This essay was originally written almost a year ago to the day until I freshly modified, edited, and updated the essay today. -- dgb, Dec. 14th, 2008.
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Words and their meaning can be viewed as dialectic, bi-polar projections and extensions of the human psyche -- and the human individual operating in a social field or social context.
This is no different than any other element of human behavior and culture including philosophy, history, evolution, art, science and medicine, religion, politics and more...
Following in the footsteps of G.W. Hegel, the famous German idealistic dialectic philosopher, and many philosophers less famously before him including Anaxmander, Heraclitus, the Han philosophers, and more -- DGBN Philosophy focuses on one particularly important characteristic of the human psyche -- it's 'dialectic' or 'bi-polar' nature.
Dialectic, bi-polar integration is a key, central facet of every aspect of human -- and non-human -- functioning. When functioning properly, it leads to what biologists and psychologists call 'homeostatic balance'. DGB Philosophy synonyms include 'dialectic balance', 'dialectic-democratic balance', and 'bi-polar balance'.
Philosophical homeostasis -- the principle of the mind and body using 'bi-polar feedback' and 'dialectic idealism' in an integrative, partly conflictual and competitive, partly co-operative and socially sensitive fashion to bring about 'cohesive dialectical unity, wholism, evolution, and balance' -- this is what 'Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy' is all about.
The DGBN network of some 30 plus inter-connected blogsites that I am building here of which this is one -- are all meant to focus on the inter-related life -- and particularly human -- characteristics and concepts of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectical realism', 'dialectical idealism', 'dialectical wholism', 'dialectical evolution', and 'dialectical harmony' as a means of describing both the many problems and the many potential solutions to human disharmony, disagreement and conflict.
'Dialectic' and 'bi-polar' as words with meaning can be viewed as being partly synonymous with each other, but 'dialectic' in the sense that I am using it here is the more abstract of the two words. It has a broader range of meaning(s). 'Bi-polar' in the sense that it is being used here has a more specific meaning. Bi-polar as used here means 'the opposite ends of a polarity spectrum such as 'black and 'white', or 'male and female' -- brought together in harmonious or partly harmonious unity and wholism through a successful utilization of the democratic-dialectic negotiation and integration process.
Hegel was arguably the first philosopher to really make the 'dialectic' -- both as a phenomenon and as a concept -- famous. Connected to the idea of the dialectic was the idea of bi-polarity -- not used by Hegel but the semantic connection is readily apparent.
'Thesis' and 'anti-thesis' -- two opposing sets of ideas or philosophies or characterics on opposite sides of the 'polar spectrum' facing off against each other, coming into interaction with each other, both attracting and conflicting with each other...this is the nature of the bi-polar, dialectical encounter.
'Great tension creates great energy' writes Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, but in order for this energy to become focused and harnessed in its most productive fashion, the two conflicting bi-polarities -- ideologies, passions, goals, energies -- have to meet democratically and dialectically to work towards establishing a common, harmonious direction of movement.
Paradoxically, this is both the ultimate achievement and the ultimate failure of mankind.
We can become better at achieving integrative dialectic success stories while leaving more and more of the 'either/or power and control game' behind us which creates more divisionism, alienation, separation, divorce, and war -- than the successful 'win-win, dialectical integrationism and wholism' that we are looking for primarily here.
Words, in this sense, are just another of many various extensions and applications of this repetitive dialectical phenomenon. Like every other element of life, we as humans can either 'win big' or 'lose big' around the dialectical phenomenon of words -- and their dialectic, bi-polar range and focus of meaning. What do I mean by this?
Words and their meaning are dialectic and bi-polar in nature. More specifically, they have both 'narcissistic (selfish) meanings' on the one hand and 'more general, social meanings' on the other hand.
Further complicating this matter is the fact that not only do I have a set of narcissistic meanings for any particular word that I may draw out of the more general, social pool of meaning that might be found in -- let's say a dictionary or in the broader and/or more specific context of everyday social usage -- but so do you.
It is here that the dialectical, bi-polar nature of words may clash and conflict -- just like on evry other projective playground of the human psyche. The human psyche is dialectic or bi-polar. So too, is the meaning of words.
My interpreted meaning of a word does not have to be hugely or oppositely different than yours for the same word. It just has to be a little bit different -- and that can mean all the difference in the world.
How many thousands of communication breakdowns used to happen -- and still happen -- when two people trying to meet up with each other at a particular time and place don't have a cell phone?
What the cell phone allows for in the arena of communication when and where two people are not in the same time and place -- is 'dialectical feedback'.
This may not seem readily important but it is hugely important when two people are trying to meet up with each other and haven't been totally concrete and exact with each other -- let us say before they leave their respective homes -- in terms of the details of their 'time and place' meeting.
The other day I went to work and forgot my cell phone at home. I shared email details over the internet with my girlfriend in terms of our usual time and meeting place at Yonge and Highway 7 at the VIVA bus terminal at 4:45pm. This may all seem simple and straightforward -- until one person doesn't have a cell phone. And then 'little gremlins' start to get into one person's or the other's head if something doesn't go exactly according to the pre-stated plan. One person is late. And the gremlins start to build. Maybe she wanted me to come down to Yonge and Finch to get her at the subway station. Of course, none of these intersections will mean didley squat to you if you do not know the 'actual territory' -- and their relationship to each other -- that my words are talking about. 5 minutes late. 10 minutes late. 15 minutes late. And now the little gremlins have become huge gremlins in my head. Where is she? Yonge and Finch? Yonge and Steeles? She probably turned around and went home when she couldn't get me on her cell phone...One time on another meeting when I did or didn't have my cell phone, she walked up to The Silver City Movie Theatre and walked inside to get warm after waiting too long in the VIVA bus shelter.
You start to get what I am talking about. None of this would happen with cell phone contact -- where you can get your dialectic feedback -- 'I'm still on the bus honey but will be there in 5 minutes - and thus push the little and big gremlins back into their many hiding places in your head to resurface on another day (when you forget your cell phone again -- or become victimized by a different type of communication breakdown).
If you and I cannot 'get it together' on what a word means -- which may entail some amount of greater or lesser semantic specification, asscociation, distinction, negotiation, and integration -- then we 'have failed dialectically to communicate'.
A communication breakdown is a 'dialectical communication breakdown' meaning that you and I both have different 'narcissistic meanings' relative to what a word means in a particular context -- and we are either unaware or ignorant as to this 'narcissistic difference' or we are 'unwilling to compromise' relative to this narcissistic difference.
We may be stuck in a 'Righteous, Either/Or, Power/Control 'One Word-One Meaning' Game. 'My meaning is right; yours is wrong.' 'No, I'm right; you're wrong. Let's look it up in the dictionary. Of course, even dictionaries have multiple meanings for words. And they just get the main, broad, and socially popular ones. The more concrete meanings and finesse meanings and unorthodox meanings, and newer 'sub-culture' meanings, and individual meanings...are all left out of the dictionary. They are the vast array of individual, narcissistic meanings that lay people and technical people use in similar and different contexts with constantly changing ranges and focuses of meaning -- every day, and indeed, from moment to moment.
Words and their vast array of social, group and individual, narcissistic meanings are like 'jellyfish'. They change their shape and size all the time. If individual people in dialogue with each other don't catch these various changes in shape and size, range and focus -- then in many instances they 'miss the boat with each other'. They miss each other's individual meanings in the 'nuance' of something that was said but not meant. Not interpreted in the same fashion that it was meant.
This happens all the time -- with or without cell phones -- but in general, the less dialectic dialogue there is in 'danger zones of easily or even less easily misinterpreted word meanings', the more likely we are to 'go for a communication flip and fall'. Hard angry, and/or hurt, upset emotional feelings are often the result -- particularly in areas of interpreted and/or intended greater intimacy.
Words are simply symbolic extensions of the dialectic, bi-polar nature of the human psyche -- and two or more individuals in a social context. The meaning of words can collide narcissistically in a social, cultural forum -- intentionally or unintentionally -- when people don't give dialectic feedback to each other relative to ambiguous words, abstract words, any type of word that is ripe for potential miscommunication.
Take the time when the time is important to 'come down the ladder of abstraction' and enter into a dialogue of 'association' and 'distinction' around the particular usage of a word -- and even 'pointing' if the circumstances require it.
If I am teaching English to a roomful of people who don't speak English, then I will probably need a lot of 'pictures' and 'concrete objects' and I will probably do a lot of 'pointing'.
This is not a bad thing. Sometimes it is a very important, absolutely necessary thing.
If you want to share the same meaning.
dgb, December 15h, 2007, modfied, edited, and updated December 14th, 2008, unknowingly and amazingly almost a year ago to the day that I originally wrote this essay. Or maybe that's just me.
-- DGBN, December 14th, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain.
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism.
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process...
