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.
