A concept in Anaximander's ancient philosophical system -- 'The Apeiron' -- that has largely been ignored for 2500 years, is suddenly starting to capture more present-day attention, and for good reason. It is an important evolutionary idea, and also has some important connections to present-day personality theory.
Think of Darwin for a minute and his idea that 'functionally extreme' genes -- like a giraffe's long neck -- will become the 'norm' after generations and generations of breeding because the 'giraffes with the longest necks' will be the giraffes that can get to the furthest leaves in the highest trees and thus have an evolutionary advantage over giraffes with smaller necks.
As appealing as this Darwinian idea may seem for some of us on the surface of things, it does not stand up to tests of either deeper logic or observation -- i.e., particularly, the actual observed evolutionary history of giraffes.
A nice little essay that you can find here, http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic10/giraffe.htm
pretty well kills the speculative Darwinian notion of how giraffes actually came to have long necks.
Evolutionary theory -- to the extent that it actually 'fits' with the way the world works both inside and outside of us -- is much more complicated and wholistic than any argument that Darwin presented to us. And it is not limited to strictly 'genes'.
Anaximander can be viewed as an 'evolutionary theorist' -- the first in known Western history -- in a number of different ways. For example, Anaxamander believed that man evolved from 'fish' which is probably every bit as true as Darwin's belief that man evolves from 'apes'. In fact, man probably evolved from 'amoeba' -- the simplest known organism on earth. Indeed, it would seem that every more highly complex organism has evolved from less complex organisms 'below' it in the evolutionary chain of life.
However, we have to be careful how we define 'evolutionary intelligence' because in the end it may turn out that even 'cockroaches' and 'viruses' may have more evolutionary intelligence than man.
The degree of 'complexity' of an organism does not necessarily increase its likelihood of survival. Sometimes more 'complex' organisms can be defeated, taken down, by less complicated organisms such as a man or woman dying to a virus.
Having said this, Anaximander offered us some very primitive but at the same time sophisticated ideas about evolutionary theory that still have relevance today.
Anaximander gave us our first primitive -- but sophisticated -- look at 'Chaos Theory'.
Let us imagine a theatre that has both a 'main, front stage' and a 'behind the curtains, back stage'.
So it is with life, argued Anaxamander. Life originited out of 'The Shadows' -- 'the back stage of life' -- which Anaxamander called 'The Apeiron'.
The Apeiron is a swirling mass of 'undifferentiated opposites' that eventually start to become 'differentiated', particularly into 'opposites' that make their way onto the main stage of life -- which is what we now call 'The Universe'.
Now I am not saying that this was all laid out clearly by Anaximander in the exact same manner that I am trying to lay it out clearly here, but Anaximander certainly laid down the foundation for this type of 'dualistic and dialectic evolutionay theorizing'.
So let us imagine that the Universe (the main stage of life) has as its backdrop -- The Apeiron (the backstage of life).
The Apeiron -- the Chaotic Shadows of Life -- send into the Universe a swirling mass of 'differentiated opposites' that 'compete' with each other for time and energy on 'The Main Stage of Life'.
From these 'competitions' for time, energy, and attention in The Universe emerge 'winners' and 'losers'. The winners stay on The Main Stage of Life; and the losers retreat back to The Apeiron -- the background Shadows of Life to 're-energize' looking for new ways to 'mutate' and 'evolve' so that when they come back onto the Main Stage of Life again, they do so with 'increased power, intelligence, and energy' -- with the goal of 'overcoming' their 'opposite nemesis' -- the opposite characteristic that 'defeated it in battle' the first time the two appeared together competing for energy, time, and attention on The Main Stage of Life.
And when the previously 'losing entity or characteristic' gathers enough energy and power in The Apeiron to 'overcome' and 'defeat' its opposite entity or characteristic on The Main Stage of Life -- the same entity or characteristic that defeated it before, well, a that point in time, you have a 'reversal of fortunes' and the previous winner now becomes the loser and has to retreat back into The Shadows of The Apeiron looking for new ways to find more 'intelligence', 'power', and 'energy'.
In the poetic words of Anaxamander,
.....................................................................................
From Wikipedia, Anaximander
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Simplicius mentions that Anaximander said all these "in poetic terms", meaning that he used the old mythical language. The goddess Justice (Dike) keeps the cosmic order. This concept of returning to the element of origin was often revisited afterwards, notably by Aristotle,[20] and by the Greek tragedian Euripides: "what comes from earth must return to earth."[21] Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, stated that Anaximander viewed "...all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance."[22] (Wikipedia, Anaximander)
..........................................................................................................
This is an exciting -- 'modern' -- way of looking at both evolutionary theory and energy theory.
From a mythological and/or religous perspective, it as if our Creator -- 'God' or 'The Gods' -- were bored with their life, took all the 'harmonious, wholistic' pieces of life, and started 'chopping them up' into 'opposite pieces'. It was like a 'Humpty Dumpty' board game in which The Gods chopped Humpty Dumpty into a practically infinite number of 'opposite and opposing pieces' -- and sent them into the Universe in 'fragments' and in 'disarray'. It was like a game of 'Scrambles' in which The Gods sent 'trillions of little opposing pieces of life' swirling into The Universe with the purpose of 'finding' each other and 'regaining wholism, unity, and harmony'. To which we now give the name 'homeostatic balance'.
Now according to this 'Multi-Dialectic Theory of Evolution and Energy' to which I am now extrapolating from Anaximander's foundational roots, in a mythological sort of way, we can distinguish between both different types of 'evolution' and different types of 'energy'.
For example, we can differentiate between 'unionized evolution' and 'individuated evolution', as well as between 'constructive evolution' and 'deconstructive evolution'.
Molecules come together and tear apart. Molecules 'construct' and 'deconstruct'. So too do people. And so too do ideas, lifestyles, theories, philosophies....
Energy is conserved and it is recycled. It is 're-distributed'.
Energy begins in The Apeiron and it ends in The Apeiron.
'Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity'.
Energy starts in the Unconscious. And it ends in The Unconscious.
The life of one organism is often dependent on the death of another -- so that energy can be 're-cycled'. This sets up an evolutionary game of 'cat and mouse', 'predator and prey', each trying to defeat each other and 'hang onto their little corner of life'.
'Energy' can be divided in a 'trillion different ways' -- dialectically.
We can talk about 'positive energy' vs. 'negative energy';
'Constructive energy' vs. 'deconstructive energy';
'Masculine energy' (testosterone, 'yang') vs. 'feminine energy' (estrogen, 'yin');
'Orderly energy' vs. 'disorderly energy';
'Narcissistic energy' vs. 'altruistic energy';
'Rational energy' vs. 'irrational or romantic energy';
'Apollonian energy' vs. 'Dionysian enegy';
'Christian energy' vs. 'anti-Christian energy';
The energy of the 'id' vs. the energy of 'the superego';
The energy of the 'nurturing superego' vs. the energy of the 'rejecting superego';
The energy of the 'Conscious' vs. the energy of 'The Unconscious';
The energy of 'The Personna' vs. the energy of 'The Shadow'.
And on and on we could continue to go...ad infinitum...
The universe has been laid out in front of us in terms of a whole host of swirling, competing and co-operating, attracting and repelling -- opposites.
And man's personality -- man's psyche and soul -- can be laid out in exactly this same manner as reflecting just a very small but significant part of the collossal, overall structure and dynamics of the universe.
Man is essentially a mass of swirling potential and actual, dominant and submerged (suppressed, repressed, disowned, disengaged, alienated, dissociated...), opposite characteristics, energies, and ideas.
Now Anaxamander's 'Chaos and Competing Opposite Powers' Theory is starting to take on an exciting modern day existence.
For example,
Anaximander meets Nietzsche...in The Birth of Tragedy...
According to Nietzsche, the ancient Greeks had an appreciative awareness of the potential 'tragedy' in man due to man's inability to 'harmonize' his competing 'Dionsyian' and 'Apollonian' energies within him, and the inherent outcome of the battle usually ending in one form of self-destruction or another... This idea would later become central to Classic Freudian Theory.
Anaximander meets Freud...in The 'Life' vs. 'Death' Instinct
Anaximander's concept of 'The Apeiron' is amazingly similar to Freud's concept of 'The Id' with the only distinction being that Freud limited the id to 'biological impulses' -- meaning mainly 'life' and 'death', 'sexual' and 'aggressive' impulses...but in the end was that any limitation at all if it was meant to describe all of man's life and death impulses, energies, and movements...
For example, we could say that 'oxygenation' is a 'life force' whereas 'oxidation' is a 'death force' and they both originate in the confines of 'The Id-Apeiron', eventually to both make their presence known on 'The Main Stage' in the body and the personality of man, wrestling for superiority until one day 'oxidation, disease, and death' eventually win the battle over man's life -- and returns man's life back to 'The Apeiron'.
Anaxamander meets Jung...
Jung argued that 'The Unconscious was compensation for The Conscious' -- in other words, whatever did not exist in our conscious personality, our 'personna' if you will, the side of our personality that we show to society, did exist in our Unconcious or 'Shadow' as a 'submerged or suppressed or repressed potential opposite characteristic and capability'. Thus, in Jungian theory, we have the existence of what might be called 'The Shadow-Apeiron' (or SA -- which could alternatively stand for 'Secret Appeal'. If we include Freudian Theory and call it 'The Shadow-Id-Apeiron', then 'SIA' might alternatively stand for 'Secret Interests Accumulating').
Thus, we could say that if a person is 'dominantly heterosexual', then within the confines of 'The SIA', he or she has the opposing latent capability for 'homosexuality'.
Alternatively, if a person is 'dominantly homosexual', then within the confines of The SIA, he or she has the opposing latent capability for heterosexuality.
If a person is 'bisexual', then he or she has the capability of bringing either heterosexuality or homosexuality up from the SIA to The Central Ego and onto the 'Main Stage of Life'...
At this point, we have evolved from Anaxamander's Theory through Nietzsche's 'BT' (Birth of Tragedy) Theory through classic Freudian Theory, through Jungian Theory, and into 'DGB Multi-Dialectic Integrative Personality Theory'.
In DGB Theory, the evolution of the personality can be seen to take the following format, from bottom (unconscious) to top (conscious):
The Structure of The Psyche:
1. The Undifferentiated Apeiron (UA):
2. The Secret (God-Given) Talent Apeiron (STA) (The Self or Soul):
3. The Mythological-Symbolic Apeiron (MSA) (The Collective Unconscious):
4. The Personal Past Apeiron (PPA) (The Personal Unconscious and Transference Template):
5. The Shadow-Id Apeiron (SIA) (Secret Interests Accumulating):
6. The Dream and Nightmare Weaver (DNW):
7. The Righteous (Rebellious) Apollonian Underego (RAU):
8. The Narcissistic-Dionysian Underego (NDU):
9. The Altruistic-Co-operative Underego (ACU):
10. The Altruistic-Nurturing Superego (ANS):
11. The Narcissistic-Dionysian Superego (NDS):
12. The Righteous-(Rejecting/Exciting) Apollonian Superego (RAS):
13. The Central Mediating Ego (CME):
And there -- without further explanation and discourse yet -- you have the foundational structure of DGB Integrative Personality Theory.
Let me just finish by saying, that with the birth of each new personality, each new individual, you have the potential birth of a new 'Superman' or 'Superwoman'. But you also have the potential for a new 'Birth of Tragedy'. It depends very much on whether The Central Mediating Ego is able to maintain control and harmonious balance over internal and external influences on the ongoing evolution of the personality. Or whether The CME is overwhelmed and/or undermined and sabotaged by either, or both, of those same set of internal or external influences.
That is where I will leave you today.
-- dgb, Jan. 9th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Central Ego Theory (Health and Pathology): Floor 4: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions
We have just finished talking about our senses and our sensory-perceptions -- our bridges and/or gateway between our inner and outer world, as well as between our subjective and objective world.
As philosophically impossible as it may be to separate our 'subjective' and 'objective' worlds (or in Kant's terminology, our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' worlds, respectively), still it is just about equally impossible to walk away from this distinction and pretend it doesn't exist.
We ignore, deny, disown, or are simply not aware of the (or 'our') 'objective' world around and in us -- at our own peril. This objective world is quite different from the more 'subjective' world of our own senses and cognitive-evaluative processes that have the critical function of 'mapping out' in our 'awareness or consciousness' or what I am calling our 'Central Ego' the objective world that we live in, that we need to live in -- and that we need to survive in.
Thus, as Alfred Korzybski has stated in his classic book on epistemology and language, 'Science and Sanity' (1933, you can find a nice, short synopsis of it here: http://www.worldtrans.org/essay/scisanity.html), our 'subjective', ('intensional', 'phenomenal') world of consciousness relates to our more 'objective' ('extensional', 'noumenal') world that we have to live in to survive, just like a 'map' relates to the 'territory' that map is supposed to usefully/functionally represent.
In this regard, if there is a significant 'misrepresentation' in terms of an 'error' that is made in the construction and the layout of the map that does not accurately correspond to the internal or external territory that this map is supposed to represent -- well then, we are going to make a 'wrong turn' because of this error and the map can be viewed as 'dysfunctional' to its 'structural misrepresentation' of the territory that it is supposed to be 'accurately representing'.
Now, no 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'word' or 'symbol' or 'abstraction' or 'generalization' is every going to perfectly represent the 'objective territory' that it is supposed to represent. All maps are going to entail a certain degree of imperfections, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the precision and expertise of the 'map-maker'. In addition, every different person who tries to put together a map of the same, or similar, 'objective territory' is going to have their own private motivations, personal interests and in short -- 'subjective, narcissistic bias'. This also then, is going to impact the outcome of the structure of each person's individual conceptual-cognitve map, meaning that every persons cogntive-conceptual maps even of the supposedly 'same objective territory' are going to be at least partly different, and often times, radically different based on the 'functional intent' of the map.
It is in this world of similar and different -- sometimes radically different -- individual and collective, conceptual-cognitive maps, that different people are going to try -- or not try -- to agree with each other in the similarity and/or differences of their individual/group/cultural/religious/economic/philosophical/psychological/political/artistic maps...
Individual and group bias, as well as different ways of 'abstracting' or 'viewing' things can cause great difficulty in both human communication, and in human agreement.
Two different people can look at exactly the same picture or the same scene and see or experience something totally different based on the nature of their particular 'internal, subjective, conceptual-cognitive-emotional world'...
As soon as we start to appreciate these individual and collective differences in our conceptual-cogntive-emotional maps, and realize that people's individual and collective perspectives are based as much on our 'interpretations and evaluations of the alleged facts', as they are on 'the assumed facts' themselves, the sooner we can move in a communication and action direction that may help us to overcome and/or tolerate these differences with our neighbour. Or not. Humans like to get their own way.
To a greater or lesser extent, we are all 'control freaks' who expend great energy on controlling our internal and/or external worlds. Sometimes this 'control fixation' is functional, other times it may be dysfunctional, neurotic, pathological, depending on the context of the situation and how far overboard we go...
The opposite of 'over-control' -- what Freud called the 'anal personality' is 'under-control' which in Freudian terminology we might call the 'oral personality'. Like the prototype of the 'feeding baby', the oral personality type always wants to be 'fed'...food, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, property, material goods, attention...and so on...
The oral peronality type tends to be 'impulsive' and 'spontaneous' as opposed to the very 'self-controlled' and 'planning' nature of the anal personality type. 'The bi-polar anal-oral type' swings back and forth both ways between opposite ends of the spectrum...controlled, controlled, controlled...and then perhaps under the influence of alchohol....let loose, let loose, let loose...Ideally, we should all be able to swing flexibly back and forth along all parts of the 'oral-anal bi-polar spectrum' according to the context of the situation, and without the extreme levels of 'dysfunctionality' that are usually attached to the 'neurotic or pathological bi-polar personality type'...
Similarily, 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' can reflect opposite ends of another bi-polar spectrum...
And so too can the opposite bi-polarities of 'association' and 'distinction'.
We associate together what we view as being similar, while we distinguish apart what we view as being different. In this regard, both 'associative' and 'differential' thinking are essential to the overall well-being of the rational-empirical, map-making human being...and in this regard also, we need to distinguish between our ability to 'abstractify and generalize' on the one hand, vs. 'specify' or 'concretize' on the other hand...
I have used, and will continue to use, the term 'subjective-objective world' to show the dialectic, integrative nature of these two worlds -- i.e. we live in them both simultaneously and they are impossible to separate except by concepts.
Still, if I am walking across the road and get hit by a car that I didn't see coming, you can very easily see that our 'subjective, cognitive (sensory-perceptual) or conceptual map' of the world that this 'map' is supposed to be representing -- i.e., our 'inside or outside 'objective' world' -- is not always right. Indeed, it can be 'dead wrong' and we can be dead on the ground because our internal cognitive-conceptual maps were at serious odds with what was or wasn't really happening in our objective world. We missed the car fast approaching us on the street and in circumstances like this our objective, 'real' world can have the 'last word' on us -- in terms of serious, even life-threatening consequences.
Thus, the importance of our 'sensory-perceptual system' in terms of giving us 'the raw data' from our outside world (or inside bodily world) that we need to act -- and sometimes act very quickly -- on in order to save ourselves from serious, sometimes even life-threatening consequences.
In this regard, our sensory-perceptual system is crtically important to us in terms of providing our 'Central Ego' with the information it/we need to make important decisisons in our life.
Room 400: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions, Differences...
Next up, after our sensory-perceptual system -- as we proceed up 'the abstraction ladder' to our 'reasoning process' is our system of inferences, interpretations, generalizations, associations...the process by which we make a 'jump into the interpretive or inferential unknown' based on 'connecting' or 'associating' the information we are seeing or hearing in front of our face or ears with our always evolving network of 'past experiences' and the 'generalizations' that we have made -- or are making now -- based on these past experiences.
The older we get, the vaster this 'network' or 'template' of past experiences along with 'any associated generalizations and/or interpretations connected with them' becomes. Some of these generalizations and associations can be very functional, and very important in our current decision-making process. Others of these, can be very 'neurotic', 'dysfunctional', and/or 'pathological'.
It all depends on our 'reasoning process' -- the reasoning process of our Central Ego, and how 'rational-empirical' this process was and whether it is still relevant in this current 'here and now situation'. At some point in our experiential history, we made a 'cognitive leap' from 'Observation A' to 'Interpretation A'. Is the interpretive assumption that we made at this time, and/or are making now, still relevant -- or is it outdated, and/or relevant to a different context and/or setting and/or different set of circumstances? These are important 'learning' and/or 'reasoning' factors that may or may not be critically important to the situation at hand that we are judging now.
If we want our decision-making, problem-solving, and/or conflict-resolving judgements to be 'good', to be 'functional', to be 'pragmatic', to be 'ethical', etc. to us (whatever 'ethical value system' we may want to use after we have all the 'raw sensory' and then 'sensory-perceptual' and 'interpretive' data available to us), then we need all of our sensory information, our sensory-perceptions, and our interpretive-assumptions' to provide a 'rock solid foundation' for the type of value judgements and decision-making choices that we are about to apply to this ideally and hopefully 'solid information base' that we are utilizing to help us make a good decision.
If our 'foundational sensory-perceptual-interpretive information' is not good, then how can our decision-making process be good after it? Everything builds on the strength and/or weakness of the information below it and preceding it as we 'pyramid upwards into the more abstractive levels of our reasoning and evaluation process'...
What we leave out and/or what we misinterpret and/or misjudge -- depending on the importance of the problem under evaluation -- may be capable of coming back to haunt us which is why it is imperative relative to certain critical problem-issues to get our facts, assumptions, interpretations, generalizations, associations, extrapolations, distinctions right...or at least 'good enough' to efficiently 'move us in the right direction' of solving our problem, and/or resolving our conflict that is causing us grief...
-- dgb, Dec. 12th, 14th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
As philosophically impossible as it may be to separate our 'subjective' and 'objective' worlds (or in Kant's terminology, our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' worlds, respectively), still it is just about equally impossible to walk away from this distinction and pretend it doesn't exist.
We ignore, deny, disown, or are simply not aware of the (or 'our') 'objective' world around and in us -- at our own peril. This objective world is quite different from the more 'subjective' world of our own senses and cognitive-evaluative processes that have the critical function of 'mapping out' in our 'awareness or consciousness' or what I am calling our 'Central Ego' the objective world that we live in, that we need to live in -- and that we need to survive in.
Thus, as Alfred Korzybski has stated in his classic book on epistemology and language, 'Science and Sanity' (1933, you can find a nice, short synopsis of it here: http://www.worldtrans.org/essay/scisanity.html), our 'subjective', ('intensional', 'phenomenal') world of consciousness relates to our more 'objective' ('extensional', 'noumenal') world that we have to live in to survive, just like a 'map' relates to the 'territory' that map is supposed to usefully/functionally represent.
In this regard, if there is a significant 'misrepresentation' in terms of an 'error' that is made in the construction and the layout of the map that does not accurately correspond to the internal or external territory that this map is supposed to represent -- well then, we are going to make a 'wrong turn' because of this error and the map can be viewed as 'dysfunctional' to its 'structural misrepresentation' of the territory that it is supposed to be 'accurately representing'.
Now, no 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'word' or 'symbol' or 'abstraction' or 'generalization' is every going to perfectly represent the 'objective territory' that it is supposed to represent. All maps are going to entail a certain degree of imperfections, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the precision and expertise of the 'map-maker'. In addition, every different person who tries to put together a map of the same, or similar, 'objective territory' is going to have their own private motivations, personal interests and in short -- 'subjective, narcissistic bias'. This also then, is going to impact the outcome of the structure of each person's individual conceptual-cognitve map, meaning that every persons cogntive-conceptual maps even of the supposedly 'same objective territory' are going to be at least partly different, and often times, radically different based on the 'functional intent' of the map.
It is in this world of similar and different -- sometimes radically different -- individual and collective, conceptual-cognitive maps, that different people are going to try -- or not try -- to agree with each other in the similarity and/or differences of their individual/group/cultural/religious/economic/philosophical/psychological/political/artistic maps...
Individual and group bias, as well as different ways of 'abstracting' or 'viewing' things can cause great difficulty in both human communication, and in human agreement.
Two different people can look at exactly the same picture or the same scene and see or experience something totally different based on the nature of their particular 'internal, subjective, conceptual-cognitive-emotional world'...
As soon as we start to appreciate these individual and collective differences in our conceptual-cogntive-emotional maps, and realize that people's individual and collective perspectives are based as much on our 'interpretations and evaluations of the alleged facts', as they are on 'the assumed facts' themselves, the sooner we can move in a communication and action direction that may help us to overcome and/or tolerate these differences with our neighbour. Or not. Humans like to get their own way.
To a greater or lesser extent, we are all 'control freaks' who expend great energy on controlling our internal and/or external worlds. Sometimes this 'control fixation' is functional, other times it may be dysfunctional, neurotic, pathological, depending on the context of the situation and how far overboard we go...
The opposite of 'over-control' -- what Freud called the 'anal personality' is 'under-control' which in Freudian terminology we might call the 'oral personality'. Like the prototype of the 'feeding baby', the oral personality type always wants to be 'fed'...food, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, property, material goods, attention...and so on...
The oral peronality type tends to be 'impulsive' and 'spontaneous' as opposed to the very 'self-controlled' and 'planning' nature of the anal personality type. 'The bi-polar anal-oral type' swings back and forth both ways between opposite ends of the spectrum...controlled, controlled, controlled...and then perhaps under the influence of alchohol....let loose, let loose, let loose...Ideally, we should all be able to swing flexibly back and forth along all parts of the 'oral-anal bi-polar spectrum' according to the context of the situation, and without the extreme levels of 'dysfunctionality' that are usually attached to the 'neurotic or pathological bi-polar personality type'...
Similarily, 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' can reflect opposite ends of another bi-polar spectrum...
And so too can the opposite bi-polarities of 'association' and 'distinction'.
We associate together what we view as being similar, while we distinguish apart what we view as being different. In this regard, both 'associative' and 'differential' thinking are essential to the overall well-being of the rational-empirical, map-making human being...and in this regard also, we need to distinguish between our ability to 'abstractify and generalize' on the one hand, vs. 'specify' or 'concretize' on the other hand...
I have used, and will continue to use, the term 'subjective-objective world' to show the dialectic, integrative nature of these two worlds -- i.e. we live in them both simultaneously and they are impossible to separate except by concepts.
Still, if I am walking across the road and get hit by a car that I didn't see coming, you can very easily see that our 'subjective, cognitive (sensory-perceptual) or conceptual map' of the world that this 'map' is supposed to be representing -- i.e., our 'inside or outside 'objective' world' -- is not always right. Indeed, it can be 'dead wrong' and we can be dead on the ground because our internal cognitive-conceptual maps were at serious odds with what was or wasn't really happening in our objective world. We missed the car fast approaching us on the street and in circumstances like this our objective, 'real' world can have the 'last word' on us -- in terms of serious, even life-threatening consequences.
Thus, the importance of our 'sensory-perceptual system' in terms of giving us 'the raw data' from our outside world (or inside bodily world) that we need to act -- and sometimes act very quickly -- on in order to save ourselves from serious, sometimes even life-threatening consequences.
In this regard, our sensory-perceptual system is crtically important to us in terms of providing our 'Central Ego' with the information it/we need to make important decisisons in our life.
Room 400: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions, Differences...
Next up, after our sensory-perceptual system -- as we proceed up 'the abstraction ladder' to our 'reasoning process' is our system of inferences, interpretations, generalizations, associations...the process by which we make a 'jump into the interpretive or inferential unknown' based on 'connecting' or 'associating' the information we are seeing or hearing in front of our face or ears with our always evolving network of 'past experiences' and the 'generalizations' that we have made -- or are making now -- based on these past experiences.
The older we get, the vaster this 'network' or 'template' of past experiences along with 'any associated generalizations and/or interpretations connected with them' becomes. Some of these generalizations and associations can be very functional, and very important in our current decision-making process. Others of these, can be very 'neurotic', 'dysfunctional', and/or 'pathological'.
It all depends on our 'reasoning process' -- the reasoning process of our Central Ego, and how 'rational-empirical' this process was and whether it is still relevant in this current 'here and now situation'. At some point in our experiential history, we made a 'cognitive leap' from 'Observation A' to 'Interpretation A'. Is the interpretive assumption that we made at this time, and/or are making now, still relevant -- or is it outdated, and/or relevant to a different context and/or setting and/or different set of circumstances? These are important 'learning' and/or 'reasoning' factors that may or may not be critically important to the situation at hand that we are judging now.
If we want our decision-making, problem-solving, and/or conflict-resolving judgements to be 'good', to be 'functional', to be 'pragmatic', to be 'ethical', etc. to us (whatever 'ethical value system' we may want to use after we have all the 'raw sensory' and then 'sensory-perceptual' and 'interpretive' data available to us), then we need all of our sensory information, our sensory-perceptions, and our interpretive-assumptions' to provide a 'rock solid foundation' for the type of value judgements and decision-making choices that we are about to apply to this ideally and hopefully 'solid information base' that we are utilizing to help us make a good decision.
If our 'foundational sensory-perceptual-interpretive information' is not good, then how can our decision-making process be good after it? Everything builds on the strength and/or weakness of the information below it and preceding it as we 'pyramid upwards into the more abstractive levels of our reasoning and evaluation process'...
What we leave out and/or what we misinterpret and/or misjudge -- depending on the importance of the problem under evaluation -- may be capable of coming back to haunt us which is why it is imperative relative to certain critical problem-issues to get our facts, assumptions, interpretations, generalizations, associations, extrapolations, distinctions right...or at least 'good enough' to efficiently 'move us in the right direction' of solving our problem, and/or resolving our conflict that is causing us grief...
-- dgb, Dec. 12th, 14th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Central Ego Theory (Health and Pathology): Epistemology, Narcissism, Ethics, Choice and Action (1979-2010)
Floor 3: The Mezzanine
In the beginning there is 'existence'.
Or is there 'essence' in the beginning?
Hegel's Hotel pursues the idea of an 'essence-existence duality and dialectic'.
Meaning in the beginning there is both essence and existence -- a chicken and egg conundrum.
In Part 1, we will explore and classify the different elements of the 'existence and consciousness' part of this puzzle called 'man'.
In Part 2, we will explore the 'essence and unconsciousness' part of the same puzzle.
Room 300: Sensuality, Perception, Narcissism, Attention, Interest -- and Subjective Bias
Sensuality is the bridge between our internal-subjective and external-objective world.
The two worlds -- our internal and external -- are 'dialectically connected' by a combination of our senses and our actions.
Our senses are our first bridge to both our outside and inside world. Without our senses their would be no 'consciousness'....no sense of 'being alive'....
Our senses take us on a teeter totter -- or even a roller coaster -- ride through life.
Up, down, and back up again, or back down again. Like the thermostat in our house or a pendulum swinging. Stopping at a point of 'evaluative indifference' -- which is not likely to last very long -- before the teeter totter-roller coaster- pendulum starts to swing 'up' or 'down' again... 'up' in our more pleasurable moments' and 'down' in our more 'unpleasurable' moments...
Our senses are the 'thermostat of our life experience' from moment to moment throughout the day and night...
Our senses are 'dialectically charged'. By this, I mean that they are the bridges to both our external (objective) and our internal (subjective ) world. They are the bridge between our 'existence' and our 'essence'. They are the bridge to what is happening around us and what 'catches our interest' amongst the myriad of things and processes that are happening around us at any moment of the day or night.
But at the same time, our senses are the bridge to our thoughts, our beliefs, our assumptions, our opinions, our theories, our values, our feelings...all the way down into our our 'unconsciousness' through our multitude of 'transferences' and 'memories' and 'fantasies' and 'archetypes' and 'symbols' and 'myths' and 'Gods' to our very 'spirit and soul'
Our senses -- and feelings -- can be partly 'pathologized' by what we 'program' into them. But at the same time, our sense are our 'key' to 're-finding ourselves and our lives' when we have gone astray, become 'alienated' from ourselves -- meaning acting in a way that defies our senses and feelings, ignores them, disowns them, suppresses them, represses them, disavows them, dissociates them, betrays them, abandons them...Abandon our senses and feelings and we abandon ourselves; we alienate ourselves from our selves... Thus, our senses and feelings become our 'roadmap', our 'key', to re-discovering our selves...who we are, and what we need to be and become...
The difference between our 'senses' and our 'feelings' is that our senses operate mostly at a 'skin level' whereas our 'feelings' are connected to the 'pounding or not pounding of our heart' and how we interpret the activity or lack of activity of our heart as 'joy', 'anger', 'rage', 'love', 'hate', 'attraction', 'repulsion', 'anxiety', 'fear', 'sadness', 'grief', 'depression'...and so on...
Our feelings are generally more susceptible to 'pathology' than our senses are because our feelings are greatly affected by our thoughts, interpretations, generalizations, associations, discriminations, and judgements -- all of which can easily become 'pathologized' if we take our thoughts down a 'bad path'...
Connected to our 'senses' is the role of 'perception' in our 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning', as we journey through the cognitive-emotional processes of 'interest', 'attention', 'narcissism', 'epistemology', 'ethics', 'impulse', 'memory', 'association', 'fantasy', 'choosing', and the 'final path to behavioral action'...
The close attachment between our senses and our perception leads to the dilalectic idea of 'sensory perception'...where 'recognition' factors from past experience -- and associative connections to these past experiences -- are 'fitted onto' what we believe we are presently 'seeing', 'hearing', 'reading', 'smelling'...
In its most general sense, this is the meaning of the concept of 'transference' where a 'scene from our past' is associatively connected to a 'scene that we are living through right now in our present'...
In Freudian conceptuology, 'transference' usually refers to a 'false connection' between a particular 'early childhood experience' (or 'fantasy' as developed in later Freudian theory after 1896) -- and/or an 'associatively connected set of experiences and/or fantasies' -- and what we are going through now in the 'experience of the present moment'.
However, as noted in later Psychoanalytic literature, 'transferences' are not always completely false -- many times there may be an 'associative relevance and meaningful connection' between what we have experienced in the past and what we are experiencing now; and secondly, this 'true' or 'false' connection between our past and present experience does not always have to be connected to 'childhood'....often these 'associative connections' are built on top of either very good or very bad personal experiences, in the latter case a 'trauma' or 'tragedy' that again does not always have to be connected back to childhood, instead, perhaps the associative connection may stem back to say, for example, a former 'lover'...or perhaps an 'assault' that occurs during our teenage or adult years...
Usually, however, the most profoundly influential 'transferences' in our character structure can be traced back to early childhood, before the age of about 7 years old....when our character structure is still in its most formative years...
Transferences stem from our inner unconscious world and become connected to many of our thoughts, feelings and senses...and in this sense -- i.e., the sense that man is not always a 'perfectly good thinker' -- can 'pathologize' them...if the whole 'transference complex' has been sufficiently 'warped' and become sufficiently 'neurotic' as is very often the case... No one gets out of childhood 'scott-free'...
And no one's thinking is always perfectly rational and 'rational-empirical' in the 'immediacy and concreteness of the moment'...especially, when we start to get frustrated, anxious, angry, and/or enraged by things, people and/or processes that just do not seem to be falling into line with what we want...
Personal narcissism can easily upset the 'objectivity' of our senses...indeed, will upset the objectivity of our senses, giving us 'information' that is 'uniquely construed', 'subjectively biased', even 'subjectively distorted by our unique individual narcissistic bias'...
This is what makes us 'human....all too human'...
Still, our senses -- and our sensory-perceptions that result from them -- represent the life-blood of our existence -- and our essence -- our dialectically connected 'existence-essence'. They represent one of the two gateways or bridges between our inner and outer world -- our 'actions' representing the other gateway or bridge between our inner and outer world...
Our senses represent our first 'subjective map' of what's going on in both our internal and external world. All other information in our cognitive system -- and particularly in what I am calling here our 'Central Ego' -- is built from the right or wrong (or partly both) sensory maps that give us a cognitive-evaluative reflection of what is happening in our external world, our internal world -- and between them.
Our Central Ego is our 'Self' at our most 'conscious, subjective' level, but, in this regard, certainly capable of epistemological error and 'narcissistic-ethical transgressions', capable of keeping the rest of our conscious and unconscious Self 'under control' at least up to some threshold of tolerance depending on the individual person and the unique context of every 'here and now' and/or 'there and then' situation...
Our Central Ego can be in control of the rest of our personality or conversely bombarded and overwhelmed by other conscious and/or unconscious elements of our 'Larger Entire Self'...
Our 'Wholistic Self' comprises our 'Central Ego' as one major portion of it, but also includes our various 'Specialized, Split Off Ego States' which we can turn into as many 'compartmentalized squares' as is convenient and functional to talk about, the Gestalt 'topdog/underdog' model representing the most simple '2 compartment model', and the Freudian 'superego', 'id', 'ego' model representing a post-Hegelian triadic (3 compartment) model -- 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'.
If you follow what I do in a more Jungian fashion, and start connecting 'Greek-Roman mythological Gods' with 'projected internal split-off ego states', then you could/can go up to significantly more 'ego-archetype compartments', again depending on the limits of convenience, simplicity, and functionality for teaching and learning purposes... for example, the 'Apollo/Dionysus' split, the 'Zeus/Hera' split, the 'Apollo/Eros' split...and so on...
Our 'Wholistic Self' also consists of all aspects of our Unconscious Personality which includes:
1. Our 'Dream-Catcher-Dream Weaver' Function;
2. Our 'Transference-Lifestyle Memory, Impulse, Defense and Compensation(Freudian-Adlerian) Complexes';
3. Our 'Mythological-Religious-Symbolic-Archetype' (Jungian) Complexes;
4. Our 'Split Unconcious Light Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Apollo and other Greek/Roman Gods...);
5. Our 'Split Unconscious Dark Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Dionysus/Bacchus, Narcissius, and other Greek/Roman Gods);
6 . Our 'Genetic Essence and Blueprint Self';
7. Our Undifferentiatied Apeiron or Chaotic Self (Consisting of Attrqcting and Repelling Opposite Potentials Circulating and Percolating Within Us...)
This model might be viewed as overly complicated and overly compartmentalized but it allows us the opportunity to focus in on particular Freudian and post-Freudian, Adlerian and post-Adlerian, Jungian and post-Jungian conceptual structures and dynamics that have not to this day been discussed fully in this manner before. Freud re-integrates with Adler and Jung in Hegel's Hotel, with the symbolic link between Greek, Roman, and Christian Mythology-Religion and 'internal ego states and splits' providing much of the subject matter.
What is the difference between Mythology and Religion?
In 'mythology', we do not treat 'past Gods from past cultures' seriously except in terms of their symbolic value. In 'religion' -- we treat the 'Resident Home God' attached to the particular religion that we are involved in, very seriously. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
From our senses, we move inwards deeper into our 'Central Ego Cogntive-Evaluative Processes'...and then deeper into the psycho-dynamics of our 'Wholistic Self'...
The most important point to remember here is that 'sensory perception' is not a 'passive, objective' experience but rather a 'subjective, active' experience, where our internal past experiences, our wishes, fears, beliefs and values, narcissistic biases... all colour our sensory-perceptual process and provide us with information that is far from 'purely objective', indeed never 'purely and perfectly objective'.
We all view the world through different individual coloured glasses... Sometimes our sensory-perceptions are viewed as being 'good enough' to be basically considered 'objective' or 'truthful' or 'fact' or 'knowledge' but these labels should, and usually are, considered 'conditional' based on the potential arrival of new and different information that may or may not contradict the previous information.
All knowledge is subject to potential change -- either because of the evolutionary, life process itself and its changing nature, and/or because of our changing view of things based perhaps on new and better informantion -- or alternatively, 'worse information' that we either don't know is worse, or don't care is worse. The truth is not always desired by individual and/or collective men and/or women.
Epistemology -- the study of knowledge -- becomes hardest to ascertain when individual and/or collective people -- particularly people in power -- want to keep the truth hidden under the cloak of darkness, and/or under a rhetoric of 'smoke and mirrors'...and expend a lot of energy in doing this...Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. 'Scandals' break out when they are not.
And sometimes, individually and/or collectively, people simply do not want to know the truth. So the truth becomes 'buried under an individual or collective suppression and/or repression'.
An epistemological skeptic, cynic, and/or 'post-modern deconstructionist' might say that we can never know for sure what is happening in our inner or outer world.
Kant was the first epistemologist to clearly say that we 'can't/Kant know for sure what is happening in our objective (in his terminology, 'noumenal') world -- because our senses are imperfect at best, or in Nietzsche's more bombastic rhetoric, distorted by our internal wants and biases.
I say that there is such a thing as 'good enough' knowledge -- good enough to 'structually, dynamically, functionally and pragmatically fit' the life situation that we are dealing with before us, and to use these essentially 'accurate cognitive maps' in order to help us make the appropriate life and self judgements that will ideally help us in our pursuit of life, liberty, health, and happiness.
In the end, or at least first and foremost, it all depends on how badly we want the truth about the context of our life to rule our individual and collective life choices...
If we want to hide the truth, or hide from the truth, then our choices will reflect that. And reflect where our life choices take us, both in the short term and in the long term.
'The truth will set you free.' (Not that I am religious except in a mythological sense of seeking to better understand man's 'religious-psychological-projections', but that is a biblical quote...John 8:32).
Not always but usually the truth will set us free -- providing we can handle the truth when we hear it.
-- dgb, Dec. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
In the beginning there is 'existence'.
Or is there 'essence' in the beginning?
Hegel's Hotel pursues the idea of an 'essence-existence duality and dialectic'.
Meaning in the beginning there is both essence and existence -- a chicken and egg conundrum.
In Part 1, we will explore and classify the different elements of the 'existence and consciousness' part of this puzzle called 'man'.
In Part 2, we will explore the 'essence and unconsciousness' part of the same puzzle.
Room 300: Sensuality, Perception, Narcissism, Attention, Interest -- and Subjective Bias
Sensuality is the bridge between our internal-subjective and external-objective world.
The two worlds -- our internal and external -- are 'dialectically connected' by a combination of our senses and our actions.
Our senses are our first bridge to both our outside and inside world. Without our senses their would be no 'consciousness'....no sense of 'being alive'....
Our senses take us on a teeter totter -- or even a roller coaster -- ride through life.
Up, down, and back up again, or back down again. Like the thermostat in our house or a pendulum swinging. Stopping at a point of 'evaluative indifference' -- which is not likely to last very long -- before the teeter totter-roller coaster- pendulum starts to swing 'up' or 'down' again... 'up' in our more pleasurable moments' and 'down' in our more 'unpleasurable' moments...
Our senses are the 'thermostat of our life experience' from moment to moment throughout the day and night...
Our senses are 'dialectically charged'. By this, I mean that they are the bridges to both our external (objective) and our internal (subjective ) world. They are the bridge between our 'existence' and our 'essence'. They are the bridge to what is happening around us and what 'catches our interest' amongst the myriad of things and processes that are happening around us at any moment of the day or night.
But at the same time, our senses are the bridge to our thoughts, our beliefs, our assumptions, our opinions, our theories, our values, our feelings...all the way down into our our 'unconsciousness' through our multitude of 'transferences' and 'memories' and 'fantasies' and 'archetypes' and 'symbols' and 'myths' and 'Gods' to our very 'spirit and soul'
Our senses -- and feelings -- can be partly 'pathologized' by what we 'program' into them. But at the same time, our sense are our 'key' to 're-finding ourselves and our lives' when we have gone astray, become 'alienated' from ourselves -- meaning acting in a way that defies our senses and feelings, ignores them, disowns them, suppresses them, represses them, disavows them, dissociates them, betrays them, abandons them...Abandon our senses and feelings and we abandon ourselves; we alienate ourselves from our selves... Thus, our senses and feelings become our 'roadmap', our 'key', to re-discovering our selves...who we are, and what we need to be and become...
The difference between our 'senses' and our 'feelings' is that our senses operate mostly at a 'skin level' whereas our 'feelings' are connected to the 'pounding or not pounding of our heart' and how we interpret the activity or lack of activity of our heart as 'joy', 'anger', 'rage', 'love', 'hate', 'attraction', 'repulsion', 'anxiety', 'fear', 'sadness', 'grief', 'depression'...and so on...
Our feelings are generally more susceptible to 'pathology' than our senses are because our feelings are greatly affected by our thoughts, interpretations, generalizations, associations, discriminations, and judgements -- all of which can easily become 'pathologized' if we take our thoughts down a 'bad path'...
Connected to our 'senses' is the role of 'perception' in our 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning', as we journey through the cognitive-emotional processes of 'interest', 'attention', 'narcissism', 'epistemology', 'ethics', 'impulse', 'memory', 'association', 'fantasy', 'choosing', and the 'final path to behavioral action'...
The close attachment between our senses and our perception leads to the dilalectic idea of 'sensory perception'...where 'recognition' factors from past experience -- and associative connections to these past experiences -- are 'fitted onto' what we believe we are presently 'seeing', 'hearing', 'reading', 'smelling'...
In its most general sense, this is the meaning of the concept of 'transference' where a 'scene from our past' is associatively connected to a 'scene that we are living through right now in our present'...
In Freudian conceptuology, 'transference' usually refers to a 'false connection' between a particular 'early childhood experience' (or 'fantasy' as developed in later Freudian theory after 1896) -- and/or an 'associatively connected set of experiences and/or fantasies' -- and what we are going through now in the 'experience of the present moment'.
However, as noted in later Psychoanalytic literature, 'transferences' are not always completely false -- many times there may be an 'associative relevance and meaningful connection' between what we have experienced in the past and what we are experiencing now; and secondly, this 'true' or 'false' connection between our past and present experience does not always have to be connected to 'childhood'....often these 'associative connections' are built on top of either very good or very bad personal experiences, in the latter case a 'trauma' or 'tragedy' that again does not always have to be connected back to childhood, instead, perhaps the associative connection may stem back to say, for example, a former 'lover'...or perhaps an 'assault' that occurs during our teenage or adult years...
Usually, however, the most profoundly influential 'transferences' in our character structure can be traced back to early childhood, before the age of about 7 years old....when our character structure is still in its most formative years...
Transferences stem from our inner unconscious world and become connected to many of our thoughts, feelings and senses...and in this sense -- i.e., the sense that man is not always a 'perfectly good thinker' -- can 'pathologize' them...if the whole 'transference complex' has been sufficiently 'warped' and become sufficiently 'neurotic' as is very often the case... No one gets out of childhood 'scott-free'...
And no one's thinking is always perfectly rational and 'rational-empirical' in the 'immediacy and concreteness of the moment'...especially, when we start to get frustrated, anxious, angry, and/or enraged by things, people and/or processes that just do not seem to be falling into line with what we want...
Personal narcissism can easily upset the 'objectivity' of our senses...indeed, will upset the objectivity of our senses, giving us 'information' that is 'uniquely construed', 'subjectively biased', even 'subjectively distorted by our unique individual narcissistic bias'...
This is what makes us 'human....all too human'...
Still, our senses -- and our sensory-perceptions that result from them -- represent the life-blood of our existence -- and our essence -- our dialectically connected 'existence-essence'. They represent one of the two gateways or bridges between our inner and outer world -- our 'actions' representing the other gateway or bridge between our inner and outer world...
Our senses represent our first 'subjective map' of what's going on in both our internal and external world. All other information in our cognitive system -- and particularly in what I am calling here our 'Central Ego' -- is built from the right or wrong (or partly both) sensory maps that give us a cognitive-evaluative reflection of what is happening in our external world, our internal world -- and between them.
Our Central Ego is our 'Self' at our most 'conscious, subjective' level, but, in this regard, certainly capable of epistemological error and 'narcissistic-ethical transgressions', capable of keeping the rest of our conscious and unconscious Self 'under control' at least up to some threshold of tolerance depending on the individual person and the unique context of every 'here and now' and/or 'there and then' situation...
Our Central Ego can be in control of the rest of our personality or conversely bombarded and overwhelmed by other conscious and/or unconscious elements of our 'Larger Entire Self'...
Our 'Wholistic Self' comprises our 'Central Ego' as one major portion of it, but also includes our various 'Specialized, Split Off Ego States' which we can turn into as many 'compartmentalized squares' as is convenient and functional to talk about, the Gestalt 'topdog/underdog' model representing the most simple '2 compartment model', and the Freudian 'superego', 'id', 'ego' model representing a post-Hegelian triadic (3 compartment) model -- 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'.
If you follow what I do in a more Jungian fashion, and start connecting 'Greek-Roman mythological Gods' with 'projected internal split-off ego states', then you could/can go up to significantly more 'ego-archetype compartments', again depending on the limits of convenience, simplicity, and functionality for teaching and learning purposes... for example, the 'Apollo/Dionysus' split, the 'Zeus/Hera' split, the 'Apollo/Eros' split...and so on...
Our 'Wholistic Self' also consists of all aspects of our Unconscious Personality which includes:
1. Our 'Dream-Catcher-Dream Weaver' Function;
2. Our 'Transference-Lifestyle Memory, Impulse, Defense and Compensation(Freudian-Adlerian) Complexes';
3. Our 'Mythological-Religious-Symbolic-Archetype' (Jungian) Complexes;
4. Our 'Split Unconcious Light Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Apollo and other Greek/Roman Gods...);
5. Our 'Split Unconscious Dark Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Dionysus/Bacchus, Narcissius, and other Greek/Roman Gods);
6 . Our 'Genetic Essence and Blueprint Self';
7. Our Undifferentiatied Apeiron or Chaotic Self (Consisting of Attrqcting and Repelling Opposite Potentials Circulating and Percolating Within Us...)
This model might be viewed as overly complicated and overly compartmentalized but it allows us the opportunity to focus in on particular Freudian and post-Freudian, Adlerian and post-Adlerian, Jungian and post-Jungian conceptual structures and dynamics that have not to this day been discussed fully in this manner before. Freud re-integrates with Adler and Jung in Hegel's Hotel, with the symbolic link between Greek, Roman, and Christian Mythology-Religion and 'internal ego states and splits' providing much of the subject matter.
What is the difference between Mythology and Religion?
In 'mythology', we do not treat 'past Gods from past cultures' seriously except in terms of their symbolic value. In 'religion' -- we treat the 'Resident Home God' attached to the particular religion that we are involved in, very seriously. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
From our senses, we move inwards deeper into our 'Central Ego Cogntive-Evaluative Processes'...and then deeper into the psycho-dynamics of our 'Wholistic Self'...
The most important point to remember here is that 'sensory perception' is not a 'passive, objective' experience but rather a 'subjective, active' experience, where our internal past experiences, our wishes, fears, beliefs and values, narcissistic biases... all colour our sensory-perceptual process and provide us with information that is far from 'purely objective', indeed never 'purely and perfectly objective'.
We all view the world through different individual coloured glasses... Sometimes our sensory-perceptions are viewed as being 'good enough' to be basically considered 'objective' or 'truthful' or 'fact' or 'knowledge' but these labels should, and usually are, considered 'conditional' based on the potential arrival of new and different information that may or may not contradict the previous information.
All knowledge is subject to potential change -- either because of the evolutionary, life process itself and its changing nature, and/or because of our changing view of things based perhaps on new and better informantion -- or alternatively, 'worse information' that we either don't know is worse, or don't care is worse. The truth is not always desired by individual and/or collective men and/or women.
Epistemology -- the study of knowledge -- becomes hardest to ascertain when individual and/or collective people -- particularly people in power -- want to keep the truth hidden under the cloak of darkness, and/or under a rhetoric of 'smoke and mirrors'...and expend a lot of energy in doing this...Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. 'Scandals' break out when they are not.
And sometimes, individually and/or collectively, people simply do not want to know the truth. So the truth becomes 'buried under an individual or collective suppression and/or repression'.
An epistemological skeptic, cynic, and/or 'post-modern deconstructionist' might say that we can never know for sure what is happening in our inner or outer world.
Kant was the first epistemologist to clearly say that we 'can't/Kant know for sure what is happening in our objective (in his terminology, 'noumenal') world -- because our senses are imperfect at best, or in Nietzsche's more bombastic rhetoric, distorted by our internal wants and biases.
I say that there is such a thing as 'good enough' knowledge -- good enough to 'structually, dynamically, functionally and pragmatically fit' the life situation that we are dealing with before us, and to use these essentially 'accurate cognitive maps' in order to help us make the appropriate life and self judgements that will ideally help us in our pursuit of life, liberty, health, and happiness.
In the end, or at least first and foremost, it all depends on how badly we want the truth about the context of our life to rule our individual and collective life choices...
If we want to hide the truth, or hide from the truth, then our choices will reflect that. And reflect where our life choices take us, both in the short term and in the long term.
'The truth will set you free.' (Not that I am religious except in a mythological sense of seeking to better understand man's 'religious-psychological-projections', but that is a biblical quote...John 8:32).
Not always but usually the truth will set us free -- providing we can handle the truth when we hear it.
-- dgb, Dec. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Central Ego Theory (Health and Pathology): Epistemology, Narcissism, Ethics, Choice and Action (1979-2010)
Part 1: Existence and Consciousness
Floor 1: Basement: Prologue
The following essay is a modified, updated, and extended version of my 1979 Honours Thesis in Psychology at The University of Waterloo. I am proud to say that my professor, sponsor, and marker back in 1979 was Dr. Donald Meichenbaum who has since become a Canadian Leader in Clinical Psycholgy specializing in 'Cognitive-Behavior Modification' interventions.
A lot of theoretical changes, modifications, and extensions have taken place in my thinking and in my writing since I was a young and idealistic 24 years old in 1979 (not to mention the underlying life changes that have contributed greatly to these theoretical changes).
In 1979, I had just barely been exposed to the concept of 'dialectic thinking' which is now the central focus of my thinking and writing. The focus up to 1979 in my thinking and my writing was a two-fold combination of 'Post-Enlightenment Rational-Empiricism (Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics...)' and 'Humanistic-Existentialism (Erich Fromm, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers...').
Through the 1980s, I became much more exposed and familiar with the concepts and applications of Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, Psychoanalysis (Classic, Object Relations, and Self Psychology), Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis...and the underlying 'double-edged' philosophical influence of Hegel and Nietzsche behind all of these 'dialectic' and 'humanistic-existential' schools of psychology.
When I finished my Honours Thesis in 1979, I knew that I had a lot more research and theoretical work to do to get into the 'deeper realm of the unconscious influences' (which I now call 'transference-archetype templates, complexes, and neuroses'), on here-and-now thinking, but even now, in 2010, the basic 'rational-empirical' foundation laid down in this essay contributes much to what is now 'Hegel's Hotel: The Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar) Humanistic-Existentialist'.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
.......................................................
Floor 2: Main Lobby: Introduction
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm, 1947.
The issue of values and value judgments (or evaluations) represents a critical problem in regard to man's life.
On the one hand, man if free to evaluate and to respond to the situations he is confronted with in his day to day life as he or she pleases (usually within the context of what he or she has learned up to that point in the course of his or her life). But on the other hand, man is not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations, choices, and actions will have (or won't have) on his natural and/or social environment, and the consequences that will in turn come back to him or her via these consequences on his/her environment.
The following two 'cosmic truisms' are very applicable to anyone's evolving life.
What goes around comes around.
For every action there is a reaction.
A person's evaluations (which are built on top of his or her epistemological sensory perceptions and interpretations) can be said to be 'effective' or 'functional' to the extent that they are 'life-serving' -- that is, they work towards promoting a person's health and/or happiness.
Conversely, a person's evaluations can be said to be 'ineffective' or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are 'life-negating' -- that is, they work towards 'sabotaging' the person's health and/or happiness.
Now, being more of a 'skeptical, cynical realist and post-modern deconstructionist' in 2010, as opposed to the 'young, naive idealist' that I was in 1979, I look back at the last two paragraphs and I see clearly that these statements are not quite as 'rosy' and 'clear' as they were to me when I initially wrote them in 1979, under the dual influence of Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand was in the midst of building her 'Objective' epistemological and ethical system which she appropriately came to name -- 'Objectivism'.
By 1979, Rand had already completed two of her 'fictional-philosophical' masterpieces, 'The Fountainhead' (1943), and 'Atlas Shrugged'(1957), in which she laid down her Capitalistic Ideals that she would later blend into her more general philosophy of Objectivism.
But even back between 1974 and 1979, I was getting the beginning of my 'dialectic exposure' even though I hadn't tagged it with that particular label yet. For as well as receiving my father's Capitalistic influence -- who introduced me to the philosophy of Ayn Rand through 'The Fountainhead', and later the philosophy of Adam Smith -- still, at the same time I was reading Erich Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' (1941), and 'Man For Himself' (1947), and 'The Sane Society' (1955) that introduced me to Fromm's 'Post-Marxian-Post-Freudian-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy'.
The potential and reality for at least partly 'opposite thinking' in epistemological, ethical, econonomic, and/or political philosophy between two very well known and well respected living philosophers at the time sparked the beginning of what would eventually, for me, become the beginning of 'dialectically integrative thinking and philosophy-psychology-ecomomics-politics...' in the 1980s.
The question for me at the time was starting to become: 'How do you understand and account for the seemingly opposite thinking in two polar opposite -- and yet both logically intelligent, rational-empirical, humanistic-existential -- philosophers'; and beyond this, 'How do you potentially integrate the results of their polar-opposite thinking?'...
These two types of dialectic questions would come to dominate my own 'Subjective-Objective', 'Humanistic-Existential', 'Capitalistic-Socialistic', 'Liberal-Conservative, 'Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt' brand of 'Post-Hegelian Multi-Dialectic Philosophy-Psychology-Economics-Politics...'
But a lot of years -- and a lot of ideas -- would have to pass between 1979 and what I am writing now in 2010.
In 1979, I was just getting the ball rolling...
In 1979, I was just starting the preliminary architecture of 'Hegel's Hotel'...
In 1979, I was just a young guy in the woods of Western History, Culture, and Evolution, starting to stretch out his/my own cognitive faculties based on my very limited life experiences and what I was reading and hearing taught to me...
A thousand essays later and Hegel's Hotel is still not completely built, probably never will be, but it is getting closer to what I continue to envision...as the architecture and construction -- metaphorically speaking -- continues to be filled in, and continues to reach higher and higher into the sky...
How do you integrate Rand's 'Objectivism' with Nietzsche's brand of epistemological and ethical 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism'?
A banker, a poverty political activist, a playboy, and an artist all walk into the same cocktail party and none of them are likely to 'see' the same things...
We are all individually -- and 'narcissistically' -- biased (based on our own constantly evolving ideas, opinions, beliefs, values, feelings, impulses and restraints).
However, 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism' -- Nietzsche style -- can only take us so far. If I cross a busy street and don't see a car turning the corner and aiming right at me, with the driver not seeing me, I could be in tomorrow's obituary column...or if I, and/or my tragedy, am/is considered by a newspaper writer and/or editor to be important enough, I might even get a first or second page article...
But I won't be around to find out where I ended up in the newspaper, or if I arrived there at all, because the difference between life and death can often be only a matter of a second or two of timing...
And if my subjective, individualistic, narcissistic timing is off by even a second or two when a car is racing towards me, the driver not seeing me, or unable to apply the brakes in time, or an ex-girlfriend 'confusing' the gas with brakes...then my 'Subjective, Relativistic Philosophy' has been steamrolled under the more 'Objective Cosmic Forces of Life and Death' and/or someone else's 'Subjective, Relativisitic Epistemology and/or Ethical -- mistake, or act of Epistemological and/or Ethical judgment (or lack thereof).
In our day to day world, life and death involves a constant 'dialectic collision' between 'subjective-narcissistic' and 'more objective' (and/or other 'subjective-narcissistic') forces.
Kant's 'noumenal'(objective) and 'phenomenal'(subjective) world are constantly colliding even if man will never know perfectly just exactly what it is that is in his 'noumenal/objective' world. He still has to strive for a 'good enough' epistemological and ethical 'fit'.
Fritz Perls, the (co-)founder of Gestalt Therapy, fittingly called this the 'fitting game'.
Alfred Korzybski, one of the best (and philosophically least known) epistemologists in the history of Western Philosophy, created his school of 'General Semantics' as a 'cognitive toolbox' for people to better learn how to play life's various '(epistemological and ethical) (subjective-objective) fitting games'.
This essay here is a continuation and an extension of Korzybski's (and later S.I. Hayakawa's) General Semantic, language, and epistemology work, as well as the 'Cognitive Theory and Therapy' ('epistemological fitting game work') of writers such as Beck, Kelly, Ellis, and Meichenbaum, as well as the political-economic philosophies ('economic-political fitting game work') of Branden, Rand and Fromm, and the 'ethical fitting game work' of other Humanistic-Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre, and Rollo May...
The two main principles that are slowly starting to be built here are:
1. The principle of 'post-Enlightenment-rational-empirical-egalitarian-humanistic-existentialism';
2. The principle of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectic interaction and negotiation between bi-polar extremes', and 'ideally evolving/resulting homeostatic-dialectic balance between bi-polar extremes in epistemology, ethics, politics, economics, and/or whatever other human endeavor we wish to partake in...
I hope that I have sufficiently 'grabbed your attention' to continue to motivate you to follow through with me on this 1979 to 2010 description of the 'original architecture and still evolving structure' of -- Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
Floor 1: Basement: Prologue
The following essay is a modified, updated, and extended version of my 1979 Honours Thesis in Psychology at The University of Waterloo. I am proud to say that my professor, sponsor, and marker back in 1979 was Dr. Donald Meichenbaum who has since become a Canadian Leader in Clinical Psycholgy specializing in 'Cognitive-Behavior Modification' interventions.
A lot of theoretical changes, modifications, and extensions have taken place in my thinking and in my writing since I was a young and idealistic 24 years old in 1979 (not to mention the underlying life changes that have contributed greatly to these theoretical changes).
In 1979, I had just barely been exposed to the concept of 'dialectic thinking' which is now the central focus of my thinking and writing. The focus up to 1979 in my thinking and my writing was a two-fold combination of 'Post-Enlightenment Rational-Empiricism (Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics...)' and 'Humanistic-Existentialism (Erich Fromm, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers...').
Through the 1980s, I became much more exposed and familiar with the concepts and applications of Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, Psychoanalysis (Classic, Object Relations, and Self Psychology), Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis...and the underlying 'double-edged' philosophical influence of Hegel and Nietzsche behind all of these 'dialectic' and 'humanistic-existential' schools of psychology.
When I finished my Honours Thesis in 1979, I knew that I had a lot more research and theoretical work to do to get into the 'deeper realm of the unconscious influences' (which I now call 'transference-archetype templates, complexes, and neuroses'), on here-and-now thinking, but even now, in 2010, the basic 'rational-empirical' foundation laid down in this essay contributes much to what is now 'Hegel's Hotel: The Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar) Humanistic-Existentialist'.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
.......................................................
Floor 2: Main Lobby: Introduction
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm, 1947.
The issue of values and value judgments (or evaluations) represents a critical problem in regard to man's life.
On the one hand, man if free to evaluate and to respond to the situations he is confronted with in his day to day life as he or she pleases (usually within the context of what he or she has learned up to that point in the course of his or her life). But on the other hand, man is not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations, choices, and actions will have (or won't have) on his natural and/or social environment, and the consequences that will in turn come back to him or her via these consequences on his/her environment.
The following two 'cosmic truisms' are very applicable to anyone's evolving life.
What goes around comes around.
For every action there is a reaction.
A person's evaluations (which are built on top of his or her epistemological sensory perceptions and interpretations) can be said to be 'effective' or 'functional' to the extent that they are 'life-serving' -- that is, they work towards promoting a person's health and/or happiness.
Conversely, a person's evaluations can be said to be 'ineffective' or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are 'life-negating' -- that is, they work towards 'sabotaging' the person's health and/or happiness.
Now, being more of a 'skeptical, cynical realist and post-modern deconstructionist' in 2010, as opposed to the 'young, naive idealist' that I was in 1979, I look back at the last two paragraphs and I see clearly that these statements are not quite as 'rosy' and 'clear' as they were to me when I initially wrote them in 1979, under the dual influence of Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand was in the midst of building her 'Objective' epistemological and ethical system which she appropriately came to name -- 'Objectivism'.
By 1979, Rand had already completed two of her 'fictional-philosophical' masterpieces, 'The Fountainhead' (1943), and 'Atlas Shrugged'(1957), in which she laid down her Capitalistic Ideals that she would later blend into her more general philosophy of Objectivism.
But even back between 1974 and 1979, I was getting the beginning of my 'dialectic exposure' even though I hadn't tagged it with that particular label yet. For as well as receiving my father's Capitalistic influence -- who introduced me to the philosophy of Ayn Rand through 'The Fountainhead', and later the philosophy of Adam Smith -- still, at the same time I was reading Erich Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' (1941), and 'Man For Himself' (1947), and 'The Sane Society' (1955) that introduced me to Fromm's 'Post-Marxian-Post-Freudian-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy'.
The potential and reality for at least partly 'opposite thinking' in epistemological, ethical, econonomic, and/or political philosophy between two very well known and well respected living philosophers at the time sparked the beginning of what would eventually, for me, become the beginning of 'dialectically integrative thinking and philosophy-psychology-ecomomics-politics...' in the 1980s.
The question for me at the time was starting to become: 'How do you understand and account for the seemingly opposite thinking in two polar opposite -- and yet both logically intelligent, rational-empirical, humanistic-existential -- philosophers'; and beyond this, 'How do you potentially integrate the results of their polar-opposite thinking?'...
These two types of dialectic questions would come to dominate my own 'Subjective-Objective', 'Humanistic-Existential', 'Capitalistic-Socialistic', 'Liberal-Conservative, 'Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt' brand of 'Post-Hegelian Multi-Dialectic Philosophy-Psychology-Economics-Politics...'
But a lot of years -- and a lot of ideas -- would have to pass between 1979 and what I am writing now in 2010.
In 1979, I was just getting the ball rolling...
In 1979, I was just starting the preliminary architecture of 'Hegel's Hotel'...
In 1979, I was just a young guy in the woods of Western History, Culture, and Evolution, starting to stretch out his/my own cognitive faculties based on my very limited life experiences and what I was reading and hearing taught to me...
A thousand essays later and Hegel's Hotel is still not completely built, probably never will be, but it is getting closer to what I continue to envision...as the architecture and construction -- metaphorically speaking -- continues to be filled in, and continues to reach higher and higher into the sky...
How do you integrate Rand's 'Objectivism' with Nietzsche's brand of epistemological and ethical 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism'?
A banker, a poverty political activist, a playboy, and an artist all walk into the same cocktail party and none of them are likely to 'see' the same things...
We are all individually -- and 'narcissistically' -- biased (based on our own constantly evolving ideas, opinions, beliefs, values, feelings, impulses and restraints).
However, 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism' -- Nietzsche style -- can only take us so far. If I cross a busy street and don't see a car turning the corner and aiming right at me, with the driver not seeing me, I could be in tomorrow's obituary column...or if I, and/or my tragedy, am/is considered by a newspaper writer and/or editor to be important enough, I might even get a first or second page article...
But I won't be around to find out where I ended up in the newspaper, or if I arrived there at all, because the difference between life and death can often be only a matter of a second or two of timing...
And if my subjective, individualistic, narcissistic timing is off by even a second or two when a car is racing towards me, the driver not seeing me, or unable to apply the brakes in time, or an ex-girlfriend 'confusing' the gas with brakes...then my 'Subjective, Relativistic Philosophy' has been steamrolled under the more 'Objective Cosmic Forces of Life and Death' and/or someone else's 'Subjective, Relativisitic Epistemology and/or Ethical -- mistake, or act of Epistemological and/or Ethical judgment (or lack thereof).
In our day to day world, life and death involves a constant 'dialectic collision' between 'subjective-narcissistic' and 'more objective' (and/or other 'subjective-narcissistic') forces.
Kant's 'noumenal'(objective) and 'phenomenal'(subjective) world are constantly colliding even if man will never know perfectly just exactly what it is that is in his 'noumenal/objective' world. He still has to strive for a 'good enough' epistemological and ethical 'fit'.
Fritz Perls, the (co-)founder of Gestalt Therapy, fittingly called this the 'fitting game'.
Alfred Korzybski, one of the best (and philosophically least known) epistemologists in the history of Western Philosophy, created his school of 'General Semantics' as a 'cognitive toolbox' for people to better learn how to play life's various '(epistemological and ethical) (subjective-objective) fitting games'.
This essay here is a continuation and an extension of Korzybski's (and later S.I. Hayakawa's) General Semantic, language, and epistemology work, as well as the 'Cognitive Theory and Therapy' ('epistemological fitting game work') of writers such as Beck, Kelly, Ellis, and Meichenbaum, as well as the political-economic philosophies ('economic-political fitting game work') of Branden, Rand and Fromm, and the 'ethical fitting game work' of other Humanistic-Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre, and Rollo May...
The two main principles that are slowly starting to be built here are:
1. The principle of 'post-Enlightenment-rational-empirical-egalitarian-humanistic-existentialism';
2. The principle of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectic interaction and negotiation between bi-polar extremes', and 'ideally evolving/resulting homeostatic-dialectic balance between bi-polar extremes in epistemology, ethics, politics, economics, and/or whatever other human endeavor we wish to partake in...
I hope that I have sufficiently 'grabbed your attention' to continue to motivate you to follow through with me on this 1979 to 2010 description of the 'original architecture and still evolving structure' of -- Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
Friday, November 26, 2010
A 21st Century Internalization of Anaxamander's Ancient, Cosmic Multi-Bi-Polar Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 3
We are what we believe -- both internally and externally.
And Axamander -- the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- gave us a very primitive but very wise, and modern, 21st century cosmic philosophy that is well worth developing beyond its original scope.
In order to do this, we need to all look deep inside ourselves into the darkest regions of our own evolving, mythological, subconscious selves; not outside into the deepest, darkest, furthest, corner of the universe...
The outer universe is but a mirror to our inner souls -- and visa versa. The two are dialectic reflections of each other. God -- our Creator -- is in everything, and conversely, everything in us is a part of God's Individual and Universal Creation.
I am a multi-dialectic atheist, agnostic, pantheist, spiritualist, mythologist, and rational-empiricist -- all tied up into one.
And before you say that I am trumpeting a fully contradictory and inconsistent philosophy, I ask you to look inside yourself and see that you too are full of internal -- and externally applied contradictions...
Does that make us all hypocrites? Partly. It certainly makes us all internally bi-polar and -- and at different times, in different contexts -- contradictory.
Put it this way.
Man is a walking, talking, endless bundle of internal contradictions.
Too many to count them all...just note and classify them all, individually, or dialectically (bi-polarly) as they make their sudden or slowly evolving appearance...
If someone tries to tell me that 'God said this...'...or 'God said that...'
I become a rational-empiricist, a skeptic, a cynic, and a border-line atheist...
I have studied psychology long enough to know when I am listening to a 'projection'... (ascribing to someone or something else what we believe or what fits the characteristics of our one and only self...)
'Have some balls, man! Take ownership and accountability for your own opinion, your own belief -- don't try to lay it on God's plate and feed it to me as 'The Gospel'!
If someone asks me if I am an 'agnostic', I say, 'Yeah, I'm an 'agnositic'....Rationally and empirically, I don't know if or when or whether God exists or existed or not...except through my own idle speculations...I certainly didn't see God 'crossing the road'!!
Even the transition from speculating about 'Our Creator' to 'worshipping God' poses some huge potential problems...the idea of -- and a 'blind faith' in -- 'God' carries a lot more potential 'psychopathologies' within it than talking about the theory of 'Intelligent Design' and then perhaps an 'Intelligent Designer/Creator'....
I created 'Hegel's Hotel' but that does not mean that you have to 'worship me as your God' (although you can if you wish as long as you don't turn on me when I don't live up to your each and every ideal expectation...Wherever and whenever there are great expectations, it is only a matter of time before there is likely to be a great 'reality crash' in these same 'over-idealized' expectations...)
We fantasize perfections in others -- including God -- that we feel incapable or unwilling to live up to in ourselves...
It is easier to worship a God than it is to be one...
If you ask me whether I believe in God 'mythologically' and 'spiritually', this is where I get most excited...This is where most of my energy lies in 'bringing God to life' -- inside ourselves...
In this regard, if you go back to Greek and Roman mythology-philosophy as well as the beginning of the Roman-Christian religion, you will see that there seems to be a rather straight-forward evolution in Greek mythology from 'Zeus' to Roman mythology and 'Jupitor' to Christian religion and 'God'...
'Zeus-Jupitor-God' reflects the ongoing mythology of the 'Alpha-Male' -- worshipped by both men and women alike...
In contrast, the 'Jesus Christ' mythology reflects the bi-polarity of the 'Therapeutically Healing' and/or/but more 'Effeminate Male'.
..............................................................................................
Definition of EFFEMINATE
1: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner
2: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement
Examples of EFFEMINATE
He had a high and somewhat effeminate voice.
Origin of EFFEMINATE
Middle English, from Latin effeminatus, from past participle of effeminare to make effeminate, from ex- + femina woman — more at feminine
First Known Use: 15th century
Related to EFFEMINATE
Synonyms: effete, epicene, sissified, sissy, unmanly, womanish
............................................................................................................
With the 'Alpha-Male Mythology', we associate the characteristics of 'manliness', 'toughness', 'strength', 'courage', 'guts', 'balls', 'testosterone galore', 'leadership by strength'...and so on... The negative side of the 'alpah male mythology' is usually destructiveness, aggression, violence, no ability or willingness to listen, this is the alpha-male's 'achilles heel' if you will...
In contrast, with the 'Jesus Christ-Therapeutic (More Effeminate) Male Mythology' we associate such characteristics as peace and harmony, conflict-resolution, therapeutic healing, wholism, unity, as well as often 'martyrdom' as its potential negatively (and/or positively) perceived flipside.. and potential 'achilles heel'...
The negative, pathological alpha male self-destructs in the midst of destroying others...
The negative, pathological effeminate, submissive male destroys others in the midst of destroying himself...
One of the main bi-polarities of man -- both men and women -- is their inherent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical bi-sexuality -- the ongoing search for a balance between 'yin' and 'yang', between the more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics within all of us, both male and female, as we all strive for 'dialectic wholism, unity, and harmony'...between often opposing, conflicting more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics...
This is reflected in our past and present Greek, Roman, -- and even 'Christian' 'mythologies'...
Now, for our purposes here, there is one more important mythological figure that we need to talk about -- 'The Counter-Alpha-Male' (or Female for that matter).
In ancient Greek mythology, the Counter-Alpha-Male was played out by 'Dionysus' -- God of sensory pleasure, alcohol, group celebrations and dances, festivity, and liberal sexuality....In Roman mythology, Dionysus became known as 'Bachus'...
................................................................................................................
BACHUS, BACUS. Bacchus is a Lydian name for Dionysus, the Thracian fertility god. A son of Jupiter, he later became the god of wine. Jupiter visited Semele, princess of Thebes, at night, and when she became pregnant, she asked to see his face. As he showed himself in thunder and lightning, she caught afire; thereupon, Jupiter ripped the infant out of her womb and placed him in his thigh, where he remained until he reached maturity. Ovid calls Bacchus "son of the thunderbolt, twice born" (Met IV.9-17; OM IV.1-118).
..............................................................................................................
The closest we have in the Christian religion to Dionysus and Bachus -- is probably 'Satan'....with perhaps a little more, or a lot more, added evil intent...Perhaps this was after 'The Fall of Rome' -- after the mythology of Dionysus/Bachus made a shamble out of Roman Civilization through hedonistic extremism...
In the Christian religion, 'Satan' is God's 'estranged, disavowed, and/or evicted angel' -- evicted from Heaven, so Satan 'set up shop' in 'Hell'...located in the fiery underground of the earth as opposed to the the peaceful Heavens and Skies...
Satan is partly a mythological extension of Dionysus/Bachus in his desire for pleasure and hedonism...but also righteous defiant and contemptful of God, and in this contemptful regard, downright evil, nasty, vengeful, and violent...towards the peace, harmony, and justice in God's Kingdom...Satan is the 'anti-thesis' of God...or the 'Anti-Christ'...in that Satan is just as defiant towards the 'attempted therapeutic healing' of Jesus Christ...
Into this partial mythological 'power-play' between different 'God's in the Greek Kingdom' (although the Roman and Christian aspects of it had not been fully developed yet), walks Anaxamander (about 610-546 BC)...with a fresh, rational-empirical, and scientific as well as a partly mythological brain...
Anaxamander's first main concept was 'The Apeiron' which might be equated today with our concept of 'The Universe'...or 'Undifferentiated Chaos' -- before the differentation and separtation of all earthly bi-polar opposites...
Thus, The Apeiron can be construed as the 'Chaotic-Shadow Birthplace of all life, matter, energy, bi-polar splits -- and underlying knowledge'...
Now look into the psychology of Freud and Jung, and we will see some strong similarities here between Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' and Freud's concept of 'The Unconscious' and later 'The Id' as well as Jung's concept of 'The Shadow'...
The Apeiron is the universal birthplace of 'undifferentiated opposites' (the bi-polar cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander).
DGB's extension and application of 'The Apeiron' into the psychology of Freud and Jung....
The Apeiron is the individual birthplace in 'The Unconscious-Id-Shadow (UIS)', of all undifferentiated opposite potentials, characteristics, beliefs, values, ideas...some of which proceed up to the 'upper echelons of the conscious personality' and others which stay back in the deep UIS -- The Apeiron -- as undeveloped, or suppressed, or repressed, or inferior, or estranged, or disavowed potentials that may stay down there for virtually one's whole life, or some could slowly evolve over time into more 'competent or even superior functions' and progress as such upwards into the conscious personality...
Finally, in some cases of 'neurotic or psycho-pathic pathology' or 'radical evolution', some characteristics could go 'screaming up to the top of the personality like a bolt of lightning', a thunderbolt from Zeus, or an erupting volcano, and/or a Dionysian-Bachusian -- even a 'Satanic' -- power-play, seemingly from the 'Depths of Hell'....One minute we are 'Dr. Jeckyl' and the next minute we are 'Mr. or Ms. Hyde'...One minute we are the very 'rational-empirical' Apollo, and the next minute we are the 'sensory seductive-sexual' Dionysus-Bachus...
Such is the Bi-Polar, Dialectic (Thesis/AntiThesis/Syntheis) Nature of Man seemingly pulled in, or from, two opposing directions, with opposite intentions, opposite beliefs and values, contradictory to the bottom core...the unique, individual context determining either the radical, extremist outcome of any internal 'power struggle' and/or 'the compromise-formation' between the two struggling 'mythological' and/or 'rational-empirical' antagonists -- whether they be Apollo and Dionysus-Bachus, Apollo and Aphrodite-Venus-Cupid-Psyche, God and Satan, Jesus Christ and Satan, Zeus and Hera...or whatever/whoever...
At the deepest, darkest, volcanic boiling caldron of our psyches, we are all a swirling mass of undifferentiated opposite potentials, contradictions, paradoxes, dichotomies...spiralling upwards into consciousness, or remaining hidden, but still potentially active, in the Shadows of our Apeiron-Id-Unconscious Self....
What comes next is the splitting of our Unconscious Self (US) -- and then our Conscious Ego (CE) -- into opposite, competing, attracting, repelling, compensating dominating or submissive or egalitarian parts...
As the atom can be split, so too can the US and the CE inside our personality, our psyche, through the process of both functional specialization and/or psychic trauma...
These psychic splits -- either conscious or unconscious or both -- fragment us into countless 'psychic dialectic or triadic ego-molecules' -- 'thesis' vs. 'anti-thesis' vs. 'compromise-formation' or 'synthesis/integration'...
Too many to count, our overall health hangs in the balance of their 'homeostatic (dialectic-triadic) balance...Are our opposite tendencies basically harmonious, peaceful, and integrated with each other? Or are they at wor with each other, with no conflict-resolution in sight?
In Gestalt Therapy, the standard, generic psychic split is conceptualized as being between 'topdog' and 'underdog'...In Freudian Psychology, there are numerous listed psychic splits such as between the 'conscious' and 'unconscious', between the 'primary process' and the 'secondary process', between the 'superego' and the 'id', between the 'life' and 'death' instinct', between the 'sex' and 'aggressive' instinct...between 'sadist' and 'masochist', between 'voyeur' and 'exhibitionist', between 'active' and 'passive'...and so on...
In Jungian Psychology, we have the split between 'personna' and 'shadow'...in Adlerian Psychology between 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving'...(although Adler didn't call this a 'split'...he called it 'compensation'...)
In Object Relations, we have the split between 'external object' and 'internal object', between 'introjection' and 'projection', between 'rejecting object' and 'exciting 'object'...in Transactional Analysis we have the psychic split between 'The Nurturing Parent' and 'The Critical, Rejecting Parent'...We all have the split between the 'Adaptive Child' and 'The Free Child'...
And on it goes...more potential psychic splits than I -- or anyone else -- can possibly list and count here...
The key to psychological growth and psychotherapy then becomes: To what extent do these 'psychic splits' work in harmony with each other to re-produce a 'balanced, functional triadic unit', in balance with other psychic triadic units, and working together towards an overall state of psychic-mental-emotional 'homeostatic balance' (peace and harmony both iside and outside the personality)?
Now I am not sure whether or not you followed me in that last paragraph but let me try to extrapolate on the implications and applications of what I just said. I'm partly over my head here because I do not know more chemistry, biology, physics, and bio-chemistry. But not entirely. Somebody with more knowledge in these three or four areas might be able to offer more technical details in what I am about to say.
Hegel's diaelctic formula -- thesis plus anti-thesis equals synthesis (oversimplified) -- has something profound to say about both energy and evolution theory, the two being inter-connected and bound together...Through dialectic energy, man -- and indeed all life -- both mutates and evolves on the one hand...and deconstructs on the other hand... (Freud's idea of the life and death instinct-force.)
For example, the combustion of ogygen in the mitochondria of each living cell creates the paradox of life and death at the same time....life through energy combustion...and death through the free radical and oxidation process...That is why we have a big 'health surge' to get more and more 'anti-oxidants' into our body to combat the deconstructive-destructive-death process of oxidation/free radicals destroying live cells...
There is a point at which the theory of Quantum Mechanics merges with Hegelian Dialectic Theory and this should not surprise us because all of life and death energy is tied up to Hegelian and/or post-Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Theory... If a wolf and coyote mate, the resulting offspring are going to have some of the characteristics of the wolf and some of the characteristics of the coyote. Each individual offspring is going to have its own unique blend of characteristics that will be partly similar, and partly different than each of its fellow siblings...as well as the father and mother...
....................................................................................................
Particle-wave duality
Main article: Wave–particle duality
Light streaming through windows at Chicago's Union Station in 1943. Quantum mechanics shows that light acts both as waves and as particles.Quantum mechanics reveals how subatomic particles can have wave-like properties and waves can have particle-like properties. This phenomenon is known as wave–particle duality. The explanation stems from a theory proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie in 1924 that subatomic particles like electrons are associated with waves. Experiments later found he was correct: Electrons can bend around objects and can display wave shapes.[8]:6
Neither wave nor particle is an entirely satisfactory model to use in understanding light. Indeed, astrophysicist A.S. Eddington proposed in 1927 that "We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle; perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a 'wavicle' ".[10] This term was later popularised by mathematician Banesh Hoffmann.[11]:172
.................................................................................................................
If I am blending Freudian and Jungian Theory together in my work, I can guarantee you that it will not be exactly the same as any other Freudian-Jungian integration out there. Because the sum of my knowledge, experiences and particular integrations is both unique and constantly evolving as I evolve...Every new experience and/or piece of knowledge in my mind generates the possibility of a new blend, a new integration, and a direction or sub-direction to the already partly integrated theory...This process will never stop as long as I am alive, changing, and still writing...
'Dialectic energy' represents an 'uncertainty principle' because when two people meet together at any point in time you never know for sure what the net result of this meeting is going to be...Dialectic energy is the 'biochemical, physical, psychological, mental, and emotional energy generated between them -- that can not be predicted with any consistent deal of accuracy before they meet'.
Dialectic energy is the 'wave' that links two 'particles' (or people)...
Dialectic energy can be a mediating, compromising, democratic force...It is built into all democratic governments. When you don't have a mediating, compromising force, then you have the potential for a 'pathological' leader like we are seeing over there in North Korea....who is a walking, talking time bomb, or worse, a nuclear bomb waiting to happen....Dr. Strangelove with an itchy nuclear trigger finger who figures if he is going to go down, then he is going to take the world with him...
No dialectic energy, and cross-exchange of information, values, and saner opinions...and you have the potential for unmitigated righteousness, narcissism, and extremism projecting itself onto the world...
This is what happens when internal psychic splits work dysfunctionally against each other in ways that do not solve problems and/or resolve conflicts, but rather move the personality-and organism-as-a-whole towards some sort of impulsive insane action, and/or conversely, self-immobility (entropy, inaction, lethargy...)...Either path can lead sooner or later to destruction and/or self-destruction.
Thus the primary psychological question here becomes: How best to use our 'psychic bi-polar splits' to harmonize in the middle towards 'homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance -- which theologically speaking, we might call 'heaven'. Bi-polar righteous or narcissistic or suppressed or repressed pathology, conversely, can best be described as 'Hell'.
Sometimes the road to a more harmonious, balanced 'Heaven on Earth' goes through a more extremist 'Bi-Polar Hell on Earth'...
-- dgb, Nov. 26th-27th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- dialectic gap bridging negotiations...
-- are still in process...
And Axamander -- the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- gave us a very primitive but very wise, and modern, 21st century cosmic philosophy that is well worth developing beyond its original scope.
In order to do this, we need to all look deep inside ourselves into the darkest regions of our own evolving, mythological, subconscious selves; not outside into the deepest, darkest, furthest, corner of the universe...
The outer universe is but a mirror to our inner souls -- and visa versa. The two are dialectic reflections of each other. God -- our Creator -- is in everything, and conversely, everything in us is a part of God's Individual and Universal Creation.
I am a multi-dialectic atheist, agnostic, pantheist, spiritualist, mythologist, and rational-empiricist -- all tied up into one.
And before you say that I am trumpeting a fully contradictory and inconsistent philosophy, I ask you to look inside yourself and see that you too are full of internal -- and externally applied contradictions...
Does that make us all hypocrites? Partly. It certainly makes us all internally bi-polar and -- and at different times, in different contexts -- contradictory.
Put it this way.
Man is a walking, talking, endless bundle of internal contradictions.
Too many to count them all...just note and classify them all, individually, or dialectically (bi-polarly) as they make their sudden or slowly evolving appearance...
If someone tries to tell me that 'God said this...'...or 'God said that...'
I become a rational-empiricist, a skeptic, a cynic, and a border-line atheist...
I have studied psychology long enough to know when I am listening to a 'projection'... (ascribing to someone or something else what we believe or what fits the characteristics of our one and only self...)
'Have some balls, man! Take ownership and accountability for your own opinion, your own belief -- don't try to lay it on God's plate and feed it to me as 'The Gospel'!
If someone asks me if I am an 'agnostic', I say, 'Yeah, I'm an 'agnositic'....Rationally and empirically, I don't know if or when or whether God exists or existed or not...except through my own idle speculations...I certainly didn't see God 'crossing the road'!!
Even the transition from speculating about 'Our Creator' to 'worshipping God' poses some huge potential problems...the idea of -- and a 'blind faith' in -- 'God' carries a lot more potential 'psychopathologies' within it than talking about the theory of 'Intelligent Design' and then perhaps an 'Intelligent Designer/Creator'....
I created 'Hegel's Hotel' but that does not mean that you have to 'worship me as your God' (although you can if you wish as long as you don't turn on me when I don't live up to your each and every ideal expectation...Wherever and whenever there are great expectations, it is only a matter of time before there is likely to be a great 'reality crash' in these same 'over-idealized' expectations...)
We fantasize perfections in others -- including God -- that we feel incapable or unwilling to live up to in ourselves...
It is easier to worship a God than it is to be one...
If you ask me whether I believe in God 'mythologically' and 'spiritually', this is where I get most excited...This is where most of my energy lies in 'bringing God to life' -- inside ourselves...
In this regard, if you go back to Greek and Roman mythology-philosophy as well as the beginning of the Roman-Christian religion, you will see that there seems to be a rather straight-forward evolution in Greek mythology from 'Zeus' to Roman mythology and 'Jupitor' to Christian religion and 'God'...
'Zeus-Jupitor-God' reflects the ongoing mythology of the 'Alpha-Male' -- worshipped by both men and women alike...
In contrast, the 'Jesus Christ' mythology reflects the bi-polarity of the 'Therapeutically Healing' and/or/but more 'Effeminate Male'.
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Definition of EFFEMINATE
1: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner
2: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement
Examples of EFFEMINATE
He had a high and somewhat effeminate voice.
Origin of EFFEMINATE
Middle English, from Latin effeminatus, from past participle of effeminare to make effeminate, from ex- + femina woman — more at feminine
First Known Use: 15th century
Related to EFFEMINATE
Synonyms: effete, epicene, sissified, sissy, unmanly, womanish
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With the 'Alpha-Male Mythology', we associate the characteristics of 'manliness', 'toughness', 'strength', 'courage', 'guts', 'balls', 'testosterone galore', 'leadership by strength'...and so on... The negative side of the 'alpah male mythology' is usually destructiveness, aggression, violence, no ability or willingness to listen, this is the alpha-male's 'achilles heel' if you will...
In contrast, with the 'Jesus Christ-Therapeutic (More Effeminate) Male Mythology' we associate such characteristics as peace and harmony, conflict-resolution, therapeutic healing, wholism, unity, as well as often 'martyrdom' as its potential negatively (and/or positively) perceived flipside.. and potential 'achilles heel'...
The negative, pathological alpha male self-destructs in the midst of destroying others...
The negative, pathological effeminate, submissive male destroys others in the midst of destroying himself...
One of the main bi-polarities of man -- both men and women -- is their inherent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical bi-sexuality -- the ongoing search for a balance between 'yin' and 'yang', between the more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics within all of us, both male and female, as we all strive for 'dialectic wholism, unity, and harmony'...between often opposing, conflicting more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics...
This is reflected in our past and present Greek, Roman, -- and even 'Christian' 'mythologies'...
Now, for our purposes here, there is one more important mythological figure that we need to talk about -- 'The Counter-Alpha-Male' (or Female for that matter).
In ancient Greek mythology, the Counter-Alpha-Male was played out by 'Dionysus' -- God of sensory pleasure, alcohol, group celebrations and dances, festivity, and liberal sexuality....In Roman mythology, Dionysus became known as 'Bachus'...
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BACHUS, BACUS. Bacchus is a Lydian name for Dionysus, the Thracian fertility god. A son of Jupiter, he later became the god of wine. Jupiter visited Semele, princess of Thebes, at night, and when she became pregnant, she asked to see his face. As he showed himself in thunder and lightning, she caught afire; thereupon, Jupiter ripped the infant out of her womb and placed him in his thigh, where he remained until he reached maturity. Ovid calls Bacchus "son of the thunderbolt, twice born" (Met IV.9-17; OM IV.1-118).
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The closest we have in the Christian religion to Dionysus and Bachus -- is probably 'Satan'....with perhaps a little more, or a lot more, added evil intent...Perhaps this was after 'The Fall of Rome' -- after the mythology of Dionysus/Bachus made a shamble out of Roman Civilization through hedonistic extremism...
In the Christian religion, 'Satan' is God's 'estranged, disavowed, and/or evicted angel' -- evicted from Heaven, so Satan 'set up shop' in 'Hell'...located in the fiery underground of the earth as opposed to the the peaceful Heavens and Skies...
Satan is partly a mythological extension of Dionysus/Bachus in his desire for pleasure and hedonism...but also righteous defiant and contemptful of God, and in this contemptful regard, downright evil, nasty, vengeful, and violent...towards the peace, harmony, and justice in God's Kingdom...Satan is the 'anti-thesis' of God...or the 'Anti-Christ'...in that Satan is just as defiant towards the 'attempted therapeutic healing' of Jesus Christ...
Into this partial mythological 'power-play' between different 'God's in the Greek Kingdom' (although the Roman and Christian aspects of it had not been fully developed yet), walks Anaxamander (about 610-546 BC)...with a fresh, rational-empirical, and scientific as well as a partly mythological brain...
Anaxamander's first main concept was 'The Apeiron' which might be equated today with our concept of 'The Universe'...or 'Undifferentiated Chaos' -- before the differentation and separtation of all earthly bi-polar opposites...
Thus, The Apeiron can be construed as the 'Chaotic-Shadow Birthplace of all life, matter, energy, bi-polar splits -- and underlying knowledge'...
Now look into the psychology of Freud and Jung, and we will see some strong similarities here between Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' and Freud's concept of 'The Unconscious' and later 'The Id' as well as Jung's concept of 'The Shadow'...
The Apeiron is the universal birthplace of 'undifferentiated opposites' (the bi-polar cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander).
DGB's extension and application of 'The Apeiron' into the psychology of Freud and Jung....
The Apeiron is the individual birthplace in 'The Unconscious-Id-Shadow (UIS)', of all undifferentiated opposite potentials, characteristics, beliefs, values, ideas...some of which proceed up to the 'upper echelons of the conscious personality' and others which stay back in the deep UIS -- The Apeiron -- as undeveloped, or suppressed, or repressed, or inferior, or estranged, or disavowed potentials that may stay down there for virtually one's whole life, or some could slowly evolve over time into more 'competent or even superior functions' and progress as such upwards into the conscious personality...
Finally, in some cases of 'neurotic or psycho-pathic pathology' or 'radical evolution', some characteristics could go 'screaming up to the top of the personality like a bolt of lightning', a thunderbolt from Zeus, or an erupting volcano, and/or a Dionysian-Bachusian -- even a 'Satanic' -- power-play, seemingly from the 'Depths of Hell'....One minute we are 'Dr. Jeckyl' and the next minute we are 'Mr. or Ms. Hyde'...One minute we are the very 'rational-empirical' Apollo, and the next minute we are the 'sensory seductive-sexual' Dionysus-Bachus...
Such is the Bi-Polar, Dialectic (Thesis/AntiThesis/Syntheis) Nature of Man seemingly pulled in, or from, two opposing directions, with opposite intentions, opposite beliefs and values, contradictory to the bottom core...the unique, individual context determining either the radical, extremist outcome of any internal 'power struggle' and/or 'the compromise-formation' between the two struggling 'mythological' and/or 'rational-empirical' antagonists -- whether they be Apollo and Dionysus-Bachus, Apollo and Aphrodite-Venus-Cupid-Psyche, God and Satan, Jesus Christ and Satan, Zeus and Hera...or whatever/whoever...
At the deepest, darkest, volcanic boiling caldron of our psyches, we are all a swirling mass of undifferentiated opposite potentials, contradictions, paradoxes, dichotomies...spiralling upwards into consciousness, or remaining hidden, but still potentially active, in the Shadows of our Apeiron-Id-Unconscious Self....
What comes next is the splitting of our Unconscious Self (US) -- and then our Conscious Ego (CE) -- into opposite, competing, attracting, repelling, compensating dominating or submissive or egalitarian parts...
As the atom can be split, so too can the US and the CE inside our personality, our psyche, through the process of both functional specialization and/or psychic trauma...
These psychic splits -- either conscious or unconscious or both -- fragment us into countless 'psychic dialectic or triadic ego-molecules' -- 'thesis' vs. 'anti-thesis' vs. 'compromise-formation' or 'synthesis/integration'...
Too many to count, our overall health hangs in the balance of their 'homeostatic (dialectic-triadic) balance...Are our opposite tendencies basically harmonious, peaceful, and integrated with each other? Or are they at wor with each other, with no conflict-resolution in sight?
In Gestalt Therapy, the standard, generic psychic split is conceptualized as being between 'topdog' and 'underdog'...In Freudian Psychology, there are numerous listed psychic splits such as between the 'conscious' and 'unconscious', between the 'primary process' and the 'secondary process', between the 'superego' and the 'id', between the 'life' and 'death' instinct', between the 'sex' and 'aggressive' instinct...between 'sadist' and 'masochist', between 'voyeur' and 'exhibitionist', between 'active' and 'passive'...and so on...
In Jungian Psychology, we have the split between 'personna' and 'shadow'...in Adlerian Psychology between 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving'...(although Adler didn't call this a 'split'...he called it 'compensation'...)
In Object Relations, we have the split between 'external object' and 'internal object', between 'introjection' and 'projection', between 'rejecting object' and 'exciting 'object'...in Transactional Analysis we have the psychic split between 'The Nurturing Parent' and 'The Critical, Rejecting Parent'...We all have the split between the 'Adaptive Child' and 'The Free Child'...
And on it goes...more potential psychic splits than I -- or anyone else -- can possibly list and count here...
The key to psychological growth and psychotherapy then becomes: To what extent do these 'psychic splits' work in harmony with each other to re-produce a 'balanced, functional triadic unit', in balance with other psychic triadic units, and working together towards an overall state of psychic-mental-emotional 'homeostatic balance' (peace and harmony both iside and outside the personality)?
Now I am not sure whether or not you followed me in that last paragraph but let me try to extrapolate on the implications and applications of what I just said. I'm partly over my head here because I do not know more chemistry, biology, physics, and bio-chemistry. But not entirely. Somebody with more knowledge in these three or four areas might be able to offer more technical details in what I am about to say.
Hegel's diaelctic formula -- thesis plus anti-thesis equals synthesis (oversimplified) -- has something profound to say about both energy and evolution theory, the two being inter-connected and bound together...Through dialectic energy, man -- and indeed all life -- both mutates and evolves on the one hand...and deconstructs on the other hand... (Freud's idea of the life and death instinct-force.)
For example, the combustion of ogygen in the mitochondria of each living cell creates the paradox of life and death at the same time....life through energy combustion...and death through the free radical and oxidation process...That is why we have a big 'health surge' to get more and more 'anti-oxidants' into our body to combat the deconstructive-destructive-death process of oxidation/free radicals destroying live cells...
There is a point at which the theory of Quantum Mechanics merges with Hegelian Dialectic Theory and this should not surprise us because all of life and death energy is tied up to Hegelian and/or post-Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Theory... If a wolf and coyote mate, the resulting offspring are going to have some of the characteristics of the wolf and some of the characteristics of the coyote. Each individual offspring is going to have its own unique blend of characteristics that will be partly similar, and partly different than each of its fellow siblings...as well as the father and mother...
....................................................................................................
Particle-wave duality
Main article: Wave–particle duality
Light streaming through windows at Chicago's Union Station in 1943. Quantum mechanics shows that light acts both as waves and as particles.Quantum mechanics reveals how subatomic particles can have wave-like properties and waves can have particle-like properties. This phenomenon is known as wave–particle duality. The explanation stems from a theory proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie in 1924 that subatomic particles like electrons are associated with waves. Experiments later found he was correct: Electrons can bend around objects and can display wave shapes.[8]:6
Neither wave nor particle is an entirely satisfactory model to use in understanding light. Indeed, astrophysicist A.S. Eddington proposed in 1927 that "We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle; perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a 'wavicle' ".[10] This term was later popularised by mathematician Banesh Hoffmann.[11]:172
.................................................................................................................
If I am blending Freudian and Jungian Theory together in my work, I can guarantee you that it will not be exactly the same as any other Freudian-Jungian integration out there. Because the sum of my knowledge, experiences and particular integrations is both unique and constantly evolving as I evolve...Every new experience and/or piece of knowledge in my mind generates the possibility of a new blend, a new integration, and a direction or sub-direction to the already partly integrated theory...This process will never stop as long as I am alive, changing, and still writing...
'Dialectic energy' represents an 'uncertainty principle' because when two people meet together at any point in time you never know for sure what the net result of this meeting is going to be...Dialectic energy is the 'biochemical, physical, psychological, mental, and emotional energy generated between them -- that can not be predicted with any consistent deal of accuracy before they meet'.
Dialectic energy is the 'wave' that links two 'particles' (or people)...
Dialectic energy can be a mediating, compromising, democratic force...It is built into all democratic governments. When you don't have a mediating, compromising force, then you have the potential for a 'pathological' leader like we are seeing over there in North Korea....who is a walking, talking time bomb, or worse, a nuclear bomb waiting to happen....Dr. Strangelove with an itchy nuclear trigger finger who figures if he is going to go down, then he is going to take the world with him...
No dialectic energy, and cross-exchange of information, values, and saner opinions...and you have the potential for unmitigated righteousness, narcissism, and extremism projecting itself onto the world...
This is what happens when internal psychic splits work dysfunctionally against each other in ways that do not solve problems and/or resolve conflicts, but rather move the personality-and organism-as-a-whole towards some sort of impulsive insane action, and/or conversely, self-immobility (entropy, inaction, lethargy...)...Either path can lead sooner or later to destruction and/or self-destruction.
Thus the primary psychological question here becomes: How best to use our 'psychic bi-polar splits' to harmonize in the middle towards 'homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance -- which theologically speaking, we might call 'heaven'. Bi-polar righteous or narcissistic or suppressed or repressed pathology, conversely, can best be described as 'Hell'.
Sometimes the road to a more harmonious, balanced 'Heaven on Earth' goes through a more extremist 'Bi-Polar Hell on Earth'...
-- dgb, Nov. 26th-27th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- dialectic gap bridging negotiations...
-- are still in process...
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology: Promoting A Multi-Dialectic Integrative Spirit, Attitude, and Process...Anaxamander's Ancient Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 2
Take Stock, Imagine, Choose Your Goal and Your Direction, Re-energize, Prioritize, Plan, Focus, Muster All Your Courage and Energy...and Act! Concretely! Now!
Life is full of opposites...and much positive energy and results can be derived from engaging opposites -- opposite perspectives, opposite concepts, opposite theories, opposite personalities, opposite characteristics...-- into contact with each other, playing both sides towards the middle in a way that brings creative new integrative possibilities into existence where none existed before...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship in order to escape the terror of their own individual freedom....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control', and how to 'let the slave be free'...
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...how to take 'courageous leaps' when the 'positive outcome of complete freedom is never guaranteed'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
The Master is afraid to let others be free...and to be left in a void, a vacuum without his or her Slave...
The Slave is terrified of not having The Master to tell him or her what to do, and to be left accountable for 'filling in the huge abyss', the 'dizzying freedom' of the Master not being there to direct the Slave...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Life is full of opposites...and much positive energy and results can be derived from engaging opposites -- opposite perspectives, opposite concepts, opposite theories, opposite personalities, opposite characteristics...-- into contact with each other, playing both sides towards the middle in a way that brings creative new integrative possibilities into existence where none existed before...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship in order to escape the terror of their own individual freedom....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control', and how to 'let the slave be free'...
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...how to take 'courageous leaps' when the 'positive outcome of complete freedom is never guaranteed'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
The Master is afraid to let others be free...and to be left in a void, a vacuum without his or her Slave...
The Slave is terrified of not having The Master to tell him or her what to do, and to be left accountable for 'filling in the huge abyss', the 'dizzying freedom' of the Master not being there to direct the Slave...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Anaxamander's Ancient, Cosmic Multi-Bi-Polar, Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 1
Most students of philosophy do not appreciate just how brilliant -- Anaxamander -- the second oldest known philosopher in both Greek and Western Civilization, and his dialectic conception of the cosmic world, was -- and still is. Anaxamander was the king of the Pre-Socratic philosophers....In fact, I will be very bold and go one step further. Anaxamander's cosmic philosophy -- as primitive, archaic, and symbolic as it may have been -- is a more important conception of the cosmic world -- and the psychology of man -- than every part of Platonic philosophy except that part which indirectly builds from the multi-dialectic, multi-bi-polar philosophy that Anaxamander laid down before him. Is that bold enough? Let me support my case.
We hear the words 'bi-polar this' and 'bi-polar that' these days...as in 'bi-polar, manic-depression' which used to be simply 'manic-depression' before psychiatrists and other mental health workers started to add the 'bi-polar personality' tag to it...
We hear this 'bi-polar personality' tag as a type of 'mental health pathology' and yet most of us -- including many if not most mental health workers do not properly understand....Man is full of 'multi-bi-polarities' and this is a normal part of healthy mental and physical and physiological and bio-chemical and organic and cosmic, natural processes...Protons (positive charges) and electrons (negative charges) coming together, and/or splitting apart, according to different positive or negative or neutral electrical charges...
....................................................................................................
Atom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Atom (disambiguation).
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutrons). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element.[1]
The name atom comes from the Greek "ἄτομος"—átomos (from α-, "un-" + τέμνω - temno, "to cut"[2]), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further.[3] The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[4][5]
...............................................................................................................................
Medical conditions like high and low blood pressure, high and low blood sugar levels, hyper and hypothyroidism, acidic and alkaline blood levels...indicate that any and all body functions are based on the floating, ranging principle of a 'homeostatic, bi-polarity spectrum' where 'health' is usually found in 'the balanced middle'...
The same 'homeostatic priniciple' can easily be extended and applied to any and all life functions whether they be cognitive-mental-psychological functions on the inside looking out, or extending outwards into the respective and overlapping realms of the philosophical, the economic, the legal, the political and/or the aforementioned medical...Everything in the universe is based on the principle of 'bi-polarity'...In the realm of language, a word would not mean anything unless we could partly define it by contrasting it with its opposite word and concept...
The word and concept of 'light' would have no meaning if we did not understand, having directly experienced, the meaning of the concept of and the word 'dark'...
In summary, the world we live in is a world of 'multiple bi-polarities'...
In this regard, Anaxamander was the first Western philosopher to describe the world as a world of multiple bi-polarities competing against, and essentially trying to overpower each other...one dominating and the other sliding back into the Shadow, the undifferentiated Chaos of the 'Apeiron'...until the 'suppressed' polarity becomes 're-charged' and comes out of The Shadow to 're-compete' against the 'dominant-in-the-limelight' polarity that bring the two opposites together...Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaxamander, would later add that 'opposites attract as well as repel each other'...
This dialectic cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander's was very, very modern -- and still is -- just as ancient Eastern philosophy would build from the twin dialectic or bi-polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' which would become one of the central features, if not the central feature, of much Eastern philosophy today -- particularly Taoism/Daoism. Again, the central feature here was one of 'homeostatic balance' between the 'masculine' characteristic of 'yang' and the 'feminine' concept of 'yin'....applied even to Eastern Medicine...which would become the central feature of the current North American 'Natural Health' industry...
Can you start to see how brilliant a concept -- or conceptuology or cosmology or cosmic philosophy -- that Anaxamander had latched onto and started to describe...some 2550 years ago!!!
It was so brilliant a cosmic philosophy that it contained the seeds of the brilliant philosophies and psychologies of Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, W.B. Cannon, Perls, Berne, Foucault, and Derrida hundreds and even thousands of years later...And that is just quickly off the top of my head...
The conceptuology and cosmic mythology-philosophy is so brilliant that it has been perculating in the depths of my subconscious for a number of years now and is about to become the focus of my mythological-philosophical model of the the human psyche...
Call this conceptuology 'Anaxamander's Multi-Bi-Polar (or Multi-Dialectic) Power-Drama' played out both inside and outside the human psyche...
-- dgb, November 22nd, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
We hear the words 'bi-polar this' and 'bi-polar that' these days...as in 'bi-polar, manic-depression' which used to be simply 'manic-depression' before psychiatrists and other mental health workers started to add the 'bi-polar personality' tag to it...
We hear this 'bi-polar personality' tag as a type of 'mental health pathology' and yet most of us -- including many if not most mental health workers do not properly understand....Man is full of 'multi-bi-polarities' and this is a normal part of healthy mental and physical and physiological and bio-chemical and organic and cosmic, natural processes...Protons (positive charges) and electrons (negative charges) coming together, and/or splitting apart, according to different positive or negative or neutral electrical charges...
....................................................................................................
Atom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Atom (disambiguation).
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutrons). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element.[1]
The name atom comes from the Greek "ἄτομος"—átomos (from α-, "un-" + τέμνω - temno, "to cut"[2]), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further.[3] The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[4][5]
...............................................................................................................................
Medical conditions like high and low blood pressure, high and low blood sugar levels, hyper and hypothyroidism, acidic and alkaline blood levels...indicate that any and all body functions are based on the floating, ranging principle of a 'homeostatic, bi-polarity spectrum' where 'health' is usually found in 'the balanced middle'...
The same 'homeostatic priniciple' can easily be extended and applied to any and all life functions whether they be cognitive-mental-psychological functions on the inside looking out, or extending outwards into the respective and overlapping realms of the philosophical, the economic, the legal, the political and/or the aforementioned medical...Everything in the universe is based on the principle of 'bi-polarity'...In the realm of language, a word would not mean anything unless we could partly define it by contrasting it with its opposite word and concept...
The word and concept of 'light' would have no meaning if we did not understand, having directly experienced, the meaning of the concept of and the word 'dark'...
In summary, the world we live in is a world of 'multiple bi-polarities'...
In this regard, Anaxamander was the first Western philosopher to describe the world as a world of multiple bi-polarities competing against, and essentially trying to overpower each other...one dominating and the other sliding back into the Shadow, the undifferentiated Chaos of the 'Apeiron'...until the 'suppressed' polarity becomes 're-charged' and comes out of The Shadow to 're-compete' against the 'dominant-in-the-limelight' polarity that bring the two opposites together...Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaxamander, would later add that 'opposites attract as well as repel each other'...
This dialectic cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander's was very, very modern -- and still is -- just as ancient Eastern philosophy would build from the twin dialectic or bi-polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' which would become one of the central features, if not the central feature, of much Eastern philosophy today -- particularly Taoism/Daoism. Again, the central feature here was one of 'homeostatic balance' between the 'masculine' characteristic of 'yang' and the 'feminine' concept of 'yin'....applied even to Eastern Medicine...which would become the central feature of the current North American 'Natural Health' industry...
Can you start to see how brilliant a concept -- or conceptuology or cosmology or cosmic philosophy -- that Anaxamander had latched onto and started to describe...some 2550 years ago!!!
It was so brilliant a cosmic philosophy that it contained the seeds of the brilliant philosophies and psychologies of Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, W.B. Cannon, Perls, Berne, Foucault, and Derrida hundreds and even thousands of years later...And that is just quickly off the top of my head...
The conceptuology and cosmic mythology-philosophy is so brilliant that it has been perculating in the depths of my subconscious for a number of years now and is about to become the focus of my mythological-philosophical model of the the human psyche...
Call this conceptuology 'Anaxamander's Multi-Bi-Polar (or Multi-Dialectic) Power-Drama' played out both inside and outside the human psyche...
-- dgb, November 22nd, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
Friday, November 19, 2010
Freud, Jung, Greek-Roman-Christian Mythology -- and The Lighter and Darker Spirit of Man
Under construction...Nov. 19th, 2010
1/ On The Mythological, Religious, and Psychological Origins of 'Satan'
Let us take a few minutes here and skim briefly over a summary of the etiology of 'Satan' in The Christian and other religions...and then we will interpret this etiology and evolution, mythologically, psychologically, and philosophically...dgb
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Satan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the concept of Satan. For the concept of "devil", see Devil. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation).
Gustave Doré, Depiction of Satan, the antagonist of John Milton's Paradise Lost c.1866.Satan (Hebrew: הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan ("the accuser");[1] Arabic: الشيطان ash-Shayṭān ("the adversary") - both from the Semitic root: Ś-Ṭ-N) is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered a "fallen" angel in Judeo-Christian belief and a Jinn in Islamic belief. Originally, the term was used as a title for various entities (humans, accusing angels, etc.) that challenged the religious faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible.[2] Since then, the Abrahamic religions have used "Satan" as a name for the Devil.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Judaism
1.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2 Septuagint
1.3 Hebrew Apocrypha
1.4 Talmud and other rabbinic sources
2 Christianity
3 Islam
4 Other religions
4.1 Yazidism
4.2 Bahá'í Faith
4.3 Satanism
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
Judaism
Hebrew Bible
The original Hebrew term, satan, is a noun from a verb meaning primarily to, “obstruct, oppose,” as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6.[4] Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as “the accuser,” or “the adversary.” The definite article “ha-”, English “the”, is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as “the Satan.”[5]
Ha-Satan with the definite article occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible:
Job ch.1-2,
1 Chronicles 21:1,
Zechariah 3:1.[6]
Job's Satan In the Book of Job, ha-Satan is a member of the divine council, “the sons of God” who are subservient to God. Ha-Satan in this capacity is many times translated as “the prosecutor,” and is charged by God to tempt humans and to report back to God all who go against God’s decrees. At the beginning of the book, Job is a good person “who feared God and turned away from evil,” (Job 1:1) and has therefore been rewarded by God. When the divine council meets, God boasts to ha-Satan about Job and how Job is blameless and upright. Between Job 1:9-10 and 2:4-5, ha-Satan merely points out that God has given Job everything that a man could want, so of course Job would be loyal to God; but if all Job has been given, even his health, were to be taken away from him then his loyalty would wane. God therefore grants ha-Satan the chance to test Job.[7] Due to this, it has been interpreted that ha-Satan is under God’s control and cannot act without God’s permission. This is further shown in the epilogue of Job in which God is speaking to Job, ha-Satan is absent from these dialogues. “For Job, for [Job’s] friends, and for the narrator, it is ultimately Yahweh himself who is responsible for Job’s suffering; as Yahweh says to the “satan”, ‘You have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’(Job 2:3)” [6]
Septuagint
In the Septuagint the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos, slanderer, the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word devil is derived. Where satan is used of human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as of Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[8] In Zechariah 3 this changes the vision of the conflict over Joshua the High Priest in the Septuagint into a conflict between "Jesus and the devil", identical with the Greek text of Matthew.
Hebrew Apocrypha
The Jewish apocrypha are religious writings which are not accepted as religious texts in Judaism and many modern-day Protestant denominations. These works usually bore the names of ancient Hebrew worthies in order to establish their validity among the true writers' contemporaries. To reconcile the late appearance of the texts with their claims to primitive antiquity, alleged authors are represented as "shutting up and sealing" (Dan. XII. 4:9) the works until the time of their fulfillment had arrived; as the texts were not meant for their own generations but for far-distant ages (also cited in Assumption of Moses I. 16:17). In the Book of Wisdom, the devil is represented as the being who brought death into the world.[9]
The 2nd Book of Enoch, also called the Slavonic Book of Enoch, contains references to a Watcher Grigori called Satanael.[10] It is a pseudepigraphic text of an uncertain date and unknown authorship. The text describes Satanael as being the prince of the Grigori who was cast out of heaven[11] and an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was "righteous" and "sinful".[12] A similar story is found in the book of 1 Enoch; however, in that book, the leader of the Grigori is called Semjâzâ.
In the apocryphal literature, Satan rules over a host of angels.[13] Mastema, who induced God to test Abraham through the sacrifice of Isaac, is identical with Satan in both name and nature.[14]
For the Chasidic Jews of the eighteenth century, ha-Satan was Baal Davar.[15] The Book of Enoch contains references to Satariel, thought also to be Sataniel and Satan'el (etymology dating back to Babylonian origins). The similar spellings mirror that of his angelic brethren Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel, previous to his expulsion from Heaven.
Talmud and other rabbinic sources
The Talmud mentions the Satan in many places. In all of these places, the Satan is an agent of God, and has no independent existence. Sometimes the Satan is conflated with various demons, such as Asmodai. At times there is even some sympathy for him. Commenting on the Book of Job, the rabbis express sympathy that his job was to "break the barrel but not spill any wine."
In Kabbalistic literature and its derivative, Hasidic literature, the Satan is seen as an agent of God whose job is to tempt one into sin, and then turn around and accuse the sinner on high. An additional understanding of Satan is from a parable to a prostitute who is hired by the King (God) to tempt his son (a Jew). The prostitute has to do the best she can to tempt the son; but deep down she hopes the son will pass the test. Similarly, Kabbalistic/Hasidic thought sees the Satan in the same situation. His job is to tempt us as best he can; turn around and accuse us; but deep down his wish is that we would resist his blandishments.
Christianity
Main article: Christian teaching about the Devil
See also: War in Heaven
In Christianity, terms that are synonymous with "Satan" include:
The most common English synonym for "Satan" is "Devil", which descends from Middle English devel, from Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin diabolus (also the source of "diabolical"). This in turn was borrowed from Greek diabolos "slanderer", from diaballein "to slander": dia- "across, through" + ballein "to hurl".[16] In the New Testament, "Satan" occurs more than 30 times in passages alongside Diabolos (Greek for "the devil"), referring to the same person or thing as Satan.[17]
Beelzebub is originally the name of a Philistine god (more specifically a certain type of Baal, from Ba‘al Zebûb, lit. "Lord of Flies") but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for Satan.
Satan is traditionally identified as the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; thus, Satan has often been depicted as a serpent.
The Book of Revelation twice refers to "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan," (12:9, 20:2). The Book of Revelation also refers to "the deceiver," from which is derived the common epithet "the great deceiver."[18]
Other terms identified with Satan include "the prince of this world" in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; "the prince of the power of the air" also called Meririm, and "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and "the god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4.[19]
From the fourth Century Lucifer is sometimes used in Christian theology to refer to Satan, as a result of identifying the fallen "son of the dawn" of Isaiah 14:12 with the "accuser" of other passages in the Old Testament.
Satan as depicted in the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, illustrated by Gustave Doré.In traditional Christian understanding of the holy Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, Satan is a synonym for the Devil. For most Christians, he is believed to be an angel who rebelled against God—and also the one who spoke through the serpent and seduced Eve into disobeying God's command. His ultimate goal is to lead people away from the love of God — to lead them to fallacies which God opposes. Satan is also identified as the accuser of Job, the tempter in the Gospels, the secret power of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation. Before his insurrection, Satan was among the highest of all angels and the "brightest in the sky". His pride is considered a reason why he would not bow to God as all other angels did, but sought to rule heaven himself. The popularly held beliefs that Satan was once a prideful angel who eventually rebels against God, however, are barely portrayed explicitly in the Bible and are mostly based on inference (e.g., Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14:12-17). In mainstream Christianity he is called "the ruler of the demons" (Matt. 12:24), "the ruler of the world" and "the god of this world". (2 Cor. 4:4). The Book of Revelation describes how Satan will be cast out of Heaven, down to the earth, having "great anger" and waging war against "those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus". Ultimately, Satan is thrown into the "Lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10), not as ruler, but as one among many, being tormented day and night for all eternity.
In other Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any "adversary" and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.[20]
Islam
Main article: Devil (Islam)
Shaitan (شيطان) is the equivalent of Satan in Islam. While Shaitan (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن) is an adjective (meaning "astray" or "distant", sometimes translated as "devil") that can be applied to both man ("al-ins", الإنس) and Jinn, Iblis (Arabic pronunciation: [ˈibliːs]) is the personal name of the Devil who is mentioned in the Qur'anic account of Genesis.[21] According to the Qur'an, Iblis (the Arabic name used) disobeyed an order from Allah to bow to Adam and as a result was forced out of heaven and given respite until the day of judgment from further punishment.
When Allah commanded all of the angels to bow down before Adam (the first Human), Iblis, full of hubris and jealousy, refused to obey God's command (he could do so because, as a jinn, he had free will), seeing Adam as being inferior in creation due to his being created from clay as compared to him (created of fire).[22]
"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis (Lucifer); He refused to be of those who prostrate."
(Allah) said: "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."
Qur'an 7:11-12
It was after this that the title of "Shaitan" was given, which can be roughly translated as "Enemy," "Rebel," "Evil" or "Devil". Shaitan then claims that if the punishment for his act of disobedience is to be delayed until the Day of Judgment, that he will divert many of Adam's own descendants from the straight path during his period of respite.[23] God accepts the claims of Iblis and guarantees recompense to Iblis and his followers in the form of Hellfire. In order to test mankind and jinn alike, Allah allowed Iblis to roam the earth to attempt to convert others away from his path.[24] He was sent to earth along with Adam and Eve, after eventually luring them into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.[25]
Other religions
Yazidism
An alternate name for the main deity in the tentatively Indo-European pantheon of the Yazidi, Malek Taus, is Shaitan.[26] Rather than Satanic, however, Yazidism is better understood as a remnant of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern Indo-European religion, and/or a ghulat Sufi movement founded by Shaykh Adi. The connection with Satan, originally made by Muslim outsiders, attracted the interest of 19th-century European travelers and esoteric writers.
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, Satan is not regarded as an independent evil power as he is in some faiths, but signifies the lower nature of humans. `Abdu'l-Bahá explains: "This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside."[27][28] All other evil spirits described in various faith traditions such as fallen angels, demons and jinns are also metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God.[29]
Satanism
Main article: Satanism
Satanic groups have various opinions about Satan, ranging from the conviction that he exists and ought to be worshipped (theistic Satanism), to Anton Szandor LaVey's symbolic interpretation, which emphasizes individual will and pleasure-seeking.
Much "Satanic" lore does not originate from actual Satanists, but from Christians. Best-known is the medieval folklore and theology surrounding demons and witches. A more recent example is the so-called Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s — beginning with the memoir Michelle Remembers — which depicts Satanism as a vast (and unsubstantiated) conspiracy of elites with a predilection for child abuse and human sacrifice. This genre regularly describes Satan as actually appearing in person in order to receive worship.
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dgb
The main thesis that I wish to develop in this essay is that mythology, religion, psychology and philosophy are all different -- or at least differently classified -- realms of human thought that remain closely tied together.
A secondary thesis that I intend to develop is the essential under-pinning importance of the dialectic concept of 'humanistic-existentialism' in the positive and/or negative judment of any religious institution, any political and/or philosophical system, any eocnomic and/or legal system, any psychological school of thought...
a/ Projection
Man has an inherent, built-in, usually subconsious or unconscious tendency to 'project' what he thinks, feels, and wants from the 'inside of his personality' to the 'outside' of his personality (projecting these different thoughts, feelings, and wants or impulses onto 'other people', 'animals', 'things', 'objects', 'Gods', 'demons'....and so on...Projection is like using the outside world as our own personal 'canvas' on which we 'paint a picture' -- and the picture which we often 'disown' or 'deny accountability' for its contents -- 'symbolically' -- and partly overtly, partly covertly -- portrays 'us'. In other words, our 'picture', our 'projection' both hides and alludes to the hidden thoughts, feelings, and impulses within us, both good and bad.
Our own personal projections -- as well as our more collective, cultural, mythological, and religious projections -- both hide(s) and allude(s) to both 'the lighter and the darker spirit of man'.
Bottom line, call it the competion in man between 'good and evil'...
Put another way, all you have to do is to study the mythologies and the religions of man, and you have a 'symbolic, projective canvas' on which to also study the psychology, as well as the partly consistent, partly evolving religious and mythological philosophy of man.
The conflict between 'God' ('Zeus', 'Jupitor'...) and 'Satan' (God's 'fallen and evicted angel'), for example becomes a conflict within us between 'good' and 'evil' although that is not to say that 'God' should always be interpreted as being 'good', and neither should 'Satan' -- as much as we have come to associate Satan with 'evil' -- should always be interepreted as being evil...
For example, a distinction could or can be made between 'Benign Satanism' and 'Malignant, Pathological Satanism'. Benign Satanism could/can also be called 'Hedonistic Satanism' or 'Sensory Satanism' or 'Dionysianism'...Dionysus being interpreted here as possibly the 'Greek precursor God' to what evolve into 'The Christian Devil' -- or 'Satan'.
'Benign-Hedonistic-Dionysian Satanism' could/can be viewed in this regard as the Nietzschean 'anti-thesis' to The Christian directive of 'denying one's senses, denying pleasure, denying hedonism, and essentially denying the pursuit of happiness except in either a 'spiritual, religious' way and/or -- in 'the afterlife'. In this regard, Nietzsche was rebelling against the 'anti-humanistic-existential' elements in
the type of Christiantity that he had been taught that essentially preached 'accepting misery and anti-pleaure' in this lifetime in order to be 'accepted into Heaven', and thus, be 'eligible' for a 'better afterlife' than those who are 'expelled from Heaven' when they die because they spent too much time chasing 'Satanic ideas' (like 'the pursuit of sensory pleasure')...
In contrast, the 'toxic, malignant, pathological' potential side of 'Satanism' ('Toxic, Pathological Satanism') is the basic belief of being above or below 'ethical scrutiny and judgment' and practising 'evil' just for the sake of practising evil...such as any thought of 'human sacrifice' (or even 'animal sacrifice' for that matter which has been connected to the worship of God as well as Satan...) In this regard, we need to psychologically examine the 'toxic etiology' of 'Pathological Satanism' -- the worshipping and practicing of 'thinking, feeling, and doing evil things'...
b) Humanistic-Existentialism
It is here that I introduce the dialectic (integrative) bi-polar homeostatic principle of 'humanistic-existenalism'...
By 'humanism' I am referring to the 'compassionate, empathetic, sympathetic, loving, caring side of man...'
In contrast, but not mutually exclusive, I refer to 'existentialism' as the belief in being 'accountable' for all our own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and actions...and being accountable for their 'consequences'...not 'passing the buck' on self-responsibility through 'excuses' and/or 'projective blame'...
On the basis of the bi-polar, homeostatic, dialectic principle of 'humanistic-existentialism', I judge all things, entities, actions...including 'God' Him(or Her)Self...and including 'Jesus', 'Satan', 'Apollo', 'Dionysus', 'Judas', 'Pilate', etc...
I support all religions that subscribe to the bi-polar, dialectic, homeostatic, ethical principle of 'humanistic-existentialism'...and I rebel against those that don't...
If man is going to support religion, then religion needs to support man...
If man is going to support and 'worship' God, then 'the God that man supports and worships needs to show that He/She is supporting the 'humanistic-existential' activities -- and 'Spirit' -- of man...
I believe in the Spinozian principle that 'God is in everything'...all of His/Her/Nature's Creations...
Or dialectically speaking, 'God is in man, and man is in God, and the two are dialectically entwined together...through both good and evil, but ideally in 'good'...
'Satan is the repressed/suppressed disavowed dark spirit of God...and man...'
Mythologically and/or religiously speaking, God evicted Satan -- the 'Dark Spirit of Him/Her Self -- from Heaven into 'Hell' -- and 'Hell' is the Dark Spirit in both God and Man that was born partly from 'evil impulses', and then exasperated from 'excommunication', 'isolation', 'alienation', 'disavowal', 'dissociation' 'rejection', 'abandonment', 'betrayal'... a lack of productive, creative, meaninful integration between God's and mans's collective Light and Dark Spirit...and instead a 'compensatory negative, vengeful movement towards hurting others in the same vein as we have been hurt ourselves'...This is 'Hell' on Earth, and 'Hell in man'...
To be continued...
1/ On The Mythological, Religious, and Psychological Origins of 'Satan'
Let us take a few minutes here and skim briefly over a summary of the etiology of 'Satan' in The Christian and other religions...and then we will interpret this etiology and evolution, mythologically, psychologically, and philosophically...dgb
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Satan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the concept of Satan. For the concept of "devil", see Devil. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation).
Gustave Doré, Depiction of Satan, the antagonist of John Milton's Paradise Lost c.1866.Satan (Hebrew: הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan ("the accuser");[1] Arabic: الشيطان ash-Shayṭān ("the adversary") - both from the Semitic root: Ś-Ṭ-N) is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered a "fallen" angel in Judeo-Christian belief and a Jinn in Islamic belief. Originally, the term was used as a title for various entities (humans, accusing angels, etc.) that challenged the religious faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible.[2] Since then, the Abrahamic religions have used "Satan" as a name for the Devil.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Judaism
1.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2 Septuagint
1.3 Hebrew Apocrypha
1.4 Talmud and other rabbinic sources
2 Christianity
3 Islam
4 Other religions
4.1 Yazidism
4.2 Bahá'í Faith
4.3 Satanism
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
Judaism
Hebrew Bible
The original Hebrew term, satan, is a noun from a verb meaning primarily to, “obstruct, oppose,” as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6.[4] Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as “the accuser,” or “the adversary.” The definite article “ha-”, English “the”, is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as “the Satan.”[5]
Ha-Satan with the definite article occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible:
Job ch.1-2,
1 Chronicles 21:1,
Zechariah 3:1.[6]
Job's Satan In the Book of Job, ha-Satan is a member of the divine council, “the sons of God” who are subservient to God. Ha-Satan in this capacity is many times translated as “the prosecutor,” and is charged by God to tempt humans and to report back to God all who go against God’s decrees. At the beginning of the book, Job is a good person “who feared God and turned away from evil,” (Job 1:1) and has therefore been rewarded by God. When the divine council meets, God boasts to ha-Satan about Job and how Job is blameless and upright. Between Job 1:9-10 and 2:4-5, ha-Satan merely points out that God has given Job everything that a man could want, so of course Job would be loyal to God; but if all Job has been given, even his health, were to be taken away from him then his loyalty would wane. God therefore grants ha-Satan the chance to test Job.[7] Due to this, it has been interpreted that ha-Satan is under God’s control and cannot act without God’s permission. This is further shown in the epilogue of Job in which God is speaking to Job, ha-Satan is absent from these dialogues. “For Job, for [Job’s] friends, and for the narrator, it is ultimately Yahweh himself who is responsible for Job’s suffering; as Yahweh says to the “satan”, ‘You have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’(Job 2:3)” [6]
Septuagint
In the Septuagint the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos, slanderer, the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word devil is derived. Where satan is used of human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as of Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[8] In Zechariah 3 this changes the vision of the conflict over Joshua the High Priest in the Septuagint into a conflict between "Jesus and the devil", identical with the Greek text of Matthew.
Hebrew Apocrypha
The Jewish apocrypha are religious writings which are not accepted as religious texts in Judaism and many modern-day Protestant denominations. These works usually bore the names of ancient Hebrew worthies in order to establish their validity among the true writers' contemporaries. To reconcile the late appearance of the texts with their claims to primitive antiquity, alleged authors are represented as "shutting up and sealing" (Dan. XII. 4:9) the works until the time of their fulfillment had arrived; as the texts were not meant for their own generations but for far-distant ages (also cited in Assumption of Moses I. 16:17). In the Book of Wisdom, the devil is represented as the being who brought death into the world.[9]
The 2nd Book of Enoch, also called the Slavonic Book of Enoch, contains references to a Watcher Grigori called Satanael.[10] It is a pseudepigraphic text of an uncertain date and unknown authorship. The text describes Satanael as being the prince of the Grigori who was cast out of heaven[11] and an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was "righteous" and "sinful".[12] A similar story is found in the book of 1 Enoch; however, in that book, the leader of the Grigori is called Semjâzâ.
In the apocryphal literature, Satan rules over a host of angels.[13] Mastema, who induced God to test Abraham through the sacrifice of Isaac, is identical with Satan in both name and nature.[14]
For the Chasidic Jews of the eighteenth century, ha-Satan was Baal Davar.[15] The Book of Enoch contains references to Satariel, thought also to be Sataniel and Satan'el (etymology dating back to Babylonian origins). The similar spellings mirror that of his angelic brethren Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel, previous to his expulsion from Heaven.
Talmud and other rabbinic sources
The Talmud mentions the Satan in many places. In all of these places, the Satan is an agent of God, and has no independent existence. Sometimes the Satan is conflated with various demons, such as Asmodai. At times there is even some sympathy for him. Commenting on the Book of Job, the rabbis express sympathy that his job was to "break the barrel but not spill any wine."
In Kabbalistic literature and its derivative, Hasidic literature, the Satan is seen as an agent of God whose job is to tempt one into sin, and then turn around and accuse the sinner on high. An additional understanding of Satan is from a parable to a prostitute who is hired by the King (God) to tempt his son (a Jew). The prostitute has to do the best she can to tempt the son; but deep down she hopes the son will pass the test. Similarly, Kabbalistic/Hasidic thought sees the Satan in the same situation. His job is to tempt us as best he can; turn around and accuse us; but deep down his wish is that we would resist his blandishments.
Christianity
Main article: Christian teaching about the Devil
See also: War in Heaven
In Christianity, terms that are synonymous with "Satan" include:
The most common English synonym for "Satan" is "Devil", which descends from Middle English devel, from Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin diabolus (also the source of "diabolical"). This in turn was borrowed from Greek diabolos "slanderer", from diaballein "to slander": dia- "across, through" + ballein "to hurl".[16] In the New Testament, "Satan" occurs more than 30 times in passages alongside Diabolos (Greek for "the devil"), referring to the same person or thing as Satan.[17]
Beelzebub is originally the name of a Philistine god (more specifically a certain type of Baal, from Ba‘al Zebûb, lit. "Lord of Flies") but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for Satan.
Satan is traditionally identified as the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; thus, Satan has often been depicted as a serpent.
The Book of Revelation twice refers to "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan," (12:9, 20:2). The Book of Revelation also refers to "the deceiver," from which is derived the common epithet "the great deceiver."[18]
Other terms identified with Satan include "the prince of this world" in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; "the prince of the power of the air" also called Meririm, and "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and "the god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4.[19]
From the fourth Century Lucifer is sometimes used in Christian theology to refer to Satan, as a result of identifying the fallen "son of the dawn" of Isaiah 14:12 with the "accuser" of other passages in the Old Testament.
Satan as depicted in the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, illustrated by Gustave Doré.In traditional Christian understanding of the holy Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, Satan is a synonym for the Devil. For most Christians, he is believed to be an angel who rebelled against God—and also the one who spoke through the serpent and seduced Eve into disobeying God's command. His ultimate goal is to lead people away from the love of God — to lead them to fallacies which God opposes. Satan is also identified as the accuser of Job, the tempter in the Gospels, the secret power of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation. Before his insurrection, Satan was among the highest of all angels and the "brightest in the sky". His pride is considered a reason why he would not bow to God as all other angels did, but sought to rule heaven himself. The popularly held beliefs that Satan was once a prideful angel who eventually rebels against God, however, are barely portrayed explicitly in the Bible and are mostly based on inference (e.g., Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14:12-17). In mainstream Christianity he is called "the ruler of the demons" (Matt. 12:24), "the ruler of the world" and "the god of this world". (2 Cor. 4:4). The Book of Revelation describes how Satan will be cast out of Heaven, down to the earth, having "great anger" and waging war against "those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus". Ultimately, Satan is thrown into the "Lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10), not as ruler, but as one among many, being tormented day and night for all eternity.
In other Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any "adversary" and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.[20]
Islam
Main article: Devil (Islam)
Shaitan (شيطان) is the equivalent of Satan in Islam. While Shaitan (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن) is an adjective (meaning "astray" or "distant", sometimes translated as "devil") that can be applied to both man ("al-ins", الإنس) and Jinn, Iblis (Arabic pronunciation: [ˈibliːs]) is the personal name of the Devil who is mentioned in the Qur'anic account of Genesis.[21] According to the Qur'an, Iblis (the Arabic name used) disobeyed an order from Allah to bow to Adam and as a result was forced out of heaven and given respite until the day of judgment from further punishment.
When Allah commanded all of the angels to bow down before Adam (the first Human), Iblis, full of hubris and jealousy, refused to obey God's command (he could do so because, as a jinn, he had free will), seeing Adam as being inferior in creation due to his being created from clay as compared to him (created of fire).[22]
"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis (Lucifer); He refused to be of those who prostrate."
(Allah) said: "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."
Qur'an 7:11-12
It was after this that the title of "Shaitan" was given, which can be roughly translated as "Enemy," "Rebel," "Evil" or "Devil". Shaitan then claims that if the punishment for his act of disobedience is to be delayed until the Day of Judgment, that he will divert many of Adam's own descendants from the straight path during his period of respite.[23] God accepts the claims of Iblis and guarantees recompense to Iblis and his followers in the form of Hellfire. In order to test mankind and jinn alike, Allah allowed Iblis to roam the earth to attempt to convert others away from his path.[24] He was sent to earth along with Adam and Eve, after eventually luring them into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.[25]
Other religions
Yazidism
An alternate name for the main deity in the tentatively Indo-European pantheon of the Yazidi, Malek Taus, is Shaitan.[26] Rather than Satanic, however, Yazidism is better understood as a remnant of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern Indo-European religion, and/or a ghulat Sufi movement founded by Shaykh Adi. The connection with Satan, originally made by Muslim outsiders, attracted the interest of 19th-century European travelers and esoteric writers.
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, Satan is not regarded as an independent evil power as he is in some faiths, but signifies the lower nature of humans. `Abdu'l-Bahá explains: "This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside."[27][28] All other evil spirits described in various faith traditions such as fallen angels, demons and jinns are also metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God.[29]
Satanism
Main article: Satanism
Satanic groups have various opinions about Satan, ranging from the conviction that he exists and ought to be worshipped (theistic Satanism), to Anton Szandor LaVey's symbolic interpretation, which emphasizes individual will and pleasure-seeking.
Much "Satanic" lore does not originate from actual Satanists, but from Christians. Best-known is the medieval folklore and theology surrounding demons and witches. A more recent example is the so-called Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s — beginning with the memoir Michelle Remembers — which depicts Satanism as a vast (and unsubstantiated) conspiracy of elites with a predilection for child abuse and human sacrifice. This genre regularly describes Satan as actually appearing in person in order to receive worship.
..................................................................................................................
dgb
The main thesis that I wish to develop in this essay is that mythology, religion, psychology and philosophy are all different -- or at least differently classified -- realms of human thought that remain closely tied together.
A secondary thesis that I intend to develop is the essential under-pinning importance of the dialectic concept of 'humanistic-existentialism' in the positive and/or negative judment of any religious institution, any political and/or philosophical system, any eocnomic and/or legal system, any psychological school of thought...
a/ Projection
Man has an inherent, built-in, usually subconsious or unconscious tendency to 'project' what he thinks, feels, and wants from the 'inside of his personality' to the 'outside' of his personality (projecting these different thoughts, feelings, and wants or impulses onto 'other people', 'animals', 'things', 'objects', 'Gods', 'demons'....and so on...Projection is like using the outside world as our own personal 'canvas' on which we 'paint a picture' -- and the picture which we often 'disown' or 'deny accountability' for its contents -- 'symbolically' -- and partly overtly, partly covertly -- portrays 'us'. In other words, our 'picture', our 'projection' both hides and alludes to the hidden thoughts, feelings, and impulses within us, both good and bad.
Our own personal projections -- as well as our more collective, cultural, mythological, and religious projections -- both hide(s) and allude(s) to both 'the lighter and the darker spirit of man'.
Bottom line, call it the competion in man between 'good and evil'...
Put another way, all you have to do is to study the mythologies and the religions of man, and you have a 'symbolic, projective canvas' on which to also study the psychology, as well as the partly consistent, partly evolving religious and mythological philosophy of man.
The conflict between 'God' ('Zeus', 'Jupitor'...) and 'Satan' (God's 'fallen and evicted angel'), for example becomes a conflict within us between 'good' and 'evil' although that is not to say that 'God' should always be interpreted as being 'good', and neither should 'Satan' -- as much as we have come to associate Satan with 'evil' -- should always be interepreted as being evil...
For example, a distinction could or can be made between 'Benign Satanism' and 'Malignant, Pathological Satanism'. Benign Satanism could/can also be called 'Hedonistic Satanism' or 'Sensory Satanism' or 'Dionysianism'...Dionysus being interpreted here as possibly the 'Greek precursor God' to what evolve into 'The Christian Devil' -- or 'Satan'.
'Benign-Hedonistic-Dionysian Satanism' could/can be viewed in this regard as the Nietzschean 'anti-thesis' to The Christian directive of 'denying one's senses, denying pleasure, denying hedonism, and essentially denying the pursuit of happiness except in either a 'spiritual, religious' way and/or -- in 'the afterlife'. In this regard, Nietzsche was rebelling against the 'anti-humanistic-existential' elements in
the type of Christiantity that he had been taught that essentially preached 'accepting misery and anti-pleaure' in this lifetime in order to be 'accepted into Heaven', and thus, be 'eligible' for a 'better afterlife' than those who are 'expelled from Heaven' when they die because they spent too much time chasing 'Satanic ideas' (like 'the pursuit of sensory pleasure')...
In contrast, the 'toxic, malignant, pathological' potential side of 'Satanism' ('Toxic, Pathological Satanism') is the basic belief of being above or below 'ethical scrutiny and judgment' and practising 'evil' just for the sake of practising evil...such as any thought of 'human sacrifice' (or even 'animal sacrifice' for that matter which has been connected to the worship of God as well as Satan...) In this regard, we need to psychologically examine the 'toxic etiology' of 'Pathological Satanism' -- the worshipping and practicing of 'thinking, feeling, and doing evil things'...
b) Humanistic-Existentialism
It is here that I introduce the dialectic (integrative) bi-polar homeostatic principle of 'humanistic-existenalism'...
By 'humanism' I am referring to the 'compassionate, empathetic, sympathetic, loving, caring side of man...'
In contrast, but not mutually exclusive, I refer to 'existentialism' as the belief in being 'accountable' for all our own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and actions...and being accountable for their 'consequences'...not 'passing the buck' on self-responsibility through 'excuses' and/or 'projective blame'...
On the basis of the bi-polar, homeostatic, dialectic principle of 'humanistic-existentialism', I judge all things, entities, actions...including 'God' Him(or Her)Self...and including 'Jesus', 'Satan', 'Apollo', 'Dionysus', 'Judas', 'Pilate', etc...
I support all religions that subscribe to the bi-polar, dialectic, homeostatic, ethical principle of 'humanistic-existentialism'...and I rebel against those that don't...
If man is going to support religion, then religion needs to support man...
If man is going to support and 'worship' God, then 'the God that man supports and worships needs to show that He/She is supporting the 'humanistic-existential' activities -- and 'Spirit' -- of man...
I believe in the Spinozian principle that 'God is in everything'...all of His/Her/Nature's Creations...
Or dialectically speaking, 'God is in man, and man is in God, and the two are dialectically entwined together...through both good and evil, but ideally in 'good'...
'Satan is the repressed/suppressed disavowed dark spirit of God...and man...'
Mythologically and/or religiously speaking, God evicted Satan -- the 'Dark Spirit of Him/Her Self -- from Heaven into 'Hell' -- and 'Hell' is the Dark Spirit in both God and Man that was born partly from 'evil impulses', and then exasperated from 'excommunication', 'isolation', 'alienation', 'disavowal', 'dissociation' 'rejection', 'abandonment', 'betrayal'... a lack of productive, creative, meaninful integration between God's and mans's collective Light and Dark Spirit...and instead a 'compensatory negative, vengeful movement towards hurting others in the same vein as we have been hurt ourselves'...This is 'Hell' on Earth, and 'Hell in man'...
To be continued...
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