How are philosophy, epistemology, science and medicine, and psychology all connected -- aside from sharing the dialectic evolutionary process?
Let's start with Freud's 'life' and 'death' instinct from Freud's controversial essay, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', 1920.
Freuds' choice of the word 'instinct' is troublesome although that may have more to do with the interpretive translation from German to English than anything. But the word 'drive' is also troublesome. A 'life instinct or drive' is pretty easy to accept -- at least for me. But a 'death instinct or drive' -- that is harder to accept.
I prefer the DGB modified terminology of 'life' vs. 'death' process. This, I can easily work with dualistically and dialectically. Plus it is easily validated or at least supported by modern-day science and biology.
'Oxygenation' is a 'life process'. We need to breathe in oxygen to live, to survive.
In contrast, 'oxidation' (the formation of 'free radical molecules' that cause the decay and eventual destruction of 'non-living objects' as well as 'living organisms' is an automatic 'negative side effect' of oxygenation and is paradoxically -- a 'death process'. An example of this destructive and death process by oxidation is the 'rusting away of cars' that are not properly 'protected' from this 'destructive-death process' happening. 'Erosion' is another example.
And the same thing is happening within each and everyone of our minds and bodies with each and every breath we take. Oxygenation (a life process) is followed immediately by 'oxidation' (a death process).
So Freud -- even 90 years ago (1919-1920), long before Linus Pauling started to introduce to the world in I believe the late 1960s, early 1970s, the idea of 'oxidation', 'free radical theory' and the therapeutic measures of ingesting more 'anti-oxidants' like 'Vitimin C' to ward off this process (Pauling lived into his 90s, so I think he knew what he was talking about -- and his theories, as provocative and controversial as they were back in the 60s and 70s, are pretty well supported and at least partly accepted by the field of science and medicine today.
However, totally independent and yet paradoxically also totally connected to this paradoxical 'dialectical playoff' inside of us between life and death, are the ideas of 'perception', 'interpretation', 'epistemology', 'awareness', 'evaluation' -- and 'action' or ('non-action').
This is where I introduce the idea, borrowed from Fritz Perls of 'the fitting game'.
Life is a fitting game.
Life requires 'good epistemology and awareness'.
'Bad epistemology and awareness' and either or both of two things happen:
1. We fail at what we are trying to accomplish because our information/epistemology is wrong; And/or
2. We die if the consequences of our 'failure to get the epistemology and awareness right' are severe enough.
These ideas about epistemology and awareness -- even before I knew what epistemology was (i.e., the study of knowledge) -- go back to my 1979 Honours Thesis on this subject matter which was influenced by the work of Nataniel Branden, 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem', who in turn was influenced by Ayn Rand and what has more lately been labelled as her philosophy of 'Objectivism'. And these ideas also came from my work in General Semantics (Korzybski, 'Science and Sanity', and Hayakawa, 'Language in Thought and Action'. And these ideas were also influenced my my psychology work at the time in the area of Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis and 'Rational-Emotive Therapy', and Aaron Beck...)
There is a reason why 'getting it right' -- and the related subjective process of 'righteousness' which DGB Philosophy-Psychology, following in the footsteps of Freud and Eric Berne, has 'structuralized' into a portion of 'The Split Ego' -- and called 'The Righteous-Critical Topdog-Ego, or Superego' -- to repeat, there is a reason 'why getting it right' and 'righteousness' is a critical subjective-objective phenomenon in human affairs.
'Wrongness' can mean failure, separation, divorce, bankruptcy, dying -- or a fast or slow -- death. .
Again, I must emphasize the principle of homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance here. Because sometimes -- indeed oftentimes -- 'righteousness' itself can be a problem especially when righteousness is either 'wrong' and/or it is connected to an area where 'individual differences, values and goals reign supreme -- and/or should be tolerantly allowed to reign supreme'. In other words, righteousness can reign supreme in areas which should be more amenable to individual tolerance, difference, taste, values and goals, flexibility -- as opposed to believing that everyone else should live their lives inside and only inside the 'tight box' of our own creation, our own consciousness, lifestyle, philosophy, politics, religion, etc.,
A good working homesotatic-dialectic balance needs to be maintained between 'epistemological righteousness' which is ideally connected to 'being existentially right' on the one hand vs. being 'flexible and tolerant enough' so as not to 'torture ourselves and/or someone else over mistakes that shouldn't matter as much as we make them matter in our own consciousness -- and the verbal/physical expression of this consciousness to whoever we are being 'righteous' towards.
I won't deny it. I can be very righteous at times. At the very least, I need to have a strongly based and accurate epistemology to support my righteousness about things that should matter; otherwise, I am not playing the epistemological fitting game well, or possibly I am making a mountain out of a molehill -- either way, I have no right to be righteous if or when I am wrong or being too intolerant and inflexible in areas where I should be more tolerant and flexible!
Still, being right vs. being wrong can be intimately tied to our individual and/or collective survival and/or destruction/extinction.
It is very important for me to connect my DGB philosophy with my personal experience -- and also to connect 'academic' philosophy with 'pragmatic, day-to-day philosophy' -- so I will relate to you a personal example that most 'philosophers' would not likely write about. (Even Freud hid his personal examples in his use of the 'anonymous third person' in his essays.)
About two years ago, at this time of year, I had what might be called either a 'liver attack' and/or a 'liver breakdown'. Important functions of my liver ceased to function. The 'normal route' of bile from the liver down to the intestines and out of the body -- or re-cycled back into the body -- backed up and started going the wrong direction through all other parts of my body. A 'toxification' of the body if you will which gives the classic symptom of serious liver problems -- 'jaundice' (a yellowing of the skin and eyes) -- which usually shows up about a day after a spherocytosis generated liver attack and/or breakdown and goes away after 2 to 3 days, longer if the problem is more than spherocytosis related.
Into the hospital I went. I was there for the better part of a month about two years ago this upcoming June. They needed to better diagnose what the problem was. To begin with, I have a genetic blood disorder called 'Spherocytosis' which puts extra stress on both my spleen and liver as my 'sphere-shaped red blood cells' (called 'spherocytes') are broken down every so many weeks as opposed to every so many months (because the spleen thinks that they are 'old, already beaten up cells'). My dad has lived to 80 with the disease and hasn't had an attack in about 25years. But he is a non-drinker. I can't say the same.
I have been a 'medium social drinker' for most of my adult life and I have obviously thrown more extra stress onto my liver over the years than I should have. There have been years when I basically didnt drink at all. But there have been other years back in my 30s when I was probably closer to 20 drinks a week than 10.
I don't do drugs, never have, but I do take 'herbs' and I wonder to this day whether there may have been an interaction between the herbs I took that night and the white wine. Herbs should be treated as being similar to drugs -- not usually as strong -- but still interactions between alcohol and some types of herbs may be suspect, maybe I took too much 'hawthorne' -- good for the heart and circulation, I was anticipating having some action with my girlfriend that night and might have overcompensated for the effect of the alcohol.
Three or four capsules was perhaps/probably too much for my already over-stressed liver. This remains a matter of 'epistemological speculation' by me about 'life vs. death processes' at work within my body' without our/my being able to empirically verify what actually was going on inside my liver at that time -- until it was too late, and the attack was under way.
The debate between drugs vs. herbs -- what should be pulled off the shelves and what shouldn't -- is a long and drawn out dialectic debate. Each individual drug or herb should be treated separately. We don't have the time to do it here.
Herbs are no different than prescription medications in that they have to be taken carefully and watched carefully for possible side-effects. And researched for their possible side-effects. If the number of 'drug-influenced' medical crises and even deaths was made truly transparent and democratically public -- I am not sure how many of our standard prescription drugs that we would still have left over or behind the counter. Again, food for more thought and debate on another day.
For me, two years ago, tests were done in the hospital, 'a couple of shady areas in my liver' were detected in the CT-Scan that they didn't know what they were. Two 'ERCPs' were done to make sure I had no 'stones blocking my liver passages'. (I don't think they found any also they said they found some small ones. I don't think that was the problem.)
I've been tested all my life in my previous brief stints in the hospital for one of the most obvious causes of jaundice -- hepatitis. Negative every time. Hereditary spherocytosis is more commonly known now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. But still doctors have to take their precautions before they zero in on my hereditary issue -- and its recent complications.
I am no doctor but I put my liver problem down as being simply a combined problem of 'too much stress on the liver' -- a combination of broken down blood cells to get rid of, the complicating effect of alcohol in the system, and a possible interaction of too many herbs that are putting additional stress on my liver -- all coming together and creating the end problem. There could even be the problem of too much 'iron overload' in the liver, a result of too many broken down blood cells for the liver to dispense of properly. Iron overload in itself can cause cirrhosis of the liver. I just read this off the internet. I will have to run this by the next doctor I see.
But I didn't want a 'liver biopsy' two years ago when they wanted to take a chunk out of my liver to see exactly what they were dealing with. I declined and left the care of my liver specialist and the hospital.
I returned to 'normal' very quickly on a careful diet of fruits and veggies, no coffee, no alcohol, beet juice, organic veggie juice, etc.
And then it is rather obvious now -- that I became too 'epistemologically arrogant or cocky with my improved condition back to feeling like normal again'. Back into the bars again that winter, another spring, summer, fall, and winter -- and on the advice of my family doctor -- another CT-Scan this spring.
Bad news. April 1st, 2009. I now have cirrhosis in the right part of my liver. So much for being 'epistemologically confident, even arrogant'. I was dreading the possibility of the other 'C' word when I went into see my doctor on April 1st. Then I quickly became re-aware that there are two dreaded 'C' words when it comes to talking about the liver -- 'Cancer' is probably the worst, but 'Cirrhosis' is not far behind. I'm working on something like 70 per cent of a 'good liver' right now. Cirrhosis is a 'sneaky disease'. You can feel fine -- symptom-free --through its early stages when you still have significant 'good liver' left to take up the normal functions of the liver. But according to my doctor, once you get down to about 30 per cent of a normal functioning liver -- with the rest 'non-functioning' because of the pathological scars of cirrhosis -- things can turn real ugly, real quickly. Obviously, I don't want to get there to find out.
So when I say that it is imperative in some cases to 'get our epistemology -- and our action -- right', this is the type of individual circumstance I am talking about. If I have another two years like my last two years -- even though I didn't miss a day of work in those two years -- I will probably either be hospitalized or dead within another two years.
Strike One was my last stint in the hospital.
Strike Two was my most recent visit to my family doctor on April 1, 2009.
There can be no Strike Three -- or I am out -- gone to meet the 'Grim Reaper'.
As I said, at times it is absolutely imperative that we get our epistemology -- and our action -- right.
God/Nature only gives us so many chances.
Perhaps I can only say that I have been lucky to be given the chances I have been.
Some people don't even get a 'Strike One' -- before a 'heart attack' or a 'stroke' or a 'traumatic accident' leads to absolute tragedy.
When we are given a second or third chance, we have to 'fully value' this gift from wherever.
Get our epistemology right. Get our action right. Get our lifestyle right.
The older we get -- and sometimes not even -- the more that time becomes a ticking timebomb.
Life, in essence, becomes a race between life and death.
Freud knew it. By the time he wrote 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' in 1919-20, he was about 63-64. Ten years older than me right now. I have to check the timeline but I think Freud probably knew by this time that he had 'jaw cancer' -- caused mainly by his famous or infamous 'cigar smoking'. Maybe his cancer hadn't fully articulated itself yet because he didn't die til 1939, about 20 years later.
But whether it have been the influence of World War 1 -- and soldiers coming back with 'repetition compulsions' from 'war traumacies' and/or Freud's increasing awareness of the 'finiteness' of his own existence, Freud's 'life vs. death' principle didn't come out of nowhere.
It came out of the essence of existence.
I support this theory, not in its Freudian entirety, but in its paradoxical, dialectic and existential essence.
-- dgb, April 6th, 2009.
