernist' and 'Deconstructionist' philosophers these days. (That is, we need 'Constructionist Philosophers' as well as 'Deconstructionist Philosophers'.)
I know this is asking a lot but we need a fascimile of a new Jefferson, a new Franklin, a new John Locke, a new Diderot, a new Voltaire, Montesque and Tom Paine...We need a new Renaissance. We need a new culture not based strictly on personal narcissism...and we need more people worried about the state of the planet we live on.
We need more idealists who say what they mean and mean what they say - and don't use their 'professed ideology' as a way of winning votes from the public, then do what they want and bend their ideology to their hearts content once they get into power for however many years. The Canadian - and I assume the American - people are sick and tired of 'fraudulent ideology' whether it comes from a politician and/or a businessman.
The paradox of the situation is that Corporate America - while trumpeting the virtues of 'individualism' and the pursuit of 'The American Dream' - are far too often helping to squash this type of idealism and reality. That's what Marx called (fake, narcissistic capitalist) ideology'. (He just called it 'ideology'.)
The '30 hour work week' - a projected idealistic vision back in the 70s and early 80s - is looking more and more like a '50 and 60 hour week' for many today trying to balance their 'expense and stress-laden budget as they strive to just break even without collapsing from exhaustion. (I am presently working a 55 to 60 hour work week in a stress-laden dispatching job so (projectively) I know something of what I am talking about. And there are many, many others who have it much worse than me. At least I make enough money to partly justify my hours even if the rest of my life is paying for it. This past two months - December and January - a 40 hour week would not have come close to meeting my expenses.)
We need to keep encouraging the work of social-political activists like Lou Dobbs even if we don't fully agree with all his opinions. He is offering a new form of political idealism and economics - he calls himslf a 'middle class populist' which I like the sound of. I also like many of his ideas, his delivery, and his courage to not water down or sugar coat his delivery. More power to him!
- dgb, jan. 19th, 2008, updated jan. 26th, 2008 updated again Dec. 16th, 2008.
I found this site on the internet full of quotes that I like. (See below for some of them.)
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Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
-
Milton Friedman, PhD, Nobel Laureate, 1912-2006: Rest in Peace.
"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." - Milton Friedman
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." -Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p479
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans
"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist no. 51.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." - Thomas Paine
"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency." - James Bovard in Voting is Overrated
(See the internet site for these and other similar quotes...just google the title: 'Eternal Vigilence is The Price of Liberty')
Monday, December 15, 2008
Parmenides Poison Revisited and Updated: 'Who Says The Sophist and The Trojan Horse Are Dead and Buried In Mythological Greece?'
There are some philosophers in the history of Western philosophy -- reputable philosophers -- who seem to have had virtually no other purpose in their philosophy and in the history of philosophy than to mess other philosophies and philosophers up! Call these philosophers the 'mind-benders'.
The 'Sophists' come most quickly to mind -- ancient Greece's version of the modern day lawyer -- great at debate, great at rhetoric, but philosophical mercenaries, willing and able to take any philosophical position and argue it with equal vigor and passion.
Within this school of philosophy, it is not the philosophical position itself that matters; it is winning a philosophical debate with superior argumentation, logic and rhetoric that matters.
Here the main philosophical point of view is not that 'Knowledge is power.' But rather that, 'Rhetoric is power.' We have also heard the expression, 'Money is power.' A connection can be made here: In the modern legal world, more money buys superior rhetoric ( a better lawyer) which in turn wins power (getting the type of judgment you are looking for)!
By association of philosophical position, today's modern day lawyer is basically the equivalent of Ancient Greece's Sophist -- no arguing the superiority of their rhetoric, just sometimes their integrity and the fact that you can never be sure that what they are trying to sell you is truthful knowledge -- or the illusion of truthful knowledge all wrapped up in a nice package and bow in order to seduce you and manipulate you into thinking you are gettng something 'good' and 'right'.
Until you open the package. Here the association can be made not only with today lawyers but also with today's marketers and advertisors. Again, just because you are getting a very 'sexy' package, doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to like what you get inside the package. The package might be full of worms - or the equivalent.
And now we come to Parmenides -- perhaps the biggest mind-bender in the history of Western philosophy, made worse by the fact that he strongly influenced Plato's pathological theory of epistemology. Thus, Parmenides pathological epistemology became Plato's pathological epistemology, almost as though through a process of osmosis. 'Plato -- you got seduced and reeled in by the equivalent of a Sophist...Someone who sold you on a nice sexy package -- or a nice lure -- and then reeled you in, hook, line, and sinker.'
We have lots of those types of people today. Yesterday's Sophist is today's Narcissistic Banker, Mortgage Lender, and CEO on Wall Street -- the type of person who sells you on a sub-prime mortgage rate, and then reels you in hook, line, and sinker, with those nasty 'Trojan Horses or Viruses Hidden Deep in The Bowels of The Mortgage Contract' that will come out of their hiding place a year or two later -- and effectively, kill you.
The virus is hidden in the fine print.
The virus is hidden in that sexy website.
Home of The Identification Thief.
21st Century Narcissistic Capitalism Comes All Wrapped Up In A Nice Sexy Package...
But The Integrity is Gone...
Gone in An Illinois Moment...
Everything Has A Bargaining Price...
How Much Is This Illinois Senate Position Worth To You?
It's Up For Auction To The Highest Bidder.
Ain't Democracy Sweet!
President-Elect Obama, you have your work cut out for you.
Don't compromise your integrity.
America is counting on you.
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Who Said The Trojan Horse Is Dead and Buried In The Archives of Mythological Greece?
No, The Trojan Horse is Very Much Alive and Being Used Over and Over Again In America.
And Canada.
Indeed, All Around The World.
Narcissistic Capitalism is full of Sophists -- and Trojan Horses.
The Trojan Horse -- and Virus -- Is The Favorite War-Toy of Sophists.
Watch out for the package!
Cause its What's In The Package That Counts!
What's Inside The Sexy Package Is What Will Kill You If You Are Not Careful
What You Are Opening...
Or How You Are Opening It...
The Worst Of The Sophists...
Operate With Trojan Horses...
Or Operate Inside Trojan Horses...
'America, Watch Out For Trojan Horses...
And Viruses...
They Will Kill You...
Even As They Smile and Wink At You...
America, Beware of The Sexy Package!
It Could Be a Trojan Horse!
Or Contain a Trojan Virus...
That Will Steal From You, or Sabotage You...
Someone From Africa or England Will Tell You, You've Just Won a Hundred Thousand Dollars...
And Tell You Where To Send All Your ID Information...
In Order To Collect Your Winnings.
Who Says That Sophists and Trojan Horses Are Dead and Buried in Mythological Greece?
Sophists and Trojan Horses are A Part of our Heritage,
Just Like The Boston Tea Party...
Sophists Are People Who Will Tax You and Tax You...
And Not Tell You Where Your Tax Money is Going To...
Sophists Are People Who Will Gouge You and Gouge You...
And Call It 'The Free Market' -- 'Don't Regulate The Free Market'...
Cause That Is How The Monopoly Sophists Gouge You...
Sophists Are Bankers Who Will Service Charge You and Service Charge You...
And Hide The Service Charges In Bank Books That You Don't Get Anymore...
In Chequing and Savings Accounts That You Don't Get Any Interest From Anymore...
The Sophist and The Trojan Horse Are Very Much Alive and Living in America.
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Back To Parmenides..
How do we make sense out of Parmenides mind-bending pathological epistemology that is likely to send anyone to a psychiatric ward who tries to believe in it and abide by it?
Actually, you don't even have to believe in anything Parmenides said in order to start to feel your mind-brain make funny contortions. All you have to do is try to follow his logic -- and the logic of 'epistemological idealism' in all of its many different shapes and forms, and you will probably start to feel those funny mind-brain contortions develop.
So my suggestion to you is, if you want to try to follow with me here, then maybe you better get another coffee like I just did...You may need it. I fully confess that in trying to get into and out of this subject matter quickly, I have bumped across a quagmire of epistemological 'snakes and ladders'.
I was partly expecting this but not totally. I have Wikipedia to both thank and curse for the new twists and turns, ups and downs, that we now have to work through as we attempt to trace epistemology down to some of its ancient Greek roots.
Just look up the term-concept of 'idealism' on Wikipedia and you will start to get a feel for what I am talking about. I will start with my own philosophical distinctions and then we will aim to blend these in with some of the academic distinctions.
Firstly, distinctions can be made between 'ethical idealism' (pertaining to ethics -- values, morals, etc.), 'political idealism' (pertaining to politics), 'legal idealism' (pertaining to law) -- and the type of idealism that we are concerned about here -- 'epistemological idealism' (pertaining to knowledge).
That wasn't too bad. But next up, we run into both a semantic problem and a philosophical complication -- but they both are linked and take us to a good place.
Firstly, the semantic problem. I think about 'epistemological idealism' without looking at the philosophical literature and I think of the 'search for truth'. Ideally speaking, the search for knowledge should be the search for truth.
In other words, the knowledge we learn should be backed and supported by substance, clarity, quality, truth, integrity...What we think and say is true needs to be true, what we think and say 'exists' needs to exist -- in order to be 'epistemologically ideal' in this sense of the term-concept 'epistemologically ideal'. And this brings us right into the lap of our next philosophical problem -- the issue of 'ontology'.
Twice now I have been clotheslined by this complicating factor of 'ontology': once when I was writing my essays on Kant and one of readers -- a student of philosophy and obviously Kant -- clotheslined me with this feedback that I was left scratching my head on and trying to sort through the semantic and philosophical difficulties of what he was saying:
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robertc.enriquez@gmail.com said...
Your conclusion out of this problem is correct but you are forgetting two key parts of Kant's philosophy; which was not by the way the destruction of epistemology! Namely, 1. the manifold of perception which we dialectically correspond with 2. the thing in itself. Note here that that we dialectically would correspond with the thing in itself (in German it sounds like dim an zing; pounded into my head by a visiting German professor who lectured on Kant from the original German). Yet, it is much like the pure platonic forms in that we do not directly access it in its "pure form". I would argue that Kant's entire project was to look at epistemology as a point to start to move forward but again; Kant wasn't arguing the epistemology track he was arguing the ontology track. If you want to attack Kant on epistemology then the a priori is where to start not dialectics. I would argue that Hegel would not have even had a project had he not used the dialectics that Kant set up.
My two cents worth.
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I think there are some hidden -- or not hidden -- gems in this feedback. I don't pretend that I am a Kantian expert and I don't pretend that I completely understood/understand what Mr. Enriquez was trying to tell me in his feedback -- but still it partly led me to here. And here, I think, is a better -- and more knowledgeable -- place than I was at when I wrote that Kantian essay back last year sometime. Others, including Mr. Enriquez, are free to disagree of course.
The second time I bumped into this 'ontology' obstacle was when I looked up 'idealism' on Wikipedia. I'm trying to sort out Parmenides epistemology, and lo and behold, there's that cursed word 'ontology' again. Was I pursuing an epistemological problem here or an ontological problem -- or both?
Or both? Voila! You think with a dialectic philosopher's mind-brain and all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, dialectical solutions jump right at you and bite you in the face.
Of course! Epistemology and ontology have to travel together because they are 'dialectical bi-polarities' -- or 'binary opposites' as Derrida would call them.
The bridge between epistemology and ontology is -- 'truth'.
Let's back up here a bit. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Ontology is the study of 'objects of knowledge' -- it is the study of 'what is real', 'what exists', 'what is being.'
Knowledge pertains to 'concepts' -- to ideas that we carry around in our 'conceptual mind' that is attached to our 'physiological brain'. Thus, it makes full dialectical sense to talk about each and everyone of us having a 'mind-brain' integrated together in such a spectacular dialectic fashion that concepts and brain synapses can live side by side with each other, each supplementing the function of the other.
Physiology, epistemology, ethics, psychology, and philosophy -- all dialectically or 'multi-laterally' united.
Knowledge -- in order to have 'substance' and 'truth' attached to it -- has to have an 'ontological referent' that the knowledge is correctly referring to and attached to.
What good is knowledge that doesn't have an ontological referent attached to it? Knowledge without an ontological referent is not knowledge. It's balderdash. Smoke and mirrors. A mirage. As David Hume would write, take such knowledge and -- 'Commit it to flames!'
Which brings us to Parmenides and 'Parmenides Poison' (my editorial take on his work).
Commit it to flames! Quickly -- before Plato gets a hold of it. Too late. Plato did get a hold of it -- and it ruined Plato's epistemology-ontology just as it ruined Parmenides'.
And since then, these two intertwined epistemologists in the history of Western philosophy -- Parmenides and Plato -- have probably driven thousands and thousands of philosophers and philosophy students close to the 'nut-house' and back. Did Kant and Hegel at least partly fall under their collective spell? It is quite possible. Mr. Enriquez seems to think -- unless I am misinterpreting him -- that there might have been a Platonic influence on Kant's term-concept of 'noumenal world'. Let us see if we can bring some clarity to this issue.
This chair that I am sitting on. Metaphysically (another philosophical snake to talk about at a later date) and assumptively speaking, this chair has an 'ontological existence' in its own right. If I leave the room, assumptively speaking, it is still here in the room that I left. If I come back into the room, unless someone has taken it away, it will still be here when I come back from the other room. If I have a heart attack and die (touch wood that I don't) assumptively speaking, the chair will still be here tomorrow for someone else to sit on and take advantage of its function -- of holding a person who wants to sit down and use this computer.
The chair doesn't need to have either my sensory perception involved and/or my epistemology involved in order for it to have an 'ontological existence in its own right'. Same with everything else in this room. And the same with the birds who are using my birdfeeder outside my living room window. Every object in this room and every plant, animal, and mineral outside my window -- assumptively speaking, using common sense, they all have an ontological existence in their own respective right.
I am not so self-centered as to try to argue that if or when I die, then everything that used to ontologically exist in this room, and everything that used to ontologically exist outside my window -- would then ontologically cease to exist. Maybe for me they would -- but ontology -- assumptively speaking again -- entails an existence of other things in the world beside me that each have an existence in their own respective right beyond the limitations and imperfections of my own sensory perceptions, logic and power of reasoning, and evaluation process.
Ontology -- just 'is'. Now unfortunately, there is another quagmire of snakes here again. A 'Catch 22' -- the age-old 'subjective-objective' paradox that has also driven many a philosopher close to the brink of insanity...A few have gone over...
How can you verify that something exists unless there is someone or something there to verify its existence? Scratch your head on that one. This is presumably about where Kant came up with his term-concept of 'noumenal world' as distinguished from 'phenomenal world'. If you are having trouble finding meaning for these two term-concepts then try my modification of them: 'subjective-phenomenal world' and 'objective-noumenal world'. Kantian scholars may object but here's how I understand these two term-concepts.
I walk across the room to turn down the volume on the radio-cd player. My 50 year old eyes can't find the volume sign. 'Phenomenally and subjectively speaking', the volume sign on the radio-cd player 'does not exist'. But assumptively, noumenally, and objectively, I do know that the volume sign exists. So I curse and I go up to my bedroom to fetch my glasses. I come back to the living room, I look at the radio-cd player, and now all of a sudden, phenomenally and subjectively speaking, perceptually and epistemologically speaking, the volume sign -- does exist! My subjective-phenomenal world meets my objective-noumenal world -- with my glasses acting as the bridge between us. Generalizing, our senses function as the bridge between our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world and objective-noumenal world.
Obviously, it is equally appropriate to argue that our senses are a major part of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world -- and as our senses deteriorate over time, so does the functioning of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological worlds as a 'map' and 'structural-process representation' of the objective-noumenal-ontological world it is supposed to be representing.
Compris?
We keep losing Parmenides.
What did Parmenides say that was so horrifically wrong? What was 'Parmenides (Epistemological-Ontological) Poison?
He said this: that the sensory-phenomenal world we live in -- is an illusion. Try to get your head around that one.
He said that -- and I am paraphrasing: there is a truer and more perfect world somewhere else. (Where? In our heads? In outer space? In the sky? Is he talking about 'heaven'? Exactly where is the perfect world that he is talking about? Parmenides must have been a rhetorical genius because he fooled a lot of people, a lot of philosophers, including one of the most highly respected philosophers of all -- Plato. He lured Plato into his 'spider's web' or nailed him with his 'spider's poison' -- and the rest is history: specifically, Plato's metaphor of 'The Caves' and his 'Theory of Ideal Forms' -- both full of Parmenidean Poison.)
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Parmenides of Elea (Greek: Παρμενίδης ο Ἐλεάτης, early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, his only known work is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In it, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In the Way of Truth, he explained how reality is one; change is impossible; and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In the Way of Seeming, he explained the world of appearences, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of western philosophy.
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Two more final distinctions: 'Empirical Ontology' vs. 'Metaphysical Ontology'.
If you want to 'empirically (subjectively, phenomenally, perceptively, existentially...) verify' that this chair I am sitting on 'ontologically exists', then you just have to visit my townhouse. Come here, knock on the door, identify yourself, and you can empirically verify that my computer chair that I have sat on for the last 5 hours or so to write this essay -- does indeed 'ontologically exist'. You and I can both point at the chair and 'empirically verify' its ontological existence.
However, if you want to argue that 'God exists' then 'sensory-perceptive-empirical validation' does not work. You are going to have to come up with some other form of 'metaphysical (above physics) argumentation' to support your case. You are arguing a 'metaphysical' case if you want to try to convince me or someone else that 'God ontologically exists'.
The same goes with Parmenides. Like Parmenides did, you will have to come up with some kind of 'metaphysical argumentation' to support his case for the type of 'perfect-Utopian-noumenal world' that he was trying to get us to believe in (it worked with Plato) -- shall we just call it 'heaven'? This was a completely metaphysical world that nobody, including himself, could point to or at, in order to validate its 'empirical-ontological existence'.
Now if you want to argue about the metaphysical existence of God, then I will allow you some latitude and flexibility in your argumentation.
But I grant you no such latitude and flexibility with Parmenides Epistemological and Ontological Poison. This was the true illusion -- the true mirage.
What do you do with epistemological and ontological illusions.
Back to the famous words of David Hume.
'Commit them to flames!
Quickly, before they poison anyone else!
-- dgb, Feb. 19th, 2008, modified and updated December 15th, 2008.
The 'Sophists' come most quickly to mind -- ancient Greece's version of the modern day lawyer -- great at debate, great at rhetoric, but philosophical mercenaries, willing and able to take any philosophical position and argue it with equal vigor and passion.
Within this school of philosophy, it is not the philosophical position itself that matters; it is winning a philosophical debate with superior argumentation, logic and rhetoric that matters.
Here the main philosophical point of view is not that 'Knowledge is power.' But rather that, 'Rhetoric is power.' We have also heard the expression, 'Money is power.' A connection can be made here: In the modern legal world, more money buys superior rhetoric ( a better lawyer) which in turn wins power (getting the type of judgment you are looking for)!
By association of philosophical position, today's modern day lawyer is basically the equivalent of Ancient Greece's Sophist -- no arguing the superiority of their rhetoric, just sometimes their integrity and the fact that you can never be sure that what they are trying to sell you is truthful knowledge -- or the illusion of truthful knowledge all wrapped up in a nice package and bow in order to seduce you and manipulate you into thinking you are gettng something 'good' and 'right'.
Until you open the package. Here the association can be made not only with today lawyers but also with today's marketers and advertisors. Again, just because you are getting a very 'sexy' package, doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to like what you get inside the package. The package might be full of worms - or the equivalent.
And now we come to Parmenides -- perhaps the biggest mind-bender in the history of Western philosophy, made worse by the fact that he strongly influenced Plato's pathological theory of epistemology. Thus, Parmenides pathological epistemology became Plato's pathological epistemology, almost as though through a process of osmosis. 'Plato -- you got seduced and reeled in by the equivalent of a Sophist...Someone who sold you on a nice sexy package -- or a nice lure -- and then reeled you in, hook, line, and sinker.'
We have lots of those types of people today. Yesterday's Sophist is today's Narcissistic Banker, Mortgage Lender, and CEO on Wall Street -- the type of person who sells you on a sub-prime mortgage rate, and then reels you in hook, line, and sinker, with those nasty 'Trojan Horses or Viruses Hidden Deep in The Bowels of The Mortgage Contract' that will come out of their hiding place a year or two later -- and effectively, kill you.
The virus is hidden in the fine print.
The virus is hidden in that sexy website.
Home of The Identification Thief.
21st Century Narcissistic Capitalism Comes All Wrapped Up In A Nice Sexy Package...
But The Integrity is Gone...
Gone in An Illinois Moment...
Everything Has A Bargaining Price...
How Much Is This Illinois Senate Position Worth To You?
It's Up For Auction To The Highest Bidder.
Ain't Democracy Sweet!
President-Elect Obama, you have your work cut out for you.
Don't compromise your integrity.
America is counting on you.
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Who Said The Trojan Horse Is Dead and Buried In The Archives of Mythological Greece?
No, The Trojan Horse is Very Much Alive and Being Used Over and Over Again In America.
And Canada.
Indeed, All Around The World.
Narcissistic Capitalism is full of Sophists -- and Trojan Horses.
The Trojan Horse -- and Virus -- Is The Favorite War-Toy of Sophists.
Watch out for the package!
Cause its What's In The Package That Counts!
What's Inside The Sexy Package Is What Will Kill You If You Are Not Careful
What You Are Opening...
Or How You Are Opening It...
The Worst Of The Sophists...
Operate With Trojan Horses...
Or Operate Inside Trojan Horses...
'America, Watch Out For Trojan Horses...
And Viruses...
They Will Kill You...
Even As They Smile and Wink At You...
America, Beware of The Sexy Package!
It Could Be a Trojan Horse!
Or Contain a Trojan Virus...
That Will Steal From You, or Sabotage You...
Someone From Africa or England Will Tell You, You've Just Won a Hundred Thousand Dollars...
And Tell You Where To Send All Your ID Information...
In Order To Collect Your Winnings.
Who Says That Sophists and Trojan Horses Are Dead and Buried in Mythological Greece?
Sophists and Trojan Horses are A Part of our Heritage,
Just Like The Boston Tea Party...
Sophists Are People Who Will Tax You and Tax You...
And Not Tell You Where Your Tax Money is Going To...
Sophists Are People Who Will Gouge You and Gouge You...
And Call It 'The Free Market' -- 'Don't Regulate The Free Market'...
Cause That Is How The Monopoly Sophists Gouge You...
Sophists Are Bankers Who Will Service Charge You and Service Charge You...
And Hide The Service Charges In Bank Books That You Don't Get Anymore...
In Chequing and Savings Accounts That You Don't Get Any Interest From Anymore...
The Sophist and The Trojan Horse Are Very Much Alive and Living in America.
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Back To Parmenides..
How do we make sense out of Parmenides mind-bending pathological epistemology that is likely to send anyone to a psychiatric ward who tries to believe in it and abide by it?
Actually, you don't even have to believe in anything Parmenides said in order to start to feel your mind-brain make funny contortions. All you have to do is try to follow his logic -- and the logic of 'epistemological idealism' in all of its many different shapes and forms, and you will probably start to feel those funny mind-brain contortions develop.
So my suggestion to you is, if you want to try to follow with me here, then maybe you better get another coffee like I just did...You may need it. I fully confess that in trying to get into and out of this subject matter quickly, I have bumped across a quagmire of epistemological 'snakes and ladders'.
I was partly expecting this but not totally. I have Wikipedia to both thank and curse for the new twists and turns, ups and downs, that we now have to work through as we attempt to trace epistemology down to some of its ancient Greek roots.
Just look up the term-concept of 'idealism' on Wikipedia and you will start to get a feel for what I am talking about. I will start with my own philosophical distinctions and then we will aim to blend these in with some of the academic distinctions.
Firstly, distinctions can be made between 'ethical idealism' (pertaining to ethics -- values, morals, etc.), 'political idealism' (pertaining to politics), 'legal idealism' (pertaining to law) -- and the type of idealism that we are concerned about here -- 'epistemological idealism' (pertaining to knowledge).
That wasn't too bad. But next up, we run into both a semantic problem and a philosophical complication -- but they both are linked and take us to a good place.
Firstly, the semantic problem. I think about 'epistemological idealism' without looking at the philosophical literature and I think of the 'search for truth'. Ideally speaking, the search for knowledge should be the search for truth.
In other words, the knowledge we learn should be backed and supported by substance, clarity, quality, truth, integrity...What we think and say is true needs to be true, what we think and say 'exists' needs to exist -- in order to be 'epistemologically ideal' in this sense of the term-concept 'epistemologically ideal'. And this brings us right into the lap of our next philosophical problem -- the issue of 'ontology'.
Twice now I have been clotheslined by this complicating factor of 'ontology': once when I was writing my essays on Kant and one of readers -- a student of philosophy and obviously Kant -- clotheslined me with this feedback that I was left scratching my head on and trying to sort through the semantic and philosophical difficulties of what he was saying:
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robertc.enriquez@gmail.com said...
Your conclusion out of this problem is correct but you are forgetting two key parts of Kant's philosophy; which was not by the way the destruction of epistemology! Namely, 1. the manifold of perception which we dialectically correspond with 2. the thing in itself. Note here that that we dialectically would correspond with the thing in itself (in German it sounds like dim an zing; pounded into my head by a visiting German professor who lectured on Kant from the original German). Yet, it is much like the pure platonic forms in that we do not directly access it in its "pure form". I would argue that Kant's entire project was to look at epistemology as a point to start to move forward but again; Kant wasn't arguing the epistemology track he was arguing the ontology track. If you want to attack Kant on epistemology then the a priori is where to start not dialectics. I would argue that Hegel would not have even had a project had he not used the dialectics that Kant set up.
My two cents worth.
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I think there are some hidden -- or not hidden -- gems in this feedback. I don't pretend that I am a Kantian expert and I don't pretend that I completely understood/understand what Mr. Enriquez was trying to tell me in his feedback -- but still it partly led me to here. And here, I think, is a better -- and more knowledgeable -- place than I was at when I wrote that Kantian essay back last year sometime. Others, including Mr. Enriquez, are free to disagree of course.
The second time I bumped into this 'ontology' obstacle was when I looked up 'idealism' on Wikipedia. I'm trying to sort out Parmenides epistemology, and lo and behold, there's that cursed word 'ontology' again. Was I pursuing an epistemological problem here or an ontological problem -- or both?
Or both? Voila! You think with a dialectic philosopher's mind-brain and all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, dialectical solutions jump right at you and bite you in the face.
Of course! Epistemology and ontology have to travel together because they are 'dialectical bi-polarities' -- or 'binary opposites' as Derrida would call them.
The bridge between epistemology and ontology is -- 'truth'.
Let's back up here a bit. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Ontology is the study of 'objects of knowledge' -- it is the study of 'what is real', 'what exists', 'what is being.'
Knowledge pertains to 'concepts' -- to ideas that we carry around in our 'conceptual mind' that is attached to our 'physiological brain'. Thus, it makes full dialectical sense to talk about each and everyone of us having a 'mind-brain' integrated together in such a spectacular dialectic fashion that concepts and brain synapses can live side by side with each other, each supplementing the function of the other.
Physiology, epistemology, ethics, psychology, and philosophy -- all dialectically or 'multi-laterally' united.
Knowledge -- in order to have 'substance' and 'truth' attached to it -- has to have an 'ontological referent' that the knowledge is correctly referring to and attached to.
What good is knowledge that doesn't have an ontological referent attached to it? Knowledge without an ontological referent is not knowledge. It's balderdash. Smoke and mirrors. A mirage. As David Hume would write, take such knowledge and -- 'Commit it to flames!'
Which brings us to Parmenides and 'Parmenides Poison' (my editorial take on his work).
Commit it to flames! Quickly -- before Plato gets a hold of it. Too late. Plato did get a hold of it -- and it ruined Plato's epistemology-ontology just as it ruined Parmenides'.
And since then, these two intertwined epistemologists in the history of Western philosophy -- Parmenides and Plato -- have probably driven thousands and thousands of philosophers and philosophy students close to the 'nut-house' and back. Did Kant and Hegel at least partly fall under their collective spell? It is quite possible. Mr. Enriquez seems to think -- unless I am misinterpreting him -- that there might have been a Platonic influence on Kant's term-concept of 'noumenal world'. Let us see if we can bring some clarity to this issue.
This chair that I am sitting on. Metaphysically (another philosophical snake to talk about at a later date) and assumptively speaking, this chair has an 'ontological existence' in its own right. If I leave the room, assumptively speaking, it is still here in the room that I left. If I come back into the room, unless someone has taken it away, it will still be here when I come back from the other room. If I have a heart attack and die (touch wood that I don't) assumptively speaking, the chair will still be here tomorrow for someone else to sit on and take advantage of its function -- of holding a person who wants to sit down and use this computer.
The chair doesn't need to have either my sensory perception involved and/or my epistemology involved in order for it to have an 'ontological existence in its own right'. Same with everything else in this room. And the same with the birds who are using my birdfeeder outside my living room window. Every object in this room and every plant, animal, and mineral outside my window -- assumptively speaking, using common sense, they all have an ontological existence in their own respective right.
I am not so self-centered as to try to argue that if or when I die, then everything that used to ontologically exist in this room, and everything that used to ontologically exist outside my window -- would then ontologically cease to exist. Maybe for me they would -- but ontology -- assumptively speaking again -- entails an existence of other things in the world beside me that each have an existence in their own respective right beyond the limitations and imperfections of my own sensory perceptions, logic and power of reasoning, and evaluation process.
Ontology -- just 'is'. Now unfortunately, there is another quagmire of snakes here again. A 'Catch 22' -- the age-old 'subjective-objective' paradox that has also driven many a philosopher close to the brink of insanity...A few have gone over...
How can you verify that something exists unless there is someone or something there to verify its existence? Scratch your head on that one. This is presumably about where Kant came up with his term-concept of 'noumenal world' as distinguished from 'phenomenal world'. If you are having trouble finding meaning for these two term-concepts then try my modification of them: 'subjective-phenomenal world' and 'objective-noumenal world'. Kantian scholars may object but here's how I understand these two term-concepts.
I walk across the room to turn down the volume on the radio-cd player. My 50 year old eyes can't find the volume sign. 'Phenomenally and subjectively speaking', the volume sign on the radio-cd player 'does not exist'. But assumptively, noumenally, and objectively, I do know that the volume sign exists. So I curse and I go up to my bedroom to fetch my glasses. I come back to the living room, I look at the radio-cd player, and now all of a sudden, phenomenally and subjectively speaking, perceptually and epistemologically speaking, the volume sign -- does exist! My subjective-phenomenal world meets my objective-noumenal world -- with my glasses acting as the bridge between us. Generalizing, our senses function as the bridge between our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world and objective-noumenal world.
Obviously, it is equally appropriate to argue that our senses are a major part of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological world -- and as our senses deteriorate over time, so does the functioning of our subjective-phenomenal-epistemological worlds as a 'map' and 'structural-process representation' of the objective-noumenal-ontological world it is supposed to be representing.
Compris?
We keep losing Parmenides.
What did Parmenides say that was so horrifically wrong? What was 'Parmenides (Epistemological-Ontological) Poison?
He said this: that the sensory-phenomenal world we live in -- is an illusion. Try to get your head around that one.
He said that -- and I am paraphrasing: there is a truer and more perfect world somewhere else. (Where? In our heads? In outer space? In the sky? Is he talking about 'heaven'? Exactly where is the perfect world that he is talking about? Parmenides must have been a rhetorical genius because he fooled a lot of people, a lot of philosophers, including one of the most highly respected philosophers of all -- Plato. He lured Plato into his 'spider's web' or nailed him with his 'spider's poison' -- and the rest is history: specifically, Plato's metaphor of 'The Caves' and his 'Theory of Ideal Forms' -- both full of Parmenidean Poison.)
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Parmenides of Elea (Greek: Παρμενίδης ο Ἐλεάτης, early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, his only known work is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In it, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In the Way of Truth, he explained how reality is one; change is impossible; and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In the Way of Seeming, he explained the world of appearences, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of western philosophy.
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Two more final distinctions: 'Empirical Ontology' vs. 'Metaphysical Ontology'.
If you want to 'empirically (subjectively, phenomenally, perceptively, existentially...) verify' that this chair I am sitting on 'ontologically exists', then you just have to visit my townhouse. Come here, knock on the door, identify yourself, and you can empirically verify that my computer chair that I have sat on for the last 5 hours or so to write this essay -- does indeed 'ontologically exist'. You and I can both point at the chair and 'empirically verify' its ontological existence.
However, if you want to argue that 'God exists' then 'sensory-perceptive-empirical validation' does not work. You are going to have to come up with some other form of 'metaphysical (above physics) argumentation' to support your case. You are arguing a 'metaphysical' case if you want to try to convince me or someone else that 'God ontologically exists'.
The same goes with Parmenides. Like Parmenides did, you will have to come up with some kind of 'metaphysical argumentation' to support his case for the type of 'perfect-Utopian-noumenal world' that he was trying to get us to believe in (it worked with Plato) -- shall we just call it 'heaven'? This was a completely metaphysical world that nobody, including himself, could point to or at, in order to validate its 'empirical-ontological existence'.
Now if you want to argue about the metaphysical existence of God, then I will allow you some latitude and flexibility in your argumentation.
But I grant you no such latitude and flexibility with Parmenides Epistemological and Ontological Poison. This was the true illusion -- the true mirage.
What do you do with epistemological and ontological illusions.
Back to the famous words of David Hume.
'Commit them to flames!
Quickly, before they poison anyone else!
-- dgb, Feb. 19th, 2008, modified and updated December 15th, 2008.
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