New and Updated Version...May 13th, 2009...extrapolated from the old, 1979 version...and well, taken much, much further...
Introduction
This is one of those essays that starts in a certain direction with a certain intention in mind, very controlled, very Apollonian, as I attempt to lay the groundwork that takes us from Behavioral Psychology to Cognitive-Humanistic-Existential Psychology. And then something switched. It must have been the mood I was in, something perculating inside me that was coming more from the Dionysian part of my personality. Or call it my 'Righteous-Rebellious Underdog Ego' breaking loose into my essay. Once this happened/happens, gone is my 'Apollonian Objectivity'. Enter a more 'passionate, righteous-rebellious-narcissistic masculine bias'.
I remember going down to The University of Toronto once. To the philosophy section. This wasn't that long ago -- two or three years ago maybe -- most of the students there were about 30 years younger than me. I remember talking to the receptionist there and asking what it would take to get into the Masters Degree Program in Philosophy. I was armed with an Honours Degree in Psychology that was a little old -- about 26 or 27 years old. I would have to go back to The University of Waterloo to dig out my archaic transcript -- which I eventually did that summer.
Still, I remember asking the receptionist what I would have to do in order to have a chance of getting into Masters Philosophy Program there. She said it was unorthodox and problematic for a student to be applying to enter the program without the full contingent of undergraduate philosophy courses, particularly relative to not having a course on 'Logic', etc. She said that I would probably have to go back and take some if not all of the essential courses that the Department of Philosophy would be looking for.
I was thinking of all the time and money that was likely going to be involved here with no guarantee that even the essential undergraduate courses in philosophy would get me into the program. I remember looking at a paper on the wall that was titled...'Writing a Philosophical Essay' by Ronald de Sousa that I took a photo copy of that was very succinct and orderly in its presentation of how to write a philosophy essay...
1. Introduction
2. Exposition
3. Discusssion
4. Conclusion
And I look below and see that I have probably broken all the rules...
My philosophy essays are more like a Gestalt Hot Seat or a Psychoanalytic Session in Free Association...
I start out by mulling around on a certain point or thesis that I intend to write about...
And then something happens...I hit a 'sore point', a point of 'extra-sensitivity', a 'core nuclear conflict' if you will, a 'transference conflict'...and then things start happening very fast...Dionysus meets Apollo in my Central Ego and my more Dionysian emotions start flying...my brain feeds my fingers in a fleury of energy and my fingers type...fast...unedited, unbridled, uncensored...Apollo has lost control of My Central Ego...It is not the way a philosophy essay is supposed to be written...
If anything it is 'experimenting in a different form, style, or way of presenting philosophy'...call it 'DGB Hot Seat Philosophy', or 'DGB Free Association Philosophy', or even 'DGB Soap Opera Philosophy'...It is not the way you are supposed to write a philosophy essay...
This style demands a certain amount of trust on the part of my reading audience. I know that my readers would generally like to know where I am going when I start an essay so that they/you have a decent idea where the essay is going before I get there...
This doesn't always happen. I remember driving around with my dad when I was a kid or a teenager and him not telling me where we were going...sometimes we might just drive...sometimes it might be business...sometimes we might visit someone...sometimes we might end up at the racetrack...every time was a 'surprise'...
Well that is similar to how I write many of my essays, this one here being a perfect example...It might not be 'politically correct', it might not even be 'ethically correct'...but once it gets going, once Dionysus -- my alter ego -- enters the picture and starts wrestling with Apollo or even pushing Apollo out of the limelight, it is likely going to be a more 'interesting' essay.
There is going to be more 'human drama' in the essay...the drama of Enlightenment Philosophy meeting Romantic-Humanistic-Existential-Deconstructive-Post-Modern Philsophy'...the drama of Bacon and Kant and Hegel and Locke and Diderot and Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson and Bertrand Russell and Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa and Nathaniel Branden and Erich Fromm facing off against the likes of Nietzsche and Voltaire and Rousseau and Kierkegaard and Doestevsky and Kafka and Camus and Freuda and Jung and Sartre and Foucault and Perls...
Call it a Jungian trip into 'The Shadows of my Existence' if you wish...
After it is all over, the essay is written in a fleury of keystrokes, and my adrenaline is still pumping...I go to work if it is written in the morning, or I go to bed if it written at night -- my papers tend to be more 'Dionysian' when they are written at night -- it only remains for me to go back and look at how much damage I've done in the essay the next day, the next week, the next month, or even years later...
Apollo is back in the picture running my personality again. How much do I go back and re-write? How much damage did I do to my reputation? How far over the line of 'political correctness' or even 'ethical correctness' did I go? How much of a 'raging firestorm' did I let off in my personality?
Do I leave the essay as it was originally written?
Or do I go back and edit it, taking out the more radical sentences, toning it down into something more 'objective, Apollonian' -- and 'palatable'?
This is my dilemma this morning as I vascillate over going back and reading what I wrote a few days ago. I have already edited it once. Does it need another edit?
I have a remarkable friend who prefers for the time being to stay in the shadows, my longest and most loyal reader who gives me great feedback by email, oftentimes changing or stimulating the direction of the next essay. Occasionally, I've published her feedback. One day, when I have finished writing in Hegel's Hotel, I would like her to take over and build Hegel's Hotel even higher. Her own creative contributions.
Just to let all of my readers know, I have just opened up a new blogsite dedicated to anyone who wants to make a philosophical contribution to, write a philosophical essay for, Hegel's Hotel. Email me your essay. We might discuss editing vs. publishing the essay untouched by my hand. Once I am satisfied that the essay meets reasonable academic, philosophical standards and/or is just clearly and well written, regardless of its style of format, regardless of your point of view, I will post it up on the new blogsite. It's called: Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy: Essays by Supporters, Debaters, Anti-Hegelians...
There are not enough good women-philosophers out there who are publishing their own work, their own essays. Some of the ones that I have read tend to be the most radical ones, writing from a strong 'Marxist-Feminist' background, writing from a perspective of 'marginalization' and 'victimization' and 'Anti-Patriarchal-Narcissistic Bias'.
I will accept this point of view up to a certain threshold, and then I will say 'Balderdash' or 'Horsecrap'!: women are no longer marginalized, suppressed, discriminated against, victimized in the courtrooms of North America; indeed, it is quite the reverse -- they are dominating the Domestic, Family Courts, and they are dominating in cases of 'assault'...both the sexual assault cases and the cases of domestic violence.
So much so that I have stated elsewhere and here that we have already largely switched from a 'Narcissitic Male Dominated Society' to a 'Narcissistic Female Dominated Society' -- not in the Corporate Boardrooms yet nor in all areas of politics and law but certainly in some areas of politics and law -- most specifically in the politics and laws that govern the conduct and conflicts between men and women.
The turning point in this essay below came when I arrived at a brief discussion of the work of Foucault and Derrida -- and the word 'marginalization'.
That touched upon my own emotional sorepoints both relative to my old childhood and teenage 'marginalization' issues with my dad -- both the primary creative visionary idealist mentor of my life and my 'transference unilateral, authoritarian topdog or superego antagonist' (two dominant themes in Hegel's Hotel) -- and with the 'domestic-family courts' in Canada as well as the politics that got these courts to where they are today.
Here are a couple of feedback comments from my friend regarding the present essay...
..........................................................................
Hi...
I've been thinking more about your essay and about your comment.. the new 21st century version of equal rights...the new "matriarchal society" vs. the old "patriarchal society."
As a woman, I can't help but feel disappointed and discouraged that my gender would have to resort to distorted truths, manipulation, and false accusations in an effort to win - in an effort to feel empowered. It is a disgrace to our gender and to what the word 'strength' as a woman should represent. If this type of behaviour has contributed to an imbalance in the judicial system, society should be speaking out, equal rights are equal rights. We need to feel confident in a system that will protect the safety of the victim(male or female) and ensure the accountability of the offender. We need to feel confident in the process! Possibly with the awareness of a more balanced system, maybe more of these issues could be dealt with outside of a courtroom. Do you feel that any steps have been taken to shift into a more balanced state of equality?
You have written a good essay, you have covered an important topic, still maybe a bit sharp but - I get it!
...........................................................................
I will probably do one more editing job on what I have written here...
But for the moment, I will leave it the way it stands...
-- dgb, May 15th, 2009.
.........................................................................
Let's start with the Behavioral model of 'Stimulus-Response'.
This model reflects an 'external locus of control' -- 'control' from an external observer-researcher-analyst-stimulus-variable-manipulator's point of view.
This can be viewed as the 'carrot and stick' game involving 'positive' (pleasure) and 'negative' (pain) reinforcers.
Even a mouse has a brain. It may be primitive and simple compared to a human's more advanced, sophisticated brain, but still, none-the-less, the mouse survives or doesn't survive using its primitive, simple brain. Its brain has a function and that function is to 'evaluate' what is 'good' for it and what is 'bad' for it in terms of its ongoing survival -- and the Darwinian survival of the species.
If I 'shock' the mouse, the mouse is, with about 100 percent certainty, going to pay attention to this stimulus -- and try to make response-choices aimed at getting away from this very noxious stimulus.
Conversely, if I try to 'train' the mouse to do a 'trick' -- like 'running on a 'mouse treadmill' -- by giving it 'food' after it does its 'exercise routine', the mouse is not 'brainless' -- after a certain number of 'repetitions' of this 'exercise routine', and then getting 'fed', it will finally likely start to make an 'association'. Indeed, you might even measure the 'IQ' of the mouse by how fast it 'catches on' to the experimenter's 'exercise on the treadmill in order to get fed' game. Because that's what it is -- it's an 'experimental game'. The mouse has to learn the experimenter's game in order to get fed -- if it wants to continue to eat and survive. The key principle here is the idea of 'associationism' -- the mouse has to learn to associate 'exercising on the treadmill' with getting 'fed'. Once it has learned this game, then the game is effectively over; the experimenter is likely to record the mouse's results -- and then move on to a different game (experiment).
Any university psychology student who has hung around one of these experimental labs for long enough has probably seen the cartoon where the mouse is deemed to be thinking to itself and saying something to the effect of: 'Hah! I have this experimenter trained. I have 'conditioned' him (or her) to give me food every time I go for a little spin on the treadmill. Aren't I smart?'
What I'm trying to get at here is the difference between the external (Behavioral) -- sometimes referred to as the 'objective' but it is not 'objective' because it is based on the 'subjective, cognitive-emotional, phenomenological' -- perspective of the experimenter/researcher vs. the 'subjective, cognitive-emotional, phenomenological' perspective of the mouse (with me taking up this subjective perspective on the part of the mouse).
You say that mice don't think like people. That is true. I am 'humanizing' the 'mental activities' of the mouse in this scenario. But still -- mice do have brains, they do have 'mind-brain dialectic activities', and there is a 'dialectic power game' going on between the mouse and the experimenter. To think that there is not is to be guilty of 'scientific reductionism' -- i.e. to assume that only the 'scientifically controlled manipulations' of the experimenter count in this type of experiment such as whether you use 'food' ('positive reinforcer') or shock the mouse ('negative reinforcer) and probably nothing more than the 'average' time or number of trials it takes to get a mouse to 'run on the exercise treadmill' or 'run through a maze' and 'get it right'. Individual differences -- I apologize if I am wrong but I don't think I am -- are not likely to be highly regarded and appreciated in most Behavioral experiments of this type. Behavioral experimenters are not generally looking to measure the individual 'Association-IQ' of each individual mouse and how long it takes each mouse to figure out the connection between 'treadmill exercise' or 'running a maze' -- and 'getting food'.
But it is there! Without the brain activities of the mouse -- without the 'covert mind-brain dialectic activities of the mouse -- in effect, the mouse 'talking to itself in a primitive way' -- there would be no 'associative connection' -- between 'positive and/or negative reinforcer' and 'conditioned response'.
There would be no 'dialectic power game between man and mouse'. And if one mouse's brain was an exact carbon copy of the last and the next -- then there would be no individual differences in terms of 'time trials'. There would be no 'high' and 'low' IQ mice; there would be no 'super-mice' and 'mentally challenged' mice.
I had a beta-fish for about a year and a half that just died a couple of weeks ago. I called him 'Nietzsche'. He was my 'super-beta-fish'. I bought him with about 4 or 5 other beta-fish which all died within about the first month or so of my having bought them. But Nietzsche just kept on living...and living...and living. I've read that beta-fish can actually live 3 or 4 years...so obvious Nietzsche wasn't the grand 'Superman' of all beta-fish. And obviously, my skills as a 'custodian-researcher-experimenter' of raising beta-fish to see how long I can keep them alive has not been 'perfected yet'. Dr. Meichenbaum says that it takes about 7 years to become an 'expert' at anything -- and I take this as a viable assumption. Every now and then -- maybe once or twice in a lifetime -- there might be the odd Lebron James James or Dwayne Wade or Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby that gets there sooner than 7 years... I don't think I will be a 'beta-expert' -- even in seven years. Maybe a 'Hegel's Hotel expert'...
We graduate from the 'dialectic experimental power games between mice and men' to those between 'men and men'...From shocking mice, we graduate to 'waterboarding'...The same 'behavioral concepts' and my own 'cognitive-emotional-phenomenological' concepts are at work...
We have just added maybe another variable -- the variable of 'ethics'. The variable of 'ethics' was always there -- even in the experimental lab with 'shocking mice' -- but its just that not as many people cared/care about the ethical issue here. The tendency is for it -- meaning the issue of 'ethics' to reach a larger medium and 'consciousness of the people' when we are talking about 'experimental dialectic power games' between men and men. Or between men and women of different skin colour. Or between men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, Christians and Muslims, Republicans and Democrats...'Either/Or'....This can be the scurge of mankind...the scurge of 'Interpretive Reductionism', 'Evaluative Reductionism' and 'Ethical Reductionism'...
Let me be clear on this next point. Behavioral Psychology -- as much as I don't like it -- does have some benefits for individuals and society. It can help us to 'eliminate self-destructive behaviors' and/or 'reinforce more productive, self-enhancing behaviors'. And/or 'reinforce behaviors that are more in line with the values and laws of society'. Or conversely, 'discourage and hopefully eliminate, minimize, and/or downplay behaviors that are not in line with the values and/or laws of society.
But once again some key ethical issues rise to the top. Who is 'The Grand Conroller'. Is it 'Big Nurse' in 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest'? Is it Bush and The Republican Party ('Waterboarding' is in.)? Or is it Obama and The Democrat Party? ('Waterboarding' is out.)
And perhaps it all starts with the ethical issues between 'man and mouse'...
The Dialectic Experimental Game Between Man and Mouse is essentially no different than 'The Dialectic Experimental Game Between Man and Man -- Between Republican Interrogator and Allegedly and/or Potentially Dangerous Prisoner/Extremist'.
You see what trouble 'associations' can cause. If I connect the two words 'Republican Interrogator'...and add the further 'associative connection' who believes in 'the value and ethical okayness of waterboarding', 'the ethical okay of torturing prisoners' (see, I just made another 'associative connection' between 'waterboarding' and 'torture'...)....Now we are left with a couple of more 'stereotypes' such as: 'All Republicans believe in The Value and Ethical Okayness of Waterboarding'...and 'All Republicans believe in The Value and Ethical Okayness of Torture'...Whereas 'All Democrats don't.'
'Associationism' is the root of much human philosophical pathology, psychopathology, and sociopathology...But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
'Reductionistic Either/Or Dialectical Elitist Power Games' are also the root of much human injustice, inequality, and philo-psycho-socio-political-legal-economic pathology.
Who is being marginalized? What is being marginalized? Those are the two most important questions that the highly provocative and controversial philosopher Jacques Derrida asked the philosophical world. On the basis of those two questions alone -- and how he addressed this highly important and ethical matter through his philosophy of 'Deconstruction(ism)' -- in an effort to 're-balance' or 'more centrally balance' the subject and/or issue that he was 'deconstructing' -- should have been more than enough sufficient reason to grant Derrida any Honourary University Degree.
Derrida -- like Michel Foucault (who philosophized around the same time as Derrida)-- in their own separate ways both dealt with the huge, elitist, societal problem of 'marginalization' and its opposite -- 'political-socio-economic-legal-philosophical-psychological pampering and preferentialism'.
It is not a coincidence that both Derrida and Foucualt felt the very intense personal experience of 'marginalization' -- Foucault because of his homosexuality, and Derrida because of his 'Jewishness' and 'Anti-Semitic' laws that were in place where he lived in Algeria...
...........................................................................
From the intenet...Wikipedia...Derrida...
On the first day of the school year in 1942, Derrida was expelled from his lycée by French administrators implementing anti-Semitic quotas set by the Vichy government. He secretly skipped school for a year rather than attend the Jewish lycée formed by displaced teachers and students. At this time, as well as taking part in numerous football competitions (he dreamed of becoming a professional player), Derrida read works of philosophers and writers such as Rousseau, Camus, Nietzsche, and Gide. He began to think seriously about philosophy around 1948 and 1949. He became a boarding student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, which he did not enjoy. Derrida failed his entrance examination twice before finally being admitted to the École Normale Supérieure at the end of the 1951–52 school year.
....................................................................................
It is here that my integrative 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP)' view on 'lifestyle-transference compensations/overcompensations' comes into play.
It is not uncommon -- in fact it is very, very common -- for people to spend a lifetime tying their best to 'metaphorically, symbolically, and/or creatively undo, reverse, and/or master' their worst childhood narcissistic ego-traumacies.
And so Derrida and Foucault -- two of the most provocative, controversial Post-Hegelian, Post-Nietzschean philosophers of the 20th century became friends as philosophers sharing the common bond (at least partly, I surmise) of intense narcissistic-righteous rage (perhaps I am projecting, yes, I know I am protecting but that doesn't mean that I am wrong in what I am interpreting here) against the very personal, individual experience of social-legal-political marginalization and discrimination.
And so their respective philosophies rightously raged -- or at least there was an underlying 'allusion to transference immediacy and narcissistic-righteous rage' in their respective philosophies -- against all 'elitist forms of dialectic-power games complete with reductionistic and discriminative forms of marginalization'.
Just like in the laboratory with mice and men.
..........................................................................
From the internet...Wikipedia...Derrida...
On his first day at the École Normale Supérieure Derrida met Louis Althusser, with whom he became friends. He also became friends with Michel Foucault, whose lectures he attended. After visiting the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium, he completed his philosophy agrégation on Edmund Husserl. Derrida received a grant for studies at Harvard University, and in June 1957 married the psychoanalyst Marguerite Aucouturier in Boston. During the Algerian War of Independence, Derrida asked to teach soldiers' children in lieu of military service, teaching French and English from 1957 to 1959.
............................................................................
Who hasn't felt the stinging negligence of intense marginalization and reductionism -- of being in a room and you might as well not be there?
As a child?
As an employee?
As a woman?
As a person of colour?
As a Muslim?
As a man realizing that you are being charged for an 'assault' that a woman would not be charged for?
As a separated father who is sending thousands of dollars to your 'ex-family', you living in 'the room' of a 'shared townhouse' or a 'basement apartment' barely being able to come up with the $500 per month it takes to pay for this room -- while half your paycheque is going to support your ex-family in what used to be your shared four-bedroom house; you watch your ex-wife and kids go on an all-paid trip (by you) to the Carribbean while you bicycle to work each day because you can't afford a vehicle or a taxi; and the government who you would like to think is at least partly looking after your interests won't even let you declare any portion of your thousands of dollars -- half your income -- that is going to your ex-family as an income tax deduction -- no, you might as well simply declare yourself as 'single'?
As a man looking up at a judge -- a female judge (with everyone else in the courtroom besides you and your lawyer also being female) -- and hearing that you 'need to plead guilty and take an anger management course to prevent you from getting a criminal record? And you look over at your ex-girlfriend in the court room, playing the role of 'female domestic victim to a T' and you shake your head, realizing the absurdity and the hypocrisy of the whole matter; you think back to how she came charging into your bedroom that night, Father's Day -- yes, that's right your bedroom because you had been sleeping in separate bedrooms for going on a year by then, the relationship was essentially over, it just needed the final nail in the coffin -- and this was it; how you told her you were leaving her but you made the mistake of staying in the apartment after you said this -- big mistake! -- and then there was the 'hang-up' at the apartment just moments after you had come home early from work that day sick as a dog with the flu, fluids dripping out of your nose like a faucet...And you retreated to your bedroom, she came charging in after you like a bull in a china shop, red as a firecracker, and going off like one too, going ballistic, going postal -- and who had/has the anger problem?; and she finally says that one thing too much, that one thing designed to push your last button -- and it works...you finally lose your temper, you push her out of your bedroom with the intent of locking the door behind her so you can have some peace and quiet and privacy -- and she pushes her way back in -- you push her back out, a little further this time, she falls into a chair, with your momentum obviously, bruises her shoulder, she says 'Get out before I call the police, and like an idiot you respond, 'Go ahead, call the police.' And she does...And the rest is standard 'domestic violence protocol'; the police come, you pushed her first so you are guilty, you are led away in handcuffs, the one and only time it has happened to you in your life, your spend Father's Day in the local police station jail, learn what it's like to try to sleep on an aluminum bed with a light shining over your head, the concrete floor beneath the bed was better but just as you are falling asleep the police woman (she didn't sound like a woman; she looked and sounded the part of 'Big Nurse' from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest') screams at you to get out from under the aluminum bed where she could see you (that was very similar to 'electric shock therapy', by this time you/I could fully identify with Jack Nicholson -- and the 'mouse'...); and you learn what is like to go from a jail to a domestic-criminal court in a 'police paddywagon' (more aluminum and/or concrete...your/my memory is starting to fail me a little here...); and after waitng a half day in a courtroom jail with a group of men of similar and/or different charges...some 'experienced'...some like me 'rookies'...you finally get into the bailroom court hearing (another female judge) and you hear that same 'masculine-female voice again' lecturing you about whatever she was lecturing about -- how you couldn't go back to what used to be 'your house', how you couldn't be within so many yards of her, how you couldn't phone her -- not that you/I wanted to, or had any intentions whatsoever of ever seeing this woman again in your/my life...and then finally a year or so later...thousands of dollars later...you finally get to the negotiated aggreement...?
And sure you learned something -- like not to physically push a woman, that's obvious -- but you think back to the time when your were running out the apartment door to get away from her and she came running down the stairs to grab you hard by the ear (Wasn't that an assault? Would anyone have taken me seriously if I had called this 'assault' in? Or would some police officer have laughed at me? Not that it would have ever gone that far...Men don't report the women who assault them -- unless she's maybe got a butcher knife waving in front of your face...I've experienced that one...(Shouldn't have confessed a 'one night stand...) Looking back at it now, I should have reported the night the ex involved in my courtcase told me 'she would cut me up in bed if I told her I was leaving her' -- I guess I have to thank her for just calling the police on me...One thing else I certainly did learn from this adventure... I was through with emotionally volitile, potentially violent women...I have myself a nice 'cool, calm, and collected girlfriend' of 9 plus years between us...and nary a 'domestic problem between us' -- well, at least one acted out physically...I learned...Thou shalt not touch...in anger no time...in sensuality and/or sexuality...well, know fully who you are touching...and/or be safe...ask before you touch... or safer still...don't touch at all...at work the 'no touch policy' is strictly in effect...don't touch or risk a call to the 'touch police'...
And the prospect of your life, career, and family being torn into shambles...a man looking for a job with no one wanting to hire you...just pin a label on your forehead...I am a sinner...I touched...Treat me like Spinoza...Ex-communicate me...Socially isolate me...Economically destroy me...Destroy my family...I deserve it...I touched...And if you are a taxi driver...don't do it, guys, don't touch...even if she touches you first...take a phone number...take her home...especially if she is drunk or disabled...don't go there...even if she picks up your hand, takes one of your fingers, and slides it into her mouth....take her home or take a phone number...or live to regret it the next day when the 'historical revisionism' sets in...and your life on fast-forward to self-destruction...
Sorry, I got carried away...
But I feel better now...
Another one of those essays that goes spiralling out of control...
Lost in a memory of a Dionysian moment...
When it was supposed to be such a nice, Apollonian paper...
How'd we get onto the subject of 'marginalization'?
Oh yes, the 'mouse being marginalized by the experimenter'...
Mouse are people too, you know...
Or at least they deserve to be treated like people...
Or the next thing you know...
You are talking about 'waterboarding'...
And the lost men's civil rights in the courts of North America...
Enough for today.
May 13th, 2009. (as we approach Father's Day)...
Post-Script
Oh, yes, fathers...
Fathers -- particularly separated fathers -- too need and deserve our compassion and respect...
Take a moment for the marginalized separated fathers in North America...
Too often they get stereotyped as 'Dead Beat Dads'...
How about paying a little more attention...
To these 'Dead Beat Anti-Separated Father Laws'...coming from the 'bombardment' of literally hundreds of highly biased and often overly narcissistic and righteous feminist groups...with no 'men's family rights groups to properly counterbalance them'...This is the danger and pathology of both 'Special Interest Lobbyist Groups' -- no counterbalancing groups to prevent them from doing what they do to get to the politicians, the taxpayers coffers, and the law books...
I say this again...Lobbyism as it is currently practised in both America and Canada is a socio-pathological process. All political forms of lobbyism need to be thoroughly investigated and reconstructed under new, more democratic-dialectically equal laws...
Again, as we approach Father's Day,
Let us take a moment to appreciate those hard-working separated fathers,
Who are making their support payments...
And who are seeing and/or talking to their children...
And who deserve our fullest compassion and encouraging support...
Not more and more philosophical, political, legal, social, and economic...
Marginalization.
Second Post-Script
And while you are at it...
Take a few moments...
For those philosphers, writers, journalists, politicians...
Who dare to be 'politically incorrect'.
At the same time remember also,
Just because I trumpet or champion a particular point of view,
A particular perspective,
A particular paradigm,
Perhaps an overlooked or marginalized,
Point of view, perspective, paradigm,
This does not mean...
As Alfred Adler used to always say,
That things can't also be different...
And/or that the laws sometimes,
Aren't doing exactly what they are supposed to do,
Protecting women's civil and family rights,
Like they are not now properly protecting men's civil and family rights...
The pendulum of justice swings too far one way...
Then over time, and much 'special interest protesting'...(hundreds of feminist groups pounding Ottawa and Washington...)
The pendulum swings back only to swing too far the other way,
Towards the overprotection of women...
And the underprotection of men...
Men, speak up...or don't cry or whine...
When your turn may come,
A false move,
In a Dionysian moment --
With or without encouragement and/or provocation,
And your life is in shambles...
As you try desperately to get someone to hear you,
Defend you, defend your own civil rights...
And no one is listening...
Like the sound of one hand clappin'
It just is not happenin'...
And in the end we all have to partly...
Share the blame...
For not speaking up...
For not speaking up against...
Civil rights that we are losing...
Innocent until proven guilty?
Or guilty until proven innocent?
Ask any man who has been through the present process...
And ask what they think...
Then judge for yourself.
'The squeeky wheel gets the oil.'
No squeek, no speak, no oil...
And women have to decide too...
Do they want men with testosterone flowing through their arteries?
Or do they want effeminized men, legally castrated 'Stepford Men', Apollonian men who function from the neck up, who have no erotic-romantic passion flowing from their hearts, who have no sexuality dripping from their pores, because they left it all behind...they left it on the courtroom floor...or rather their passion and their sexuality and/or their sense of being a family man, an important contributer to the welfare of your children, was bled out onto the floor...by female -- or male --judges (just doing their job as written into the 'new lawbooks') but particularly female judges in the mold of 'Big Nurse' from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'...
You leave this courtroom scenario...
And you either go cuckoo,
You give up, fold your cards,
Attempt to run and hide...
Become a 'Dead Beat Dad'...
Do something really, really stupid...
Like drive onto a set of railway tracks...(That's coming from a story that actually happened...)
Or become a 'Stepford Man', and/or a 'Stepford Dad'...
And lose your passion for what it means to be a man.
Welcome to the 21st century and the 'new and improved version' of -- 'equal rights'.
Welcome to the new and improved -- 'Matriarchal Society'.
Is it any better than the old 'Patriarchal' one?
Say goodbye to the old fashioned, risk-taking 'alpha male' (Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Marlon Brando, Sylvestor Stalone, James Dean, Jack Nicholson...)
Could you ever see Jack Nicholson in a movie saying something like...
'Excuse me, is it okay if I touch you?'...Or
'Is it okay if I kiss you?'
Welcome to our new and improved Matriarchal Society...
Sexuality without bold, risky masculine moves...
Gone with the dinosaur is the male tiger, the male lion...the alpha male...
Instead now, we have men trying to learn the new and politically correct way to make a 'pass' at a woman...
'Do you mind if I touch you?'
'Do you mind if I kiss you?'
How about Zeus and Hera finding a better negotiated settlement here?
Courtrooms should be the place for clear and obvious transgressions,
Or at least allegedly serious ones...
With strong supporting empirical, witness, and/or circumstantial evidence...
And both sides being treated equally...
Both sexes need to fully know that they are going to get a fair shake,
When a pair of police officers walk through that door...
Provocation, intimidation, threats, invasions of personal space, distortion, embellishment, and falsification of victimization claims should all be violations of the law complete with fines and/or possible jail sentences...
We need to get out of the 'either/or' system of justice...
Either you are guilty or she is guilty...
And into a more dialectic system of justice...
Where both could be equally or differentially guilty of similar or different crimes...
For example, one person may be guilty of provocation, threats, and invasion of personal space, the other might be guilty of the first physical transgression...the first push or hit in anger...
There are far too many men being charged with assaults where women are at least partly or equally guilty...
But men are being 'sexually profiled'...because women have hundreds of feminist rights groups bombarding Ottawa and Washington...left, right, and centre...
While men sit around watching hockey games until their turn comes to see that the laws between men and women are radically changing and not in the protection of men...
Still not a peep comes out of the mouths of men...until after they have been charged for the first time and they find out the hard way that no one in the justice system is listening to them except the man or woman he is paying to listen to him...his defense lawyer who says he doesn't think its fair...but he's seeing these types of cases all the time...the laws have changed he says...as he rings up another $5,000 to negotiate an 'anger management program settlement' (another $1,000)...
Gee, I wonder why these courses are full of men? Women don't get angry? Women don't lose their temper? Women don't do stupid things in the heat of the moment -- sexual things or angry, violent things? They just wear their halo to court and play the 'innocent victim'. That is what they are 'coached' to do. And the judge and the government continue to eat up all this narcissistic feminist bullcrap -- not all of it to be sure but significant portions of it that are not being democratically and dialectically challenged by significant groups and members of the male sex that are being victimized...
Do men commit assaults? Of course they do.
Are men being charged and penalized? Most definitely. Now more than ever.
Do women commit assaults? Do they have sexual impulses? Do they make sexual advances? Of course they do. Are they being charged for 'making false advances' when they do? Or for 'historical revisionism' when they can't properly remember -- or don't properly want to remember -- what they did the night before when they were hammered? No.
Thus, men are being sexually profiled by the legal system; women are not.
You don't see the women's jails filling up with more and more perpetrators of domestic violence...
But the men's jails, yes, most definitely...The percentage is huge.
There is only two logical conclusions to be drawn from this.
Either men are the only sex capable of domestic violence and sexual assault (by the new definitions of 'women phoning the police' and 'men not making a pass properly'; or men are being sexually profiled...and unequally targeted..
So let 'The Dialectic Power Legal Games' begin...
Games of 'Marginalization' and 'Elitist, Narcissistic, Authoritarian Domination'...
In reversed roles...
Let the dominatrixes rule!
Games of Marginalization and 'Grab The Money and/or The House While You Can'...
'I'll take the house...and you pay for me living in the house...and the two kids going to university...Hope there is enough money left over for your new girlfriend...Did you say you got another promotion or raise? Great! Look at me as your 'Money Shadow'...I will see you back in court to get my half of your raise or overtime pay...You say you can't live on half your income...I can...but of course I have other revenues coming in too...
Who needs a job or a career when your money ship has come in?
I don't blame women for trying to get proper protection from the law, the police, and the government from narcissistic men who are trying to run roughshod over top of them. But at the same time, I can distinguish the difference between a 'narcissistic feminist' and an 'egalitarian feminist'.
The first one will eat you alive -- especially if she feels betrayed and/or rejected.
The second one will actually care about your rights and dignities and ability to survive in a tough economic, political, and legal world that may not really be interested in properly protecting male civil rights relative to women. But if she is angry enough because she feels betrayed and/or rejected, well, she may eat you alive as well.
The argument behind closed doors is that women need to be protected from narcissitic men; but men don't need to be protected from narcissistic women who will jump all over every advantage that the law will give them...
It is actually somewhat humerous (not to them I imagine) to watch the 'male gold diggers' prey on rich female celebrities...Get those 'pre-nuptual papers signed and legally solid, ladies'...I wouldn't want to see happen to you what has been happening to men for a couple of decades now...Some young stud marrying you for a few months or year...and then walking away with half your money and property...
What goes around comes around...
Gee, maybe we should think about people just logically and legally and ethically being able to keep the money and property that they came into a new relationship with. Wouldn't that make some kind of more logical sense in a world where both men and women are making good money and buying property on their own accord? Why should anyone have to worry about losing the property they may have spent a lifetime accumulating and the money they may have spent a lifetime saving all because the law says that the second you tie that magic knot, your property becomes his, and his property becomes yours.
Who wants to get married under laws like this -- especially if you are the one with the most money and property? Those laws may be appropriate for my parents generation when both started with essentially nothing, my dad worked, and my mom took care of the house and family. But not for my generation where everything is mainly different with both men and women freely working, or capable of freely working, they both likely have careers, of similar and/or different socio-economic status and monetary value, may or may not have property when they are thinking about getting married, and in these days of 'serial marriages' no one should have to worry about losing money and property that they come into a marriage with, having fully earned this property and money by themselves with no help from the 'new spouse'...Common sense combined with ethical Capitalism...
Archaic marriage laws that need to be changed so we don't have 'goldiggers' -- male or female.
Games of 'Submission' and 'Domination'...
Like 'quivering politically correct politicians without any backbone' and 'powerful feminist lobbyist groups' that are walking over top of them.
Like mice and men...
I think I am through.
Maybe I will water this essay down and/or sugar-coat it tomorrow.
I think i might have gotten just a little bit carried away...
Do I feel better? I don't know. Ask me tomorrow. Maybe I will feel like an deranged idiot going off like a loose cannon, a bull in the proverbial china shop...
I don't usually get angry.
But maybe i need a shot of that 'anger management course'.
On a good day, I could teach the course.
It is very simple. If you don't think righteously, then you won't get angry.
But some times you need to think, speak, write, and/or act righteously in order to bring about change -- assuming you can convince people that you are right relative to your righteous claims.
There is a significant difference between being righteous and being right. Hitler was righteous -- and demented. Jefferson was righteous -- and a hero among men. Same with Lincoln. Most of the rest of us stand somewhere in between.
I am through thinking righteously -- for tonight.
Time to give it a rest.
I will let you decide how to judge this paper, where I stand, and what I stand for, good and/or bad -- tomorrow -- or whenever.
I believe in the dialectic-democratic interconnection between egalitarian male and female rights. Period. End of essay.
-- dgb, May 13th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
................................................................................
