A/ Introduction
Do you really know what it means to be a 'DGB Post-Hegelian, Humanistic Existential' philosopher?
It means that you embrace human and life paradoxes...and play them into an encounter to see where the 'encounter' between both sides of the 'bi-polar paradox' takes you creatively, integratively, dialectically, wholistically...
I can guarantee you one thing: that every dialectic encounter will be different -- depending on who is involved in the dialectic exchange, when, and where -- and consequently every dialectic, whether it be with yourself, with one other person, or more than one other person, will take you to a different place...with different results...
Over the past 1000 essays or so, I have written a considerable number of essays on my view of God, Religion, Spirituality, Mythology, Psychology and Philosophy -- which I see as all being connected...
Undeniably, my views on God and Religion are totally unorthodox and probably enough to send many a 'traditional, and non-liberal, religious person's' -- i.e., Judaist, Christian's, Muslim's, Hindu's, Buddhist's... -- blood pressure soaring through the roof.
I am -- first and foremost -- a philosopher.
My job is to philosophically and conceptually go to different places where other people would not venture...
Without doing that, I could hardly rightfully call myself a philosopher in the stricter sense of the word, although on a less strict sense of the word, we are all philosophers relative to what we do and don't believe.
Yesterday morning I got up reasonably early and got 'hooked' on a television preacher's speech....I listened to it almost all the way through which is rare for me...
You see, first and foremost, not only am I a philosopher but I am also a 'rational-empirical' philosopher...
Which means that I believe, first and foremost, what I see with my eyes (although even they are becoming increasingly unreliable the older I get...).
For the most part, I trust my own reasoning process, and based on my own experiences, my own reasoning process, and my own 'subjective-objectivity' or 'objective-subjectivity', I make judgments about the 'viability', 'credibilty', and 'value' of other people's reasoning processes -- both good and bad, and parts of both...I would suspect that we can all admit to this 'righteous, judgmental' process...at least to some extent...even the most liberal and open-minded of us...
This being the case, I generally raise a very skeptical -- if not downright cynical -- eyebrow to the sky when I hear a preacher say that 'You have to have faith' or 'I was talking to God the other day'...Philosophically, these types of assertions just don't cut it with me....I feel like I am talking to a Used Car Salesman...or one of my last 3 bosses over the last 9 months or so...When it comes to money and God (or both), salesmen (and saleswomen, not to be sexist) -- and preachers -- can put up a lot of 'smoke and mirrors'. And they can sell a lot of 'snake oil' trying to tell you that 'you are drinking the fountain of youth' -- or 'guaranteeing yourself a place when you die right beside God as one of his favorites...'
Such is at least a significant part of the history of man, God, and Capitalism...and Socialism...and Communism...and Feudalism...There is probably no religion and/or economic and/or political and/or philosophical system that man -- given the narcissistic motivation and willpower -- can't corrupt...
Simplified: Unbridled human narcissism -- meaning primarily, selfishness, egotism, greed, money, property, power, natural resources -- corrupts -- almost anything and everything that we call 'cultural' and 'civil' in man's life.
The older -- and more jaded -- I get, the more difficult it is to not see some 'significant semblence of truth' in the words and philosophy of one of the meanest, nastiest, ugliest philosopher's in the history of Western philosophy -- Arthur Schopenhauer...
Schopenhauer was two things: 1. He was a brilliant man who along with Kierkegaard and Marx could give Hegel a run for his money; and 2. From all accounts that I have heard, he was generally a nasty, cynical man -- probably mainly the result of having his dad commit suicide on him when he was very young. Schopenhauer's philosophy was probably very much a 'transference message' to his 'abandoning dad'.
I would rate the three main founding fathers of 'Existentialism' as Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegaard...with some honorable mention to both Rousseau and the 'German Romantics' -- particularly, Goethe, Schelling...and later Nietzsche...
Let me share a handful of quotes by Schopenhauer before I go any further...
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
Arthur Schopenhauer
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
Arthur Schopenhauer
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!
Arthur Schopenhauer
Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Compassion is the basis of morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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B/ God, Religion, Preachers, and Capitalism: Good and/or Bad Intent?
Anyway, I was listening to this television preacher Saturday morning -- Dr. Mike Murdock -- and I listened to his whole speech...and even wrote down some of its key components which I hardly ever do...
I liked his speech but at the end of his speech there was the burning, cynical question regarding his 'pushing for $1,000 donations'....Was he legitimately trying to help people through his ministry? Or was he another tv evangelist 'money manipulator and quack'....
This morning I went to the internet...and the general overall editorial opinion on the work of Dr. Mike Murdock seemed to be of a much more negative flavor than positive....
However, I am going to work with his message, not with his style of, and ethical or unethical reasons for, soliciting donations...because I think his message holds some value for Hegel's Hotel....particularly when his message is integrated with the message of Hegel's Hotel...to bring something a little different than -- and of significantly new value relative to -- what I have offered up so far...
Another thing I want to do based on what I have written here today, is to integrate Hegel and Schopenhauer...Hegel the integrative idealist and Schopenhauer the skeptical, pessimistic, cynical realist.
The title of this work -- which would consist of the largest network of interconnected mini-essays in Hegel's Hotel-- is presently buzzing through my mind under a title such as this: Evaluation and Health: The Mind As Representation, Spirit, Desire, Ethics, Choice and Action
Let's start first with Dr. Mike Murdock's '7 Seeds of Wisdom for Uncommon Success'...
I don't trust the man...
But I trust the message...
In my hands...
In my medium...
Here in Hegel's Hotel...
No donations being solicited, requested, asked for, pryed for...
I don't even have a method for accepting them...
Did I just commit to two more essays?
Will I ever get to them?
I feel them fading away....
Let me make my committment for writing them with their respective titles...
And then return to them when I have 're-found' my 'excitement' for writing them...
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1. Dr. Mike Murdock's Message (The Seven Laws of Wisdom For Uncommon Success) Meets DGB (Post-Hegelian) Quantum Philosophy and Psychology
2. Evaluation and Health: The Mind As Representation, Spirit, Desire, Ethics, Choice and Action
To be continued...
-- dgb, Modified and updated July 7th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic-Democratic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
To be continued...
