On The Dialectic Interplay Between Failure and Success....

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize
how close they were to success when they gave up."

-- Thomas Edison

Moving Day!!

Moving day...out with the old...in with the new...Am I sliding down hill?....Or was this just a 10 month bad patch that I am starting to recover from?...Time will tell whether I'm 'righting the plane or not'...I'm cautiously optimistic...with lots of jaded feelings swirling around both in my brain and my heart...essays galore coming out of my head each day...Essays of celebration...essays of grief...essays of rage...But no time or place to write them down...Hopefully, I will recover some of them and get them into Hegel's Hotel one day...But not right now...Right now, more pragmatic, pressing, stressing, and distressing matters take priority...and are dominating my days' events...

I shall be back...

-- dgb, May 28th, 2010.

From Robin Hood...Russell Crowe Version...

Rise and rise again until lambs become lions.

What is God?

God is a personified or objectified ideal -- usually the ideal of all ideals. 


-- dgb, May 24th, 2010

We All Have Conceptualized and/or Personalized Ideal(s) -- i.e., Gods, Myths, and Idols -- That We Choose To Serve...It Is Only The Particular Ideals and Idols That Differ...

In process...

Aphorisms...Again....For a While....Nietzsche Style...Part 1: Did Nietzsche Have A 'Will to His Own Downfall'?

I may have to go back to writing aphorisms and mini-essays for a while....to compensate for my lack of writing time...I have to start reading Nietsche again...his short passages and aphorisms which can ignite more fire in my blood....

Here is one of Nietzsche's most famous ones...I will give you the context under which I 'accidentally' came across this passage again....

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I had taken a couple of customers (pilots) downtown in my limo and was waiting for them to have dinner before I took them back to the airport.

I drove over to the other side of downtown and parked my Lincoln.....walked down towards Church and Wellesley (not my usual walking ground ) and happened upon The Church Street Diner, 555 Wellesley Street. A man fixing the menu board waved me in so I walked up the stairs, went inside, and grabbed a seat by the window overlooking Church St. The waitress was smiling and friendly...asked me later what I was reading...and then when I told her she asked me who Nietzsche was...(in 20 words or less....I tried to tell her who Nietzsche was, that he was a very intense, passionate philosopher...and this was probably his most famous book...I then said I was looking for a dessert and she recommended the 'maple sugar pie with ice cream'...I said that sounded 'very sweet'...she said it was 'very good'...and I said, 'I'd give it a try although my belly would probably not be thanking her later....The pie and ice cream came, all 500 calories or more of it...but who was counting after I took my first bite...).

While I was waiting for my dessert, I opened 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' to a page and start reading. It didn't grab me, so I tried again, and then again....On my third try, I got the 'hit' I was (or wasn't) looking for, but found anyway, probably one of Nietzsche's most famous quotes from 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. (I didn't even know that it came from this book)  Here is a more extended version of the writing context surrounding one of Nietzsche's most famous quotes...

..............................................................

But Zarathustra looked at the people and marvelled. Then he spoke thus:

Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman -- a rope over an abyss.

A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and staying still.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going.

I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across.

I love the great despisers, for they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other bank.

I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices; but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.

I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall.

I love him who works and invents that he may build a house for the Superman and prepare earth, animals, and plants for him; for thus he wills his own downfall.

I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is will to downfall and an arrow of  longing.

I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as virtue over the bridge.

I love him who makes a predilections and a fate of his virtue; thus for his virtue's sake he will live or not live.

I love him who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more than two, because it is more of a knot for fate to cling to.

I love him whose soul is lavish, who neither wants nor returns thanks: for he always gives and will not preserve himself.

I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? -- for he wants to perish.

I love him who throws golden words ahead of his deeds and always performs more than he promised: for he wills his own downfall.

I love him who justifies the men of the future and redeems the men of the past: for he wants to perish by the men of the present.

I love him who chastises his God because he loves his God: for he must perish by the anger of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in its ability to be wounded, and whom even a little thing can destroy: thus he is glad to go over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself and all things are in him: thus all things become his downfall.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the bowels of his heart, but his heart drives him to his downfall.

I love all those who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they prophesy the coming of the lightning and as prophets they perish.

Behold, I am the prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Superman.

  ...............................................................................


DGB...Editorial Comments....


Part 1: Did Nietzsche Have A 'Will to His Own Downfall'?


 It feels like Nietzsche is anticipating his own collapse in the passages above...Thus Spoke Zarathustra was composed between 1883 and 1885...Nietzsche collapsed from a mental breakdown on January 3rd, 1889.

The first puzzling phrase that Nietzsche uses is:

'What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going'.

The 'going across' phrase fits with Nietzsche's image of two cliffs and an abyss. And man needing to 'go across' the abyss of life....That part fits...but what about the phrase 'down going'....What does that mean?  Does it mean that Nietzsche anticipates 'falling into the abyss'...

Nietzsche continues: 'I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across'.

So Nietzsche associates 'going down' with 'going across'...going down where? To the earth? To your own self-destruction? Let's look for more clarification in the passages below:

I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices; but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.

I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall.

I love him who works and invents that he may build a house for the Superman and prepare earth, animals, and plants for him; for thus he wills his own downfall.

I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is will to downfall and an arrow of  longing.

I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as virtue over the bridge.

Does this help to clarify the 'down-going' Nietzschean puzzle?  Or make it more puzzling? It is almost as if Nietzsche is setting himself up to be a 'martyr' here -- he is going to die for a cause, and that cause is living the life of a 'Superman'...until he collapses...Nietzsche is 'willing his own downfall' for the cause of The Superman...

What's he seems to be saying is that to live life with all the passion that he is trumpeting is to 'will your own downfall'...to be 'left at the bottom of the abyss'? You can't go across without falling -- falling at some point into the abyss. And depending on how hard you land in the abyss, you may be able to climb your way back out...or maybe not...eventually not...

It's better to live and to eventually take a very hard fall...than not to have lived at all... 

In Neil Young's words, 'It's better to burn out than to fade away.'

Perhaps this is just a little more passion than most people are prepared to live....How many broken hearts are you going to endure before you start to 'compensate' by 'protecting your heart' in whatever manner you deem necessary...by in effect, coating it with a 'sheet of armour'....Wilhelm Reich called this 'body armour'....

How many broken hearts did Nietzsche endure? Two that I have read about, one relative to Richard Wagner's second wife, Cosima...and the other relative to Lou Andreas Salome...Nietzsche did not seem to be lucky in love...More research is needed here on my part...we will explore some of these details in the future...

So on January 3rd, 1899, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and never returned to sanity in the eleven years leading up to his death in 1900. The event was recorded as follows:

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect the horse, and then collapsed to the ground.^[22]

Here, in an instant perhaps, was Nietzsche's final 'down-going' -- his plummet to the bottom of a mental abyss from which he did not return.

How and for what reason did it happen? Here are some of the still existing theories:

1. Syphilis; (diagnosis at the time, perhaps caught during his war years...Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter.^[10][11];

^{2. Some hereditary type of brain disease...his dad died from some kind of brain disorder when little Nietzsche was 5 years old...and Nietzsche suffered from migraines, dizziness, and the like for most of his adult life...He was not a healthy person;}

^{3. 'A will to his own downfall'...written about in the passages above some five years before his eventual collapse..was he prognosing it, anticipating it, prophesizing it...}

4. 'Manic-Depression'...'Bi-Polar Disorder'...'Split Personality'...'Existential Disorder'and/or some other psychological disorder/diagnosis.... 

Now, I don't feel comfortable making any definitive conclusion here, when other more far more authoritative Nietzschean scholars are either inconclusive themselves, or in disagreement with each other. Having said this, I will offer my own speculations. I think that it is quite likely that Nietzsche suffered from the same type of brain disorder that killed his father. His father, having died when little Nietzsche was only 5 years old, is quite likely to have passed on his 'pathological genes'.

Also, Nietzsche seems to have been sick for most, if not all of his, life with headaches, blurred vision, and the like, even before he went to war and contacted dysentry and/or whatever else...This having been said, his 'psychotic breakdown' seems to have been caused or at least stimulated by an emotional stressor, specifically the horse incident, which does point to one or more (likely more) psychological co-factors. There is also another horse incident previous to this one in which Nietzsche took a very bad fall and this could have resulted in brain trauma.

Whether he actually 'willed his own downfall' or not is a debatable question but he certainly does seem to be prognosticating his own downfall in the passages that I have cited above...That is about as far as I can take this matter without having enough concrete biographical knowledge to do a full 'transference analysis' of Nietzsche's character...Wikipedia's comments seem to touch upon most of the relevant variables:


................................................................................................
From the internet...Wikipedia...

In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel. (Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays until regular work became impractical.)

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Similarly to the Wikipedia comments cited above, I believe that there were probably multiple co-factors involved in Nietzsche's physical, mental, and psychological demise: 1. genetic brain factors from his dad; 2. possible brain injury factors resulting from his serious fall from a horse; 3. possible viral and/or bacterial issues from his year spent in The Prussian Army...(Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter....Wikipedia...)...and an inter mixture of great self-destructive, ideational  and psychological factors as well as great creative factors...perhaps a form of 'bi-polar disorder', or more specifically, 'manic-depression'...


In the end, Nietzsche basically turned his back on finding some sort of 'healthy homeostatic balance' in his life in favor of 'bi-polar extremism' -- climbing to the highest heights of philosophical achievement and perhaps 'romantic infatuation/love' on the one hand vs. 'jumping off of metaphorical cliffs and crashing to the bottom of the metaphorical abyss on the other hand'....with perhaps one too many falls to the bottom of the abyss...

Such was the life and is the philosophy of Nietzsche -- the philosophy of The Superman...with potentially or inevitably 'Super Falls' To The Bottom of The Metaphorical Abyss in The Name of Giving One's Best Effort at Jumping or Climbing From The 'Cliff of Being' to 'The Cliff of Becoming'...

In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt...

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. 
Eleanor Roosevelt 


-- dgb, May 23rd, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiatons...

-- Are Still in Process...

The Self-Apologizer Speaks... and The Self-Defender Retaliates...

The Self-Apologizer Speaks: I'm sorry for saying what I shouldn't have said.

The Self-Defender Replies: Good God, man, did I just hear you right? Did you just say that you apologize for saying what we both meant? Take some testosterone, will you? Don't ever let me hear you apologizing for being who you are, and saying what you mean!

The Self-Apologizer Retaliates: Yeah, that's easy for you to say. But see what happens when I don't bite my tongue. We used to be on Easy Street making a nice, cool $50-$60,000 without too much effort -- and we had the whole morning and afternoon to create and build Hegel's Hotel...Now look at us ..we are lucky to find 5 minutes to write and both of us are looking for a new place to live because we can't pay our rent! So much for saying what we mean, and meaning what we say!! What do you have to say about that Mr. Testosterone?

The Self-Defender Strikes Back: Well, I'd rather be a man with no money, than have money and not be a man. So what do you have to say about that, Mr. Walking on Egg Shells...Assuming you are man enough to speak to me boldly and without stuttering!!

The Self-Apologizer Speaks Boldly: Yeah, well try this: The next time we have to speak to an employer about something we don't like, try sticking a sock in your mouth and count to 10...while I talk to him a little  more carefully and diplomatically than we did the last time!!

The Self-Defender Still Hasn't Finished: Yeah, well 'Careful' is your Middle Name...and your whole existence...Have you ever even taken a risk? You're like the high school teenager who's back is plastered against the dance floor wall...In case you're too blind to see, there's never been any women that I can remember who's ever waled over to you to ask you to dance!! Who do you think gets us the action? You or me?

The Self-Apologizer Remembers: Well, that's not exactly true, back in our earlier days, there were a few women who made moves on us...There must have been something they liked...

The Self-Defender Laughs: Yeah, I remember...that's because they all knew that if they had to wait on you to move your feet and clear your vocal chords, they'd be 'Waiting For Godot'!! And besides, they were probably looking for me, not for you!!

The Self-Apologizer Retaliates: Well, where were you back then, Mr. Big Stuff? I don't remember you talking to me back then like you are now...

The Self-Defender Replies: Hmmm, Let's just say I was still evolving from your Chicken Space!!

The Self-Apologizer Still Has More Fire: Well, I wouldn't say that we are exactly 'evolving' right now...'Macho Man'....I would call this 'devolving'!!! Or regressing!! Pretty soon we'll both have regressed back to Cave Men and we will both be trying to catch our next dinner in the forest!!

The Self-Defender Shoots Back: Well, you just keep driving, keep your eyes on the road, and earning us a living, and I'll think up next what we are going to write on Hegel's Hotel!!  We have to figure out how to be more than 'sheep in a herd'. You read Nietzsche, he was talking to you...You're afraid of your own shadow...You're too afraid to be anything but another sheep in the herd!!

The Self-Apologizer Is Not Through Yet: Well, I'd rather be a sheep in a herd rather than a goat jumping off a cliff...Right now, we're both looking at the bottom of the abyss looming closer and closer...So much for Nietzsche's 'Superman'!!  You've already shown us that we can't fly....just fall like a rock!!!


The Self-Defender chimes in a little optimism: Well, we learned in Gestalt Therapy that 'everything is subject to change'....Hang in there dear boy...We just have to grab a hold of the abyss wall here and climb our way back -- back to the top of the cliff again...and try once again to fly!!!


The Self-Apologizer Gets His Last Word In: I'm getting too old for this. Can't we just find a nice middle class job again? Something that will house us and feed us for another 5 years...and give us time to write and have a bit of a life? I don't think either of us has to worry about after 60...because I don't think either of us is going to be around...just long enough to finish Hegel's Hotel....and maybe one day...if we're lucky...see Europe one more time...have a glass of red wine where Sartre sat in his favorite cafe...see where Diderot put together his colossal Enlightenment project, Encyclopedie...see where Rousseau lived in the forests of Switzerland... see where Kant walked by in Germany every day that people could set their watches by him...see where Hegel saw Napoleon on his white horse..."I saw the Spirit on his horse", wrote Hegel....see where Holderlin wrote his famous poetry and engaged in his scandalous love affair....see where Schelling lectured...visit where Spinoza lived in Holland...visit where David Hume and Adam Smith lived in Scotland...visit Aberdeen, Scotland...the European origins of my dad's side of the family.. 

The Self-Defender Cuts His Dialectic Partner Off: Enough!! I want to go there too...just as bad or worse than you do...but right now, just drive the limo and stop talking...We've got a lot of work ahead of us...and not much time to do it...

-- dgb, May 17th, 18th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process....

Tomorrow Is A Long Time -- Bob Dylan, 1978

Bob Dylan lyrics - Tomorrow Is A Long Time

If today was not an endless highway If tonight was not a crooked trail If tomorrow wasn't such a long time Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all Yes and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear her heart softly pounding If only she was lying by me Then I'd lie in my bed once again I can't see my reflection in the water I can't speak the sounds that show no pain I can't hear the echo of my footsteps I can't remember the sound of my own name Yes and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear her heart softly pounding If only she was lying by me Then I'd lie in my bed once again There is beauty in the silver singing river There is beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else could match the beauty That I remember in my true love's eyes Yes and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear her heart softly pounding If only she was lying by me Then I'd lie in my bed once again If today was not an endless highway If tonight was not a crooked trail If tomorrow wasn't such a long time Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all Yes and only if my own true love was waiting If I could hear her heart softly pounding If only she was lying by me Then I'd lie in my bed once again

Perspective Is In The Mind of The Beholder...Nothing Is Right or Wrong...Until Perception, Interpretation, and Ethics Make It So...

Apollo Speaks: Don't objectify me...don't exploit me...don't use and abuse me...treat me fairly, respectfully, equally...

Dionysus Shakes His Diabolic Head: Oh baby, you look so hot....Can I just objectify you -- and you objectify me -- for a couple of hours...or even just a half an hour...then we can go back to talking about ethics, fairness, respect, and equality in the morning...



-- dgb, May 16th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Listen Up Owners! When Does 'Winning' At The Negotiation Table Eventually Turn Your Corporation into A Losing Enterprise?

The answer is simple: when you have to maintain an ongoing relationship with the person or people you just 'beat' at the bargaining table.


Anarchy often hides behind a smiling face...


And/or a resentful, complaining workforce...


You just landed that million dollar contract...


Now you want to keep as much of this money as possible in corporate and executive -- and your own pockets...


Unless you are negotiating with a union, you know you hold all the trump cards, all of the leverage and the power over that employee who walks into your office -- unless you really need the person that just walked in, and that person knows it, as he or she sits down in front of your desk.  


Let's say that you just won a new bus contract, that you already have a fleet of bus drivers, and you want to give some of your drivers some extra work on this new contract. And/or depending on the number of hours needed to fulfill the requirements of the new contract, you dedicate a few of your drivers to this new contract only. 


Let's say that you view the job as being 'easier' than the one that they have been used to doing, perhaps because this contract involves 'regular, ambulatory customers' as opposed to more 'physically challenged' wheel-chair and/or ambulatory customers. So you knock down the hourly wage for the drivers on this new contract down to $15 an hour -- with drivers being responsible for filling up their own gas tanks -- as opposed to the $18 an hour that they have been accustomed to. You argue that the drivers gas and work involved will be less than on their regular routes...


The drivers grudgingly agree, and you don't care too much about this complaining because 'all drivers complain' and you got the rate you wanted as you start off with a good team of experienced drivers on this new contract...


Until something not entirely foreseen and/or appreciated starts to happen on the way to the forum....


The drivers get out on the road and they start to experience that they are spending more on gas than was forecast. Gas starts to go up in price. The kilometers (or miles) driven is higher than you had told the drivers it would be...You start to hear more complaints but you just 'talk them off'...


But the problem is getting worse. Drivers being drivers, they talk amongst themselves. They are all in the same boat and they start to complain amongst themselves. Worse than that, they start to complain to customers. And these complaints eventually start to filter into the company that gave you the lucrative million dollar company. 


Up until now, everything had been going well -- the contract-giving company has been happy with the performance of your company. People have been generally happy with the service...Service was faster and more direct...Except this 'poisonous attitude of resentment' that has been circulating in your drivers is starting to filter through to the customers and the customers are starting to turn around and complain to the company you are representing.  Furthermore, drivers have been talking to drivers in other companies, and have heard about this one company that pays the drivers gas...And slowly, like carbon monoxide circulating through a garage with all the doors closed around it, this 'poisonous attitude' amongst the drivers is starting to kill your contract...


One driver say that he or she doesn't want to do the new contract any more...and another...and now you have to replace these lost 'experienced' drivers with 'less experienced rookies'...And mistakes start to be made on the routes...more complaints...More dissatisfaction starts to filter back to the company you are representing that gave you that wonderful, lucrative contract...


And you, fine sir, are starting to starting to 'suffocate' in your own self-made carbon monoxide...


Am I clear on this matter? 


Do you fully understand the very wise principle of: 


'What goes around, comes around'...


Do you understand the full extent of the principle of 'the invisible hand' in Adam Smith's 'free Capitalist Market'....(which wasn't meant to include a 'government bailout hand'...)?


Do you understand that if employees are coming and going in your corporation faster than customers are going through the turnstiles at your local grocery store -- this is probably not a good thing? 


Do you understand the principle of 'corporate image'?  -- that if your employees are walking around, during and after work, bad-mouthing your company, saying that you are 'cheap' or worse, that you are 'ripping them off', that it is likely only a matter of time before your 'bag of gold' starts to turn to 'fool's gold'? 


Lucrative contracts can be flushed down the drain...all because an employer doesn't fully appreciate the fact that an employer's most valuable set of customers is the 'team' of employees that he or she has working for him or her. 


You kill the morale in your team, and you slowly or quickly kill your suppliers, your lucrative contracts, and the rest of the customers you are supposed to be serving...


What goes around comes around...


'Cosmic justice'. 


'Free market capitalist justice' -- Adam Smith style...


In the mystic but profound words of the second oldest recognized philosopher in Western history...


..................................................................................................................


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.


-- Anaximander, 610BC to 546BC


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Winning the individual battle -- or even a number of individual battles -- does not always mean winning the war. 


In business, you can two 8 or 9 things out of 10 right -- you can 'win' lucrative contracts, you can 'win' individual battles at the negotiation table, you can put everything together structurally and dynamically -- and yet, in the end, you can still lose your business because you didn't do one or two important things right...


And in at least the last three companies that I have worked for, that 'one thing' that employers 'haven't done right' is they haven't 'treated their employees right'....they've treated their employees like 'pieces' or 'objects' to be used, abused, and exploited....


Didn't Karl Marx and Erich Fromm have something to say about 'worker exploitation' and 'worker alienation' and all of this can be traced back to Hegel's brilliant discussion and analysis of labor and the 'master-slave relationship'...


You see, I am here, and Hegel's Hotel is here, some 200 years after Hegel's most brilliant masterpiece was published -- 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' -- to continue to teach Hegel's most important message...and to build on it...modify it...and apply it in 101 or even a 1001 different contexts in today's world in the 21st century...


I am here to teach the principle of 'dialectic paradox'...


Which is simply a repetition of the message of some of our oldest Western and Eastern philosophers -- particularly Heraclitus and Lao Tse...


There would have been no Hegel and no 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' without Anaximander, and Heraclitus, and Lao Tse, and Kant, and Fichte, and Schelling...


All of these philosophers wrestled and grappled with the concept of 'dialectic paradox'...


Life is built on the principle of atoms and molecules coming together and separating, coming together and separating...almost sounds like the 'dialectic cycle' of 'marriage' and 'divorce'...


Lao tse -- and Daoism -- describe the 'healthy life' as being a balance between 'yin' and 'yang' forces...too much 'yang' (aggression) will generally create a self and/or social problem; so too will too much 'yin' (passiveness and inassertiveness). 


The dialectic paradox of Adam Smith and Karl Marx is that they need each other. 


Capitalism cannot be healthy without the presence of both the philosophy of Adam Smith and Karl Marx in its midst....Someone has to be present to protect the rights of the individual worker and the rights of the consumer/customer. Especially in today's 'globalized market' and monopolies where 'collusion' and 'price fixing' and 'gouging' all need to be monitored to help prevent employee and/or customer victimization...The 'invisible hand' in the 'free market' -- as long as it is not manipulated with -- will usually at least partly bring 'capitalist-cosmic justice' back to greedy, narcissistic owners...


But still, some legislation and legal protection to the employee and the consumer/customer need to be in place...In North America, this function is to some extent carried out by all political parties, although generally emphasized more by the 'left' parties than the 'right'....ignored more by the 'right' parties than the 'left'...


In Hegel's Hotel, metaphorically speaking, I bring Karl Marx into the same negotiating room as Adam Smith...with me, playing the mediator between them. 
   
My movement is towards a more humanistic-existential Adam Smith-Karl Marx (Capitalist-Socialist; Conservative-Liberal; Republican-Democrat) dialectic negotiation and union. 


Let the rhetoric fly!


-- dgb, May 14th, 2010. 


-- David Gordon Bain


-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...


-- Are Still in Process....

On Narcissistic vs. Egalitarian Masculinism and Feminism

The egalitarian, ethical-moral feminist cares about men, even as she asserts her own self-boundaries. The narcissistic feminist does not. Similarily, the egalitarian, ethical-moral masculinist cares about women, even as he asserts his own self-boundaries. The narcissistic masculinist does not.

In short, to repeat, unbalanced narcissism is the anti-thesis to caring about other people.

The unbalanced narcissist talks about him or herself, cares only about him or herself, is quick to change the conversation to him or herself, is basically blind and deaf to anyone other than him or herself...wants this, that, and more...wants as much as you are willing to keep giving...and more...will take, take, and still take more, and in the end, will leave you in his or her dust...as they move on to someone or something else...to newer pastures to exploit and pillage...

The unbalanced narcissist takes everything from you, and leaves you with nothing...

Now obviously, as in anything and everything else, there are different degrees of extremes here and we can connect 'a healthy foundation of narcissism' with: 1. being in touch with what we want; and 2. being able to assert ourselves in the goal of getting what we want. No guilt or shame in this. The key factor here between healthy narcissism and pathological narcissism is a clear lack of empathy, social sensitivity, being able to put oneself in another person's shoes, or even caring to do so. The unbalanced, one-sided, righteous, and/or pathological narcissist tends to have one main trick, or many tricks, in his or her bag of tricks to get what he or she wants from intimidation to extortion to bribery to black mail to coercion to manipulation to power and authority to guilt to crying ('water power') to 'trading' -- you name it, the list is as long and creative as the narcissist's motivation and willpower.

In business, in law, in politics, in economics, we all have to learn to 'swim with the sharks' or likely get eaten alive...How many other ways are there to say what I want to say here other than 'nice guys finish last', 'nice guys get trampled on'.....The unbalanced narcissist needs to learn to respect, accept, and value other people's self-boundaries (fat chance in the worst cases), while the unbalanced approval-seeker needs to:

Wake up and protect his or her self-boundaries!  One can see how easily it is for the narcissist to attract the approval-seeker and visa versa because they both can learn something valuable from the other but at the same time this type of relationship is inevitably going to 'go back to the path of least resistance' -- the narcissist dominates and the approval-seekers submits and loses his or her self-boundaries...And/or there are a hundred different possible 'spin-offs' of this basic relationship such as covert rebellion, distancing, periodic emotional explosions, impasses, 'absences', loss of attraction, silent judgments, movements away from the relationship...


Why can't we all just aim to find that ideal harmonious balance between self-assertion and social empathy, acceptance, and respect....  


One of man's biggest conflicts is the conflict between the wish for a real or professed democratic-egalitarian relationship and the underlying wish for a 'winner take all' and/or a 'master-slave relationship'.  Try to find a 'democratic-egalitarian' relationship in the family courts...'It's winner take all baby, and let me kick you to the street if my lawyer is better than your lawyer...'


Isn't life wonderful? Why can't we find that real democratic balance? Why can't we just get along?

Personal and/or collective greed perhaps -- on one or both sides of the fence? 

-- dgb, May 13th, expanded May 14th, 2010.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Unbalanced Narcissism is The Anti-Thesis of Caring About Other People...Your Character Talks...

Do not tread harshly on the hearts of the people who love and care about you. We live in enough of an uncaring world -- we have an ethical responsibility to ourselves and to the people around us, especially to the people who are closest to us, not to make it worse.

The difference between a narcissistic person and a more well-balanced ethical person centres around the issue of empathy, caring, listening, and altruism: does the person listen intently, and care about other people -- or not.

The difference between a Narcississistic Capitalist and an Ethical-Moral Dialectic-Democratic Capitalist centres around the issue of character and integrity -- basically caring about other people, the people you work with, the people above and below you, the people you sell to -- or not. If you are in business and you treat the people you work with well, treat them with respect and dignity and caring, treat them fairly, then you are helping to lead Capitalism in the right direction, in the direction it needs to go. However, if you are like probably the majority of business men and women out there  -- and seemingly growing every day -- then you need to get back to integrity and ethics basics, back to yourself, and back to your heart. When you leave for work each morning, don't check your heart at home. As the school slogan trumpets, but so few of our adult business and government role models lead the way in this domain: Character matters.

Caring matters. Integrity matters. Ethics matters. You can be the richest and/or most powerful business man or woman out there but at the end of the day you need to ask yourself: How many hearts have you trampled on to get to where you are now? Was it worth it? Can you sleep at night? Can you live with yourself? How many people have you helped? How many people have you poisoned, exploited, manipulated, walked over, to get where you are now. There are some good businesses and some good business people out there. I know. I've either seen them and/or heard about them, heard about what they do right. They treat people well and people flock to their business.

The cut-throaters, the manipulators, the exploiters...you can usually find out easily enough where they are and how they operate...They are the business owners with the constant turnover....the employees who keep walking in and out of their doors...they are the people whose customers eventually flock to the 'good businesses'...the businesses that keep their people, and whose employees respect and care for the owners who they work for.

I fully believe in the slogan: What goes around comes around?

If you are in business, whether its in managing and/or selling, 

Pick the type of business person who you want to be...

And the type of legacy you want to leave behind you...

How do you want to be rememebered? 

Choose -- and if you have chosen wrong --

Then, think and feel carefully.

And choose again.

-- dgb, May 13th, 2010.

-- David Gordon Bain

On Labeling, Stereotyping, Witch-hunting vs. The Right to Privacy and a Fair Trial

Sometimes the label, the stereotype, the charge, is as bad as the conviction -- legal or otherwise. Either way, a life can be destroyed....A report in a newspaper, an arrest -- and the label -- can send an innocent man or woman to Hell on Earth...

We must not forget some of our most basic constitutional and civic rights: 1. the right to individual privacy; 2. the right to a fair trial and not to be judged guilty before the conclusion of a fair trial; the right not to be scapegoated and/or witch-hunted; the right not to be 'profiled' and 'prosecuted' differently than a person of a different class or subset of people, whether that be based on religion, sex, race, culture, ethnic group, skin colour... The worst part about 'prosecution missions' is that they can turn into profiling, labeling, stereotyping, discriminating -- yes, Government sanctioned forms of discrimination and/or reverse discrimination -- and witch hunts' like what actually happened with St. Joan of Arc, and in The Salem Witchhunt, as well in the  'McCarthyism' era with the 'witchhunting' of 'communists'...

The worst part of the internet is that people of bad intentions are preying on, and exploiting, people's loss of privacy. From internet scams, to stolen identy, to adware and malware, to viruses, to people peering into your private life that you don't want anything to do with, it is getting worse and worse...The internet has become a way for people of any type of motivation and intention -- good, bad, or ugly -- to get basically inside your front door and into your private life without needing your permission or any legal permission to do so.  

We need to seriously think about what is happening here to our loss of privacy and civil rights...

-- dgb, May 13th, 2010.

-- David Gordon Bain

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Joan of Arc


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Joan of Arc (disambiguation).

Saint Joan of Arc



Painting, c.1485. Artist's interpretation; the only portrait for which she is known to have sat has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490)

Saint

Born ca. 1412

Domrémy, France

Died 30 May 1431 (aged 19)

Rouen, France (Then England)

Venerated in Roman Catholic Church

Anglican Communion

Beatified 18 April 1909, Notre Dame de Paris by Pope Pius X

Canonized 16 May 1920, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome by Pope Benedict XV

Feast 30 May

Patronage France ; martyrs; captives; militants; people ridiculed for their piety; prisoners; soldiers; Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (U.S. WAVES); U.S. Women's Army Corps

Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans (French: Jeanne d'Arc,[1] IPA: [ʒan daʁk]; ca. 1412[2] – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old.[3] Twenty-four years later, on the initiative of Charles VII, Pope Callixtus III reviewed the decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr.[3] She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.[2] She is, along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux, one of the patron saints of France.

Joan asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who have created works about her include Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 1), Voltaire (La Pucelle d'Orléans), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orléans ), Verdi (Giovanna d'Arco), Tchaikovsky (Орлеанская дева), Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc), Jean Anouilh (L'Alouette), Bertolt Brecht (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe), George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan), and Maxwell Anderson (Joan of Lorraine). Depictions of her continue in film, television, video games, song, and dance.
 
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Salem witch trials


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Salem Witches” redirects here. For the minor league baseball team, see Salem Witches (NEL).



1876 illustration of the courtroom; the central figure is usually identified as Mary Walcott

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court of trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. The episode has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and governmental intrusion on individual liberties.[1]

Despite being generally known as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in a variety of towns across the province: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover and Salem Town. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. At least five more of the accused died in prison. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Village, but also in Ipswich, Boston and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man (Giles Corey) who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so.
 
 
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McCarthyism


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





A 1947 propaganda comic book published by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society warning of the dangers of a Communist takeover.

McCarthyism is the political action of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.

During the post–World War II era of McCarthyism, many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned,[1] laws that would be declared unconstitutional,[2] dismissals for reasons later declared illegal[3] or actionable,[4] or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.

The most famous examples of McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Senator McCarthy himself; the Hollywood blacklist, associated with hearings conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities; and the various anti-communist activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Director J. Edgar Hoover. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.

On Depression

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.


- Chinese Proverb


..................................................................................................................................


With depression, you can either think your way to new feelings and actions -- change your 'self-talk',

Or you can act your way to new thinking and new feelings...

It is much harder to be depressed when you are active....

Depression brings everything inside you to a grinding halt...

All circulation more or less stops...

All life stops....you feel like your life is over...

Lost loved ones...lost self-identity....

Your mind is going around and around on the same toxic track...

If only this, if only that...I should have done this, I should have done that...

Everything is stuck in past tense...

Maybe I can do this or maybe I can do that...

And my loved one will come walking back through my door....

If only I could hear his or her voice...

Grief, for the most part, is a healing, cleansing emotion....

Bringing emotional closure -- or at least partial emotional closure -- to a lost loved one...

There will always be a place for that person in your heart...

But depression is unfelt grief.....hanging on to a person who does not want to let go...

Depression is a 'pit bull, hanging on, bite'....where we won't unclench our jaws...

We're biting ourselves over and over again...

Depression is at least partly internalized rage....

Externalizing that rage -- in the right therapeutic environment -- is a key step to moving on...

Activate yourself...

Go for a walk...

Meet new people...

Stop toxifying yourself...poisoning yourself, strangulating yourself...

With the words that you say to yourself, your endless, fruitless, depressive, merry-go-round...

Your 'ifs' and 'buts'...will drive you 'nuts'...

When someone smiles at you and offers you a lifeboat...

Don't go down with the Titanic...


-- dgb, May 13th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain....

The Philosophical Difference Between Sublation (Synthesis) and Conflation (Mis-Association)

'Sublation' is a technical Hegelian term. I will quote the meaning of sublation from Lloyd Spencer's book, 'Introducing Hegel' (1996).

............................................................................................................................

Aristotle's logic is concerned with separate, discrete (self-) identities in a deductive pattern. Hegel dissolves this classical static view of logic in a dynamic movement towards the whole. The whole is an overcoming which preserves what it overcomes.

Nothing is lost or destroyed but raised up and preserved as in a spiral. Think of the opening of a fern or a shell.

This is an organic rather than mechanical logic. Hegel's special term for this 'contradiction' of overcoming and at the same time preserving is Aufhebung, sometimes translated as 'sublation'. (1996, Lloyd Spencer, illustrations by Andrzej Krauze, Introducing Hegel, p. 80-81)

.....................................................................................................................................................

We discussed this distinction between Aristotelean (Either/Or, Non-Identity) Logic and Hegelian (Dialectic, Organic, Evolving) Logic in the last essay, as well as a number of earlier ones.

Firstly, it is probably simpler to use the concept of 'synthesis' or 'integration' rather than 'sublation'. The technical name of sublation seems to have never really caught on whereas the less technical names of 'synthesis' and/or 'integration', we use every day in our day-to-day language.

 Secondly, Hegel was wrong in believing that 'nothing is lost' in the process of sublation or synthesis.

For example, if I have a carton of orange juice on my kitchen counter and an empty glass, and then I pour orange juice into the glass until it is full with orange juice. Then, I take a second glass of the exact same dimensions and I pour it half full of orange juice. Then I take a carton of pineapple juice out of my fridge and fill the last half of the glass with pineapple juice, we can't say that nothing is lost relative to what we put into the first glass. For there is only half as much orange juice in the second glass as there is in the first glass.

And so it is with 'integrated' or 'synthesized' theories. If I integrate Freudian Theory (both before and after 1897 meaning Traumacy-Seduction Theory with Fantasy-Oedipal Theory), including also much later Death Instinct Theory, and Object Relations Theory, and then I mix it also with parts of Jungian Theory, and Adlerian Theory, and Gestalt Theory, and Transactional Analysis, and Cognitive Theory -- we certainly cannot say that 'nothing is lost along the way' because there will likely be 'many ideas lost along the way', screened out of this editorial synthesizing process, just as other ideas are 'screened in'. That is part of the evolving 'abstraction process' of modifying ideas and theories...as well as genetic mutations and cross-fertilizations between the same and different species of animal, and different races and families of men and women...Indeed, no genetic mutation -- or theoretical mutation -- is ever going to be exactly the same. 

So sometimes we may need to go back and check this abstraction process, this screening in and out process, to make sure that what we have lost is not more important than what we have gained by any particular brand of 'theoretical and/or technical and/or practical, applied mutation'. A mutated and integrated or multi-integrated theory is only a 'good thing' if it is better than any and/or all of the theories that it evolved from.  

In this regard, there is every right -- depending on how we want to define 'evolution' -- to either say that evolution is not always a good thing, or conversely to say that evolution also has its polar concept of 'dis-evolution', de-evolution' or 'regression' or 'devilution' (sorry, had to add that last one...). 

I am not quite as highly idealistic and optimistic as Hegel when he says (to paraphrase) that 'dialectic evolution' (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, and start all over again at a 'higher' place of evolution that will eventually take us to 'God's Absolute Knowledge') is always a good thing and will always -- even through temporary steps backward -- eventually take us to a better place. For example, 'God's Knowledge' is never static because 'God's World' is never static and 'God's Knowledge' is a perfect reflection of 'God's Always Evolving World'.


 In this respect, I am inclined to say that 'man's knowledge' will always be an imperfect reflection of 'God's Knowledge' no matter how hard we try, and how long we stay on this Earth...Yes, we can always get 'closer' but we can also get 'further apart' and who are we going to set up as the 'Ultimate Judge of Human Perfection or Imperfection'? God? (He or She or It is not talking...at least to me...and if there are others out there who believe strongly enough that they are blessed and gifted in this regard, I am likely to remain skeptical and pessimistic and cynical....I call this 'SPC Syndrome' -- I have a lot of it...that is, 'Skeptical-Pessimistic-Cynical Syndrome'...


Gee, how'd we get there? 


In contrast to sublation or synthesis, 'conflation' is a pathological concept and phenomenon based on the principle of 'cognitive distortion' or 'false association' -- i.e., combining two things together (or trying to) that are not the same. 


Conflation falsely associates two or more concepts or phenomenon....


There are a whole range of different Freudian terms that can be viewed as different types of 'conflation' such as:


1. distorted transference;
2. distorted projection;
3. displacement.

Some form of 'dialectic and/or cognitive psychotherapy' may be required to help a person through his or her 'false and/or pathological cognitive-emotional-behavior patterns. Of course, there are Kantian and Nietzschean epistemological problems here such as 'Who's to be the ultimate human judge -- the psychotherapist and/or psychiatrist? -- on what should and shouldn't be cognitively connected?' ('paranoia' can turn out to be 'truth' or at least 'partial truth'; and we must not forget that every person has there own 'private frame of reference and subjective self-interest'...


Hegel anticipated the eventual phenomenon of 'dialectic psychotherapy' about 80 or 85 years before Charcot, Bernheim, Janet, Breuer and Freud began their respective and/or collective activities in this area. Some of the mediating figures between Hegel and Freud included Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, (The Birth of Tragedy). The evolution of 'hypnotism' seems to have stimulated such ideas as 'dual consciousness' and 'competing egos (ego and alter-ego)', and 'dissociation' and 'subconscious' and 'unconscious'....all of which became a part of the idea of 'dialectic psychotherapy' -- i.e., 'reuniting and harmonizing dissociated parts of the personality or different ego-states'.

To be alive is to be 'dialectically alive' (or dead, or anywhere in between).


We are always going to be confronted with 'competing internal ego-states' and 'opposing self-talk' in different degrees of internal 'harmony' and/or 'disharmony'. And our 'external dialectic engagement' is likely to be even greater as we all pursue our own unique form of 'will to power' and/or 'will to self-empowerment'. 




Even to be 'disengaged' is to usually be making some sort of 'dialectic statement'...such as... 'I have other priorities'...or 'I do not have the time or energy or motivation to dialectically engage with you...'...or 'I feel dialectically dead right now'...


In contradistinction to one of my philosophical adversaries (hi Niki), 


I say that it is impossible to 'live outside the dialectic'...


Unless we are dead. 


The genius of Hegel was not in his brand of 'State Philosophy' or in his conception of 'Absolute Knowledge' but rather in his conception of 'organic, dynamic, dialectic evolution and logic'. 


In this latter regard, Hegel has arguably had the greatest impact on the evolution of Western -- and Eastern -- Philosophy, Politics, and Culture of any of the greatest of all Western and/or Eastern philosophers. For good, bad, or worse, Kierkegaard, Marx, Mao tse Tung, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler,  Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Foucault, Derrida, Perls...were all directly or indirectly influenced by his work. Unfortunately his 'State Philosophy' and his influence from Fichte in this regard (relative to the submission of the individual to the State regardless of where the State goes politically) did much more harm to the evolution (dis-evolution, devilution...) of Germany than good. But that wasn't mainly Hegel's fault as Hegel always fought for 'freedom' although his political philosophy at a quick glance seems to be an odd contradiction in this regard. 


Something to be explored on another date...


-- dgb, May 12th, 2010, 


-- David Gordon Bain




















  

Aristotelean (Either/Or) Logic, Hegelian (Dialectic) Logic, DGB Multi-Dialectic Logic -- and The Always Controversial Issue of 'Equal Rights'...

Modified May 11th, 2010.

I would like to point out -- or re-emphasize -- some important distinctions here, already discussed in previous essays but this time applied to the always controversial and provocative subject of -- 'equal rights'.

Going back to Aristotelean Logic, we have his famous Law of Non-Identity: A is A and B is B and A cannot be B because A has boundaries and characteristics and distinctions that keep it separate from B. A coyote is not a wolf and a wolf is not a coyote. A polar bear is not a grizzly bear and a grizzly bear is not a polar bear. Such is/was the logic and the law of non-identity. This was the basis of Aristotelean Logic.

The problem with Aristotelean Logic is that it is 'static' whereas 'life is dynamic'. Life moves, changes, mutates, fertilizes, adapts, compensates, modifies...'  Aristotelean Logic does not account for evolving hybrids that share the characteristics of two or more sets of different species or sub-species. 


Look at all the different breeds of dogs we have today. A dog today might be a genetic combination of Boxer, Doberman, German Shepard, and Rottweiler.  I have mentioned in previous essays that we have new species of animals today that didn't even exist in Aristotle's time period such as a 'Colf' (a combination of coyote and wolf) and a species of animal that hasn't even been named yet -- part polar bear and part grizzly bear (a 'prizzly bear' or a 'grolar bear'?).


Similarly, the number and types of 'interracial hybrids of people' that we have today far exceeds anything that Aristotle saw in his day.  Aristotelean Logic does not account for the Hegelian and Darwinian factor of 'cross-fertilization' -- races, religions, politics, economics, law, philosophy, science, psychology, art... all inter-mixing and resulting in both bio and cultural-educational diversity'.


This was the superiority of Hegel's brand of 'dialectic -- dynamic, interactive -- logic' as opposed to Aristotle's 'stationary, static, non-moving, non-changing logic'.


In short, Aristotle's 'Law of Non-Identity' did not account for evolution in either the realm of ideas  (Hegel) and in the realm of physics, physiology, biology, chemistry, biochemistry...(Darwin)...


Hegel offered a superior form of 'organic, dialectic logic'...which should actually be updated again to 'multi-dialectic logic' or 'poly-lectic logic' ...the idea being that many different factors can come together to influence the outcome and the organic nature of the 'evolving whole'...


The problem is that, even today, with all our technological advancements and gadgets, we still get caught up in Aristotelean Logic -- and use it -- when and where we shouldn't be using it. 


Even in our institutions that should most know the dangers of Aristotelean -- 'static, either/or' -- Logic is misused and overused. Our parliaments. Our court rooms. Our newspapers, televisions, and radios. Our industries, businesses, and corporations. Our educational institutions. Our churches. Everyone has an editorial opinion that at least partly ignores 'dialectic (two-sided) -- or multi-dialectic/poly-lectic (many sided) -- logic'. 


Editorially, we are always looking for 'scapegoats' and people to 'hold accountable'  -- and 'blame'  -- for things that go wrong. 


Guilty or innocent? What about 'mutual (dialectic) accountability and guilt'? 


The truck driver rolled his truck because he was going too fast. However, he was under corporate instructions to get to his destination by a certain deadline -- or else -- which he couldn't do without speeding. 


The driver turned left onto a street but misjudged the speed of an oncoming car and the slippery road conditions that hampered the traction on the tires of both cars. Both cars were totaled, one in the front, the other on the driver's side door, and the driver of the turning car -- who was lucky to be alive -- was given a ticket for an inappropriate turn. But other (poly-lectic) factors could have been mentioned and addressed. The oncoming car was going 20 kms. over the speed limit. And there should have been -- still should be -- lights at this particular intersection because of the high speed limit (70kms/hr) of the one road without the stop sign. 


There are times when we do think dialectically and poly-lectically but not when we are most looking for someone to blame -- and to 'simply' fault. 


The problem is that the 'blaming orientation' and the 'simplification orientation' can easily lead to 'over-blaming' and 'oversimplification'. 


 We trumpet, promote, campaign for, and financially support organizations aimed at 'stopping the violence of men against women'...which is fine as far as it goes....but we are using a brand of 'one-sided' Aristotelean Logic here....What are we saying and/or not saying covertly, and discriminatively? -- that the phenomenon of 'women committing violence against men is basically okay -- and/or that it is not important enough to warrant our awareness, attention, and action'?  


We all heard or read about horrific cases of men committing violence against women -- physical assaults, sexual assaults, domestic assaults, stranger assaults...it goes on and on...and has so for thousands of years...


For argument sake, let's say a man just gets out of prison, is on probation, goes back to his ex-girlfriend and commits terrible violence against her. 


People -- and women in particular -- have a right to feel outraged by such an event. But we also need to be fully aware of the dangers of 'falsely associating' thousands and thousands of 'non-violent' men with this one violent man.  In particular, we need to be fully aware of the dangers of 'legal overcompensation' -- and 'sexual' as well as 'racial' profiling. And we need to be fully aware of the dangers of 'reverse discrimination' as well as 'discrimination'. 


We must be fully aware that 'stereotyping' and 'discriminating' and 'stigmatizing' is not simply something that 'whites do against browns or blacks'...and/or that 'men do against women'....and/or that 'majorities do against minorities'...but that stereotyping-discriminating-stigmatizing -- is a hugely prolific species-wide human tendency that everyone can do, and often does do, to every single person they come into contact with -- and especially when there is something 'different' about the person they are meeting whether it be religion, nationality, sex, culture, skin color, physical appearance, or whatever. 


If Albert Einstein were to walk into an interview, unshaven, and looking like he had slept on a park bench the night before, would he be likely to make it through the first interview without being rejected? Even if he started reciting and explaining his famous formula of E=MC squared, if we didn't know what Albert Einstein looked like, how many of us would have the patience and tolerance to take him seriously? 


This is where Derrida's 'Deconstruction' philosophy -- which is an extension of Hegelian Logic -- becomes vitally important.  There is always some 'cause' that is going to be focused on by the media, by politicians, by the law, by police officers, by prosecutors, by lobbyist groups....


These 'Aristotelean -- One-Sided -- Causes' become 'over-focused' on, 'overcompensated for', and subject to 'one-sided, government supported and enforced, politically correct' actions that may include new laws, charges, convictions, fundings  -- and 'discriminatory' or 'reverse-discriminatory'    profiling. 


If there are 500 women's lobbyist and social activist groups 'camped' around Ottawa or Washington, and pounding on Parliament and Politicians Doors when some violent act has been committed against another woman -- which, to repeat, anyone in their ethical right mind wants to stop -- but at the same time, there is not a single 'men's rights group' sticking up for the rights of men in Ottawa and Washington, who are the laws about 'assault' and 'divorce' and 'child support' eventually going to favor?  One-sided lobbyism is eventually going to lead to one-sided laws. 


People -- not whites, browns, or blacks, not men or women, not adults or children -- are stupid when it comes to acts of racial or religious or sexual discrimination. And that goes for people on both sides of the discriminatory fence -- not just minority groups (which are fast growing in numbers and power as North America becomes more ethnically and racially diversified...) And not women, many of whom have more money and power than men, while the domestic laws around separation and support payments still often tend to treat women as though they are 'financial dependents'.  


The domestic laws need to continue to evolve -- and eliminate 'reverse discriminations' as well as 'discriminations', and eliminate 'sexual profiling' where a man is in effect 'profiled as a victimizer against women' before the police even knock on the domestic door, and/or before a word is even uttered out of his mouth'. 


This may come as a shock to many people -- or not -- but women can actually be violent against men as well as the way that domestic violence is stereotypically portrayed and profiled. 


Domestic violence -- except in obvious cases of 'serial offenders' -- is often a dialectic, two sex problem where both sexes are partial victimizers and both sexes are partial victims. But one sex is stereotypically portrayed as the 'sexual and/or physical victimizer' and the other sex is stereotypically portrayed as the 'sexual and/or physical victim' -- and thus, we have 'sexual profiling' just as prolifically and systemically as we have 'racial and/or reverse-racial profiling'. 


What is the percentage of men who are going to court and jail on charges of domestic violence? What is the percentage of women who are going to court and jail on charges of domestic violence? Need I say anymore or am I the proverbial little boy saying that 'the king is naked' while everyone around me is being 'politically correct' and saying that the king is not naked, the king is wearing clothes, and so too are our domestic laws 'equal' for both sexes.


There are many different 'nuances' to domestic violence -- 'provocation', 'intimidation', 'coercion', 'threats', 'retaliation', 'power', 'revenge'...One 'inappropriate' touch -- whether in anger, in lust, and/or in affection -- and a man has to be worried about the possibility of being charged and going to jail these days. Do women have the same fear to worry about, or are they well aware of how the domestic laws are there to 'protect' -- even to 'overprotect' -- them?  How many women are going to face charges for 'inappropriately touching' a man? How many men are going to 'blow the whistle' on a woman who inappropriately touches him?  How many women haven't learned how to 'trump up' their 'victim profile'? How many women like the prospect of giving up their hard earned money and property to a man who they have lived with for perhaps barely over a year, and who has far less money and property to divide? 


My room mate -- for right or wrong -- has gone through this 'money and property division' four times in his life to four different women, only one of whom he was legally married to, and in the process given up about half a million dollars to each woman. He gave up his last 3 or 4 hundred thousand to his twin sister to keep her alive in an expensive medical operation. And now he is on disability, renting a room, and getting $580 a month from the government. You think he doesn't have some serious resentments -- even anger running into rage -- running through his head. Rightly or wrongly, he says that he is tired of 'giving out money' -- indeed, he has no more money to give out -- and that the next woman he meets and gets involved with will have to have more money and property than he does (which isn't saying anything anymore because it is hard not to have more than 'nothing').  I know that he just partly saying this because of his economic position in life now compared to where he more than very comfortably was, even five or ten years back. And I know that he is internally generous to the people he cares about...But still there are some underlying inequalities here that, only now, with many women establishing more money and power in their financial portfolio, they are beginning to understand what it means when they are having to 'give up' their own money and property as opposed to 'being on the receiving end of their ex-spouses' money and property.  In domestic court -- and with warring spouses -- personal narcissism reigns supreme.  


One law I would change for sure. There should be no need for 'prenuptial agreements' -- or they should be mandatory, depending on how you want to look at it. In other words, a man and a woman should both be equally entitled to keep the money and property they enter a relationship with. That should be a given -- no ifs, and, or buts about it. 


I feel sorry for these mobility drivers who I used to dispatch to. On the one hand, they are compelled to 'help the customer', to take their hand or shoulder if they need assistance, to go to the door to help walk or wheel the customer to the mobility van or sedan, to help the customer with his or her seat belt...but again, 'one false touch' -- even non-intentional -- and if there is a customer complaint, all administrative and legal processes swing into motion. A driver leans over to help a female customer put on her seat belt...he should have taken the time to go around to the other side to get the seat belt from the passenger side, he inadvertently brushes one of the woman's rather large breasts (or was it on purpose?) while he is trying to put on her seatbelt, the older, middle-aged woman lodges a complaint, and the driver is history...his job, his career, and quite possibly his marriage are all destroyed by the legal process that may take a year or two to finish...The 'alleged assault' is quite likely to be written up in the newspapers, we don't know if the 'touch' was an accident, or on purpose, whether the customer had any hidden agenda like getting some money from a possible payoff, we may here in passing a couple of years later that the driver got off the charge...but does it matter? His life is in ruins and how many people care about this, assuming that the touch was accidental? Does anyone care that this man's life, career, and family life have all been left in emotional and economic shatters?  The woman goes off like nothing happened -- maybe she did get a 'payoff' even if the man was innocent, or maybe the judge determined that the touch was accidental....But two years later, who cares, except the man and the family who's lives were destroyed...


If I have gone off on somewhat of a rhetorical tirade here, let me make this abundantly clear: I am not 'anti-women's rights' ....I trumpet the equal rights of men and women, as well as each and every race, religion, and culture...


It is just that I do not believe that the principle of establishing and enforcing 'alleged equal rights' should ever involve the overt and/or covert process of  'stepping on' and/or 'putting a higher priority on establishing and enforcing one sex's rights over the other'...I do not believe in reverse discrimination anymore than I believe in discrimination. And I do not believe in 'sexual profiling' any more than I believe in 'racial profiling'. And I do not believe in 'preferential rights' to any sub-category of people regardless of sex, race, religion, culture...or money and power...(read 'special interest lobbyist groups' that don't transparently state their business...and giving 'opposing groups' the right to democratically react to them...)

Distinctions need to be made between 'equal rights' and 'preferential rights' as well as between 'egalitarian feminism (or masculinism)' and 'narcissistic feminism (or masculinism).

The egalitarian feminist or masculinist truly is looking for that 'place of equal rights and responsibilities' as well as for that ideal but elusive place of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'; whereas the narcissistic feminist or masculinist is looking for 'all he or she can get'. The ethics of 'equality' becomes secondary or is rationalized and/or justified as 'preferential rights'.

The position of 'preferential rights' is sometimes justified on the grounds of 'trying to make up for lost ground'.  But it is like the referee who makes 'a bad call against one team' and then purposely sets out to make 'an opposite bad call against the other team' in order to 'offset and equal out the first mistake'.  That's a dangerous type of reasoning, often escalating one mistake after another. I was always taught that 'two wrongs don't make a right'.


This was kind of a 'hit and run' essay...I am leaving this subject matter, didn't even expect this essay to evolve the way it did when I first started to write it...I know the subject matter of 'equal rights' is very, very emotionally charged...with sometimes horrific traumacies on either or both sides...This is not the type of essay I like to write -- have spent more time avoiding then confronting this issue and wish I didn't feel the need to 'have to write it'...But Hegel's Hotel looks for any and all types of discrimination -- which includes any and all types of reverse discrimination. Where others are afraid to politically walk, sometimes I must go...It is my duty as a free-thinking, critical philosopher. We will come back to this issue one day...But I am not in a hurry...


I want to move back to psychology now, and write one essay on 'Hegel and His Anticipation of Dialectic Psychotherapy'; then I would like to move into a whole network of essays on 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning' (which I also have been avoiding for a long time). 


Enough for today. 


-- dgb, May 10th, 11th, 2010


-- David Gordon Bain, 


-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...


-- Are Still in Process...


-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...