Evaluation and Health -- By David Bain, 1979
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm (1947)
Introduction
The issue of values and evaluation represents a crucial problem in regard to our lives. On the one hand, we are free to evaluate and respond to the situations we are confronted with in our day-to-day lives as we please. But on the other hand, we are not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations and responses have on our lives and well-being.
Our evaluations then, can be said to be 'healthy' and/or 'functional' to the extent that they are life-serving -- that is, they work towards protecting or enhancing our personal health and happiness. Conversely, our evaluations can be said to be 'pathological', 'neurotic', and/or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are life-negating -- that is, they work towards sabotaging the person's health and happiness.
Now to be sure, there are numerous areas of complication here such as the matter of 'individual taste', and also the matter of 'short term pleasures' of the 'healthy' and/or 'unhealthy' variety vs. 'longer term life-serving and life-preserving choices'.
For example, if I like bananas and you like apples, there is not much to be said about this -- both are generally 'healthy' choices (unless it is a rotten apple or rotten banana). However, if over time, you develop a deficiency in calcium, magnesium, and/or potassium, then 'rational-empirical logic' would suggest that you introduce more bananas into your diet to address your nutritional deficiency and imbalance -- and to correct this deficiency/imbalance. The same would go for me if I was missing some important nutritional needs that could or can easily be found in 'apples' but not as much so in 'bananas'. (Obviously, eating both would probably be a generally good health practice for both of us, all else being equal.)
Then there are the 'unhealthier' pleasures that we may or may not disregard when warning signs start cropping up relative to our health and/or happiness. Too much food, not enough food, not enough nutritional food, too many carbs, too much alchohol, too many exotic desserts, dangerous drugs, smoking, not enough exercise...and on and on we could go...The older we get, the more we are likely to realize that there is the very real issue of our 'mortality' -- and that life is not forever -- unfortunately, some young people never reach this level of 'wisdom' before they run into tragic disaster and for my fellow aging 'baby boomers' (obviously this is me writing in 2009, not 1979), there is the issue of all of the acute and/or chronic diseases that can start to hit us in our 40s and/or 50s -- clogged arteries, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, adrenal fatigue, liver problems, kidney problems, colon problems, cancer, male problems, female problems, and on and on we could/can go...Welcome to our 50s for those who have made it this far...
And then there are all the psychological, economic, political, social, relgious, moral, and ethical issues...
Enough to more than fill an essay of this size with issues that could require an essay of 10 or 20 or 50 times this size to even begin to properly address all of the various subject matters...(See 'Hegel's Hotel'...)
What we are primarily interested in here is what might be called: 'Central Ego Functioning' including language, perception, interpretation, evaluation, a brief introduction to the idea of balancing 'Narcissistic-Dionysian' impulses with 'Apollonian moral-ethical restraints', generating response-alternatives, judging possible consequences of different actions, making decisions and choices, and the execution of action. Followed by the perception, interpretation, and evaluation of feedback -- and the resulting 'learning and/or mislearning' process.
That is the essence of 'Evaluation and Health'.
The essay will be divided into 3 parts.
In Part 1, we will look at three different 'sub-processes' in Central Ego Functioning -- specifically: 1. The Stimulus-Evaluation Stage; 2. The Response-Evaluation Stage; and 3. The Feedback-Learning Stage.
In Part 2, we will look at potential 'disturbances', 'neuroses', and/or 'pathologies' within each of the previously mentioned stages of Central Ego functioning.
In Part 3, we will look at a more 'wholistic' -- as well as 'reductionistic-compartmentalized' -- model of the personality, including The Central Ego in the centre of all the 'soap opera conflict-generating and conflict-resolving or unresolving action' as what we might also call the 'Chief Executive Officer' (CEO) in our personality. The model is designed to give us some idea of how we might approach the 'art and science of living -- from a (Post-Hegelian, multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential) DGB-GAP perspective. Part 3 was never written in the original 1979 essay but will be 2009 addition from the context of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Let's look at the interactive dynamics of language, epistemology, evaluation, response choice, action or inaction -- and the resulting effects on our health.
Let's look at 'Evaluation and Health'.
-- dgb, March 5th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
