It's Friday January 2nd, 2009 and time to pull myself out of holiday celebration mode. Time to save more money rather than spend it although that may not be what our leading economists want to hear. Christmas and New Year's was fun but time to pull in the money belt. And yes, lose 5 to 10 pounds. I bought a new 'Weight Watcher's' Bathroom scale when I was spending on Christmas gifts and got off to a great start checking my weight every morning and losing almost 4 pounds in the first week. But alas, now I am a pound heavier than when I first started recording my day to day weight changes -- 169.2 lbs as opposed to 168.2 lbs My first goal here is just to get back to 165. Let's say two weeks and I will come back to you with the results.
(An update on Feb. 19th, 2009: Down to 164.8 lbs. Some progress but a slow, tedious process and now I am looking to join a gym again. Am I serious or am I kidding myself? If I join, will I go? Or will I just throw another $200 dollars down the drain for another 4 months? That is the question. Don't bother buying a treadmill. Anyone who I see who has bought a treadmill is using it as a coat hanger!)
It is time to get back to good, old-fashioned Protestant work-mode (my parents are Protestant, my dad of Scottish background, my mom of German background).
Time to leave the 'Dionysian festivities' behind and get back into 'Apollo-mode'. Hard work, committment, discipline, and perseverence. Goals set; goals achieved.
My astrological sign is 'Pisces' and I don't usually achieve my goals in the most orthodox, straightforward manner. Sometimes -- I weave and chase other goals -- but I do move forward. Hegel's Hotel is moving forward. I am quite proud of what has been achieved here in 2008. And I love the feedback when I get it. So don't be shy about giving me feedback -- postive and/or negative. It's all constructive. It all helps Hegel's Hotel to move forward -- and upward -- right now, we are aiming for about 60 floors upward. Sometimes your feedback has an impact on the ongoing process, architecture, and overall structure of Hegel's Hotel. So don't be shy...Keep it coming. Keep it coming. This philosophy site is all about the 'dialectic' -- and the dialectic implies at least two people and/or two different perspectives on the same subject manner. Thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis -- that is our most simplified working classical Hegelian, and Post-Hegelian, model.
We seek to identify 'dialectic splits' in Western human history and evolution, then work within these splits -- and aim to integrate the polarities and, in so doing, close the splits, the gaps, the chasms, the abysses -- in human philosophy, psychology, politics, culture, indeed, existence. That is what Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy is all about.
In 2008, we identified a number of different human 'dialectic splits' -- or at least potentials for dialectic splits -- such as the 'Apollonian/Dionysian split' identified by Nietzsche in 'The Birth of Tragedy'. Freud built on a combination of this Nietzschean identified split based on ancient Greek Mythology and Tragedy utilizing also the Hegelian model of 'thesis/anti-thesis/synthesis. Freud's resulting model was his classic 'Superego/Ego/Id' model. Jung followed with a partly similar, partly different model utilizing his concepts of 'Personna' and 'Shadow', and 'Archetypes'. In Jungian Psychology and language, both our Personna and our Shadow are influenced by elements from our 'Collective Human Unconscious' -- more specifically from our 'Archetype-God Figures' that stem from way, way back in our collective, ancient Mythological Human history. These Archetype-God-Figures can be seen to influence the way we operate out of our individual Personna which can be viewed as the main working 'ego-state' of our personality; and our 'Shadow' - the anti-thesis of our Personna, which usually represents darker, more Narcissistic forces from deeper within our usually subconscious or unconscious personality.
We can see that both Hegel and Nietzsche -- and for that matter, Schopenhauer -- had their particular dynamic influences on the way that clinical Freudian and Jungian Psychology was created, and then evolved.
A second major dialectical split in Western Philosophy, Western Culture, and Western thinking can be identified in the form of 'Apollonian, rational-empirical thinking' vs. more 'creative-symbolic-metaphorical-metaphysical-mythological-spiritual-religious thinking'.
Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy aims to do its part in the human evolution process to further integrate this second dialectical split as well. Indeed, this is a top priority in 2009.
With this in mind let us set some New Year's goals and priorities for Hegel's Hotel in 2009.
1. To further integrate 'Apollonian-Dionysian thinking' (in the spirit of Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy' before Nietzsche became 'obsessed and fixated with Dionysus') in the double context of both an individual and cultural-socio-political dialectic-democratic democracy;
2. To further integrate 'Rational-Empirical and Symbolic-Mythological thinking' as historically articulated in the bi-polariity between Enlightenment vs. Romantic-Spiritual Philosophy, and/or before that, in the bi-polarity between Platonic (spiritual-mythological) thinking vs. Aristolean (rational-empirical) thinking;
3. More specifically, to finish my work on 'Language-Epistemology' and 'Central Ego Functioning' as first articulated in my Honors Thesis in Psychology in 1979 and re-built in an updated version that will be our first project of 2009;
4. To finish my work on the rest of DGBN Personality Theory including both 'The Subsidiary Special-Interest Ego States', The Dynamic, Creative, Subconscious Ego', The Subconscious Memory and Transference Template, The Genetic, Potential Self, and a range of individually different, healthy and pathological (or both) Narcissistic Transference Complexes including Traumacies, Compensating Identification and Projection Fantasies, Obsessive-Compulsions, and Serial Behavior Patterns.
5. To start to work more concretely on the different historical stages of Western -- and some Eastern -- Philosophy.
6. To continue with some evolving essays on Politics and Economics.
That is our menu for 2009.
-- dgbn, Jan. 2nd, 2008.
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
