Dealing With 'A Post-Mid-Life Existential and Ego Crisis'

You hear so much about the infamous 'mid-life crisis'.....Well, I think that there is a far worse potential crisis that comes about 10 years after that...

This is coming from an 'aging baby boomer'...

It is a combination of things...or at least can be...mainly an ominous feeling that even your 'mid-life' is -- or has -- slipped away on you and you haven't accomplished anywhere close to all the things that you wanted to accomplish by this time period...For those of you in this age group who are still 'on top of your game' -- at the top of your 'power level' -- this probably won't apply to you...But for those of you who may have experienced a recent professional, economic, finanical, health, and/or relationship 'crash', or simply not attained the more 'lofty' status that you expected of yourself from this time period....well, this combined 'post-mid-life-existiential-and-ego crisis' can be -- harsh -- 'dis-evolving' into very high levels of self-criticism, self-berating, even self-hate...

Not the type of 'dialectical self-talk' that inspires a 'return to the higher levels of self-confidence needed for good performance in any job, career, or activity' which in turn sets up a 'Catch 22' of low levels of confidence leading to bad performance which in turn leads to even lower levels of self-confidence...and worse performance...

You can start with a 'sense of humor' to help break the 'self-destructive cycle'...

Being able to step outside of yourself and laugh at yourself, not berate and debase yourself for self-behavior that you find totally intolerable...is a good first step for turning things around...

I know of one CEO of a large company who was 'fired' or 'downsized' because of corporate losses, who still managed to hook up with a very good contract job at one of Canada's leading banks...But the contract was only for a year although I think he'd been offered an extension, and there was more stress brewing in his personal life, an affair, leaving his wife, trying to support two families at the same time, with two adult children from his marriage in expensive university programs...He economically and emotionally 'caved in' under all the stress, moved back home to his wife, and wasnt' home a month when he had a massive heart attack a week after Christmas and was dead...at 49.

Sometimes you just have to be able to 'step away from it all and look for that fresh new perspective that is going to turn you back in the right direction'... Your personal health should always come first because without your health you have nothing but a one way ticket heading for the morgue.

Laugh at your predicament if that is what you need to do...don't let anyone else hold the keys to your health...or lack thereof....Good personal judgment as to what makes you healthy and happy generally has to come from inside...

I still feel horrible about the man dying at 49 who I knew but who wasn't really a friend, as with my sister-in-law dying at 39 from 'crack abuse'...and wish that I could go back in time to offer some sort of friendship or meaningful statement that might have turned their lives around before it was too late...

In the end, once you have given an effort, you can't live someone else's life for them, as they can't live yours...

If you are 5, 10 or 15 medications a day, you are probably not on a good path...but what do I know...'your doctors knows best'... I can only choose for myself...

My 'health' credibility is not great. Herbs, if you are not careful and moderate, can create trouble too. I've been like an 'amateur biochemist' playing with different types of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs in my own body... 

Whether you are a doctor or an amateur layperson like myself, when you start to seriously 'play around' with the 'balance and the wisdom of the body', you are quite likely looking at increasing trouble...The more you do it, the more you risk dangerous potential side effects...

Deciphering 'causes' and 'side effects' can be an 'interpretive crapshoot'....Nietzsche's skeptical epistemology has some value here: 'There are no facts; just interpretations.' -- Nietzsche.

I would re-word this: There are facts but built from facts are a wide possible assortment of conflicting interpretations -- like how you see different politicians interpret the same statistics in completely different ways. And from these conflicting interpretations come an equally wide array of conflicting value judgments. All from the same 'facts'.

What 'caused' or 'causes' what? Your theory or ideology becomes critical -- the type of 'philosophy and/or ideology glasses' that you see the world through -- and your 'righteous-narcissistic bias' based on the particular type of 'ideology glasses' you wear  -- Are you a Capitalist? A Conservative? A Socialist? A Liberal? -- will mean everything in terms of determining type of  'causal analysis' you lay on the scene before you.

Obviously, my 'philosophy-ideology glasses' I lay before you to interpret and judge for yourself.
Better that these philosophy-ideology glasses' are as transparent as possible rather than laying in the weeds, hidden from your awareness, ready to jump out and pull a fast one on you...

The worst part of Capitalism is the psychology of manipulation and exploitation.

This I call 'Narcissistic' as opposed to 'Ethical' Capitalism. The difference is important.

My 'Post-Mid-Life Existential Crisis' is based on a lot of internal, self-based anger. But it is also based on a lot of 'Anti-Narcissitic Political and Corporate Anger' as well.

I need to sort out the difference and pinpoint accountability and responsibility where it deserves to be. I am not out to blame others for my own mistakes and my own lack of self-marketing skills. But I AM out to put Political and Corporate Blame where it deserves to be.

Making this distinction properly -- again -- is important.

It is an imperative part of my ongoing philosophical and writing process here.

'DGB Philosophical Therapy' if you will.

-- dgb, Sept. 27th, 2010. 

-- David Gordon Bain, 

-- Dialectical Gap Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Progress...










  

Conquer A New Fear Every Day...

For those of us who want to become more than what we are today, the trick -- and indeed often our 'existential failing point' -- is to conquer a new fear every day....This is the 'existential abyss', or the 'ontological chasm', that separates us from 'being' to 'becoming'...We need to either creativly build a bridge across this abyss, whatever form both the chasm and the bridge may take, or we may just plain need to find the 'ontological or existential courage' to jump (preferrably with a net below us in the form of 'self and/or social support' if we fall...so we can get up and keep jumping again until we 'successfully fly' across our existential chasm...) -- dgb

Different Areas of Dialectical Living -- Thinking, Feeling, Wanting, Not Wanting, Creating, Destroying, Integrating -- Coming Together and Breaking Apart..The Very Essence of Life..Evolving and 'Dis(or 'De)-Evolving' As We Speak...

Under construction, Sept. 24th, 2010...

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Overview

In this essay I will briefly overview all of the different aspects of living that Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy both affects and is affected by, including evolution, culture, politics, law, economics, psychology, art, religion...indeed, every aspect of both human life, and life in general.


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Let me just quickly outline some of the different realms of living and thinking that Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy affects with or without our awareness and knowledge of what is happening as it is happening...

1. Evolution

Without really knowing it -- or at least the public knowing it -- Hegel advanced a theory of evolution about 50 years before Darwin. Hegel's brand of evolutionary philosophy could or can be called 'dialectical evolution' or even 'multi-dialectical evolution'...

For Hegel, the whole world including man's world and man's mind is 'exploding in contradictions and from contradictions'...

In our external world, we can call these 'external contradictions' and/or 'external dialectic dynamics'...

The world explodes in energy -- 'dialectic tension and the release of this tension into dialectic energy' -- from 'opposites attracting, coming together, fusing or integrating with great energy, and then at some poing usually slowly or quickly coming apart again'...

In classical Hegelian logic (although Hegel never actually used this formulation), the dialectical formula is: 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis'.

In evolution, we see just recently the beginning of a new species in Canada here...truly amazing really to witness 'biological evolution' in action: 1. a male or female wolf; 2. the opposite sex coyote; and 3. the new species -- a 'colf'...  Years ago, I remember seeing a 'cabbit' on Tonight Show...half cat and half rabbit...

And you can see how Darwin's Theory of Evolution can be very easily integrated with Hegel's Dialectic Theory of Evolution -- in fact, Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a 'Dialectic Theory' as well...1. thesis (male); 2. anti-thesis (female); 3. synthesis through 'copulation' and integration of DNA (offspring) into a new 'child' or even 'species' of life...

We don't even necessarily need Darwin's theory of 'the giraffes with the longest necks surviving as the fittest' although 'functionality in evolution' through 'mutation' and 'modification' such as in the case of different integrations of 'viruses' and 'bacteria' is an absolute given...and it may not take hundreds or thousands of years...It may just take 'stronger' and 'more anti-biotic resistant' strains of bacteria integrating with each other in remarkably short periods of time...When 'survival' is on the line, it certainly doesn't necessarily take hundreds or thousands of years to 'make something different happen'...

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I hate to sound like a Freudian here but the metaphor of 'sexual intercourse' or 'copulation' can be applied to every aspect of human life, and life and general.

Every time two new things 'come together' -- and 'integrate' -- we are, in effect, witnessing the 'birth of a new, living being'....This is the biodiversity of life -- the dialectic of life -- played over and over again, a billion times in a billion variations of the same theme...and this same essential process of 'copulation-sexual intercourse' can be metaphorically applied to every aspect of human life and culture...such as:

2. The Food Industry: Every time a new 'integrative food' such as a new integrative juice comes out on the market such as: 'orange-grapefruit juice', 'orange-tangerine juice', 'blueberry-pomegranate juice', 'kiwi-apple juice' and so on....we have the 'dialectic unfolding' in terms of a new product unfolding in life, and in the market place...

3. The Fashion Industry: I was listening to the radio the other day and hearing about a number of new fashion products that are going to hit the fashion market soon if they haven't already...such as: 'jeggings' (a combination of 'jeans' and 'leggings'), a 'shacket' (a combination of 'shirt' and 'jacket')...and there was another one or two that I have forgotten now...you get the idea how 'dialectic integration' works in the fashion industry as well...

4. Medicine: There is a slow, laborious integrative process going on between the dialectic integration of Western and Eastern Medicine, or alternatively, between 'Pharmaceutical' Medicine and 'Natural Health' and/or 'Alternative' and/or 'Vitamins and Herbs' and/or 'Complementary' Medicine...It could take a long while as 'Big Pharmaceutical Companies' fight to hold onto their 'patents' and the 'pharmaceutical drugs' that have been so profitable for them over the past 30 years or so...

5. Law: The slow, ongoing, laborious and often painful integration between 'men's rights' and 'women's rights' and 'equal rights' and where the proper balance in applied politics and law takes us to...

6. Politics: In America, the 'dialectical switchover' from Bush to Obama, and the Republicans to the Democrats, and the recognized limitations/weaknesses/deficiencies... of both ideologies, and their application...In Canada, the 'dialectical switchover' in Federal Politics has been from The Liberals (Chretien) to The Conservatives (Harper) and the recognized limitations/weaknesses, deficiencies of both political polarities...

7. Religion: Over thousands of years the coming together and breaking apart of countless numbers of religious sects, denominations, cults, faiths, the Catholics, The Protestants, The Anglicans, The Jews, The Mormons, The Quakers, The Freemasons, The Muslims or Islamic Faith, Hinduism, Buddhism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Deism, Pantheism, Mysticism, Spiritualism...all involving the dialectic process of deconstructionism, constructionism, and/or reconstructionism, coming together, breaking apart, and starting all over again...at a different stage of overall evolution...

8. Psychology: Freud, Adler, Jung, Reich, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne,, Horney, Rank, Ferenczi, Perls, Masson....different theorists and therapists coming together and breaking apart, preaching and/or teaching some brand of 'dialectic philosophy and psychology' in itself, and/or being a part of a larger, historical evolution of the field of psychology and psychotherapy in general...

9. Philosophy: From the Ancient Pre-Socratics, to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the Scholastics, The Rationalists, the Early Empirical Scientists, the later British Empiricists, The German Idealists, The Enlightenment Philosophers, The Romantic Philosophers, The Humanistic-Existentialists, The Economic and Political Philosophers, The Linguistic-Semantic Philosophers, The Structuralists, the Deconstructionists, The Pragmatics, The Utilitarians, The Modernists, The Post-Modernists, The 'Subjectivists', The 'Objectivists', and on an on we go in the spirit of the spiralling dialectical evolutionary process..



-- Man is a multiple implosion and explosion of internal contradictions, paradoxes, and conflicting tensions,  and their attempted and/or resulting negotiations, dominations, submissions, and/or integrations... -- dgb, Sept. 25th, 2010.

A New Table of Contents for Hegel's Hotel...Sept. 19th, 2010

We have been through this before...Let us see the new 'architectual map' for Hegel's Hotel that is circulating in my head right now.

Hegel's Hotel: On The History and Evolution of Western Dialectical Philosophy-Psychology...

Floor 1: Most Recent Essays

Floor 2: Table of Contents

Floor 3: Introductory Essays on The History and Evolution of Dialectic Philosophy

Floor 4: More Essays on The Dialectic

Floor 5: Ancient Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy

Floor 6: Ancient Chinese Philosophy

Floor 7: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

Floor 8: Roman Philosophy

Floor 9: Scholastic (Religious) Philosophy

Floor 10: Early Scientific Philosophy

Floor 11: Descartes and Spinoza

Floor 12: The British Empiricists (Locke, Berkely, and Hume)

Floor 14: The French, British, and American Enlightenment Philosophers

Floor 15: Economic Philosophy, Part 1, Early Idealistic Capitalism (Adam Smith)

Floor 16: Europeon Romantic Philosophy

Floor 17: The German Idealists, Part 1 (Kant, Fichte, and Schelling)

Floor 18: The German Idealists, Part 2 (Hegel)

Floor 19: The Post and Anti-Hegelians, Part 1, Irrationalism (Schopenhauer)

Floor 20: The Post and Anti-Hegelians, Part 2, Economic Philosophy, Part 2, Idealistic Socialism (Marx) 

Floor 21: Humanistic-Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidigger, Sartre)

Floor 22: British Utilitarianism

Floor 23: American Pragmatism

Floor 24: Structuralism

Floor 25: Russell and Wittgenstein (Lingusistic and Semantic Philosophy)

Floor 26: General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa)

Floor 27: Biological and Medical Philosophy (The Hippocratic Oath, Walter Cannon, 'The Wisdom of The Body', and The Dialectic Playoff and/or Integration Between 'Pharmaceutical' Medicine and 'Natural Health' Medicine)

Floor 28: Power Philosophy (Foucault)

Floor 29: Post Modernism and Deconstruction(ism) (Derrida)

Floor 30: Economic Philosophy, Part 3, Idealistic Capitalism, Part 2 (Ayn Rand)

Floor 31: Economic Philosophy, Part 4, Idealistic Socialism, Part 2 (Erich Fromm)

Floor 32: DGB Epistemological Philosophy, Part 1, Structural, Process, and Dialectic Epistemology

Floor 33: DGB Metaphysics

Floor 34: DGB Ontological and Teleological Philosophy (Being and Becoming)

Floor 35: DGB Narcissistic Philosophy, Part 2, Humanistic-Existential vs. Pathological Narcissism

Floor 36: DGB Altruistic Philosophy, Part 3, Humanistic-Existential vs. Pathological Altruism

Floor 37: DGB Ethical Philosophy, Part 4, Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic Ethics)

Floor 38: DGB Philosophy, Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential (Homeostatic) Economic Philosophy

Floor 39: DGB (Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic) Equal Rights and Legal Philosophy)

Floor 40: DGB (Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic) Political Philosophy

Floor 41: DGB (Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic) Philosophy of Religion, Spirituality, Mythology, Pantheism, Deism...

Floor 42: DGB Quantum (Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic) Psychoanalysis, Part 1, Introduction

Floor 43: Freud and Classical Psychoanalysis (Traumacy Theory and Repression, The Seduction Theory and Repression, The Abandonment of The Seduction Theory, Childhood Sexuality, The Psycho-Sexual Stages of Development and The Oedipal Complex, Narcissism, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, The Ego and The Id, and The Birth of Object Relations ('Integrated and Alienated Ego-States')

Floor 44: Adler and Adlerian Psychology ('Lifestyle', 'Inferiority Feelings', 'Superiority Striving', 'Social Interest')

Floor 45: Wilhelm Rank (Body and Character Armour)

Floor 46: Sandor Ferenczi (Return To The Seduction Theory, 'Identification with The Aggressor'...)

Floor 47: Carl Jung (Jungian Psychology: The Personna and The Shadow, Archetypes, Symbolism and Mythology, The Self...)


Floor 48: Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, and 'Object Relations' Psychoanalysis

Floor 49: The Birth of Humanistic and Humanistic-Existential Psychology (Otto Rank, Karen Horney, Eric Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May...)


Floor 50: Heinz Kohut ('Narcissistic Transferences' and 'Self-Psychology')

Floor 51: The Birth of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Therapy

Floor 52: Fritz Perls andGestalt Therapy (Topdog vs. Underdog, 'Organismic Self-Regulation', 'Open' and 'Closed' Gestalts, 'Figural' and 'Background' Gestalts, 'Hot Seat Work' and 'The Empty Chair Technique')

Floor 53: Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis ('Ego-States', The 'Nurturing' vs. 'Critical' Parent(Psychoanalytic Learning Theory, Personality Theory, Psychopathology, Neurosis, and Psychosis, Psychotherapy and Personal Growth Psychology)

Floor 54: DGB Cognitive and Psychoanalytic Learning Theory

Floor 55: DGB 'Transference-Lifestyle Complex and Neurosis' Theory

Floor 56: DGB Personality Theory (Model-Structure and Dynamics)

Floor 57: DGB Theory of 'The Central Ego' and 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning'

Floor 58: DGB 'Depth' Psychology ('Quantum' -- Multi-Dialectic -- Ego-State and Depth Psychoanalysis)

Floor 59: The Structural and Dynamic Template/Blueprint of The Self (Being, Becoming, Humanistic-Existential Alienation) 

Floor 60: DGB Personal Growth Psychology and Psychotherapy

Floor 61: Back to Basics, Part 1: Family, Friends, and Com
munity

Floor 62: Back to Basics, Part 2: Marriage and The Many Internal and External Contradictions of Men and Women

Floor 63: Back to Basics, Part 3: Work, Self-Actualization, and Self-Alienation

Floor 64: Back to Basics, Part 4: Contact, Awareness, Internal Contradiction, Conflict, Dialectic Alienation and/or Integration

Floor 65: Back to Philosophy: DGB International (Dialectic-Democratic-Humanistic-Existential-Homeostatic) Philosophy and Human Rights

Floor 66: Summing Up: 'Either/Or' Philosophy vs. 'Integrative' ('Dialectic-Gap-Bridging')Philosophy as They Both Pertain To Problem-Solving, Conflict-Resolving, Looking For 'Win-Win' Solutions, and Getting Along With Our Fellow Man...


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It will take a while before each of my individual blog-sites and everything that is on them will 'match up' with 'The New Table of Contents For Hegel's Hotel' that I have listed here above...Your patience is requested as this is a major revisionary project in its own right...

-- dgb, Sept. 19th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

A New Introduction for Hegel's Hotel...Sept.18th, 2010.

Just finished, Sept. 18th, 2010.

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Well, it is time to organize -- or re-organize -- Hegel's Hotel again.

I am not happy with the cluttered mess that I am looking at -- Hegel's Hotel is full of  'hoarded' essays, essentially unclassified, and largely inaccessible in its deepest archives of essays written months or now years ago.

I have to find a way for you -- my potential readers -- to access the particular subject matter that you may be looking for....whether you be interested in philosophy, psychology, politics, law, equal rights, economics, the arts, religion, mythology...and at the level of sophistication and academic thoroughness that you are also looking for whether it be at an introductory, general level, or at a more advanced academic level, complete hopefully with some DGB 'cutting edge', evolving 21st century dialectic-democratic, enlightenment-romantic, constructive-deconstructive, modern-post-modern, structural-process, humanistic-existential philosophy and pychology that will take us to places that past schools of philosophy and psychology have not quite taken us before...

Man is full of internal contradictions.

And greater or lesser hypocrisies too depending on the state of our awareness of our internal contradictions...and our willingness to admit and accept them within ourselves, as well as in our social environment...

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"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."


--From Hamlet (III, ii, 239)

[Jump to the quote in the text of the play]


Queen Gertrude speaks these famous words to her son, Prince Hamlet, while watching a play at court. Gertrude does not realize that Hamlet has staged this play to trap her and her new husband, King Claudius, whom Hamlet suspects of having murdered his father. She also does not realize that the lady who "doth protest too much" is actually herself, as the Player King and Queen represent King Hamlet and Queen Gertrude. The former will be poisoned (in this play within the play) by the king's brother, as in reality (Hamlet suspects) Claudius killed King Hamlet. Gertrude's statement is in response to the play-Queen's repetitive statements of loyalty to and love of her first husband.

Source(s):

http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes…


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First -- in Western history and evolution as far as we can trace it back, or choose to usually take it back -- there was 'Greek mythology' and 'polytheism' (the belief in many Gods, and the 'dialectic interaction' not only between Gods and Gods, but also between Gods and humans, in the sky and on earth...)

Then came the arrival of the first Greek philosophers -- Thales, Anaxamander, Anaxamenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Pythagoras -- and their first attempts at 'explaining the beginning and the source of all life through 'natural' as opposed to 'theological' or 'mythological' causes... The 'one natural cause started all life' philosophers we can call 'monists' as opposed to the 'dualists' ( who believe(d) that life arose through the 'competing of opposing forces doing battle with each other and creating evolutionary energy' such as Anaxamander who was the first real evolutionary thinker, a monist, a dualist, and the first dialectic philospher all rolled into one...Thales preceded Anaxamander but Anaxamander created a much more sophisticated school of dialectic philosophy that still passes the test of time today, if in a primitive form, and indeed, can be viewed as a precursor, and a prognostication of the work of the most famous dialectic philosopher of all -- G.W. Hegel -- who wrote arguably the most important work in the history and evolution of Western Philosophy, i.e., 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', finished and published in 1807). The work of both Anaxamander and Hegel can be compared and contrasted with the work of another hugely evolutionary and revolutionary theorist and philosopher -- Charles Darwin -- whose most famous work, The Origin of The Species, 1859, post-dated Hegel's work by 52 years, and Anaxamander's work by about 2400 years.

Monists can also be distinguished from  'monotheists' who believe in one God as the cause and source of all life.

Most of the earliest monists -- Thales (water), Anaxamenes (air), Heraclitus (fire) -- shared this common goal: they each were searching for the 'lowest common denominator in the form of a physical or material substance that could be viewed as the starting point of all life'.

As a monist, Anaxamander broke the prototype: he was looking for the 'highest common denominator' of all life which he called  'The Apeiron' -- translatable as the 'The Boundless' or 'The Limitless' which almost sounds like our present conception of 'The Universe'.

From Anaxamander's concept of The Apeiron or Limitless, he then turns into the first Western dialectic philosopher, not totally unlike Lao Tse around the same time in China, although Lao Tse's philosophy was probably closer to Heraclitus's philosophy of 'opposites needing their polar half to create balance in the universe' -- which in China developed into the philosophy of Daoism and the philosophy of 'yin' (feminine qualities in the universe) and 'yang' (masculine qualities in the universe) needing each other for 'harmonious-homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance' in the universe'.

Anaxamander was distinguishable from both Heraclitus (who was likely influenced by the philosophy of Anaxamander) and Lao Tse because Anaxamander's brand of dialectic philosophy was more of a 'conflict and will to power' dialectic philosophy.

The stronger opposite would conquer the weaker opposite with the stronger opposite taking 'centre stage' in life's ongoing, evolving psycho-drama while the 'weaker opposite' retreats to the 'Shadows' of The Apeiron, The Boundless, The Limitless, The Universe...as opposed to the 'limelight' or 'centre stage' of life..the two together -- in Jung's much, much later psychological terminology -- the 'Personna' dominating the Shadow but only in appearance and for certain lengths of time before The Shadow regains the strength and power to over-run The Personna and leave it reeling in the 'Anarchy of the Shadow' -- the two of them alternating strength and weakness, visable and invisible or overt and covert power and , and the two of them together comprising the 'Full Dialectic-Wholistic Gestalt of Life'  where opposing tensions and contradictions create the energy necessary for all ongoing re-creation, reproduction, mutation, modification, diversity, and evolution...not to mention strife and war...which as much as love, desire, attraction and sex is the other half of this powerful 'multi-dialectic-evolutionary' equation...

Permit me for just having taken the liberty of converting the ancient wisdom and philosophy of Anaxamander into what would over 2000 years later evolve into the different dialectic philosophies of Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls...and many others...


Describing this 2500 year plus 'Multi-Dialectic and Wholistic Evolutionary Odyssey' in more concrete detail is much of what Hegel's Hotel is all about....

Hegel created the dialectic platform and paradigm for this type of historical evolutionary investigation and analysis and I am running with it...building a modern metaphorical, 21st century modern and post-modern, humanistic-existential, constructive-deconstructive, structural-process, evolving monument in Hegel's name in the form of 'Hegel's Hotel'...

One of the central internal contadictions in man's personality that I will be focusing on is the contradiction between the 'will to greed and power over people' (i.e., 'personal and political and corporate narcissism') versus the 'will to care about, co-operate with, and negotiate with, people in the spirit of a win-win formula' (a generally healthier, 'will to dialectically, democratically, and homeostatically balance between narcissism and altruism' -- i.e., the the dialectic-democratic-homeostatic bridge between narcissism and altruism, or worded otherwise, 'ethics').

Building a 21st century metaphorical monument and 'hotel' in Hegel's name -- this is the very, very large subject domain, and the visionary idealistic and realistic goal of Hegel's Hotel...

Call me a 'Post-Hegelian, and Post-German, Idealist' if you will...

With undercurrents of Greek Pre-Socratic Philosophy...

Spinozian Pantheism...

Locke's Rational-Epiricism, and Liberal Religious-Political Philosophy...

The British, French, and American Enlightenment Philosophy...

Schopenhauer's Irrationalism...

German Romanticism...

Adam Smith and Karl Marx's 'Polar Economic Humanism'...

Kierkegaard's, Nietzche's, and Sartre's Humanistic-Existentialism...

Wittgenstein's and Korzybski's 'Structural Representation' Linguistic-Semantic Philosophy...

Foucault's and Derrida's 'Power Philosophy' and 'Deconstruction Philosophy' respectively...

Eric Fromm's and Ayn Rand's 'Polar Economic-Political Philosophy'....

Freud, Adler, Jung, Berne, and Perls...

All playing major roles in this evolving human historical-evolutionary psycho-philosophical drama...

Please join me if this interests you, if you have not already...

And I am open to feedback and 'complimetary and/or counter-essays' at any time...

There is a point at which I would like to cease being the sole contributor to Hegel's Hotel...other than my dad's poetry and one or two essay or email contributions here and there...

I would like Hegel's Hotel to become more 'dialectically interactive and debative' in a way that presents more than my own perspective...

How many leaders proclaim to be democratic...and yet rule as 'Tight, Anal-Retentive, Control Freaks'....with no democratic transparency...a word that seems to be much more popular in political campaigns than in the actual supposedly 'democratic' running of a country...

Are you listening, Prime Minister Harper?

And all you members of parliament who don't want your 'expense accounts' to be 'transparent' to the public?

Politically, I am a Liberal-Conservative or a Conservative-Liberal...with some socialist-NDP streaks running through my blood...

Economically, I was raised as a Capitalist. My father owned his own small business of about 30 or 40 employees. He introduced me to 'The Fountainhead'.
But I was influenced by Erich Fromm also who wrote about the negative side of Capitalism...the work alienation, the 'marketing orientation' where the value of a product or a person becomes equated with its monetary value...even our own self-esteem...the herd mentality as everyone learns the 'corporate line' and the 'corporate mentality'...the loss of self-identity to the extent that our skills and talents are suppressed and vanquished in favor of the corporate needs of  the most mundane jobs that require an endless repetition of the same tasks over and over again...some jobs and/or careers are obviously better than others in this regard depending on their nature and the degree of creativity, freedom, and flexibility allowed and/or needed by them...

Politically -- as well as corporately -- I am both an idealist and a cynic depending on whether we are talking about good companies or bad ones, or the gap between corporate possiblities and corporate actualities...which is often the gap between Ethical, Dialectical-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism
on the one hand vs. Narcissistic, Unethical Capitalism on the other hand...

I can, have, and will continue to, rage against the destructive components of Unethical, Narcissistic Capitalism...although I will save you from one of my rants today...

While at the same time, supporting the more idealistic Capitalist visions of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, and also weigh in with the 'counter-Capitalist-arguments' of  Karl Marx and Erich Fromm...

That's the Hegel's Hotel agenda...

And the evolving psycho-philosophical-socio-economic drama...that is woven into Hegel's Hotel...

There are already a good 500 essays that are a major part of Hegel's Hotel...

Providing Hegel's Hotel with its philosophical and psychological foundation...

All I need to do is better organize these essays so that they are easier to access, for your potential reading interest...

And then keep building Hegel's Hotel...

Higher....

While keeping the story line of my essays...

Philosophically, psychologically, and personally...

Meaningful....and contactful...

It is imperative for me that I keep my essays alive and engaging...

On this note,

For all of you newcomers,

Welcome to Hegel's Hotel!

-- dgb, Sept. 18th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Evolutionary Progress...

On The Interconnection Between Dialectic Thinking and Epistemology: 1. Introduction: On The German Good or Bad Mutation From Kant's 'Epistemological Split' to Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's, and Schopenhauer's 'Monistic/Wholistic' Epistemological Rebellion

Started on Sept. 11th and finished on Sept. 12th, 2010....


On the anniversary of 9/11, may the more rational, humanistic side of human thinking, feeling, and doing  prevail...


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




1A. Introduction: On The Evolutionary Interconnection Between Rational-Empiricism and Dialectic Thinking


Philosophy is inseparable from history, and history is inseparable from philosophy. The two are dialectically entwined. On this matter, I am in full agreement with Hegel. -- dgb.


This has been a slow train coming...a very slow train coming...

Do I start in the past and work forward?

Or do I start in the present -- my present -- and work back to the past?

How do you negotiate your past with your present?


Are you the same person? Or someone else? Are you a mixture of who you were, what you used to think and feel and want, combined with something new -- a 'mutation' spinning off of what you were, and/or a 'compensation' built off of, or onto, whatever the 'old you' was driving towards, and was all about?

This is part of what I personally have had to reconcile...indeed, I have actually been trying to reconcile it for about two years or so now with much resistance and 'go and stop' starts, relative to my own writing today compared to what I was writing about 30 years ago in my Honours Thesis, in Psychology when I directly or indirectly started the project of what today I am calling 'Hegel's Hotel'.

Except back in 1979, I barely knew who Hegel was, and what he stood for....I heard the expression 'dialectic thinking' primarily in relation to a particular professor teaching the philosophy of Marx and Social(ist) Activism...

And somehow it rattled in and out of my brain that Hegel influenced Marx relative to this matter of whatever 'dialectic thinking' was...even though it didn't really soak into me that there was a world of difference between Hegel and Marx, that Marx basically turned Hegel's philosophy upside down, stood Hegel's philosophy on its 'head' if you will, and in this regard, Hegel and his philosophy was essentially 'split into two halves' -- a 'right wing' faction of Hegelian philosophy that tended to be more 'conservative and status-quo based', and a much more radical, 'left wing' faction of Hegelian philosophy led ultimately by Marx and Engels who revolutionized in both good and bad ways the future history, socio-economics, politics and culture of both Eastern and Western thinking...


The paradoxical, ironic thing about Hegel and his philosophy as it became associated with 1. 'German Idealism, then Imperialism, and ultimately, Nazism on the one hand: and 2. Marxism, and the deviations of Marxism into Leninism, and Soviet Communism as well as Mao Tse Tung and Chinese Communism on the other hand -- was and is that Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy first and foremost is a philosophy that is designed to 'negotiatie and integrate opposing perspectives', and in this regard, 'bridge the gap between opposing philosophical, political, psychological, artisitic, religious, and/or cultural forces...

So how is it that a philosophy that was designed to 'integrate opposites' became, from all outward appearances, inherently contradictory -- 'self-split' and 'schizoid' -- within itself? What happened? And where was the resolution in this apparent split? 

Firstly, Hegelian philosophy was built on 'the reality of internal contradiction'...According to Hegel, all things, processes, qualities, characteristics, ideas, theories, ideologies, philosophies, religions, political parties, relationships...are built from a foundation of 'internal contradiction'.  
What unites us, divides us...and what divides us, unites us...

Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy is built upon the principle of 'dialectic unity, harmony, wholism, and/or monism'...

This is how you can distinguish the difference between the ultimate 'singular wholism and/or monism' of Baruch Spinoza vs. the 'dialectic monism' of say, Heraclitus ('the balance of opposites'), Lao Tse ('yin' and 'yang' need to harmonize together...), and The German Idealists, primarily, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel who were each in their own respective way trying to 'heal the dualistic schizoid split' asserted by Kant between 'subject' and 'object' and between 'epistemology' and 'metaphysics'...

Most of the little I have read about Fichte's philosophy I don't like. You don't 'heal a split' by pretending that the split is not there -- when it is. The 'subject-object split' will always be with us -- 'The Great Kantian Divide' -- and Fichte trying to 'do away' with the 'object' didn't -- and still doesn't -- solve the problem of this 'Great Subjective-Objective Divide'.

Without getting in over my head here -- because to repeat my knowledge of Fichte's philosophy is very shallow and introductory -- Fichte seems to have at least partly tried to do what the British Empiricist, George Berkeley tried to do: specifically, 'get rid' of the 'can of worms' called the 'object' and base all philosophy on 'subjectivism'... in Berkeley's case 'subjective empiricism'....If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to see or hear it fall, did the tree make a 'sound'?  Berkeley's answer to this epistemological problem was: 'No the tree didn't make a sound, and indeed, the tree never fell if there was no one there to witness it!! Does a squirrel count as a 'witness'? And what if someone finds the tree lying on the ground in the forest afterwards? What about this, Professor Berkeley? Are you still going to say that the tree 'never made a sound and/or never fell'?

Fichte's 'subjectivism' was more of a 'Cosmic Subjectivism'....and this ultimately became more dangerous...indeed, one of the philosophical foundations of Nazism....This requires a little explaining...

Historically, let us briefly go back to the traumatic influence of Napoleon on the national evolution of Germany. Napoleon's conquering Germany and Prussia fairly easily created a hugely 'traumatic ego blow to the collective German Psyche'. And Napoleon's essentially 'walking over Germany' created the beginning of what might be called a 'Traumatic-Transference Complex' in the National German Psyche. Why did it happen? And how could Germany 'compensate' and 'evolve' to make sure that this type of 'National Ego Humiliation' didn't happen again?

The answer was simple. At the time of Napoleon's conquest of Germany, Germany was divided into a whole network of 'city-states' that were not ultimately 'united'....So Napoleon just drove his army through the divided 'pre-Germany' and what at that time was Prussia -- and conquered a divided Germany fairly easily...

Thus the post-Napoleon calling card of the German people based on their 'collective national humiliation' and their resulting 'compensation' towards a national 'superiority-striving' (Adlerian Psychology at work on a national, collective level) became -- 'collective national unity'... A country that is not divided in its collective, national vision and mission of being 'collectively and nationally strong' presents a much more formidable defensive and/or offensive force to any of its potential 'national enemies'...

Fichte presented such a national, collective, philosophical vision and mission to the German people. And the German people swallowed it hook, line, and sinker...Fichte's philosophy became a part of the German people's 'Collective, National Anti-Napoleon Transference Complex'....which was slowly starting to build towards Nazism and, in the end, The Third Reich...

What was lost in Fichte's 'Collective, National Philosophy' was the 'Philosophy of the Individual' and the functional necessity of the contradiction between the Individual and The State...

What was lost in Fichte's philosophy and ultimately in Nazism was the concept of 'individualism'...and the concept, process, and dynamic force of all evolving democratic governments -- specifically, the 'rational-empirical-ethical critical thinking' of The Individual vs. The State... 

Between Fichte and The Third Reich, 'individual critical rational-empirical-ethical thinking became 'taboo'.

It was what eventually led Nietzsche to criticize in his own German people 'the herd mentality'...

Although Nietzsche's philosophy -- and particularly Nietzsche's concept of 'The Will to Power' -- was twisted by the Nazi regime and used for its own 'imperialistic designs'...

In the Nazi mentality -- the Nazi/German Collective Fichtean Psyche at the time -- there wouldn't be any more 'Napoleons walking over and through Germany'....because by this point in time the German army had become so formidable that it was ready 'to walk over the rest of the world just like Napoleon did to them'...

This is what I call 'transference-reversal' -- in this case, a 'Collective, National Transference-Reversal Complex' -- or 'Identification with The Aggressor' -- where Germany basically followed Kant's 'Categorical Imperative' or 'The Reverse' of it -- 'Do unto the world what the world did unto you'....

In three words, I call this phenomenon 'National (and/or Religious) Transference Revenge'...

We see it all the time operating in the world today, in America, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanastan...Christians killing Muslims, Muslims killing Christians...where does it all stop?

So Fichte -- unintentionally I am sure -- and his 'Collective, National Unity Philosophy' essentially tore the shreds out of Individualism, Critical-Rational-Empirical-Ethical (Humanistic-Existential) Thinking, Feeling, and Acting...and in effect, all Enlightenment Values...

What Fichte left us with which is still valuable is almost laughably contradictory, paradoxical, and ironical -- he left us with the concept of 'The Ego' (the German word for 'I' or 'Self'...There is that dastardly 'Kantian Subjective-Objective Split' again -- 'The Active, Subjective, Creative I' vs. 'The more Passive, Objective Self'...which is in effect the 'creative or non-creative recipient' of the 'creative or non-creative choices' of our active 'I')...

Schelling will have to wait for another day. I like Schelling, in some ways, even better than Hegel...But that comparison and contrast again has to wait for another day...

Then, ever so briefly, there were the 'Post-and/or Anti-Hegelians.

Kierkegaard...who wrote so abstractly on the philosphy and the psychology of 'the concrete invidual in evolving process'...another internal philosophical and self-contradiction that will have to wait for another day...

Schopenhauer...who in both similarily and contrast to Fichte created a 'Cosmic Id' (an external 'projection' of his internal 'nasty self'...)...Another day...

Between Fichte and Schopenhauer, Freud had the essence of 'two thirds' of his much later internal model of the human psyche...from Fichte, Freud took 'The Ego'...and from Schopenhauer, Freud took 'The Id'...

Nietzsche helped Freud close most of the remaining gap in Freud's model in Nietzsche's classic first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy', in which Nietzsche introduced us to the need for 'homeostatic-dialectic bi-polar balance' between our 'Apollonian' (ethical Superego) Selves' and our more Schopenhaurian-based (and Ancient Greek Tragedy based) 'Dionysian Selves'...

Freud put all these 19th century (and mainly German Idealistic and Romantic) philosophical ideas together in the form of one burst of creative genius...in one of his most important essays...'The Ego and The Id' (1923)...

And all of these different philosophical and psychological ideas when integrated together -- with Hegel being the main integrating philosophical force -- brings us up to date in Hegel's Hotel...

These ideas can perhaps be summed up in my Post-Hegelian, Dialectic Humanistic-Existential Philosophy under the words 'Multi-Bi-Polar, Dialectic Divisionism and Wholistic Unity'...

Or ideally 'Dialectic Monism or Wholism'...

Put another way, 

Man is a walking self-contradiction....

Even our self-contradictions are self-contradictory...

Because our self-contradictions can both be 'neurotic and psychopathological' on the one hand...

And inherent to our 'self-growth, self-therapy, and self-evolution' on the other hand...

The conflicting tensions within us...between our 'competing, conflicting parts' (or 'non-conflicting tensions between non-competing parts' for that matter because the latter may imply 'internal collusion' in perhaps a 'non-growthful' way...just as we have to be wary of the presence of 'external colluding' forces in our government, in our corporations, in our 'special interest lobbyists'...and between them all)...to repeat, the conflicting, competing tensions within us, drive us, or leave us stagnant, and their evolving psycho-philosophical-dynamics and outcomes define us in terms of the individuals who we are, the individuals who we aren't, and the 'gaps' left between them...

This 'Dialectic Premise' provides the driving, underlying force and broader context of what next we are about to do...i.e....study the philosophy and the psychology of 'The Central Ego'...

Enough for today..

-- dgb, Sept. 12th, 2010, 

-- David Gordon Bain, 

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

On God, Religion, Righteousness, and Politics

No sentence with the word 'God' in it should be used in a political forum.

I support Kant in this viewpoint and oppose Hegel. 'God' belongs to the world of 'metaphysics', not the world of 'grounded epistemology'. The only common meeting ground for The State and The Church should be their common goal of the humanism and compassion of mankind. 'God' should not be a meeting ground. It is the sole territory of religion, and should not be the territory of The State and State Politics...

Politics should be based on our best possible epistemology (i.e., knowledge based first and foremost on observation...and reliable deductions and conclusions and ethical, compassionate values based on reliable observations from reliable, credible people...), not any one person's or group of person's much more abstract, speculative world of metaphysics...which includes all religions...
If a religious person wants to talk to a politician about how we need to better support our war veterans coming home from the war (and/or not send them over there in the first place), then the politician should have open ears. But if a religious person wants a national and/or international platforum on which to assert that 'God has told me this'...or 'God has given me a sign'...or 'The Bible says this...' or 'The Qu'ran says this...' the only thing that has relevance is what the person says after the reference to 'God', or after the Biblical reference or after the Qu'ran reference...and/or after the word 'this'....

There are two parts to why God, religion, and politics should not be connected...

1. Epistemology starts with what we can 'see', not with what we can't see... and;

2. Whenever God, religion, righteousness, and politics get too tightly wound up together,

Bad things generally happen.

Wars start, and/or are exasperated like a grass fire becoming a forest fire...

Politics needs to stay out of religion...except when National and/or International laws are transgressed...

And religion needs to stop quoting God, The Bible, and/or The Qu'ran...

When stepping into politics, law, and/or education...

We should be teaching our young people skepticism, not faith, in what they cannot see...and

In what bears no credible or reliable witness..
The world is an amazing and mystifying Creation...

But that doesn't mean that we know anything about its 'Creator'...

Or whether or not there is, or ever was, one...

Speculate to your heart's content...

But don't bring your abstract metaphysical speculations, mythologies, and/or religions...

Into politics...where laws need to follow...

What we see, interpret, and evaluate...

Here on Earth...

Using our sensory/interpretive/evaluative faculties....

Of observation, logic and reason...

And the more abstract concepts of...

Ethics, fairness, justice, egalitarianism, democracy, transparency, and

Accountability...

That is the 'old ratiional empiricist' in me talking....the Locke, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, Kant, Korzybski, Rand influence on me...

Hegel's attempted dialectic union between Religion and Politics doesn't work here for me...

Because Religion is based primarily on what you can't see...

And you don't build a government...

Start heresay and gossip...

Talk about Faith...

Or Declare War...

Based upon what you can't see...

Just ask George Bush that...

-- dgb, Sept 11th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain

On Relationships...

Relationships are either continually being born or 're-born', or conversely, they will peter out and die...

Stagnant relationships are usually relationships that are moving backwards and/or away from contact and growth...they are self-destructing by their very stagnancy....

'He not busy being born is busy dying.' -- Bob Dylan

The purpose of relationships is generally mutual contact and growth...without the contact and growth, the relationship starts to lose its functionality and meaning....

If there is no evolving life between us, then one of us, if not both of us, is bound to move on...to another relationship where there is evolving life...

Have the courage, take the plunge, to evolve together...

If it wasn't meant to be, then it won't be...

'I am I, and you are you,
And if by chance we meet,
It's beautiful,
If not, then not.

-- The Gestalt Prayer


Relationships frozen by anxiety and/or anger-resentment are destined to fail...or not get off the ground at all...

You need to break through the impasse...

To break the 'stalemate', the impasse, and get the relationship in motion, and/or moving forward again...

If not, then once you have given your best effort, and it is still not enough, to put the relationship back in forward motion again, then it is probably time to move on. There is a point in time with all of us when, as the expression says, 'there is no use beating a dead horse'...some losses simply can't or won't be recovered....with all due respect, there usually comes some time in all of our lives when it is simply time to find a 'new, live galloping horse (relationship)'...

Life is short.



-- dgb, Sept. 11th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Progress...

On Ethical, Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism

Unfortunately, unbridled Capitalism -- the type that neither Adam Smith or Ayn Rand taught -- teaches and exasperates narcissism, manipulation, and greed...that is why I call it 'Narcissistic Capitalism'...

University business programs need to re-focus, or focus more, on teaching good work and business ethics...

I love to see it when I find good, sound, ethical business men and women out there -- people who are looking for 'win-win solutions to customer and employee problems -- in a dominantly  narcissistic captitalist world of dog-eat-dog... a world of employers squeezing the last possible buck out of their customers, a world of employers squeezing their employees wages down as low as they possibly can until the employee has to find a second job, or a different job, elsewhere...and a world of angry customers and employees who feel 'ripped off'', and who often find different, imaginative ways of putting a 'proverbial wrench in the assembly line' before they finally march off and take their business and/or work skills elsewhere...

Give me the employer who knows how to treat his or her employees and customers well, and give me the employees and customers that respond in kind with respect, caring, and loyalty....

And you get the idea of what I am trying to promote here in terms of 'Ethical Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism'...

It is a situation where, ideally, all relevent parties participating in a particular business venture, benefit from this business venture -- the employer, the employee, and the customer -- with no 'hidden collusions', no 'undemocratic behind the scene negotiations', no 'price fixing or price gouging', and an ongoing situation where all relevant employers, employees, and customers want to keep on doing business with each other...want to engage in 'ethical, humanistic-existential business transactions', and in this regard, actually care about each other...

Am I living in an idealistic, unrealistic dream-world? 

Or is this a realistic, achievable idealistic -- and realistic -- vision and goal...

That the right ethical people can all help to make happen?

-- dgb, Sept. 9th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

The Unmaking of A Company Man... By Andrew Bacevich, September 3, 2010

By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy. In a life spent subject to authority, deference had become a deeply ingrained habit. I found assurance in conventional wisdom. Now, I started, however hesitantly, to suspect that orthodoxy might be a sham. I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high -- whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops -- is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them. Even then, the truths to which they testify come wrapped in a nearly invisible filament of dissembling, deception, and duplicity. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_unmaking_of_a_company_man

'I Mean No Harm Nor Put Fault, On Anyone Who Lives In a Vault' -- Bob Dylan

People who are hired to do a certain job often lose the ability -- or at least the willingness and the power -- to either think for themselves, and/or to voice their thoughts, if or when these thoughts run contrary to the thoughts of the person/people paying their cheque. Does this really surprise us? Economics rules ideology as much as ideology rules economics. (Probably even more the first way around.) Regardless, the two factors are in a dialectic relationship with each other -- each influencing the other. And to be sure, not always in good ways.

The obvious main problem is that this sets up the possibility of a 'conflict of interest' situation in practically every 'capitalistic endeavor' where a man or woman's decisions are influenced by money, the lack of it, and/or by plain old self-interest -- or worded otherwise, narcissism.

To a certain extent, we all become subject to the dangers of 'group think', 'organization think', 'institution think', 'party think', 'paycheque think'....It is part of what leads to 'the silence and the silencing of the lambs'... It is what Nietzsche called the 'herd' mentality, it is what prevented Spinoza from accepting a position as a professer at a Holland university...(Instead, he 'ground glass' for a living which probably sped up his death...)

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

'But I mean no harm, nor put fault,
On anyone that lives (and thinks and feels) in a vault,
But It's alright, Ma, if I can't please him...' -- Bob Dylan (inside the italics mine)

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


I don't really know or expect a practical answer to this problem....I just know that this problem is constantly endangering all epistemological and ethical endeavors....In effect, saying nothing here that isn't already known...'Money changes everything...'  -- Cyndi Lauper

Money affects our search for -- and our willingness to share the results of our search for -- truth and justice.

Put another way,

'All ideology blinds us from that truth that contradicts our ideology.' -- dgb

Marketing and business interests are affected by what we say and don't say, and/or by how much we are willing to financially invest in what we say, and in turn, what we say and do, or don't do, including our lack of financial investment, affects the behavior of the business systems that are either willing to carry and market our thoughts -- or not -- at least withinin a 'Capitalist System'... And most 'Socialist Systems' have shown themselves to be only worse, at least historically speaking.

Which seems to lead to the inevitable conclusion: 'All thinking is affected by different narcisstic interests, especially the most powerful narcissistic interests....

Which in turn leads to 'the silence and the silencing of the lambs within a narcissistic, ideological system.'

Or worded otherwise, 'thinking, and feeling, and living in a vault -- the vault of ideological narcissism or narcissistic ideology'. 

-- dgb, Aug. 7th, 2010.

-- David Gordon Bain

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


 It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) -- Bob Dylan (from the internet)...



Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying



Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying



Temptation’s page flies out the door

You follow, find yourself at war

Watch waterfalls of pity roar

You feel to moan but unlike before

You discover that you’d just be one more

Person crying



So don’t fear if you hear

A foreign sound to your ear

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing



As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred



Disillusioned words like bullets bark

As human gods aim for their mark

Make everything from toy guns that spark

To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

It’s easy to see without looking too far

That not much is really sacred



While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked



An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged

It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge

And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it



Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you



You lose yourself, you reappear

You suddenly find you got nothing to fear

Alone you stand with nobody near

When a trembling distant voice, unclear

Startles your sleeping ears to hear

That somebody thinks they really found you



A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to



Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to



For them that must obey authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Cultivate their flowers to be

Nothing more than something they invest in



While some on principles baptized

To strict party platform ties

Social clubs in drag disguise

Outsiders they can freely criticize

Tell nothing except who to idolize

And then say God bless him



While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in



But I mean no harm nor put fault

On anyone that lives in a vault

But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him



Old lady judges watch people in pairs

Limited in sex, they dare

To push fake morals, insult and stare

While money doesn’t talk, it swears

Obscenity, who really cares

Propaganda, all is phony



While them that defend what they cannot see

With a killer’s pride, security

It blows the minds most bitterly

For them that think death’s honesty

Won’t fall upon them naturally

Life sometimes must get lonely



My eyes collide head-on with stuffed

Graveyards, false gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?



And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only


Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

On Missing The Changes in Life....

People who think in terms of closed generalizations are more subject to missing the changes, evolutions, modifications, adaptations, mutations, compensations, and nuances in life...

-- dgb, Sept. 7th, 2010,

-- David Gordon Bain

On The Politics, Economics, and Psychology of Hypocrisy...Ideology...Religion, Humanism, Narcissism, 'Free Trade', Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Ethics

Why do we have hypocrisy? Why is hypocrisy so prevalent? Am I wrong to say that most people are ethically harder on others than they are on themselves? Sometimes it may be the reverse but not very often.

I like religion to be defined not by 'how loyal you are to whatever your image of God may be' but rather by how good you are to other people, and to 'the protection, the salvation, and the re-generation of all God's creations, including the Earth and the Universe as a whole. If God helps you get there -- i.e., towards treating other people better -- then great! But if God is leading you down a path of righteousness, unbridled narcissism, nastiness towards others, and destruction, then I challenge your image of God and what you believe HE/SHE is demanding of you...Or you are a hypocrite.

I see some people dressed up in all their religious garbs -- and/or simply regular church goers without the garbs --  and I see these same people cheating and squeezing their employees at work  all week long between religious sessions -- and I say 'that isn't religion'....Or at least, it certainly isn't anything close to the type of religion I believe in. 

I would trumpet the words and the deeds of a 'humanistic atheist' while ignoring and/or 'deconstructing' the words and deeds of a 'narcissistic Church-goer and/or supposedly religious person' -- a person who spouts off and/or professes to believe in a particular religious philosophy/ ideology that he or she defies and aborts in every action that he or she presents to the world for others to look at, interpret, and evaluate' -- again, the hallmark of hypocrisy...

Hypocrisy basically comes down to either the 'un-integration' of a 'split ego' and/or the workings of a 'narcissistic ego' that is attempting to hide -- with a show of  'smoke and mirrors' -- his or her 'narcissistic activities'.  At the extreme, this is the hallmark of the 'psychopathic and/or sociopathic personality'. In greater or lesser degrees of moderation, this is the rest of us.

Except for the case of what might be called 'white lies'  (i.e., lying in order to not hurt someone's feelings) -- most forms of lying, cheating, hiding, covering up, non-transparency, hypocrisy, greed, unethical behavior -- these are all the calling cards of the 'unethical, narcissistic personality' at work...

Self enhancement through the 'putting down' and/or 'disrespect and debasement of others' is not a very 'religious' activity in my mind.  I see it every day I go to work.

There are good 'employers', bad employers, narcissistic employers, altruistic employers, ethical employers who aim to split the difference between narcissism and altruism, employers who spout an ideology that they cannot, will not, and/or choose not, to live up to, employers who break promises, break comittments, who tell you one thing with 'rose colored glasses on', and then the rose-colored glasses quickly disappear into Never, Never Land....and of course, the same can be said for 'employees' as well... 

'Unions' were created to protect the worker from bad employers....and 'free trade' was created by politicians via employers to 'break unions'...

There are 'good unions', 'bad unions', and 'no unions' which is the direction we are going now with 'free trade'. To have 'free trade' with 'third world countries' where workers get paid a dollar an hour, if that, in dehumanistic conditions where they could be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, that defy any sense of the word 'humanity' ('sweat shops', they are often called) -- a situation that we here, in Canada, are 'following suit' with in order to 'compete' with these third world countries, and in order to just personally 'survive' in a 'country of diminishing wages coupled with rising prices' -- this is what we got with 'free trade'.... a country with 'rising sweat shops', cheaper labour, and a stressed out, overworked, disappearing middle class, at least for those who are a part of the 'plummeting wages scene' and the 'rising competitiion amongst low income earners' who are willing to be paid less and less, and work more and more, just to have a job in a context of high unemployment...

The unscrupulous, narcissistic employer takes advantage of this scene -- and/or is forced to -- in order to compete with the 'cheap goods' coming in from foreign, third world markets...

North America -- as a consequence of 'free trade' -- has become a continent with 'little to no manufacturing' as the 'cheapest goods are coming from foreign markets' in a foreign labour market that North America cannot compete with (at least without tariffs -- gee, I wonder why 'tariffs' were around for a hundred years before 'free trade'?) unless our wages keep tumbling, and/or the wages in these foreign markets start to go up...That is not likely to happen in our lifetime...at least without intervention....

What we need is a 'universal, international minimum wage' where all countries can compete on the same footing...Failing that, if we ever want to see 'manufacturing' in this continent again, we need to re-introduce tariffs...

'Free trade' was presented to us in a spirit of 'Adam Smith Idealistic Capitalistic Ideology'. Back when Mulroney introduced this idea to the Canadian people, I didn't have a clue as to what the ramifications of it would be....

All the talk at the time was about a 'big, bad America' crushing and 'taking over' a much smaller, weaker Canada...

Little did we know that 'free trade' would be a law that would 'favor the weakest economic countries in the world'  -- plus the 'multi-international corporations' who were big enough to close down their manufacturing plants in North America and open them up in all these 'weaker economic countries' with a hugely 'cheaper work force'...

A free trade agreement between America, Canada, and Mexico...Gee, who is going to win that agreement? America? Canada? Try Mexico -- and all the American and Canadian Corporations who have enough money to move their manufacturing plants down there...Sorry, all you American and Canadian workers -- particularly, those of you who were a part of a big, bad 'corporate union' -- but you just lost your jobs.

The 'unions' that are left in North America have much less power than they used to which is partly a good thing and partly a bad thing. On the one hand, some corporate unions were becoming increasing 'narcissistic and pathological' in their own management style...leading to 'out of control labour costs'.... Eg. the auto industry....But on the other hand, these unions were the only bargaining power that workers had to protect themselves, and enhance themselves, in an otherwise overpowering context of 'big, bad corporate management wolves'...

Today, it is hard to tell whether some unions are actually working for the workers or 'colluding' with the 'bad corporate management wolves' in their mutual aim to suppress and dehumanize the workers...

Six suicides amongst nurses in a Quebec hospital. The spokesperson for the union said that the nurses all had 'personal family problems'. Interview other 'still living' nurses at the hospital and you find out that the nurses were/are all being forced to work 'unGodly' hours where they had/have no time for 'family' -- no wonder why the six nurses all had 'family problems'. In this context, you have to ask the question: Who is the union working for  -- management or the workers?

You have a problem with your phone in Canada. You phone an operator -- and you find that the operator lives in India...

You go to Wal-Mart and you are lucky if you can find a single manufactured good that is made anywhere in North America... For that matter, it is hard to walk into any retail outlet and still find a manufactured good made in North America... Unless the manufacturing -- or 'service' company for that matter -- has either 'imported cheaper labour from other cheaper international work force markets'  and/or the 'local labour market wage prices' have been 'forced downwards' by the high unemployment rate and/or the existence of a sufficient body of workers who are 'willing to work for less' than what used to be the going rate...

When it gets to the point where even graduating teachers and lawyers are having a tough time finding jobs and beginning their careers....you get the idea that something is wrong with this picture...

What you have basically is a 'cheapening of the Canadian job market'....

With all due respect to immigrants and refugees, immigrants and refugees should not be let into this country -- except for perhaps a bare minimum -- in a time of a bad recession and high unemployment. Otherwise, you are just putting more and more stress on the backs of Canadians who already live here. Canadians are overtaxed, underemployed, many underpaid, being forced to work longer and longer hours or work two or three jobs to meet inflationary Canadian prices, our Seniors are not sufficiently protected from falling under the Canadian Safety Net -- with pensions that are not sufficient to support them (unless you have the support of a private, corporate or government pension plan...) 

A single male (and I presume female) in the 'Employment Works' (Social Assistance, Welfare) Program gets a cheque each month for $585.  That is barely enough to cover their rent, let alone their food, transportation, hygiene, clothing...That type of cheque basically puts them under 'house arrest'...

Meanwhile, our federal MPs don't want to disclose their expense accounts. 

Does the NDP have a political voice -- and/or an 'idealistic mission' -- anymore? 

Jack Layton has been pretty quiet on the political front for the last year or so -- maybe because of personal health reasons -- and no one to really step up in his absence. Just one 'deal with the devil' (i.e., Harper) to give more people on (un)employment insurance more time on the back end to find a job...How about all of the unemployed Canadian workers who have been paying into their federal (un)employment insurance their whole working lives -- and don't even make it 'through the front gate' of UI because of the many 'stipulations' that the federal government puts on 'who qualifies for this insurance' once they become unemployed?  If you are 'fired', you are ineligible..

If you 'quit' or 'resign',  you are ineligible...If you are 'downsized', you are eligible...The federal government is supposedly trying to 'screen out' unscrupulous, unethical ex-workers here but who in the federal government from this same (un)employment insurance department is looking at 'corporate ethics'.... 

I call that 'worker profiling' and 'federal government prejudice and discrimination' on who does and doesn't get (un)employment insurance. The only thing that should matter is whether you have paid enough into your government insurance plan to qualify you for drawing it back out when you need it...

I am not a socialist or a capitalist in their respective solitary one-sided perspectives, but rather a 'dialectic-democratic-humanistic' who operates in the context of wanting to integrate the best of capitalism and socialism together in a way that creates a good employer-employee labour situation -- a 'win-win' situation where both parties can work and prosper together, not aim to ravage and pillage each other...

A political and/or corporate hypocrite is someone who professes a particular idealistic ideology on the one hand, but operates by a much 'shadier' set of rules 'under the table' and/or 'behind closed doors' or 'in back alleys' perhaps with 'brief cases full of money'...that won't leave a 'paper' trail behind him or her...

Like Prime Minister Stephen Harper who campaigns on a platform of 'political, democratic transparency' and 'ethical accountability'....who hated the practice of previous Prime Ministers 'stacking the deck' with 'partisan' (read 'Liberal) Senators but had absolutely no problem with 'stacking the deck' with 'Conservative' Senators...I guess 'two wrongs do make a right'...as in a Senate full of 'right' leaning Senators...

And we have our 'Wanna Be Toronto Mayor'  -- Mr. Rob Ford -- who seems to have found the right voter audience in his aim to lower Toronto debt and taxes at the same time (doesn't almost every campaigning politician say that?)  Mr. Ford has been very outspoken -- even calling City Hall 'corrupt' which obviously didn't go over too well with the existing mayor, David Miller and his Council -- and has supposedly charged ahead in the race to be the next mayor.

Mr. Ford yelled loud and righteously about the wrongfulness and corruptness of an 'untendered, exclusive long term city contract' to an existing restaurant vendor operating on Woodbine Beach... And yet, Mr. Ford turned around and supported the same type of untendered, exclusive long term contract to a restaurant vendor on Sunnyside Beach...The difference...it seems like perhaps the first vendor was a 'lobbyist' who 'belonged' to a competing politician whereas the latter vendor was one of his 'own lobbyists'.... I would definitely say that this discrepancy in Ford's political perspective depending apparently on 'who' exactly the lobbyist/vendor was/is
-- is a big warning 'red flag' to all Torontonian voters...

Let me finish this essay by moving to psychology from politics...

Again, 'hypocrisy' can be -- and usually is -- a sign of 'underlying narcissitic bias'...

We all have to walk a day to day line between how much 'personal narcissism' we are going to let 'surface from the inner depths of our personality to 'outer social (or anti-social) behavior.

And how much narcissism we are going to 'push back down' into our 'inner depths' again....unplayed out in our social (or anti-social) behavior...

Where we draw the line between 'acceptable and unacceptable narcissistic behavior' is probably the truest indicator of our personal 'state of ethics'...and whether our professed 'idealism' and 'idelology' actually matches with, and is 'congruent with', how we actually behave...

As the police credo states....'Deeds speak'...

Freud definitely made some serious 'epistemological mistakes' in my opinion...

And he probably made some serious 'ethical mistakes' as well...

Or his so-called epistemological and ethical mistakes -- like his rigid interpretation of The Oedipal Complex -- may not have been 'mistakes' at all...They may very well have been 'narcissistically motivated'....Like most of the rest of us to differing degrees -- it is possible that he may have simply decided to 'step away from a political, legal, and therapeutic can of worms'...in order not to be 'politically incorrect' and/or have his career jeopardized....Nobody around him at the time apparently wanted to talk about 'childhood sexual assault'...so why should he stick his neck on the line and risk the future of his career? But would he actually intentionally change his Psychoanalytic theory 180 degrees in order to stay out of this can of worms?  That is rather mind-boggling and definitely hard to believe...That would indeed be a first degree 'breach of theoretical and therapeutic ethics'....and I don't think I would personally believe Freud capable of that...

Finally, to finish here, there is the relationship between a 'split ego' and 'hypocrisy'... This is the other major reason (besides personal narcissism) for human hypocrisy.

Let's take Freud's first conscious memory again as an example of this type of 'traumacy and transference based, 'split ego' hypocrisy'...

Little Freud at about 3 or 4 years old bursts into his parents bedroom while they are having sex together....He is in shock -- and completely at a loss -- as to undestanding what is happening in front of his eyes with his father probably perched over his mother, in what looks to the little Freud like his dad in a 'power' position 'debasing' his mother... His irate father angrily evicts the little Freud from the parental room, from this 'primal scene'....

This is the moment of most radical change in the little Freud's personality -- the beginning of his 'Primary Transference Complex' (PTC) if you will...The little Freud's ego -- his 'wholistic ego' -- is radically 'split into two' by this shockingly traumatic event...

One side of the little Freud's character at that radical moment in time, in the exact ways remembererd by the little Freud in his memory (which Freud never fully articulated in any kind of detail but which a good psychoanalyst, if he or she knows what to look for, can 'reconstruct' by the many, many essays that Freud wrote about one of his favorite subject matters most intimately connected to his 'PTC' -- specifically, the subject of 'primal memories/phantasies'...) became like the little Freud's father -- 'anally rejecting', 'very private', 'pushing people away from his most personal, private life', and at the same time 'wanting to powerfully possess and dominate/demean/perch over his wife'...

This universal feature of human behavior and 'human transference complexes'  has been given the name in Psychoanalysis of 'identification with the aggressor'...I also call it 'identification with the rejector, betrayor, abandoner...' depending on the exact details of the 'primal transference memory'....Sometimes I will also call it 'transference reversal' as one of our 'primal transference phantasies' becomes in effect, the 'transference switching of roles' of our main transference rejector and ourselves...(little Freud and father Freud) and also in this case, the 'winning of his mother' over his main 'Oedipal' rival -- his father -- which means that Freud essentially 'invented' the 'Oedipal Complex' not after 1896 but rather when he was 3 or 4 years old, i.e., as a part of his Primary (or Primal) Transference Scene...

Thus, the second part of the little Freud's new 'split ego' is the 'rebellious child', the deconstructionist, the boy who wants to usurp his father in terms of power, and in terms of power over his mother...The 'little rebel' Freud wanted to 'know absolutely everything that was happening in his parents bedroom that the little Freud did not understand' -- and that his own father would not properly explain to him. In this regard, the little Freud essentially spent the rest of his life pursuing a 'perfectionist's understanding' of anything and everything that could and was happening in 'the primal bedroom'... This he eventually called Psychoanalysis and the study of Psychoanalysis eventually came to include not only the study of 'adult sexuality' but also of 'childhood sexuality'....and the inter-relationship between 'childhood and adult sexual desires and fantasies'...

Thus, the underlying 'hypocrisy' of Freud's character is that he wanted to know anything and everything about everyone else's personal life and yet he didn't want anyone to know anything about his own very private and personal life. This is what I call 'split-ego hypocrisy' the paradox and discordance between that part of his character that 'introjected' his father's attitude of wanting his own 'personal space and privacy' and the other part of the little Freud's character that wanted to know 'absolutely everything about this father's most personal, intimate business'...

The little Freud knew that his father was 'lying' to him, he knew that his father was 'resisting' the truth, he knew that his father was 'defending against' or 'covering up' the 'truth' of what was happening inside his parents' bedroom....and later, with more awareness, the little Freud would come to know that the truth behind 'bedroom doors' was about 'hidden sexuality and hidden sexual impulses'....and Freud was absoutely intent on finding anything and everything about all these 'hidden sexual impulses'.....They would become his life adventure...

Thus, the hipocrisy within Sigmund Freud's character was between the 'voyeur' (the little Freud) and the person who 'didn't like to be watched' (his introjection or identification with his dad)...

And another hipocrisy within Freud's character was between the little Freud who essentially wanted an 'open bedroom policy' and 'the truth that lies behind closed doors' on the one hand and the other part of Freud (his 'topdog' or 'superego' 'rejecting dad') who was 'covering up the truth' and who wanted to 'run a secret society behind closed doors'...

If Freud had really understood his own 'transference complexes', he would have better understood his most important one -- which he didn't....and thus, he couldn't properly see through his own 'transference hypocrisies'... Thus, his 'character flaws' became the 'transferred and/or 'projected' flaws of 'Classical Psychoanalysis'.

For those of you -- whether you be a politician or a philosopher or an economist or a corporate leader, or a scientist, or a psychotherapist, or a therapeutic client -- who really want to properly investigate and understand all the immense potential creative insights of Psychoanalysis -- at its best -- and who do not want to be 'hypocrites' and or 'silenced lambs' who profess to one idealistic ideology while behaviorally subscribing to something else entirely -- for all of you who really have 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' in mind -- in your mind -- I offer you a study of a type of Psychoanalysis that takes the best 'Classical Psychoanalysis' has to offer us -- while eliminating the flaws in Classical Psychoanalysis that were caused by 'the neurotic transference symptoms' in Freud's character....that have been 'transferred again' onto the power brokers and the 'silenced lambs' of The Orthodox, Anal Psychoanalytic Establishment...

I offer you a 'wilder', much more 'unothodox' brand of 'underground' Psychoanalysis...

And I call this brand of 'underground' Psychoanalysis...

'DGB Quantum ('Post-Hegelian' or 'Multi-Dialectic-Democratic) Psychoanalysis'

Shorten it as you wish...

Have a good evening, 

-- dgb, Sept. 4th, 2010, 

-- David Gordon Bain, 

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...