Part 1: Existence and Consciousness
Floor 1: Basement: Prologue
The following essay is a modified, updated, and extended version of my 1979 Honours Thesis in Psychology at The University of Waterloo. I am proud to say that my professor, sponsor, and marker back in 1979 was Dr. Donald Meichenbaum who has since become a Canadian Leader in Clinical Psycholgy specializing in 'Cognitive-Behavior Modification' interventions.
A lot of theoretical changes, modifications, and extensions have taken place in my thinking and in my writing since I was a young and idealistic 24 years old in 1979 (not to mention the underlying life changes that have contributed greatly to these theoretical changes).
In 1979, I had just barely been exposed to the concept of 'dialectic thinking' which is now the central focus of my thinking and writing. The focus up to 1979 in my thinking and my writing was a two-fold combination of 'Post-Enlightenment Rational-Empiricism (Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics...)' and 'Humanistic-Existentialism (Erich Fromm, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers...').
Through the 1980s, I became much more exposed and familiar with the concepts and applications of Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, Psychoanalysis (Classic, Object Relations, and Self Psychology), Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis...and the underlying 'double-edged' philosophical influence of Hegel and Nietzsche behind all of these 'dialectic' and 'humanistic-existential' schools of psychology.
When I finished my Honours Thesis in 1979, I knew that I had a lot more research and theoretical work to do to get into the 'deeper realm of the unconscious influences' (which I now call 'transference-archetype templates, complexes, and neuroses'), on here-and-now thinking, but even now, in 2010, the basic 'rational-empirical' foundation laid down in this essay contributes much to what is now 'Hegel's Hotel: The Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar) Humanistic-Existentialist'.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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Floor 2: Main Lobby: Introduction
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm, 1947.
The issue of values and value judgments (or evaluations) represents a critical problem in regard to man's life.
On the one hand, man if free to evaluate and to respond to the situations he is confronted with in his day to day life as he or she pleases (usually within the context of what he or she has learned up to that point in the course of his or her life). But on the other hand, man is not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations, choices, and actions will have (or won't have) on his natural and/or social environment, and the consequences that will in turn come back to him or her via these consequences on his/her environment.
The following two 'cosmic truisms' are very applicable to anyone's evolving life.
What goes around comes around.
For every action there is a reaction.
A person's evaluations (which are built on top of his or her epistemological sensory perceptions and interpretations) can be said to be 'effective' or 'functional' to the extent that they are 'life-serving' -- that is, they work towards promoting a person's health and/or happiness.
Conversely, a person's evaluations can be said to be 'ineffective' or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are 'life-negating' -- that is, they work towards 'sabotaging' the person's health and/or happiness.
Now, being more of a 'skeptical, cynical realist and post-modern deconstructionist' in 2010, as opposed to the 'young, naive idealist' that I was in 1979, I look back at the last two paragraphs and I see clearly that these statements are not quite as 'rosy' and 'clear' as they were to me when I initially wrote them in 1979, under the dual influence of Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand was in the midst of building her 'Objective' epistemological and ethical system which she appropriately came to name -- 'Objectivism'.
By 1979, Rand had already completed two of her 'fictional-philosophical' masterpieces, 'The Fountainhead' (1943), and 'Atlas Shrugged'(1957), in which she laid down her Capitalistic Ideals that she would later blend into her more general philosophy of Objectivism.
But even back between 1974 and 1979, I was getting the beginning of my 'dialectic exposure' even though I hadn't tagged it with that particular label yet. For as well as receiving my father's Capitalistic influence -- who introduced me to the philosophy of Ayn Rand through 'The Fountainhead', and later the philosophy of Adam Smith -- still, at the same time I was reading Erich Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' (1941), and 'Man For Himself' (1947), and 'The Sane Society' (1955) that introduced me to Fromm's 'Post-Marxian-Post-Freudian-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy'.
The potential and reality for at least partly 'opposite thinking' in epistemological, ethical, econonomic, and/or political philosophy between two very well known and well respected living philosophers at the time sparked the beginning of what would eventually, for me, become the beginning of 'dialectically integrative thinking and philosophy-psychology-ecomomics-politics...' in the 1980s.
The question for me at the time was starting to become: 'How do you understand and account for the seemingly opposite thinking in two polar opposite -- and yet both logically intelligent, rational-empirical, humanistic-existential -- philosophers'; and beyond this, 'How do you potentially integrate the results of their polar-opposite thinking?'...
These two types of dialectic questions would come to dominate my own 'Subjective-Objective', 'Humanistic-Existential', 'Capitalistic-Socialistic', 'Liberal-Conservative, 'Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt' brand of 'Post-Hegelian Multi-Dialectic Philosophy-Psychology-Economics-Politics...'
But a lot of years -- and a lot of ideas -- would have to pass between 1979 and what I am writing now in 2010.
In 1979, I was just getting the ball rolling...
In 1979, I was just starting the preliminary architecture of 'Hegel's Hotel'...
In 1979, I was just a young guy in the woods of Western History, Culture, and Evolution, starting to stretch out his/my own cognitive faculties based on my very limited life experiences and what I was reading and hearing taught to me...
A thousand essays later and Hegel's Hotel is still not completely built, probably never will be, but it is getting closer to what I continue to envision...as the architecture and construction -- metaphorically speaking -- continues to be filled in, and continues to reach higher and higher into the sky...
How do you integrate Rand's 'Objectivism' with Nietzsche's brand of epistemological and ethical 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism'?
A banker, a poverty political activist, a playboy, and an artist all walk into the same cocktail party and none of them are likely to 'see' the same things...
We are all individually -- and 'narcissistically' -- biased (based on our own constantly evolving ideas, opinions, beliefs, values, feelings, impulses and restraints).
However, 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism' -- Nietzsche style -- can only take us so far. If I cross a busy street and don't see a car turning the corner and aiming right at me, with the driver not seeing me, I could be in tomorrow's obituary column...or if I, and/or my tragedy, am/is considered by a newspaper writer and/or editor to be important enough, I might even get a first or second page article...
But I won't be around to find out where I ended up in the newspaper, or if I arrived there at all, because the difference between life and death can often be only a matter of a second or two of timing...
And if my subjective, individualistic, narcissistic timing is off by even a second or two when a car is racing towards me, the driver not seeing me, or unable to apply the brakes in time, or an ex-girlfriend 'confusing' the gas with brakes...then my 'Subjective, Relativistic Philosophy' has been steamrolled under the more 'Objective Cosmic Forces of Life and Death' and/or someone else's 'Subjective, Relativisitic Epistemology and/or Ethical -- mistake, or act of Epistemological and/or Ethical judgment (or lack thereof).
In our day to day world, life and death involves a constant 'dialectic collision' between 'subjective-narcissistic' and 'more objective' (and/or other 'subjective-narcissistic') forces.
Kant's 'noumenal'(objective) and 'phenomenal'(subjective) world are constantly colliding even if man will never know perfectly just exactly what it is that is in his 'noumenal/objective' world. He still has to strive for a 'good enough' epistemological and ethical 'fit'.
Fritz Perls, the (co-)founder of Gestalt Therapy, fittingly called this the 'fitting game'.
Alfred Korzybski, one of the best (and philosophically least known) epistemologists in the history of Western Philosophy, created his school of 'General Semantics' as a 'cognitive toolbox' for people to better learn how to play life's various '(epistemological and ethical) (subjective-objective) fitting games'.
This essay here is a continuation and an extension of Korzybski's (and later S.I. Hayakawa's) General Semantic, language, and epistemology work, as well as the 'Cognitive Theory and Therapy' ('epistemological fitting game work') of writers such as Beck, Kelly, Ellis, and Meichenbaum, as well as the political-economic philosophies ('economic-political fitting game work') of Branden, Rand and Fromm, and the 'ethical fitting game work' of other Humanistic-Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre, and Rollo May...
The two main principles that are slowly starting to be built here are:
1. The principle of 'post-Enlightenment-rational-empirical-egalitarian-humanistic-existentialism';
2. The principle of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectic interaction and negotiation between bi-polar extremes', and 'ideally evolving/resulting homeostatic-dialectic balance between bi-polar extremes in epistemology, ethics, politics, economics, and/or whatever other human endeavor we wish to partake in...
I hope that I have sufficiently 'grabbed your attention' to continue to motivate you to follow through with me on this 1979 to 2010 description of the 'original architecture and still evolving structure' of -- Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
A 21st Century Internalization of Anaxamander's Ancient, Cosmic Multi-Bi-Polar Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 3
We are what we believe -- both internally and externally.
And Axamander -- the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- gave us a very primitive but very wise, and modern, 21st century cosmic philosophy that is well worth developing beyond its original scope.
In order to do this, we need to all look deep inside ourselves into the darkest regions of our own evolving, mythological, subconscious selves; not outside into the deepest, darkest, furthest, corner of the universe...
The outer universe is but a mirror to our inner souls -- and visa versa. The two are dialectic reflections of each other. God -- our Creator -- is in everything, and conversely, everything in us is a part of God's Individual and Universal Creation.
I am a multi-dialectic atheist, agnostic, pantheist, spiritualist, mythologist, and rational-empiricist -- all tied up into one.
And before you say that I am trumpeting a fully contradictory and inconsistent philosophy, I ask you to look inside yourself and see that you too are full of internal -- and externally applied contradictions...
Does that make us all hypocrites? Partly. It certainly makes us all internally bi-polar and -- and at different times, in different contexts -- contradictory.
Put it this way.
Man is a walking, talking, endless bundle of internal contradictions.
Too many to count them all...just note and classify them all, individually, or dialectically (bi-polarly) as they make their sudden or slowly evolving appearance...
If someone tries to tell me that 'God said this...'...or 'God said that...'
I become a rational-empiricist, a skeptic, a cynic, and a border-line atheist...
I have studied psychology long enough to know when I am listening to a 'projection'... (ascribing to someone or something else what we believe or what fits the characteristics of our one and only self...)
'Have some balls, man! Take ownership and accountability for your own opinion, your own belief -- don't try to lay it on God's plate and feed it to me as 'The Gospel'!
If someone asks me if I am an 'agnostic', I say, 'Yeah, I'm an 'agnositic'....Rationally and empirically, I don't know if or when or whether God exists or existed or not...except through my own idle speculations...I certainly didn't see God 'crossing the road'!!
Even the transition from speculating about 'Our Creator' to 'worshipping God' poses some huge potential problems...the idea of -- and a 'blind faith' in -- 'God' carries a lot more potential 'psychopathologies' within it than talking about the theory of 'Intelligent Design' and then perhaps an 'Intelligent Designer/Creator'....
I created 'Hegel's Hotel' but that does not mean that you have to 'worship me as your God' (although you can if you wish as long as you don't turn on me when I don't live up to your each and every ideal expectation...Wherever and whenever there are great expectations, it is only a matter of time before there is likely to be a great 'reality crash' in these same 'over-idealized' expectations...)
We fantasize perfections in others -- including God -- that we feel incapable or unwilling to live up to in ourselves...
It is easier to worship a God than it is to be one...
If you ask me whether I believe in God 'mythologically' and 'spiritually', this is where I get most excited...This is where most of my energy lies in 'bringing God to life' -- inside ourselves...
In this regard, if you go back to Greek and Roman mythology-philosophy as well as the beginning of the Roman-Christian religion, you will see that there seems to be a rather straight-forward evolution in Greek mythology from 'Zeus' to Roman mythology and 'Jupitor' to Christian religion and 'God'...
'Zeus-Jupitor-God' reflects the ongoing mythology of the 'Alpha-Male' -- worshipped by both men and women alike...
In contrast, the 'Jesus Christ' mythology reflects the bi-polarity of the 'Therapeutically Healing' and/or/but more 'Effeminate Male'.
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Definition of EFFEMINATE
1: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner
2: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement
Examples of EFFEMINATE
He had a high and somewhat effeminate voice.
Origin of EFFEMINATE
Middle English, from Latin effeminatus, from past participle of effeminare to make effeminate, from ex- + femina woman — more at feminine
First Known Use: 15th century
Related to EFFEMINATE
Synonyms: effete, epicene, sissified, sissy, unmanly, womanish
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With the 'Alpha-Male Mythology', we associate the characteristics of 'manliness', 'toughness', 'strength', 'courage', 'guts', 'balls', 'testosterone galore', 'leadership by strength'...and so on... The negative side of the 'alpah male mythology' is usually destructiveness, aggression, violence, no ability or willingness to listen, this is the alpha-male's 'achilles heel' if you will...
In contrast, with the 'Jesus Christ-Therapeutic (More Effeminate) Male Mythology' we associate such characteristics as peace and harmony, conflict-resolution, therapeutic healing, wholism, unity, as well as often 'martyrdom' as its potential negatively (and/or positively) perceived flipside.. and potential 'achilles heel'...
The negative, pathological alpha male self-destructs in the midst of destroying others...
The negative, pathological effeminate, submissive male destroys others in the midst of destroying himself...
One of the main bi-polarities of man -- both men and women -- is their inherent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical bi-sexuality -- the ongoing search for a balance between 'yin' and 'yang', between the more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics within all of us, both male and female, as we all strive for 'dialectic wholism, unity, and harmony'...between often opposing, conflicting more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics...
This is reflected in our past and present Greek, Roman, -- and even 'Christian' 'mythologies'...
Now, for our purposes here, there is one more important mythological figure that we need to talk about -- 'The Counter-Alpha-Male' (or Female for that matter).
In ancient Greek mythology, the Counter-Alpha-Male was played out by 'Dionysus' -- God of sensory pleasure, alcohol, group celebrations and dances, festivity, and liberal sexuality....In Roman mythology, Dionysus became known as 'Bachus'...
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BACHUS, BACUS. Bacchus is a Lydian name for Dionysus, the Thracian fertility god. A son of Jupiter, he later became the god of wine. Jupiter visited Semele, princess of Thebes, at night, and when she became pregnant, she asked to see his face. As he showed himself in thunder and lightning, she caught afire; thereupon, Jupiter ripped the infant out of her womb and placed him in his thigh, where he remained until he reached maturity. Ovid calls Bacchus "son of the thunderbolt, twice born" (Met IV.9-17; OM IV.1-118).
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The closest we have in the Christian religion to Dionysus and Bachus -- is probably 'Satan'....with perhaps a little more, or a lot more, added evil intent...Perhaps this was after 'The Fall of Rome' -- after the mythology of Dionysus/Bachus made a shamble out of Roman Civilization through hedonistic extremism...
In the Christian religion, 'Satan' is God's 'estranged, disavowed, and/or evicted angel' -- evicted from Heaven, so Satan 'set up shop' in 'Hell'...located in the fiery underground of the earth as opposed to the the peaceful Heavens and Skies...
Satan is partly a mythological extension of Dionysus/Bachus in his desire for pleasure and hedonism...but also righteous defiant and contemptful of God, and in this contemptful regard, downright evil, nasty, vengeful, and violent...towards the peace, harmony, and justice in God's Kingdom...Satan is the 'anti-thesis' of God...or the 'Anti-Christ'...in that Satan is just as defiant towards the 'attempted therapeutic healing' of Jesus Christ...
Into this partial mythological 'power-play' between different 'God's in the Greek Kingdom' (although the Roman and Christian aspects of it had not been fully developed yet), walks Anaxamander (about 610-546 BC)...with a fresh, rational-empirical, and scientific as well as a partly mythological brain...
Anaxamander's first main concept was 'The Apeiron' which might be equated today with our concept of 'The Universe'...or 'Undifferentiated Chaos' -- before the differentation and separtation of all earthly bi-polar opposites...
Thus, The Apeiron can be construed as the 'Chaotic-Shadow Birthplace of all life, matter, energy, bi-polar splits -- and underlying knowledge'...
Now look into the psychology of Freud and Jung, and we will see some strong similarities here between Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' and Freud's concept of 'The Unconscious' and later 'The Id' as well as Jung's concept of 'The Shadow'...
The Apeiron is the universal birthplace of 'undifferentiated opposites' (the bi-polar cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander).
DGB's extension and application of 'The Apeiron' into the psychology of Freud and Jung....
The Apeiron is the individual birthplace in 'The Unconscious-Id-Shadow (UIS)', of all undifferentiated opposite potentials, characteristics, beliefs, values, ideas...some of which proceed up to the 'upper echelons of the conscious personality' and others which stay back in the deep UIS -- The Apeiron -- as undeveloped, or suppressed, or repressed, or inferior, or estranged, or disavowed potentials that may stay down there for virtually one's whole life, or some could slowly evolve over time into more 'competent or even superior functions' and progress as such upwards into the conscious personality...
Finally, in some cases of 'neurotic or psycho-pathic pathology' or 'radical evolution', some characteristics could go 'screaming up to the top of the personality like a bolt of lightning', a thunderbolt from Zeus, or an erupting volcano, and/or a Dionysian-Bachusian -- even a 'Satanic' -- power-play, seemingly from the 'Depths of Hell'....One minute we are 'Dr. Jeckyl' and the next minute we are 'Mr. or Ms. Hyde'...One minute we are the very 'rational-empirical' Apollo, and the next minute we are the 'sensory seductive-sexual' Dionysus-Bachus...
Such is the Bi-Polar, Dialectic (Thesis/AntiThesis/Syntheis) Nature of Man seemingly pulled in, or from, two opposing directions, with opposite intentions, opposite beliefs and values, contradictory to the bottom core...the unique, individual context determining either the radical, extremist outcome of any internal 'power struggle' and/or 'the compromise-formation' between the two struggling 'mythological' and/or 'rational-empirical' antagonists -- whether they be Apollo and Dionysus-Bachus, Apollo and Aphrodite-Venus-Cupid-Psyche, God and Satan, Jesus Christ and Satan, Zeus and Hera...or whatever/whoever...
At the deepest, darkest, volcanic boiling caldron of our psyches, we are all a swirling mass of undifferentiated opposite potentials, contradictions, paradoxes, dichotomies...spiralling upwards into consciousness, or remaining hidden, but still potentially active, in the Shadows of our Apeiron-Id-Unconscious Self....
What comes next is the splitting of our Unconscious Self (US) -- and then our Conscious Ego (CE) -- into opposite, competing, attracting, repelling, compensating dominating or submissive or egalitarian parts...
As the atom can be split, so too can the US and the CE inside our personality, our psyche, through the process of both functional specialization and/or psychic trauma...
These psychic splits -- either conscious or unconscious or both -- fragment us into countless 'psychic dialectic or triadic ego-molecules' -- 'thesis' vs. 'anti-thesis' vs. 'compromise-formation' or 'synthesis/integration'...
Too many to count, our overall health hangs in the balance of their 'homeostatic (dialectic-triadic) balance...Are our opposite tendencies basically harmonious, peaceful, and integrated with each other? Or are they at wor with each other, with no conflict-resolution in sight?
In Gestalt Therapy, the standard, generic psychic split is conceptualized as being between 'topdog' and 'underdog'...In Freudian Psychology, there are numerous listed psychic splits such as between the 'conscious' and 'unconscious', between the 'primary process' and the 'secondary process', between the 'superego' and the 'id', between the 'life' and 'death' instinct', between the 'sex' and 'aggressive' instinct...between 'sadist' and 'masochist', between 'voyeur' and 'exhibitionist', between 'active' and 'passive'...and so on...
In Jungian Psychology, we have the split between 'personna' and 'shadow'...in Adlerian Psychology between 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving'...(although Adler didn't call this a 'split'...he called it 'compensation'...)
In Object Relations, we have the split between 'external object' and 'internal object', between 'introjection' and 'projection', between 'rejecting object' and 'exciting 'object'...in Transactional Analysis we have the psychic split between 'The Nurturing Parent' and 'The Critical, Rejecting Parent'...We all have the split between the 'Adaptive Child' and 'The Free Child'...
And on it goes...more potential psychic splits than I -- or anyone else -- can possibly list and count here...
The key to psychological growth and psychotherapy then becomes: To what extent do these 'psychic splits' work in harmony with each other to re-produce a 'balanced, functional triadic unit', in balance with other psychic triadic units, and working together towards an overall state of psychic-mental-emotional 'homeostatic balance' (peace and harmony both iside and outside the personality)?
Now I am not sure whether or not you followed me in that last paragraph but let me try to extrapolate on the implications and applications of what I just said. I'm partly over my head here because I do not know more chemistry, biology, physics, and bio-chemistry. But not entirely. Somebody with more knowledge in these three or four areas might be able to offer more technical details in what I am about to say.
Hegel's diaelctic formula -- thesis plus anti-thesis equals synthesis (oversimplified) -- has something profound to say about both energy and evolution theory, the two being inter-connected and bound together...Through dialectic energy, man -- and indeed all life -- both mutates and evolves on the one hand...and deconstructs on the other hand... (Freud's idea of the life and death instinct-force.)
For example, the combustion of ogygen in the mitochondria of each living cell creates the paradox of life and death at the same time....life through energy combustion...and death through the free radical and oxidation process...That is why we have a big 'health surge' to get more and more 'anti-oxidants' into our body to combat the deconstructive-destructive-death process of oxidation/free radicals destroying live cells...
There is a point at which the theory of Quantum Mechanics merges with Hegelian Dialectic Theory and this should not surprise us because all of life and death energy is tied up to Hegelian and/or post-Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Theory... If a wolf and coyote mate, the resulting offspring are going to have some of the characteristics of the wolf and some of the characteristics of the coyote. Each individual offspring is going to have its own unique blend of characteristics that will be partly similar, and partly different than each of its fellow siblings...as well as the father and mother...
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Particle-wave duality
Main article: Wave–particle duality
Light streaming through windows at Chicago's Union Station in 1943. Quantum mechanics shows that light acts both as waves and as particles.Quantum mechanics reveals how subatomic particles can have wave-like properties and waves can have particle-like properties. This phenomenon is known as wave–particle duality. The explanation stems from a theory proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie in 1924 that subatomic particles like electrons are associated with waves. Experiments later found he was correct: Electrons can bend around objects and can display wave shapes.[8]:6
Neither wave nor particle is an entirely satisfactory model to use in understanding light. Indeed, astrophysicist A.S. Eddington proposed in 1927 that "We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle; perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a 'wavicle' ".[10] This term was later popularised by mathematician Banesh Hoffmann.[11]:172
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If I am blending Freudian and Jungian Theory together in my work, I can guarantee you that it will not be exactly the same as any other Freudian-Jungian integration out there. Because the sum of my knowledge, experiences and particular integrations is both unique and constantly evolving as I evolve...Every new experience and/or piece of knowledge in my mind generates the possibility of a new blend, a new integration, and a direction or sub-direction to the already partly integrated theory...This process will never stop as long as I am alive, changing, and still writing...
'Dialectic energy' represents an 'uncertainty principle' because when two people meet together at any point in time you never know for sure what the net result of this meeting is going to be...Dialectic energy is the 'biochemical, physical, psychological, mental, and emotional energy generated between them -- that can not be predicted with any consistent deal of accuracy before they meet'.
Dialectic energy is the 'wave' that links two 'particles' (or people)...
Dialectic energy can be a mediating, compromising, democratic force...It is built into all democratic governments. When you don't have a mediating, compromising force, then you have the potential for a 'pathological' leader like we are seeing over there in North Korea....who is a walking, talking time bomb, or worse, a nuclear bomb waiting to happen....Dr. Strangelove with an itchy nuclear trigger finger who figures if he is going to go down, then he is going to take the world with him...
No dialectic energy, and cross-exchange of information, values, and saner opinions...and you have the potential for unmitigated righteousness, narcissism, and extremism projecting itself onto the world...
This is what happens when internal psychic splits work dysfunctionally against each other in ways that do not solve problems and/or resolve conflicts, but rather move the personality-and organism-as-a-whole towards some sort of impulsive insane action, and/or conversely, self-immobility (entropy, inaction, lethargy...)...Either path can lead sooner or later to destruction and/or self-destruction.
Thus the primary psychological question here becomes: How best to use our 'psychic bi-polar splits' to harmonize in the middle towards 'homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance -- which theologically speaking, we might call 'heaven'. Bi-polar righteous or narcissistic or suppressed or repressed pathology, conversely, can best be described as 'Hell'.
Sometimes the road to a more harmonious, balanced 'Heaven on Earth' goes through a more extremist 'Bi-Polar Hell on Earth'...
-- dgb, Nov. 26th-27th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- dialectic gap bridging negotiations...
-- are still in process...
And Axamander -- the second oldest Greek and Western philosopher -- gave us a very primitive but very wise, and modern, 21st century cosmic philosophy that is well worth developing beyond its original scope.
In order to do this, we need to all look deep inside ourselves into the darkest regions of our own evolving, mythological, subconscious selves; not outside into the deepest, darkest, furthest, corner of the universe...
The outer universe is but a mirror to our inner souls -- and visa versa. The two are dialectic reflections of each other. God -- our Creator -- is in everything, and conversely, everything in us is a part of God's Individual and Universal Creation.
I am a multi-dialectic atheist, agnostic, pantheist, spiritualist, mythologist, and rational-empiricist -- all tied up into one.
And before you say that I am trumpeting a fully contradictory and inconsistent philosophy, I ask you to look inside yourself and see that you too are full of internal -- and externally applied contradictions...
Does that make us all hypocrites? Partly. It certainly makes us all internally bi-polar and -- and at different times, in different contexts -- contradictory.
Put it this way.
Man is a walking, talking, endless bundle of internal contradictions.
Too many to count them all...just note and classify them all, individually, or dialectically (bi-polarly) as they make their sudden or slowly evolving appearance...
If someone tries to tell me that 'God said this...'...or 'God said that...'
I become a rational-empiricist, a skeptic, a cynic, and a border-line atheist...
I have studied psychology long enough to know when I am listening to a 'projection'... (ascribing to someone or something else what we believe or what fits the characteristics of our one and only self...)
'Have some balls, man! Take ownership and accountability for your own opinion, your own belief -- don't try to lay it on God's plate and feed it to me as 'The Gospel'!
If someone asks me if I am an 'agnostic', I say, 'Yeah, I'm an 'agnositic'....Rationally and empirically, I don't know if or when or whether God exists or existed or not...except through my own idle speculations...I certainly didn't see God 'crossing the road'!!
Even the transition from speculating about 'Our Creator' to 'worshipping God' poses some huge potential problems...the idea of -- and a 'blind faith' in -- 'God' carries a lot more potential 'psychopathologies' within it than talking about the theory of 'Intelligent Design' and then perhaps an 'Intelligent Designer/Creator'....
I created 'Hegel's Hotel' but that does not mean that you have to 'worship me as your God' (although you can if you wish as long as you don't turn on me when I don't live up to your each and every ideal expectation...Wherever and whenever there are great expectations, it is only a matter of time before there is likely to be a great 'reality crash' in these same 'over-idealized' expectations...)
We fantasize perfections in others -- including God -- that we feel incapable or unwilling to live up to in ourselves...
It is easier to worship a God than it is to be one...
If you ask me whether I believe in God 'mythologically' and 'spiritually', this is where I get most excited...This is where most of my energy lies in 'bringing God to life' -- inside ourselves...
In this regard, if you go back to Greek and Roman mythology-philosophy as well as the beginning of the Roman-Christian religion, you will see that there seems to be a rather straight-forward evolution in Greek mythology from 'Zeus' to Roman mythology and 'Jupitor' to Christian religion and 'God'...
'Zeus-Jupitor-God' reflects the ongoing mythology of the 'Alpha-Male' -- worshipped by both men and women alike...
In contrast, the 'Jesus Christ' mythology reflects the bi-polarity of the 'Therapeutically Healing' and/or/but more 'Effeminate Male'.
..............................................................................................
Definition of EFFEMINATE
1: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner
2: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement
Examples of EFFEMINATE
He had a high and somewhat effeminate voice.
Origin of EFFEMINATE
Middle English, from Latin effeminatus, from past participle of effeminare to make effeminate, from ex- + femina woman — more at feminine
First Known Use: 15th century
Related to EFFEMINATE
Synonyms: effete, epicene, sissified, sissy, unmanly, womanish
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With the 'Alpha-Male Mythology', we associate the characteristics of 'manliness', 'toughness', 'strength', 'courage', 'guts', 'balls', 'testosterone galore', 'leadership by strength'...and so on... The negative side of the 'alpah male mythology' is usually destructiveness, aggression, violence, no ability or willingness to listen, this is the alpha-male's 'achilles heel' if you will...
In contrast, with the 'Jesus Christ-Therapeutic (More Effeminate) Male Mythology' we associate such characteristics as peace and harmony, conflict-resolution, therapeutic healing, wholism, unity, as well as often 'martyrdom' as its potential negatively (and/or positively) perceived flipside.. and potential 'achilles heel'...
The negative, pathological alpha male self-destructs in the midst of destroying others...
The negative, pathological effeminate, submissive male destroys others in the midst of destroying himself...
One of the main bi-polarities of man -- both men and women -- is their inherent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical bi-sexuality -- the ongoing search for a balance between 'yin' and 'yang', between the more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics within all of us, both male and female, as we all strive for 'dialectic wholism, unity, and harmony'...between often opposing, conflicting more 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics...
This is reflected in our past and present Greek, Roman, -- and even 'Christian' 'mythologies'...
Now, for our purposes here, there is one more important mythological figure that we need to talk about -- 'The Counter-Alpha-Male' (or Female for that matter).
In ancient Greek mythology, the Counter-Alpha-Male was played out by 'Dionysus' -- God of sensory pleasure, alcohol, group celebrations and dances, festivity, and liberal sexuality....In Roman mythology, Dionysus became known as 'Bachus'...
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BACHUS, BACUS. Bacchus is a Lydian name for Dionysus, the Thracian fertility god. A son of Jupiter, he later became the god of wine. Jupiter visited Semele, princess of Thebes, at night, and when she became pregnant, she asked to see his face. As he showed himself in thunder and lightning, she caught afire; thereupon, Jupiter ripped the infant out of her womb and placed him in his thigh, where he remained until he reached maturity. Ovid calls Bacchus "son of the thunderbolt, twice born" (Met IV.9-17; OM IV.1-118).
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The closest we have in the Christian religion to Dionysus and Bachus -- is probably 'Satan'....with perhaps a little more, or a lot more, added evil intent...Perhaps this was after 'The Fall of Rome' -- after the mythology of Dionysus/Bachus made a shamble out of Roman Civilization through hedonistic extremism...
In the Christian religion, 'Satan' is God's 'estranged, disavowed, and/or evicted angel' -- evicted from Heaven, so Satan 'set up shop' in 'Hell'...located in the fiery underground of the earth as opposed to the the peaceful Heavens and Skies...
Satan is partly a mythological extension of Dionysus/Bachus in his desire for pleasure and hedonism...but also righteous defiant and contemptful of God, and in this contemptful regard, downright evil, nasty, vengeful, and violent...towards the peace, harmony, and justice in God's Kingdom...Satan is the 'anti-thesis' of God...or the 'Anti-Christ'...in that Satan is just as defiant towards the 'attempted therapeutic healing' of Jesus Christ...
Into this partial mythological 'power-play' between different 'God's in the Greek Kingdom' (although the Roman and Christian aspects of it had not been fully developed yet), walks Anaxamander (about 610-546 BC)...with a fresh, rational-empirical, and scientific as well as a partly mythological brain...
Anaxamander's first main concept was 'The Apeiron' which might be equated today with our concept of 'The Universe'...or 'Undifferentiated Chaos' -- before the differentation and separtation of all earthly bi-polar opposites...
Thus, The Apeiron can be construed as the 'Chaotic-Shadow Birthplace of all life, matter, energy, bi-polar splits -- and underlying knowledge'...
Now look into the psychology of Freud and Jung, and we will see some strong similarities here between Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' and Freud's concept of 'The Unconscious' and later 'The Id' as well as Jung's concept of 'The Shadow'...
The Apeiron is the universal birthplace of 'undifferentiated opposites' (the bi-polar cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander).
DGB's extension and application of 'The Apeiron' into the psychology of Freud and Jung....
The Apeiron is the individual birthplace in 'The Unconscious-Id-Shadow (UIS)', of all undifferentiated opposite potentials, characteristics, beliefs, values, ideas...some of which proceed up to the 'upper echelons of the conscious personality' and others which stay back in the deep UIS -- The Apeiron -- as undeveloped, or suppressed, or repressed, or inferior, or estranged, or disavowed potentials that may stay down there for virtually one's whole life, or some could slowly evolve over time into more 'competent or even superior functions' and progress as such upwards into the conscious personality...
Finally, in some cases of 'neurotic or psycho-pathic pathology' or 'radical evolution', some characteristics could go 'screaming up to the top of the personality like a bolt of lightning', a thunderbolt from Zeus, or an erupting volcano, and/or a Dionysian-Bachusian -- even a 'Satanic' -- power-play, seemingly from the 'Depths of Hell'....One minute we are 'Dr. Jeckyl' and the next minute we are 'Mr. or Ms. Hyde'...One minute we are the very 'rational-empirical' Apollo, and the next minute we are the 'sensory seductive-sexual' Dionysus-Bachus...
Such is the Bi-Polar, Dialectic (Thesis/AntiThesis/Syntheis) Nature of Man seemingly pulled in, or from, two opposing directions, with opposite intentions, opposite beliefs and values, contradictory to the bottom core...the unique, individual context determining either the radical, extremist outcome of any internal 'power struggle' and/or 'the compromise-formation' between the two struggling 'mythological' and/or 'rational-empirical' antagonists -- whether they be Apollo and Dionysus-Bachus, Apollo and Aphrodite-Venus-Cupid-Psyche, God and Satan, Jesus Christ and Satan, Zeus and Hera...or whatever/whoever...
At the deepest, darkest, volcanic boiling caldron of our psyches, we are all a swirling mass of undifferentiated opposite potentials, contradictions, paradoxes, dichotomies...spiralling upwards into consciousness, or remaining hidden, but still potentially active, in the Shadows of our Apeiron-Id-Unconscious Self....
What comes next is the splitting of our Unconscious Self (US) -- and then our Conscious Ego (CE) -- into opposite, competing, attracting, repelling, compensating dominating or submissive or egalitarian parts...
As the atom can be split, so too can the US and the CE inside our personality, our psyche, through the process of both functional specialization and/or psychic trauma...
These psychic splits -- either conscious or unconscious or both -- fragment us into countless 'psychic dialectic or triadic ego-molecules' -- 'thesis' vs. 'anti-thesis' vs. 'compromise-formation' or 'synthesis/integration'...
Too many to count, our overall health hangs in the balance of their 'homeostatic (dialectic-triadic) balance...Are our opposite tendencies basically harmonious, peaceful, and integrated with each other? Or are they at wor with each other, with no conflict-resolution in sight?
In Gestalt Therapy, the standard, generic psychic split is conceptualized as being between 'topdog' and 'underdog'...In Freudian Psychology, there are numerous listed psychic splits such as between the 'conscious' and 'unconscious', between the 'primary process' and the 'secondary process', between the 'superego' and the 'id', between the 'life' and 'death' instinct', between the 'sex' and 'aggressive' instinct...between 'sadist' and 'masochist', between 'voyeur' and 'exhibitionist', between 'active' and 'passive'...and so on...
In Jungian Psychology, we have the split between 'personna' and 'shadow'...in Adlerian Psychology between 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving'...(although Adler didn't call this a 'split'...he called it 'compensation'...)
In Object Relations, we have the split between 'external object' and 'internal object', between 'introjection' and 'projection', between 'rejecting object' and 'exciting 'object'...in Transactional Analysis we have the psychic split between 'The Nurturing Parent' and 'The Critical, Rejecting Parent'...We all have the split between the 'Adaptive Child' and 'The Free Child'...
And on it goes...more potential psychic splits than I -- or anyone else -- can possibly list and count here...
The key to psychological growth and psychotherapy then becomes: To what extent do these 'psychic splits' work in harmony with each other to re-produce a 'balanced, functional triadic unit', in balance with other psychic triadic units, and working together towards an overall state of psychic-mental-emotional 'homeostatic balance' (peace and harmony both iside and outside the personality)?
Now I am not sure whether or not you followed me in that last paragraph but let me try to extrapolate on the implications and applications of what I just said. I'm partly over my head here because I do not know more chemistry, biology, physics, and bio-chemistry. But not entirely. Somebody with more knowledge in these three or four areas might be able to offer more technical details in what I am about to say.
Hegel's diaelctic formula -- thesis plus anti-thesis equals synthesis (oversimplified) -- has something profound to say about both energy and evolution theory, the two being inter-connected and bound together...Through dialectic energy, man -- and indeed all life -- both mutates and evolves on the one hand...and deconstructs on the other hand... (Freud's idea of the life and death instinct-force.)
For example, the combustion of ogygen in the mitochondria of each living cell creates the paradox of life and death at the same time....life through energy combustion...and death through the free radical and oxidation process...That is why we have a big 'health surge' to get more and more 'anti-oxidants' into our body to combat the deconstructive-destructive-death process of oxidation/free radicals destroying live cells...
There is a point at which the theory of Quantum Mechanics merges with Hegelian Dialectic Theory and this should not surprise us because all of life and death energy is tied up to Hegelian and/or post-Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Theory... If a wolf and coyote mate, the resulting offspring are going to have some of the characteristics of the wolf and some of the characteristics of the coyote. Each individual offspring is going to have its own unique blend of characteristics that will be partly similar, and partly different than each of its fellow siblings...as well as the father and mother...
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Particle-wave duality
Main article: Wave–particle duality
Light streaming through windows at Chicago's Union Station in 1943. Quantum mechanics shows that light acts both as waves and as particles.Quantum mechanics reveals how subatomic particles can have wave-like properties and waves can have particle-like properties. This phenomenon is known as wave–particle duality. The explanation stems from a theory proposed by French physicist Louis de Broglie in 1924 that subatomic particles like electrons are associated with waves. Experiments later found he was correct: Electrons can bend around objects and can display wave shapes.[8]:6
Neither wave nor particle is an entirely satisfactory model to use in understanding light. Indeed, astrophysicist A.S. Eddington proposed in 1927 that "We can scarcely describe such an entity as a wave or as a particle; perhaps as a compromise we had better call it a 'wavicle' ".[10] This term was later popularised by mathematician Banesh Hoffmann.[11]:172
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If I am blending Freudian and Jungian Theory together in my work, I can guarantee you that it will not be exactly the same as any other Freudian-Jungian integration out there. Because the sum of my knowledge, experiences and particular integrations is both unique and constantly evolving as I evolve...Every new experience and/or piece of knowledge in my mind generates the possibility of a new blend, a new integration, and a direction or sub-direction to the already partly integrated theory...This process will never stop as long as I am alive, changing, and still writing...
'Dialectic energy' represents an 'uncertainty principle' because when two people meet together at any point in time you never know for sure what the net result of this meeting is going to be...Dialectic energy is the 'biochemical, physical, psychological, mental, and emotional energy generated between them -- that can not be predicted with any consistent deal of accuracy before they meet'.
Dialectic energy is the 'wave' that links two 'particles' (or people)...
Dialectic energy can be a mediating, compromising, democratic force...It is built into all democratic governments. When you don't have a mediating, compromising force, then you have the potential for a 'pathological' leader like we are seeing over there in North Korea....who is a walking, talking time bomb, or worse, a nuclear bomb waiting to happen....Dr. Strangelove with an itchy nuclear trigger finger who figures if he is going to go down, then he is going to take the world with him...
No dialectic energy, and cross-exchange of information, values, and saner opinions...and you have the potential for unmitigated righteousness, narcissism, and extremism projecting itself onto the world...
This is what happens when internal psychic splits work dysfunctionally against each other in ways that do not solve problems and/or resolve conflicts, but rather move the personality-and organism-as-a-whole towards some sort of impulsive insane action, and/or conversely, self-immobility (entropy, inaction, lethargy...)...Either path can lead sooner or later to destruction and/or self-destruction.
Thus the primary psychological question here becomes: How best to use our 'psychic bi-polar splits' to harmonize in the middle towards 'homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance -- which theologically speaking, we might call 'heaven'. Bi-polar righteous or narcissistic or suppressed or repressed pathology, conversely, can best be described as 'Hell'.
Sometimes the road to a more harmonious, balanced 'Heaven on Earth' goes through a more extremist 'Bi-Polar Hell on Earth'...
-- dgb, Nov. 26th-27th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- dialectic gap bridging negotiations...
-- are still in process...
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology: Promoting A Multi-Dialectic Integrative Spirit, Attitude, and Process...Anaxamander's Ancient Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 2
Take Stock, Imagine, Choose Your Goal and Your Direction, Re-energize, Prioritize, Plan, Focus, Muster All Your Courage and Energy...and Act! Concretely! Now!
Life is full of opposites...and much positive energy and results can be derived from engaging opposites -- opposite perspectives, opposite concepts, opposite theories, opposite personalities, opposite characteristics...-- into contact with each other, playing both sides towards the middle in a way that brings creative new integrative possibilities into existence where none existed before...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship in order to escape the terror of their own individual freedom....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control', and how to 'let the slave be free'...
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...how to take 'courageous leaps' when the 'positive outcome of complete freedom is never guaranteed'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
The Master is afraid to let others be free...and to be left in a void, a vacuum without his or her Slave...
The Slave is terrified of not having The Master to tell him or her what to do, and to be left accountable for 'filling in the huge abyss', the 'dizzying freedom' of the Master not being there to direct the Slave...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Life is full of opposites...and much positive energy and results can be derived from engaging opposites -- opposite perspectives, opposite concepts, opposite theories, opposite personalities, opposite characteristics...-- into contact with each other, playing both sides towards the middle in a way that brings creative new integrative possibilities into existence where none existed before...
As Carl Jung has stated, the energy comes from the tension of the opposites interacting with each other...sometimes in the heat of attraction, passion, and sexuality, other times, in the heat of argumentation, disagreement, and conflict...Either way, I call this the 'dialectic force of Nature/God/Evolution'...
The first 'dialectic philosopher' in the East goes back to whoever created the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...the 'feminine' and 'masculine' forces in Nature and Evolution...I have this philosopher pinned as Lao Tse. However, the roots of Chinese philosophy go very, very deep, and it could have been someone unknown before Lao Tse who created the yin/yang dialectic concepts...
Over in the West, back in Ancient Greece, before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, I have Anaximander pinned as the first Western dialectic philosopher. Anaxamander's philosophy was both very mystic and primitive on the one hand, but interpreted in a particular way, it becomes very profound and wise, and just as relevant today as when he created it somewhere back about 650-700BC...
Anaxamander's idea -- and I am paraphrasing and interpreting -- was that opposites are born from Chaos (The Apeiron, The Universe, The Boundless, The Infinite, The Shadows...Jung/Gestalt Psychology)...From Chaos and The Shadows are born opposites (night vs. day, hot vs. cold, men vs. women...) which are differentiated from each other and enter the World as we know it, and experience their differences in contact with each other. From this contact of differences, boundaries become apparent, and a Battle For Power ensues...(Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'...)...
Out of this 'battle for power', 'winners' and 'losers' become apparent based on the difference of 'superiority' and 'inferiority' (Adler)...and based on this principle of superiority and inferiority becomes the beginning of what Hegel would come to call over 2000 years later, 'The Master/Slave Relationship'... Translated into Marxian Philosophy, this becomes 'The Bourgeoisie' vs. 'The Proletariat'...translated into Capitalist Philosophy, this becomes 'The Employer' vs. 'The Employee, The Union, The Workers'...translated into Feminist Philosophy, this becomes the old 'Dominant Husband vs. Submissive Wife role positions'...translated into Religious Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Muslims, the Palestinians and the Jews...translated into Political and Economic Philosophy this becomes the tension between the Capitalists and The Socialists, The Liberals and The Conservatives, the Republicans and The Democrats...the Politicians and the Citizens...
Everywhere we look the 'fight for power between opposites' is evident....
In some cases, we at least partly strive to 'balance this power' in the idea of a 'democracy' or 'egalitarianism'... The idea of 'balancing opposite powers' goes back to Heraclitus in the West (following in Anaxamander's footsteps but taking Anaxamander's philosophy to a different level in the idea of 'balancing opposing forces'); and again to the East and the idea of 'balancing yin and yang forces for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining health'...In contrast, the idea of 'an imbalanced power force' between yin and yang forces -- either yin dominating yang, or yang dominating yin, becomes associated with the idea of 'medical pathology'...This idea can easily be transferred to psychology and to much, if not all, of life....
Thus, even in the realm of 'yin and yang (masculine/feminine; testosterone/estrogen) relationships', we can talk about Hegel's idea of the 'master/slave relationship'...which has roots in the ancient 'Power Philosophy of Anaxamander'...
Now this 'master/slave relationship' is a little more complicated than we usually assume it to be, and Hegel was the first to point this out...Indeed, the relationship of the 'master' and 'slave' is often a relationship of 'co-dependence'...and 'attraction' as well as 'repulsion'...People want freedom and yet they are afraid of freedom and in the words of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Eric Fromm often get 'terrified by freedom' and 'back up' to 'Escape From Freedom' (Fromm)...
They often retreat to the Master/Slave Relationship in order to escape the terror of their own individual freedom....
Regarding the issue of 'co-dependence', the Master and The Slave are often tied to each other in a co-dependent relationship in which both perceive that they need each other -- just as often, they resent and hate each other for the same reason. They both have a different type of 'power' and a different type of 'weakness'. The Master knows how to 'lead' and how to 'tell other people what to do' but at the same time, often he or she is either incapable of, and/or unwilling to, do the work the Slave knows how to, and is capable of, doing...
Thus, take away the Slave, and the Master becomes terrified -- he or she loses his or her power and doesn't know what to do because he or she doesn't know how to do the work that The Slave was doing...The Master feels a deep emotional and behavioral void and vacuum in the absence of the Slave...unless the Master knows how to, and is capable of doing, the work just vacated by The Slave...
Now the Slave may feel terrified of running away from The Master for any or all of a variety of different reasons: provocation, intimidation, prosecution, persecution, victimization, loss of food, shelter, and/or money...
Which heightens the Master's power....
Until the 'cycle of power' changes...
This was the essence of the wisdom of Anaxamander's 2700 year old philosophy...
The cycle of power always changes...
People do injustices upon each other...
The Master exploits injustices onto the Slave...
But The Slave, over time, learns how to exploit injustices back onto the Master...
And over time, the powerful (the Master) becomes weaker, while the less powerful (the Slave) becomes more powerful...
To the point, where one day the Slave becomes Master of either his or her own freedom, and/or the Slave becomes Master over The Master...(Adler, 'superiority striving', 'the mastery compulsion')...
But there are a lot of steps -- and steps backward -- to getting here....
For both the Master and the Slave...
The Master needs to learn how to 'give up control'...to 'listen' to the Slave...and to 'learn' from the Slave...to learn from the Slave how to do those things that the Master may not know how to do properly...
And the Slave needs to learn from the master how to take more 'initiative' and 'risk'...to have more 'courage to leap into the unknown'....'to take chances'....to 'jump across the Nietzschean Abyss from Being or non-Being to Becoming'...
In short, the Master needs to learn more 'social sensitivity skills', more how to 'give up self- control', and how to 'let the slave be free'...
While the Slave needs to learn more 'self-assertiveness skills', more how to 'take self-control'...how to take 'courageous leaps' when the 'positive outcome of complete freedom is never guaranteed'...
The Master too often has no ears to listen...
While the Slave too often has no mouth to speak...
The Master usually has too much 'yang'...
And the Slave too much 'yin'...
The Master is afraid to let others be free...and to be left in a void, a vacuum without his or her Slave...
The Slave is terrified of not having The Master to tell him or her what to do, and to be left accountable for 'filling in the huge abyss', the 'dizzying freedom' of the Master not being there to direct the Slave...
They both have 'gaps', 'holes', 'voids' in their personality....
They both long for freedom and strive to achieve and/or maintain power, while avoiding self-accountability for their own respective 'weaknesses',
They both can learn from each other...
Such is the nature, essence, the ongoing dialectic, between The Will to Power and The Will to Democracy and Egalitarianism...
In the combined words of a number of historical, philosophical friends of mine...
'Thus, Anaxamander, Lao Tse, Hegel, Nietzsche, Zarathrusta
And dgb...
Spoke...'
-- dgb, March 5th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Anaxamander's Ancient, Cosmic Multi-Bi-Polar, Power-Drama Philosophy: Act 1
Most students of philosophy do not appreciate just how brilliant -- Anaxamander -- the second oldest known philosopher in both Greek and Western Civilization, and his dialectic conception of the cosmic world, was -- and still is. Anaxamander was the king of the Pre-Socratic philosophers....In fact, I will be very bold and go one step further. Anaxamander's cosmic philosophy -- as primitive, archaic, and symbolic as it may have been -- is a more important conception of the cosmic world -- and the psychology of man -- than every part of Platonic philosophy except that part which indirectly builds from the multi-dialectic, multi-bi-polar philosophy that Anaxamander laid down before him. Is that bold enough? Let me support my case.
We hear the words 'bi-polar this' and 'bi-polar that' these days...as in 'bi-polar, manic-depression' which used to be simply 'manic-depression' before psychiatrists and other mental health workers started to add the 'bi-polar personality' tag to it...
We hear this 'bi-polar personality' tag as a type of 'mental health pathology' and yet most of us -- including many if not most mental health workers do not properly understand....Man is full of 'multi-bi-polarities' and this is a normal part of healthy mental and physical and physiological and bio-chemical and organic and cosmic, natural processes...Protons (positive charges) and electrons (negative charges) coming together, and/or splitting apart, according to different positive or negative or neutral electrical charges...
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Atom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Atom (disambiguation).
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutrons). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element.[1]
The name atom comes from the Greek "ἄτομος"—átomos (from α-, "un-" + τέμνω - temno, "to cut"[2]), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further.[3] The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[4][5]
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Medical conditions like high and low blood pressure, high and low blood sugar levels, hyper and hypothyroidism, acidic and alkaline blood levels...indicate that any and all body functions are based on the floating, ranging principle of a 'homeostatic, bi-polarity spectrum' where 'health' is usually found in 'the balanced middle'...
The same 'homeostatic priniciple' can easily be extended and applied to any and all life functions whether they be cognitive-mental-psychological functions on the inside looking out, or extending outwards into the respective and overlapping realms of the philosophical, the economic, the legal, the political and/or the aforementioned medical...Everything in the universe is based on the principle of 'bi-polarity'...In the realm of language, a word would not mean anything unless we could partly define it by contrasting it with its opposite word and concept...
The word and concept of 'light' would have no meaning if we did not understand, having directly experienced, the meaning of the concept of and the word 'dark'...
In summary, the world we live in is a world of 'multiple bi-polarities'...
In this regard, Anaxamander was the first Western philosopher to describe the world as a world of multiple bi-polarities competing against, and essentially trying to overpower each other...one dominating and the other sliding back into the Shadow, the undifferentiated Chaos of the 'Apeiron'...until the 'suppressed' polarity becomes 're-charged' and comes out of The Shadow to 're-compete' against the 'dominant-in-the-limelight' polarity that bring the two opposites together...Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaxamander, would later add that 'opposites attract as well as repel each other'...
This dialectic cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander's was very, very modern -- and still is -- just as ancient Eastern philosophy would build from the twin dialectic or bi-polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' which would become one of the central features, if not the central feature, of much Eastern philosophy today -- particularly Taoism/Daoism. Again, the central feature here was one of 'homeostatic balance' between the 'masculine' characteristic of 'yang' and the 'feminine' concept of 'yin'....applied even to Eastern Medicine...which would become the central feature of the current North American 'Natural Health' industry...
Can you start to see how brilliant a concept -- or conceptuology or cosmology or cosmic philosophy -- that Anaxamander had latched onto and started to describe...some 2550 years ago!!!
It was so brilliant a cosmic philosophy that it contained the seeds of the brilliant philosophies and psychologies of Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, W.B. Cannon, Perls, Berne, Foucault, and Derrida hundreds and even thousands of years later...And that is just quickly off the top of my head...
The conceptuology and cosmic mythology-philosophy is so brilliant that it has been perculating in the depths of my subconscious for a number of years now and is about to become the focus of my mythological-philosophical model of the the human psyche...
Call this conceptuology 'Anaxamander's Multi-Bi-Polar (or Multi-Dialectic) Power-Drama' played out both inside and outside the human psyche...
-- dgb, November 22nd, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
We hear the words 'bi-polar this' and 'bi-polar that' these days...as in 'bi-polar, manic-depression' which used to be simply 'manic-depression' before psychiatrists and other mental health workers started to add the 'bi-polar personality' tag to it...
We hear this 'bi-polar personality' tag as a type of 'mental health pathology' and yet most of us -- including many if not most mental health workers do not properly understand....Man is full of 'multi-bi-polarities' and this is a normal part of healthy mental and physical and physiological and bio-chemical and organic and cosmic, natural processes...Protons (positive charges) and electrons (negative charges) coming together, and/or splitting apart, according to different positive or negative or neutral electrical charges...
....................................................................................................
Atom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Atom (disambiguation).
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutrons). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element.[1]
The name atom comes from the Greek "ἄτομος"—átomos (from α-, "un-" + τέμνω - temno, "to cut"[2]), which means uncuttable, or indivisible, something that cannot be divided further.[3] The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[4][5]
...............................................................................................................................
Medical conditions like high and low blood pressure, high and low blood sugar levels, hyper and hypothyroidism, acidic and alkaline blood levels...indicate that any and all body functions are based on the floating, ranging principle of a 'homeostatic, bi-polarity spectrum' where 'health' is usually found in 'the balanced middle'...
The same 'homeostatic priniciple' can easily be extended and applied to any and all life functions whether they be cognitive-mental-psychological functions on the inside looking out, or extending outwards into the respective and overlapping realms of the philosophical, the economic, the legal, the political and/or the aforementioned medical...Everything in the universe is based on the principle of 'bi-polarity'...In the realm of language, a word would not mean anything unless we could partly define it by contrasting it with its opposite word and concept...
The word and concept of 'light' would have no meaning if we did not understand, having directly experienced, the meaning of the concept of and the word 'dark'...
In summary, the world we live in is a world of 'multiple bi-polarities'...
In this regard, Anaxamander was the first Western philosopher to describe the world as a world of multiple bi-polarities competing against, and essentially trying to overpower each other...one dominating and the other sliding back into the Shadow, the undifferentiated Chaos of the 'Apeiron'...until the 'suppressed' polarity becomes 're-charged' and comes out of The Shadow to 're-compete' against the 'dominant-in-the-limelight' polarity that bring the two opposites together...Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaxamander, would later add that 'opposites attract as well as repel each other'...
This dialectic cosmic philosophy of Anaxamander's was very, very modern -- and still is -- just as ancient Eastern philosophy would build from the twin dialectic or bi-polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' which would become one of the central features, if not the central feature, of much Eastern philosophy today -- particularly Taoism/Daoism. Again, the central feature here was one of 'homeostatic balance' between the 'masculine' characteristic of 'yang' and the 'feminine' concept of 'yin'....applied even to Eastern Medicine...which would become the central feature of the current North American 'Natural Health' industry...
Can you start to see how brilliant a concept -- or conceptuology or cosmology or cosmic philosophy -- that Anaxamander had latched onto and started to describe...some 2550 years ago!!!
It was so brilliant a cosmic philosophy that it contained the seeds of the brilliant philosophies and psychologies of Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, W.B. Cannon, Perls, Berne, Foucault, and Derrida hundreds and even thousands of years later...And that is just quickly off the top of my head...
The conceptuology and cosmic mythology-philosophy is so brilliant that it has been perculating in the depths of my subconscious for a number of years now and is about to become the focus of my mythological-philosophical model of the the human psyche...
Call this conceptuology 'Anaxamander's Multi-Bi-Polar (or Multi-Dialectic) Power-Drama' played out both inside and outside the human psyche...
-- dgb, November 22nd, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
Friday, November 19, 2010
Freud, Jung, Greek-Roman-Christian Mythology -- and The Lighter and Darker Spirit of Man
Under construction...Nov. 19th, 2010
1/ On The Mythological, Religious, and Psychological Origins of 'Satan'
Let us take a few minutes here and skim briefly over a summary of the etiology of 'Satan' in The Christian and other religions...and then we will interpret this etiology and evolution, mythologically, psychologically, and philosophically...dgb
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Satan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the concept of Satan. For the concept of "devil", see Devil. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation).
Gustave Doré, Depiction of Satan, the antagonist of John Milton's Paradise Lost c.1866.Satan (Hebrew: הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan ("the accuser");[1] Arabic: الشيطان ash-Shayṭān ("the adversary") - both from the Semitic root: Ś-Ṭ-N) is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered a "fallen" angel in Judeo-Christian belief and a Jinn in Islamic belief. Originally, the term was used as a title for various entities (humans, accusing angels, etc.) that challenged the religious faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible.[2] Since then, the Abrahamic religions have used "Satan" as a name for the Devil.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Judaism
1.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2 Septuagint
1.3 Hebrew Apocrypha
1.4 Talmud and other rabbinic sources
2 Christianity
3 Islam
4 Other religions
4.1 Yazidism
4.2 Bahá'í Faith
4.3 Satanism
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
Judaism
Hebrew Bible
The original Hebrew term, satan, is a noun from a verb meaning primarily to, “obstruct, oppose,” as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6.[4] Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as “the accuser,” or “the adversary.” The definite article “ha-”, English “the”, is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as “the Satan.”[5]
Ha-Satan with the definite article occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible:
Job ch.1-2,
1 Chronicles 21:1,
Zechariah 3:1.[6]
Job's Satan In the Book of Job, ha-Satan is a member of the divine council, “the sons of God” who are subservient to God. Ha-Satan in this capacity is many times translated as “the prosecutor,” and is charged by God to tempt humans and to report back to God all who go against God’s decrees. At the beginning of the book, Job is a good person “who feared God and turned away from evil,” (Job 1:1) and has therefore been rewarded by God. When the divine council meets, God boasts to ha-Satan about Job and how Job is blameless and upright. Between Job 1:9-10 and 2:4-5, ha-Satan merely points out that God has given Job everything that a man could want, so of course Job would be loyal to God; but if all Job has been given, even his health, were to be taken away from him then his loyalty would wane. God therefore grants ha-Satan the chance to test Job.[7] Due to this, it has been interpreted that ha-Satan is under God’s control and cannot act without God’s permission. This is further shown in the epilogue of Job in which God is speaking to Job, ha-Satan is absent from these dialogues. “For Job, for [Job’s] friends, and for the narrator, it is ultimately Yahweh himself who is responsible for Job’s suffering; as Yahweh says to the “satan”, ‘You have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’(Job 2:3)” [6]
Septuagint
In the Septuagint the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos, slanderer, the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word devil is derived. Where satan is used of human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as of Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[8] In Zechariah 3 this changes the vision of the conflict over Joshua the High Priest in the Septuagint into a conflict between "Jesus and the devil", identical with the Greek text of Matthew.
Hebrew Apocrypha
The Jewish apocrypha are religious writings which are not accepted as religious texts in Judaism and many modern-day Protestant denominations. These works usually bore the names of ancient Hebrew worthies in order to establish their validity among the true writers' contemporaries. To reconcile the late appearance of the texts with their claims to primitive antiquity, alleged authors are represented as "shutting up and sealing" (Dan. XII. 4:9) the works until the time of their fulfillment had arrived; as the texts were not meant for their own generations but for far-distant ages (also cited in Assumption of Moses I. 16:17). In the Book of Wisdom, the devil is represented as the being who brought death into the world.[9]
The 2nd Book of Enoch, also called the Slavonic Book of Enoch, contains references to a Watcher Grigori called Satanael.[10] It is a pseudepigraphic text of an uncertain date and unknown authorship. The text describes Satanael as being the prince of the Grigori who was cast out of heaven[11] and an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was "righteous" and "sinful".[12] A similar story is found in the book of 1 Enoch; however, in that book, the leader of the Grigori is called Semjâzâ.
In the apocryphal literature, Satan rules over a host of angels.[13] Mastema, who induced God to test Abraham through the sacrifice of Isaac, is identical with Satan in both name and nature.[14]
For the Chasidic Jews of the eighteenth century, ha-Satan was Baal Davar.[15] The Book of Enoch contains references to Satariel, thought also to be Sataniel and Satan'el (etymology dating back to Babylonian origins). The similar spellings mirror that of his angelic brethren Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel, previous to his expulsion from Heaven.
Talmud and other rabbinic sources
The Talmud mentions the Satan in many places. In all of these places, the Satan is an agent of God, and has no independent existence. Sometimes the Satan is conflated with various demons, such as Asmodai. At times there is even some sympathy for him. Commenting on the Book of Job, the rabbis express sympathy that his job was to "break the barrel but not spill any wine."
In Kabbalistic literature and its derivative, Hasidic literature, the Satan is seen as an agent of God whose job is to tempt one into sin, and then turn around and accuse the sinner on high. An additional understanding of Satan is from a parable to a prostitute who is hired by the King (God) to tempt his son (a Jew). The prostitute has to do the best she can to tempt the son; but deep down she hopes the son will pass the test. Similarly, Kabbalistic/Hasidic thought sees the Satan in the same situation. His job is to tempt us as best he can; turn around and accuse us; but deep down his wish is that we would resist his blandishments.
Christianity
Main article: Christian teaching about the Devil
See also: War in Heaven
In Christianity, terms that are synonymous with "Satan" include:
The most common English synonym for "Satan" is "Devil", which descends from Middle English devel, from Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin diabolus (also the source of "diabolical"). This in turn was borrowed from Greek diabolos "slanderer", from diaballein "to slander": dia- "across, through" + ballein "to hurl".[16] In the New Testament, "Satan" occurs more than 30 times in passages alongside Diabolos (Greek for "the devil"), referring to the same person or thing as Satan.[17]
Beelzebub is originally the name of a Philistine god (more specifically a certain type of Baal, from Ba‘al Zebûb, lit. "Lord of Flies") but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for Satan.
Satan is traditionally identified as the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; thus, Satan has often been depicted as a serpent.
The Book of Revelation twice refers to "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan," (12:9, 20:2). The Book of Revelation also refers to "the deceiver," from which is derived the common epithet "the great deceiver."[18]
Other terms identified with Satan include "the prince of this world" in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; "the prince of the power of the air" also called Meririm, and "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and "the god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4.[19]
From the fourth Century Lucifer is sometimes used in Christian theology to refer to Satan, as a result of identifying the fallen "son of the dawn" of Isaiah 14:12 with the "accuser" of other passages in the Old Testament.
Satan as depicted in the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, illustrated by Gustave Doré.In traditional Christian understanding of the holy Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, Satan is a synonym for the Devil. For most Christians, he is believed to be an angel who rebelled against God—and also the one who spoke through the serpent and seduced Eve into disobeying God's command. His ultimate goal is to lead people away from the love of God — to lead them to fallacies which God opposes. Satan is also identified as the accuser of Job, the tempter in the Gospels, the secret power of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation. Before his insurrection, Satan was among the highest of all angels and the "brightest in the sky". His pride is considered a reason why he would not bow to God as all other angels did, but sought to rule heaven himself. The popularly held beliefs that Satan was once a prideful angel who eventually rebels against God, however, are barely portrayed explicitly in the Bible and are mostly based on inference (e.g., Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14:12-17). In mainstream Christianity he is called "the ruler of the demons" (Matt. 12:24), "the ruler of the world" and "the god of this world". (2 Cor. 4:4). The Book of Revelation describes how Satan will be cast out of Heaven, down to the earth, having "great anger" and waging war against "those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus". Ultimately, Satan is thrown into the "Lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10), not as ruler, but as one among many, being tormented day and night for all eternity.
In other Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any "adversary" and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.[20]
Islam
Main article: Devil (Islam)
Shaitan (شيطان) is the equivalent of Satan in Islam. While Shaitan (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن) is an adjective (meaning "astray" or "distant", sometimes translated as "devil") that can be applied to both man ("al-ins", الإنس) and Jinn, Iblis (Arabic pronunciation: [ˈibliːs]) is the personal name of the Devil who is mentioned in the Qur'anic account of Genesis.[21] According to the Qur'an, Iblis (the Arabic name used) disobeyed an order from Allah to bow to Adam and as a result was forced out of heaven and given respite until the day of judgment from further punishment.
When Allah commanded all of the angels to bow down before Adam (the first Human), Iblis, full of hubris and jealousy, refused to obey God's command (he could do so because, as a jinn, he had free will), seeing Adam as being inferior in creation due to his being created from clay as compared to him (created of fire).[22]
"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis (Lucifer); He refused to be of those who prostrate."
(Allah) said: "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."
Qur'an 7:11-12
It was after this that the title of "Shaitan" was given, which can be roughly translated as "Enemy," "Rebel," "Evil" or "Devil". Shaitan then claims that if the punishment for his act of disobedience is to be delayed until the Day of Judgment, that he will divert many of Adam's own descendants from the straight path during his period of respite.[23] God accepts the claims of Iblis and guarantees recompense to Iblis and his followers in the form of Hellfire. In order to test mankind and jinn alike, Allah allowed Iblis to roam the earth to attempt to convert others away from his path.[24] He was sent to earth along with Adam and Eve, after eventually luring them into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.[25]
Other religions
Yazidism
An alternate name for the main deity in the tentatively Indo-European pantheon of the Yazidi, Malek Taus, is Shaitan.[26] Rather than Satanic, however, Yazidism is better understood as a remnant of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern Indo-European religion, and/or a ghulat Sufi movement founded by Shaykh Adi. The connection with Satan, originally made by Muslim outsiders, attracted the interest of 19th-century European travelers and esoteric writers.
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, Satan is not regarded as an independent evil power as he is in some faiths, but signifies the lower nature of humans. `Abdu'l-Bahá explains: "This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside."[27][28] All other evil spirits described in various faith traditions such as fallen angels, demons and jinns are also metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God.[29]
Satanism
Main article: Satanism
Satanic groups have various opinions about Satan, ranging from the conviction that he exists and ought to be worshipped (theistic Satanism), to Anton Szandor LaVey's symbolic interpretation, which emphasizes individual will and pleasure-seeking.
Much "Satanic" lore does not originate from actual Satanists, but from Christians. Best-known is the medieval folklore and theology surrounding demons and witches. A more recent example is the so-called Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s — beginning with the memoir Michelle Remembers — which depicts Satanism as a vast (and unsubstantiated) conspiracy of elites with a predilection for child abuse and human sacrifice. This genre regularly describes Satan as actually appearing in person in order to receive worship.
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dgb
The main thesis that I wish to develop in this essay is that mythology, religion, psychology and philosophy are all different -- or at least differently classified -- realms of human thought that remain closely tied together.
A secondary thesis that I intend to develop is the essential under-pinning importance of the dialectic concept of 'humanistic-existentialism' in the positive and/or negative judment of any religious institution, any political and/or philosophical system, any eocnomic and/or legal system, any psychological school of thought...
a/ Projection
Man has an inherent, built-in, usually subconsious or unconscious tendency to 'project' what he thinks, feels, and wants from the 'inside of his personality' to the 'outside' of his personality (projecting these different thoughts, feelings, and wants or impulses onto 'other people', 'animals', 'things', 'objects', 'Gods', 'demons'....and so on...Projection is like using the outside world as our own personal 'canvas' on which we 'paint a picture' -- and the picture which we often 'disown' or 'deny accountability' for its contents -- 'symbolically' -- and partly overtly, partly covertly -- portrays 'us'. In other words, our 'picture', our 'projection' both hides and alludes to the hidden thoughts, feelings, and impulses within us, both good and bad.
Our own personal projections -- as well as our more collective, cultural, mythological, and religious projections -- both hide(s) and allude(s) to both 'the lighter and the darker spirit of man'.
Bottom line, call it the competion in man between 'good and evil'...
Put another way, all you have to do is to study the mythologies and the religions of man, and you have a 'symbolic, projective canvas' on which to also study the psychology, as well as the partly consistent, partly evolving religious and mythological philosophy of man.
The conflict between 'God' ('Zeus', 'Jupitor'...) and 'Satan' (God's 'fallen and evicted angel'), for example becomes a conflict within us between 'good' and 'evil' although that is not to say that 'God' should always be interpreted as being 'good', and neither should 'Satan' -- as much as we have come to associate Satan with 'evil' -- should always be interepreted as being evil...
For example, a distinction could or can be made between 'Benign Satanism' and 'Malignant, Pathological Satanism'. Benign Satanism could/can also be called 'Hedonistic Satanism' or 'Sensory Satanism' or 'Dionysianism'...Dionysus being interpreted here as possibly the 'Greek precursor God' to what evolve into 'The Christian Devil' -- or 'Satan'.
'Benign-Hedonistic-Dionysian Satanism' could/can be viewed in this regard as the Nietzschean 'anti-thesis' to The Christian directive of 'denying one's senses, denying pleasure, denying hedonism, and essentially denying the pursuit of happiness except in either a 'spiritual, religious' way and/or -- in 'the afterlife'. In this regard, Nietzsche was rebelling against the 'anti-humanistic-existential' elements in
the type of Christiantity that he had been taught that essentially preached 'accepting misery and anti-pleaure' in this lifetime in order to be 'accepted into Heaven', and thus, be 'eligible' for a 'better afterlife' than those who are 'expelled from Heaven' when they die because they spent too much time chasing 'Satanic ideas' (like 'the pursuit of sensory pleasure')...
In contrast, the 'toxic, malignant, pathological' potential side of 'Satanism' ('Toxic, Pathological Satanism') is the basic belief of being above or below 'ethical scrutiny and judgment' and practising 'evil' just for the sake of practising evil...such as any thought of 'human sacrifice' (or even 'animal sacrifice' for that matter which has been connected to the worship of God as well as Satan...) In this regard, we need to psychologically examine the 'toxic etiology' of 'Pathological Satanism' -- the worshipping and practicing of 'thinking, feeling, and doing evil things'...
b) Humanistic-Existentialism
It is here that I introduce the dialectic (integrative) bi-polar homeostatic principle of 'humanistic-existenalism'...
By 'humanism' I am referring to the 'compassionate, empathetic, sympathetic, loving, caring side of man...'
In contrast, but not mutually exclusive, I refer to 'existentialism' as the belief in being 'accountable' for all our own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and actions...and being accountable for their 'consequences'...not 'passing the buck' on self-responsibility through 'excuses' and/or 'projective blame'...
On the basis of the bi-polar, homeostatic, dialectic principle of 'humanistic-existentialism', I judge all things, entities, actions...including 'God' Him(or Her)Self...and including 'Jesus', 'Satan', 'Apollo', 'Dionysus', 'Judas', 'Pilate', etc...
I support all religions that subscribe to the bi-polar, dialectic, homeostatic, ethical principle of 'humanistic-existentialism'...and I rebel against those that don't...
If man is going to support religion, then religion needs to support man...
If man is going to support and 'worship' God, then 'the God that man supports and worships needs to show that He/She is supporting the 'humanistic-existential' activities -- and 'Spirit' -- of man...
I believe in the Spinozian principle that 'God is in everything'...all of His/Her/Nature's Creations...
Or dialectically speaking, 'God is in man, and man is in God, and the two are dialectically entwined together...through both good and evil, but ideally in 'good'...
'Satan is the repressed/suppressed disavowed dark spirit of God...and man...'
Mythologically and/or religiously speaking, God evicted Satan -- the 'Dark Spirit of Him/Her Self -- from Heaven into 'Hell' -- and 'Hell' is the Dark Spirit in both God and Man that was born partly from 'evil impulses', and then exasperated from 'excommunication', 'isolation', 'alienation', 'disavowal', 'dissociation' 'rejection', 'abandonment', 'betrayal'... a lack of productive, creative, meaninful integration between God's and mans's collective Light and Dark Spirit...and instead a 'compensatory negative, vengeful movement towards hurting others in the same vein as we have been hurt ourselves'...This is 'Hell' on Earth, and 'Hell in man'...
To be continued...
1/ On The Mythological, Religious, and Psychological Origins of 'Satan'
Let us take a few minutes here and skim briefly over a summary of the etiology of 'Satan' in The Christian and other religions...and then we will interpret this etiology and evolution, mythologically, psychologically, and philosophically...dgb
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Satan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the concept of Satan. For the concept of "devil", see Devil. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation).
Gustave Doré, Depiction of Satan, the antagonist of John Milton's Paradise Lost c.1866.Satan (Hebrew: הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan ("the accuser");[1] Arabic: الشيطان ash-Shayṭān ("the adversary") - both from the Semitic root: Ś-Ṭ-N) is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered a "fallen" angel in Judeo-Christian belief and a Jinn in Islamic belief. Originally, the term was used as a title for various entities (humans, accusing angels, etc.) that challenged the religious faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible.[2] Since then, the Abrahamic religions have used "Satan" as a name for the Devil.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Judaism
1.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2 Septuagint
1.3 Hebrew Apocrypha
1.4 Talmud and other rabbinic sources
2 Christianity
3 Islam
4 Other religions
4.1 Yazidism
4.2 Bahá'í Faith
4.3 Satanism
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
Judaism
Hebrew Bible
The original Hebrew term, satan, is a noun from a verb meaning primarily to, “obstruct, oppose,” as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6.[4] Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as “the accuser,” or “the adversary.” The definite article “ha-”, English “the”, is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as “the Satan.”[5]
Ha-Satan with the definite article occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible:
Job ch.1-2,
1 Chronicles 21:1,
Zechariah 3:1.[6]
Job's Satan In the Book of Job, ha-Satan is a member of the divine council, “the sons of God” who are subservient to God. Ha-Satan in this capacity is many times translated as “the prosecutor,” and is charged by God to tempt humans and to report back to God all who go against God’s decrees. At the beginning of the book, Job is a good person “who feared God and turned away from evil,” (Job 1:1) and has therefore been rewarded by God. When the divine council meets, God boasts to ha-Satan about Job and how Job is blameless and upright. Between Job 1:9-10 and 2:4-5, ha-Satan merely points out that God has given Job everything that a man could want, so of course Job would be loyal to God; but if all Job has been given, even his health, were to be taken away from him then his loyalty would wane. God therefore grants ha-Satan the chance to test Job.[7] Due to this, it has been interpreted that ha-Satan is under God’s control and cannot act without God’s permission. This is further shown in the epilogue of Job in which God is speaking to Job, ha-Satan is absent from these dialogues. “For Job, for [Job’s] friends, and for the narrator, it is ultimately Yahweh himself who is responsible for Job’s suffering; as Yahweh says to the “satan”, ‘You have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’(Job 2:3)” [6]
Septuagint
In the Septuagint the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos, slanderer, the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word devil is derived. Where satan is used of human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as of Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[8] In Zechariah 3 this changes the vision of the conflict over Joshua the High Priest in the Septuagint into a conflict between "Jesus and the devil", identical with the Greek text of Matthew.
Hebrew Apocrypha
The Jewish apocrypha are religious writings which are not accepted as religious texts in Judaism and many modern-day Protestant denominations. These works usually bore the names of ancient Hebrew worthies in order to establish their validity among the true writers' contemporaries. To reconcile the late appearance of the texts with their claims to primitive antiquity, alleged authors are represented as "shutting up and sealing" (Dan. XII. 4:9) the works until the time of their fulfillment had arrived; as the texts were not meant for their own generations but for far-distant ages (also cited in Assumption of Moses I. 16:17). In the Book of Wisdom, the devil is represented as the being who brought death into the world.[9]
The 2nd Book of Enoch, also called the Slavonic Book of Enoch, contains references to a Watcher Grigori called Satanael.[10] It is a pseudepigraphic text of an uncertain date and unknown authorship. The text describes Satanael as being the prince of the Grigori who was cast out of heaven[11] and an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was "righteous" and "sinful".[12] A similar story is found in the book of 1 Enoch; however, in that book, the leader of the Grigori is called Semjâzâ.
In the apocryphal literature, Satan rules over a host of angels.[13] Mastema, who induced God to test Abraham through the sacrifice of Isaac, is identical with Satan in both name and nature.[14]
For the Chasidic Jews of the eighteenth century, ha-Satan was Baal Davar.[15] The Book of Enoch contains references to Satariel, thought also to be Sataniel and Satan'el (etymology dating back to Babylonian origins). The similar spellings mirror that of his angelic brethren Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel, previous to his expulsion from Heaven.
Talmud and other rabbinic sources
The Talmud mentions the Satan in many places. In all of these places, the Satan is an agent of God, and has no independent existence. Sometimes the Satan is conflated with various demons, such as Asmodai. At times there is even some sympathy for him. Commenting on the Book of Job, the rabbis express sympathy that his job was to "break the barrel but not spill any wine."
In Kabbalistic literature and its derivative, Hasidic literature, the Satan is seen as an agent of God whose job is to tempt one into sin, and then turn around and accuse the sinner on high. An additional understanding of Satan is from a parable to a prostitute who is hired by the King (God) to tempt his son (a Jew). The prostitute has to do the best she can to tempt the son; but deep down she hopes the son will pass the test. Similarly, Kabbalistic/Hasidic thought sees the Satan in the same situation. His job is to tempt us as best he can; turn around and accuse us; but deep down his wish is that we would resist his blandishments.
Christianity
Main article: Christian teaching about the Devil
See also: War in Heaven
In Christianity, terms that are synonymous with "Satan" include:
The most common English synonym for "Satan" is "Devil", which descends from Middle English devel, from Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin diabolus (also the source of "diabolical"). This in turn was borrowed from Greek diabolos "slanderer", from diaballein "to slander": dia- "across, through" + ballein "to hurl".[16] In the New Testament, "Satan" occurs more than 30 times in passages alongside Diabolos (Greek for "the devil"), referring to the same person or thing as Satan.[17]
Beelzebub is originally the name of a Philistine god (more specifically a certain type of Baal, from Ba‘al Zebûb, lit. "Lord of Flies") but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for Satan.
Satan is traditionally identified as the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; thus, Satan has often been depicted as a serpent.
The Book of Revelation twice refers to "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan," (12:9, 20:2). The Book of Revelation also refers to "the deceiver," from which is derived the common epithet "the great deceiver."[18]
Other terms identified with Satan include "the prince of this world" in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; "the prince of the power of the air" also called Meririm, and "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and "the god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4.[19]
From the fourth Century Lucifer is sometimes used in Christian theology to refer to Satan, as a result of identifying the fallen "son of the dawn" of Isaiah 14:12 with the "accuser" of other passages in the Old Testament.
Satan as depicted in the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, illustrated by Gustave Doré.In traditional Christian understanding of the holy Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, Satan is a synonym for the Devil. For most Christians, he is believed to be an angel who rebelled against God—and also the one who spoke through the serpent and seduced Eve into disobeying God's command. His ultimate goal is to lead people away from the love of God — to lead them to fallacies which God opposes. Satan is also identified as the accuser of Job, the tempter in the Gospels, the secret power of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation. Before his insurrection, Satan was among the highest of all angels and the "brightest in the sky". His pride is considered a reason why he would not bow to God as all other angels did, but sought to rule heaven himself. The popularly held beliefs that Satan was once a prideful angel who eventually rebels against God, however, are barely portrayed explicitly in the Bible and are mostly based on inference (e.g., Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14:12-17). In mainstream Christianity he is called "the ruler of the demons" (Matt. 12:24), "the ruler of the world" and "the god of this world". (2 Cor. 4:4). The Book of Revelation describes how Satan will be cast out of Heaven, down to the earth, having "great anger" and waging war against "those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus". Ultimately, Satan is thrown into the "Lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10), not as ruler, but as one among many, being tormented day and night for all eternity.
In other Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any "adversary" and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.[20]
Islam
Main article: Devil (Islam)
Shaitan (شيطان) is the equivalent of Satan in Islam. While Shaitan (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن) is an adjective (meaning "astray" or "distant", sometimes translated as "devil") that can be applied to both man ("al-ins", الإنس) and Jinn, Iblis (Arabic pronunciation: [ˈibliːs]) is the personal name of the Devil who is mentioned in the Qur'anic account of Genesis.[21] According to the Qur'an, Iblis (the Arabic name used) disobeyed an order from Allah to bow to Adam and as a result was forced out of heaven and given respite until the day of judgment from further punishment.
When Allah commanded all of the angels to bow down before Adam (the first Human), Iblis, full of hubris and jealousy, refused to obey God's command (he could do so because, as a jinn, he had free will), seeing Adam as being inferior in creation due to his being created from clay as compared to him (created of fire).[22]
"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis (Lucifer); He refused to be of those who prostrate."
(Allah) said: "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."
Qur'an 7:11-12
It was after this that the title of "Shaitan" was given, which can be roughly translated as "Enemy," "Rebel," "Evil" or "Devil". Shaitan then claims that if the punishment for his act of disobedience is to be delayed until the Day of Judgment, that he will divert many of Adam's own descendants from the straight path during his period of respite.[23] God accepts the claims of Iblis and guarantees recompense to Iblis and his followers in the form of Hellfire. In order to test mankind and jinn alike, Allah allowed Iblis to roam the earth to attempt to convert others away from his path.[24] He was sent to earth along with Adam and Eve, after eventually luring them into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.[25]
Other religions
Yazidism
An alternate name for the main deity in the tentatively Indo-European pantheon of the Yazidi, Malek Taus, is Shaitan.[26] Rather than Satanic, however, Yazidism is better understood as a remnant of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern Indo-European religion, and/or a ghulat Sufi movement founded by Shaykh Adi. The connection with Satan, originally made by Muslim outsiders, attracted the interest of 19th-century European travelers and esoteric writers.
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, Satan is not regarded as an independent evil power as he is in some faiths, but signifies the lower nature of humans. `Abdu'l-Bahá explains: "This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan—the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside."[27][28] All other evil spirits described in various faith traditions such as fallen angels, demons and jinns are also metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God.[29]
Satanism
Main article: Satanism
Satanic groups have various opinions about Satan, ranging from the conviction that he exists and ought to be worshipped (theistic Satanism), to Anton Szandor LaVey's symbolic interpretation, which emphasizes individual will and pleasure-seeking.
Much "Satanic" lore does not originate from actual Satanists, but from Christians. Best-known is the medieval folklore and theology surrounding demons and witches. A more recent example is the so-called Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s — beginning with the memoir Michelle Remembers — which depicts Satanism as a vast (and unsubstantiated) conspiracy of elites with a predilection for child abuse and human sacrifice. This genre regularly describes Satan as actually appearing in person in order to receive worship.
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dgb
The main thesis that I wish to develop in this essay is that mythology, religion, psychology and philosophy are all different -- or at least differently classified -- realms of human thought that remain closely tied together.
A secondary thesis that I intend to develop is the essential under-pinning importance of the dialectic concept of 'humanistic-existentialism' in the positive and/or negative judment of any religious institution, any political and/or philosophical system, any eocnomic and/or legal system, any psychological school of thought...
a/ Projection
Man has an inherent, built-in, usually subconsious or unconscious tendency to 'project' what he thinks, feels, and wants from the 'inside of his personality' to the 'outside' of his personality (projecting these different thoughts, feelings, and wants or impulses onto 'other people', 'animals', 'things', 'objects', 'Gods', 'demons'....and so on...Projection is like using the outside world as our own personal 'canvas' on which we 'paint a picture' -- and the picture which we often 'disown' or 'deny accountability' for its contents -- 'symbolically' -- and partly overtly, partly covertly -- portrays 'us'. In other words, our 'picture', our 'projection' both hides and alludes to the hidden thoughts, feelings, and impulses within us, both good and bad.
Our own personal projections -- as well as our more collective, cultural, mythological, and religious projections -- both hide(s) and allude(s) to both 'the lighter and the darker spirit of man'.
Bottom line, call it the competion in man between 'good and evil'...
Put another way, all you have to do is to study the mythologies and the religions of man, and you have a 'symbolic, projective canvas' on which to also study the psychology, as well as the partly consistent, partly evolving religious and mythological philosophy of man.
The conflict between 'God' ('Zeus', 'Jupitor'...) and 'Satan' (God's 'fallen and evicted angel'), for example becomes a conflict within us between 'good' and 'evil' although that is not to say that 'God' should always be interpreted as being 'good', and neither should 'Satan' -- as much as we have come to associate Satan with 'evil' -- should always be interepreted as being evil...
For example, a distinction could or can be made between 'Benign Satanism' and 'Malignant, Pathological Satanism'. Benign Satanism could/can also be called 'Hedonistic Satanism' or 'Sensory Satanism' or 'Dionysianism'...Dionysus being interpreted here as possibly the 'Greek precursor God' to what evolve into 'The Christian Devil' -- or 'Satan'.
'Benign-Hedonistic-Dionysian Satanism' could/can be viewed in this regard as the Nietzschean 'anti-thesis' to The Christian directive of 'denying one's senses, denying pleasure, denying hedonism, and essentially denying the pursuit of happiness except in either a 'spiritual, religious' way and/or -- in 'the afterlife'. In this regard, Nietzsche was rebelling against the 'anti-humanistic-existential' elements in
the type of Christiantity that he had been taught that essentially preached 'accepting misery and anti-pleaure' in this lifetime in order to be 'accepted into Heaven', and thus, be 'eligible' for a 'better afterlife' than those who are 'expelled from Heaven' when they die because they spent too much time chasing 'Satanic ideas' (like 'the pursuit of sensory pleasure')...
In contrast, the 'toxic, malignant, pathological' potential side of 'Satanism' ('Toxic, Pathological Satanism') is the basic belief of being above or below 'ethical scrutiny and judgment' and practising 'evil' just for the sake of practising evil...such as any thought of 'human sacrifice' (or even 'animal sacrifice' for that matter which has been connected to the worship of God as well as Satan...) In this regard, we need to psychologically examine the 'toxic etiology' of 'Pathological Satanism' -- the worshipping and practicing of 'thinking, feeling, and doing evil things'...
b) Humanistic-Existentialism
It is here that I introduce the dialectic (integrative) bi-polar homeostatic principle of 'humanistic-existenalism'...
By 'humanism' I am referring to the 'compassionate, empathetic, sympathetic, loving, caring side of man...'
In contrast, but not mutually exclusive, I refer to 'existentialism' as the belief in being 'accountable' for all our own thoughts, feelings, impulses, and actions...and being accountable for their 'consequences'...not 'passing the buck' on self-responsibility through 'excuses' and/or 'projective blame'...
On the basis of the bi-polar, homeostatic, dialectic principle of 'humanistic-existentialism', I judge all things, entities, actions...including 'God' Him(or Her)Self...and including 'Jesus', 'Satan', 'Apollo', 'Dionysus', 'Judas', 'Pilate', etc...
I support all religions that subscribe to the bi-polar, dialectic, homeostatic, ethical principle of 'humanistic-existentialism'...and I rebel against those that don't...
If man is going to support religion, then religion needs to support man...
If man is going to support and 'worship' God, then 'the God that man supports and worships needs to show that He/She is supporting the 'humanistic-existential' activities -- and 'Spirit' -- of man...
I believe in the Spinozian principle that 'God is in everything'...all of His/Her/Nature's Creations...
Or dialectically speaking, 'God is in man, and man is in God, and the two are dialectically entwined together...through both good and evil, but ideally in 'good'...
'Satan is the repressed/suppressed disavowed dark spirit of God...and man...'
Mythologically and/or religiously speaking, God evicted Satan -- the 'Dark Spirit of Him/Her Self -- from Heaven into 'Hell' -- and 'Hell' is the Dark Spirit in both God and Man that was born partly from 'evil impulses', and then exasperated from 'excommunication', 'isolation', 'alienation', 'disavowal', 'dissociation' 'rejection', 'abandonment', 'betrayal'... a lack of productive, creative, meaninful integration between God's and mans's collective Light and Dark Spirit...and instead a 'compensatory negative, vengeful movement towards hurting others in the same vein as we have been hurt ourselves'...This is 'Hell' on Earth, and 'Hell in man'...
To be continued...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
New Integrations in The DGB Multi-Dialectic Model of The Psyche/Self
So let's see what we have here as I pull together a mixture and modification of Freudian Trauma, Transference, and Impulse Theory, Object Relations, Adlerian Family Constellation and Lifestyle Theory, Transactional Analysis, Jungian Mythological, Archetype, and Self Theory...
A/ Family Constellation Ego States In The Personality
1. First Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) 'The Good, Stabilizing (Nurturing, Supportive, Encouraging) Mother' and b) 'The Bad, Unstabilizing (Righteous, Narcissistic, Rejecting, Abandoning) Mother';
2. The Second Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good (Stabilizing, Nurturing, Supportive, Encouraging) Father and b) The Bad (Unstabilizing, Narcissistic, Righteous, Rejecting, Abandoning) Father;
3. The Third Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good, Supportive Sibling and b) The Bad (Rival, Competitive) Sibling;
4. The Fourth Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good (Co-operative, Conflict-Avoiding) Self and b) The Bad (Rebellious, Deconstructive) Self
B/ Main Generic Mythological Ego States in The Personality
5. The Good and Bad 'Reasonable-Apollo' Ego State;
6. The Good and Bad 'Romantic-Aprodite' (Venus/Cupid/Psyche, Spinoza, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling, Woodsworth...) Ego State;
7. The Good and Bad 'Water-God-Poseidon' Ego State;
8. The Good and Bad 'Earth-And-Family Bound Gaia-Hera' Ego State;
9. The Good and Bad 'Ego-God-Narcissus' Ego State;
10. The Good and Bad 'Sensual-Sexual-Dionysus' Ego State;
11. The Good and Bad 'War-God-Aries' Ego State;
12. The Good and Bad, Jesus Christ and God (Zeus, Jupitor), 'Yin' and 'Yang' Central Ego State;
13. The Evil Satanic Ego State (The Darkest Shadow of Man);
C/ The Dream and Nightmare Catcher/Weaver/Creator
D/ The Transference Memory, Relationship, and Complex Template
E/ The Primitive, Archaic Mythological Archetype and Dream Symbols Template
F/ The Dialectic, Bi-Polarity of The Light (Apollo, Aprodite, Venus, Cupid, Psyche, God, Jesus) and The Dark(er) (Dionysus, Narcissus, Satan...) Spirit of Man/Self
-- dgb, Nov. 16th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
A/ Family Constellation Ego States In The Personality
1. First Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) 'The Good, Stabilizing (Nurturing, Supportive, Encouraging) Mother' and b) 'The Bad, Unstabilizing (Righteous, Narcissistic, Rejecting, Abandoning) Mother';
2. The Second Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good (Stabilizing, Nurturing, Supportive, Encouraging) Father and b) The Bad (Unstabilizing, Narcissistic, Righteous, Rejecting, Abandoning) Father;
3. The Third Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good, Supportive Sibling and b) The Bad (Rival, Competitive) Sibling;
4. The Fourth Internalized Ego State -- Split into Two: a) The Good (Co-operative, Conflict-Avoiding) Self and b) The Bad (Rebellious, Deconstructive) Self
B/ Main Generic Mythological Ego States in The Personality
5. The Good and Bad 'Reasonable-Apollo' Ego State;
6. The Good and Bad 'Romantic-Aprodite' (Venus/Cupid/Psyche, Spinoza, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling, Woodsworth...) Ego State;
7. The Good and Bad 'Water-God-Poseidon' Ego State;
8. The Good and Bad 'Earth-And-Family Bound Gaia-Hera' Ego State;
9. The Good and Bad 'Ego-God-Narcissus' Ego State;
10. The Good and Bad 'Sensual-Sexual-Dionysus' Ego State;
11. The Good and Bad 'War-God-Aries' Ego State;
12. The Good and Bad, Jesus Christ and God (Zeus, Jupitor), 'Yin' and 'Yang' Central Ego State;
13. The Evil Satanic Ego State (The Darkest Shadow of Man);
C/ The Dream and Nightmare Catcher/Weaver/Creator
D/ The Transference Memory, Relationship, and Complex Template
E/ The Primitive, Archaic Mythological Archetype and Dream Symbols Template
F/ The Dialectic, Bi-Polarity of The Light (Apollo, Aprodite, Venus, Cupid, Psyche, God, Jesus) and The Dark(er) (Dionysus, Narcissus, Satan...) Spirit of Man/Self
-- dgb, Nov. 16th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Friday, November 12, 2010
I Speak of The 'DHEEP'...
There is a co-relational, influential relationship between self-perceived weakness and self-hate... As self-perceived weakness and ineffectualness (real and/or imagined) goes up, so too does self-condemnation, self-anger, self-depression, and self-hate....Adler pinpointed this relationship in terms of the effect of 'level of perceived inferiority feelings' on self-image and self-esteem fluctuation...
Working with this type of transient, acute, or chronic 'self-esteem illness', one may need the help of a good friend, counsellor, or psychotherapist....and/or alternatively, be able to kick-start into motion the 'self-healing capabilities' within all of us...
Whether we need to 'nurture' ourselves better, and/or 'kick ourselves in the ass', be embraced and cuddled or -- in recent Geico commerical style -- have a 'drill seargent' inside or outside us...'direct us to take a trip over to Mambi Pambi land...and find us some self-confidence...'
Whether we need to 'go easier on ourselves' -- or 'harder'....it all comes down to 'what works for us'...Let pragmatism and functionality dictate...chase dysfunctionality out the door...
Don't let the toxins within you poison you from the inside out...or the outside in...
Like our body needs our liver for 'detoxifying pathogens'....so too does our mind....
We need a 'liver' in our mind that is pragmatic and functional....detoxifying and self-healing...The Jesus Christ Archetype providing energy to our 'Central Ego'
And our Central Ego adhering to, worshipping, and celebrating the gifts of our Creative and Altruistic Selves....Our 'Light-Soul'...The Archetype of our 'Internal God' who is guiding...or who should be guiding us...and finally the re-integration of not only Holy Spirits...but also 'Darker Spirits'....'The Dark-Soul'...home of Satan...who needs to be listened to for his 'Anti-Christian' and 'Deconstructive' Beliefs...his grudges and resentments from being 'evicted from Heaven'...from being 'ex-communicated'...and being labelled as 'The Disavowed'...'The Evil One'....In this regard 'Satanic Impulses'...evil impules...most certainly need to be 'detoxified' through the self-healing capabilities of The Central Ego in the Archetype Image of Jesus Christ...'negative energy' needs to be 'turned back into positive energy'...and failing that...civil justice systems need to take over....
But the Human Spirit needs the Fires from the Underworld...just as it needs the romantic passion of Aphrodite, Venus, Cupid, and Psyche...and just as it needs the deep, healing energies of the peaceful waters ruled by Poseidon (until Poseidon gets angry)...
And so too, the Human Spirit needs the rootedness, the security, the stability, the food and nutrition provided by The Earth, ruled over by The Greek God 'Gaia'....
And The Human Spirit needs the stabilizing institution of 'family' and 'marriage' as guided over by the Greek Mythological God, 'Hera', in whatever way we can best conceive of maintainging the stability of the family...
And finally The Human Spirit needs the Idealistic and Supreme Ruling of Zeus, Jupitor...and God in The Heavens...the Ideal Goodness worshipped by Plato...that became the Goodness of The Christian Relgion...or at least the best part of The Christian Religion...
The worst part of the Christian Religion was rhetorically confronted and 'deconstructed' by Nietzsche, Dionysus, Zarathrusta, The Superman, and 'The Anti-Christ' all of them emphasizing the supreme importance of appreciating every last day and moment we have the capability of enjoying on Earth...regardless of what may or may not be waiting for us in any imagined or real 'Afterlife'...
And I speak of the 'all-round integration of man'...
Of rational-empirical-spiritual-romantic-sensual-dialectical-humanitic-existential-religious-and/or-pantheistic egalitarianism and freedom...
I speak of the 'DHEEP'.
Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Egalitarian-Psychotherapy'...
-- dgb, Nov. 12th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Working with this type of transient, acute, or chronic 'self-esteem illness', one may need the help of a good friend, counsellor, or psychotherapist....and/or alternatively, be able to kick-start into motion the 'self-healing capabilities' within all of us...
Whether we need to 'nurture' ourselves better, and/or 'kick ourselves in the ass', be embraced and cuddled or -- in recent Geico commerical style -- have a 'drill seargent' inside or outside us...'direct us to take a trip over to Mambi Pambi land...and find us some self-confidence...'
Whether we need to 'go easier on ourselves' -- or 'harder'....it all comes down to 'what works for us'...Let pragmatism and functionality dictate...chase dysfunctionality out the door...
Don't let the toxins within you poison you from the inside out...or the outside in...
Like our body needs our liver for 'detoxifying pathogens'....so too does our mind....
We need a 'liver' in our mind that is pragmatic and functional....detoxifying and self-healing...The Jesus Christ Archetype providing energy to our 'Central Ego'
And our Central Ego adhering to, worshipping, and celebrating the gifts of our Creative and Altruistic Selves....Our 'Light-Soul'...The Archetype of our 'Internal God' who is guiding...or who should be guiding us...and finally the re-integration of not only Holy Spirits...but also 'Darker Spirits'....'The Dark-Soul'...home of Satan...who needs to be listened to for his 'Anti-Christian' and 'Deconstructive' Beliefs...his grudges and resentments from being 'evicted from Heaven'...from being 'ex-communicated'...and being labelled as 'The Disavowed'...'The Evil One'....In this regard 'Satanic Impulses'...evil impules...most certainly need to be 'detoxified' through the self-healing capabilities of The Central Ego in the Archetype Image of Jesus Christ...'negative energy' needs to be 'turned back into positive energy'...and failing that...civil justice systems need to take over....
But the Human Spirit needs the Fires from the Underworld...just as it needs the romantic passion of Aphrodite, Venus, Cupid, and Psyche...and just as it needs the deep, healing energies of the peaceful waters ruled by Poseidon (until Poseidon gets angry)...
And so too, the Human Spirit needs the rootedness, the security, the stability, the food and nutrition provided by The Earth, ruled over by The Greek God 'Gaia'....
And The Human Spirit needs the stabilizing institution of 'family' and 'marriage' as guided over by the Greek Mythological God, 'Hera', in whatever way we can best conceive of maintainging the stability of the family...
And finally The Human Spirit needs the Idealistic and Supreme Ruling of Zeus, Jupitor...and God in The Heavens...the Ideal Goodness worshipped by Plato...that became the Goodness of The Christian Relgion...or at least the best part of The Christian Religion...
The worst part of the Christian Religion was rhetorically confronted and 'deconstructed' by Nietzsche, Dionysus, Zarathrusta, The Superman, and 'The Anti-Christ' all of them emphasizing the supreme importance of appreciating every last day and moment we have the capability of enjoying on Earth...regardless of what may or may not be waiting for us in any imagined or real 'Afterlife'...
And I speak of the 'all-round integration of man'...
Of rational-empirical-spiritual-romantic-sensual-dialectical-humanitic-existential-religious-and/or-pantheistic egalitarianism and freedom...
I speak of the 'DHEEP'.
Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Egalitarian-Psychotherapy'...
-- dgb, Nov. 12th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Falling Into The Nietzschean Abyss
I'm falling...
Falling...
Into the Nietzschean Abyss...
Quick...
Anybody have a trampoline...
A really, really long ladder...
A fire department...
A parachute...
Even a set of mountain gear...
Some shoes and gloves with spikes...
To grab onto the walls...
Perhaps a ledge...not that I've seen a ledge...
I can't see anything..
It just keeps getting darker, and darker, and darker...
I can barely see the light above me...
Does this abyss...
End in water?
Or hard rock ground...that is going to break all my bones...
And kill me...
Anybody got a super big, thick mattress...
That they can throw beneath me...
Perhaps this abyss...
Goes right through the earth...
To China...or Australia...or New Zealand...
Or more likely it ends in fire and rock...
Perhaps I will meet the Devil himself...
Did I do something wrong...
Go down a bad path...
Or make a wrong choice...
Make a whole bunch of bad choices...
To get me here....
Is this my 'Un-Divine Punishment'...
Or might I learn something down here...
Can I learn something about myself...
And turn myself into a better person...
My own personal Phoenix re-born...
Whatever doesn't kill you,
Makes you stronger....
How much deeper must I plunge?
And who or what am I going to meet down here?
Or is this going to end on a deathbed of cold rock...
Or burning lava...
Deep water maybe I can survive...
Although with my momentum,
I'll probably run out of air long before I resurface...
Assuming I resurface at all...
Is this a dream?
A myth?
A nightmare?
Please, be a nightmare!
And let me wake up!!
Now!! Before I have a heart attack!!
If I must be down here,
Let me at least walk around...
Not keep falling...
Man, did I ever miss The Nietzschean Bridge...
Even the Nietzschean Rope...
Anybody...give me a Nietschean Rope...
That I can once again feel some Nietzschean Hope...
Climbing is far better than falling...
Give me some mountain gear...
And I'll take on Mt. Everest...
Or let me land safely below...
And I will take on...
Narcissus...Dionysus...Even Satan himself...
The 'Unholy Trinity'...
No deals with The Devil...
Well, maybe some detoxified compromises...
(My bargaining power isn't very good right now...)
But I'm not going to sell my Soul...
Maybe I did already sell my Soul...
Maybe that is why I am down here...
I sold out on My Self...
I sold myself to The Devil...
Where did I go wrong?
What bad choice did I make?
Or was it a whole slew of them?
How did I sell myself to The Devil?
By failing my parents when they need me most?
By looking powerless and weak in front of my kids...
And in front of my long-time girlfriend?
Maybe I have become powerless and weak?
How did that happen?
By turning my back on corporate owners...
Who had already sold themselves out to The Devil?
Who every day re choosing Profit over People?
But in walking away...
I was making things worse for myself...
Throwing myself into this economic abyss?
Is a 'Personal Economic Abyss'
The same as a 'Nietzschean Abyss'?
Or are the two abysses just connected together?
Different holes down to the same landing pit?
Not enough money and you can't pay your bills properly...
Take your kids and/or your girlfriend out for dinner...
Help your parents out of their own Economic Abyss...
I feel weak inside...
I can't chase my existential dream...
Because I am too busy just trying to get out of...
My Economic Abyss...
'Recession' is too weak a word to describe...
The Personal Economic Hell that you feel going on inside you...
And all around you...
As you battle your personal demons...
And meet some of the people you need to meet...
To work your way out of your Economic Abyss...
And not the ones who want to keep you down there...
The psychology, economics, and politics
Of Insufficieny...and Deficiency...
For those who struggle with debt, taxes, lower work wages than what we were making ten years ago, inflation, rising food, gas, utility, and energy prices, insufficiency, and deficiency...
I take my hat off to those who are still doing well...
And its not all about money; it is also about health...
I have an ex-friend who I worked with for 11 years, and lived with briefly...
He has closed his condominium door to visitors, as he and his family deal with his impending death...terminal cancer, a virus...and/or whatever hit his body fast and hard...
It makes my complaints here sound pretty hollow...
And yet they are still real...
Just secondary to a devastating health plunge...
At least I can still fight another economic day...
And write about philosophy, psychology economics, and politics...
Lose your body, lose your mind...and you lose everything you have to fight with...
I struggle between economic, creative, professional, and personal battles...
But at least I can still write in Hegel's Hotel...
Write about Nietzsche and The 'Anti-Christ'...
Write about Jung and Mythology...
Write about Freud and Transference...
And still find a way to help my parents...
And take my kids and girlfriend out to dinner...
As long as we are living, breathing, and still have hope, energy, and willpower...
We can still climb our way out of Nietzsche's Abyss...
No Faustian deals with The Devil...
Are needed...
Just faith in ourselves, and what we can do...
Both individually...
And collectively...
In dialectic...
And pluralistic...
Union...
-- dgb, Nov. 12th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Falling...
Into the Nietzschean Abyss...
Quick...
Anybody have a trampoline...
A really, really long ladder...
A fire department...
A parachute...
Even a set of mountain gear...
Some shoes and gloves with spikes...
To grab onto the walls...
Perhaps a ledge...not that I've seen a ledge...
I can't see anything..
It just keeps getting darker, and darker, and darker...
I can barely see the light above me...
Does this abyss...
End in water?
Or hard rock ground...that is going to break all my bones...
And kill me...
Anybody got a super big, thick mattress...
That they can throw beneath me...
Perhaps this abyss...
Goes right through the earth...
To China...or Australia...or New Zealand...
Or more likely it ends in fire and rock...
Perhaps I will meet the Devil himself...
Did I do something wrong...
Go down a bad path...
Or make a wrong choice...
Make a whole bunch of bad choices...
To get me here....
Is this my 'Un-Divine Punishment'...
Or might I learn something down here...
Can I learn something about myself...
And turn myself into a better person...
My own personal Phoenix re-born...
Whatever doesn't kill you,
Makes you stronger....
How much deeper must I plunge?
And who or what am I going to meet down here?
Or is this going to end on a deathbed of cold rock...
Or burning lava...
Deep water maybe I can survive...
Although with my momentum,
I'll probably run out of air long before I resurface...
Assuming I resurface at all...
Is this a dream?
A myth?
A nightmare?
Please, be a nightmare!
And let me wake up!!
Now!! Before I have a heart attack!!
If I must be down here,
Let me at least walk around...
Not keep falling...
Man, did I ever miss The Nietzschean Bridge...
Even the Nietzschean Rope...
Anybody...give me a Nietschean Rope...
That I can once again feel some Nietzschean Hope...
Climbing is far better than falling...
Give me some mountain gear...
And I'll take on Mt. Everest...
Or let me land safely below...
And I will take on...
Narcissus...Dionysus...Even Satan himself...
The 'Unholy Trinity'...
No deals with The Devil...
Well, maybe some detoxified compromises...
(My bargaining power isn't very good right now...)
But I'm not going to sell my Soul...
Maybe I did already sell my Soul...
Maybe that is why I am down here...
I sold out on My Self...
I sold myself to The Devil...
Where did I go wrong?
What bad choice did I make?
Or was it a whole slew of them?
How did I sell myself to The Devil?
By failing my parents when they need me most?
By looking powerless and weak in front of my kids...
And in front of my long-time girlfriend?
Maybe I have become powerless and weak?
How did that happen?
By turning my back on corporate owners...
Who had already sold themselves out to The Devil?
Who every day re choosing Profit over People?
But in walking away...
I was making things worse for myself...
Throwing myself into this economic abyss?
Is a 'Personal Economic Abyss'
The same as a 'Nietzschean Abyss'?
Or are the two abysses just connected together?
Different holes down to the same landing pit?
Not enough money and you can't pay your bills properly...
Take your kids and/or your girlfriend out for dinner...
Help your parents out of their own Economic Abyss...
I feel weak inside...
I can't chase my existential dream...
Because I am too busy just trying to get out of...
My Economic Abyss...
'Recession' is too weak a word to describe...
The Personal Economic Hell that you feel going on inside you...
And all around you...
As you battle your personal demons...
And meet some of the people you need to meet...
To work your way out of your Economic Abyss...
And not the ones who want to keep you down there...
The psychology, economics, and politics
Of Insufficieny...and Deficiency...
For those who struggle with debt, taxes, lower work wages than what we were making ten years ago, inflation, rising food, gas, utility, and energy prices, insufficiency, and deficiency...
I take my hat off to those who are still doing well...
And its not all about money; it is also about health...
I have an ex-friend who I worked with for 11 years, and lived with briefly...
He has closed his condominium door to visitors, as he and his family deal with his impending death...terminal cancer, a virus...and/or whatever hit his body fast and hard...
It makes my complaints here sound pretty hollow...
And yet they are still real...
Just secondary to a devastating health plunge...
At least I can still fight another economic day...
And write about philosophy, psychology economics, and politics...
Lose your body, lose your mind...and you lose everything you have to fight with...
I struggle between economic, creative, professional, and personal battles...
But at least I can still write in Hegel's Hotel...
Write about Nietzsche and The 'Anti-Christ'...
Write about Jung and Mythology...
Write about Freud and Transference...
And still find a way to help my parents...
And take my kids and girlfriend out to dinner...
As long as we are living, breathing, and still have hope, energy, and willpower...
We can still climb our way out of Nietzsche's Abyss...
No Faustian deals with The Devil...
Are needed...
Just faith in ourselves, and what we can do...
Both individually...
And collectively...
In dialectic...
And pluralistic...
Union...
-- dgb, Nov. 12th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Mythological Additions and Components To The DGB Model of The Personality
My first 'model' of the personality was created in 1979 with the completion of my Honours Thesis, Evaluation and Health.
Looking back at this first model now, I would call it mainly a model of 'The Central Ego' -- and a contrast between the different 'ways we can talk to ourselves', i.e, 'think to ourselves', in ways that can have radically different results on both our emotional and behavioral lives...between 'positive internal energy' and 'negative internal energy', between 'functional' or 'adaptive' ways we can relate to ourselves and 'dysfunctional', 'maladaptive', 'neurotic', 'psychotic', and/or otherwise pathological ways we can relate to ourselves...before we even begin to relate to our outside world...My primary influences here were all the 'cognitive' and 'cognitive-behavioral' psychologists that I had directly or indirectly (through books) come in contact with such as: Afred Korzybksi, S.I. Hayakawa, and the mutual field of 'General Semantics' that they were working in, Albert Ellis and Rational-Emotive Therapy, Aaron Beck, George Kelly, Jerome Frank, Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand, and the person I was writing this essay for, my University of Waterloo advisor at the time, Donald Meichenbaum, with his freshly published book, Cognitve-Behavior Modification: An Integrative Approach (1977)...At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was to be writing for a man who was in the process of building a very impressive reputation for himself... This quick summary of Dr. Meichenbaum career below came from an interview in April, 2002, by Victor Yalom....
http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/donald-meichenbaum
...................................................................................................
Donald Meichenbaum, PhD is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Waterloo, and founding member of The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment. He holds the dual distinction of having been voted "one of the ten most influential psychotherapists of the century" (reported in the American Psychologist) and being the most cited psychology researcher at a Canadian university.
........................................................................................................
This first DGB model of the personality in 1979, as well as expressing the dominance of my 'rational-empirical' and 'cognitve' approach to psychotherapy at the time also showed the beginnings of my 'humanistic' and 'humanistic-existential' approach to psychotherapy with influences such as Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, and more...The Fritz Perls influence would become much more developed in the 1980s and lead me to Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis, the study of Object Relations, Eric Berne and the study of Transactional Analysis, Jeffrey Masson and The Seduction Theory Controversy, Carl Jung and Jungian Psychology, G.W.Hegel the main philosophical creator of 'dialectic philosophy and psychology' which would lead to the dominant perspective in my thinking, , and from Hegel and the study of Dialectic Philosophy, the study of Western -- and a tidbit of Eastern -- Philosophy in general...
Finally, very very slowly over about 30 years, my latest significant influence by Carl Jung would awaken the 'mythologist' in me which was very much a 'Shadow' of my 1979 personality and would be for some 20 to 30 years after that...I am just starting to 'feel comfortable' with this new, creative element of my personality...as I write now...in 2010....
In 1979, I had not even significantly grasped the essence of the 'dialectic approach' that would in the 2000s stimulate the birth of my major integrative philosophical-psychological perspective and work -- a conglomeration of some 1000 essays or more that are so far strewn in disorganized fashion throughout -- 'Hegel's Hotel'...
I have just now started a derrivative of Hegel's Hotel called -- Freud's Hotel... And there will be probably many more derrivatives coming to spread out all of my work and its myriad of different philosophical and psychological influences...
Hegel's Hotel remains very much a still disorganized work in progress, with hopefully more and more organizational sub-classifications coming in the upcoming months...
My most recent model of the personality combines a 'nuclear family model' of the personality comprised of different internalized, 'compartment-ego-states'; with a larger mythological model of the personality that features elements of Greek and Roman Mythology, as well as Christian and Anti-Christian Mythology/Religion...
It is hard to adequately explain the model without a diagram but try to envision this...
Jesus on The Cross -- The Archetype Image of Our Central Ego -- with the concept-mythological images of 'heaven', 'air', 'romantic fire', 'water', and 'the earth' and 'sensual-sexual fire and the underground' being featured along the different sections on the cross -- 'Heaven' at the top', 'air, sky, and wind' a little further down on the top of the cross...'romantic fire' on the left hand side of the cross, 'water' on the right-hand side of the cross, 'the earth' towards the bottom of the cross, and 'sexual fire and the underground or underworld at the very bottom of the cross....
Now think of the 'light-soul' in the top part of the cross that features 'heaven' (Zeus, Jupitor, God), and the 'dark-soul' in the bottom part of the cross that features sensual- sexual fire and the underground (Dionysus, Satan, Hades, Pluto, Hell...)...
Now think of 'The Id' and 'The Shadow' as representing personality elements on the way to the deepest underground of the personality....And think of the Creative and Destructive Unconscious or Subconscious that respectively reflect images from either our 'Light-Soul' or our 'Dark-Soul'...or a combination of both...
And also on the way to the deepest Underground of our personality we have our 'Transference Templates, Memories, Images, Figures, Scenes, and Complexes'....as well as our 'Genetic Mythological Templates, Archetypes, Symbols, Figures, Scenes, and Complexes'...our Transference Templates and Complexes influenced by our childhood experiences, family dynamics, and upbringing; our Mythological Templates and Archetypes reflecting a much deeper, more archaic, primitive part of our human heritage and history...
Think of all these different factors as potentially 'bombarding internal forces' on our Central Ego -- on our personal, internalized, 'Jesus Christ Archetype' that can either be our 'Master Problem-Solver and Spiritual Self-Healer' or conversely become 'crucified' by the overwhelming barrage of different forces from all areas of the inside of personality, particularly from the deepest Underground of our personality...
In the most successful behavioral functions of our Central Ego -- our Master Spiritual Self-Healer, Problem-Solver, Mediator, Integrator, and Conflict-Resolver -- we put 'Humpty Dumpty back together again...we even reunite God and Satan in a new, creative energetic, functional relationship in which Satan becomes 'the prodigal, estranged and demonic Angel, that is detoxified, healed, and re-welcomed back into heaven...but not a completely 'angelic, God dominated Heaven above the sky'...but rather a new 'integrative, Heaven on earth, a Garden of Eden, with Adam, Eve, and The Snake all living harmoniously together....with both spiritual and sensual-sexual aspects of this relationship as well as rational and romantic components, idealistic and realistic components, and a sense of strong Earth-bound rootedness, stability, and security combining with various ventures into the sky, the water, and the different fires of the personality, contact and withdrawal in all relationships and in all aspects of the psyche, convergence and divergence, separation and union, separating as two...and coming back again as one...in a back and forth, productive, creative cycle..
In effect, our 'Light-Soul' and our 'Dark-Soul' are harmonized into something that may not be 'angelic' but that is a combination of what man essentially is -- a 'Centaur', a combination of both spiritual and sensual-sexual components...part man...and part animal...united harmoniously in the same being...at least until another internal, agitating force...sets the whole 'temporarily united' personality into 'imbalance' again...
This 'spiritual-sensual-and/or-sexual' bi-polarity is only one of a thousand potential different competing and/or attracting 'bi-polarities' in man that need to be successfully 'negotiated' and 'integrated' -- or, if our Central Ego is not strong enough to hold out against the barrage of all these internal competing forces, we could, in a state of a 'nervous breakdown' or something leading up to it, or see ourselve overcome by dark forces in our personality, see or not see ourselves become essentially the archetype of Jesus Christ 'crucified on the cross'...
Have I made the essential dynamics of my model and its various components reasonably clear? Or have I 'mythologically' lost you?
This is where I stand now on Nov 10th, 2010, at least on an abstractified level, with more of the particular details to follow...some of them I have already outlined in past essays...
It is a far cry from the model I presented to Dr. Meichenbaum in 1979....
Things change...
Have a good day!
-- dgb, Nov. 10, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Looking back at this first model now, I would call it mainly a model of 'The Central Ego' -- and a contrast between the different 'ways we can talk to ourselves', i.e, 'think to ourselves', in ways that can have radically different results on both our emotional and behavioral lives...between 'positive internal energy' and 'negative internal energy', between 'functional' or 'adaptive' ways we can relate to ourselves and 'dysfunctional', 'maladaptive', 'neurotic', 'psychotic', and/or otherwise pathological ways we can relate to ourselves...before we even begin to relate to our outside world...My primary influences here were all the 'cognitive' and 'cognitive-behavioral' psychologists that I had directly or indirectly (through books) come in contact with such as: Afred Korzybksi, S.I. Hayakawa, and the mutual field of 'General Semantics' that they were working in, Albert Ellis and Rational-Emotive Therapy, Aaron Beck, George Kelly, Jerome Frank, Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand, and the person I was writing this essay for, my University of Waterloo advisor at the time, Donald Meichenbaum, with his freshly published book, Cognitve-Behavior Modification: An Integrative Approach (1977)...At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was to be writing for a man who was in the process of building a very impressive reputation for himself... This quick summary of Dr. Meichenbaum career below came from an interview in April, 2002, by Victor Yalom....
http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/donald-meichenbaum
...................................................................................................
Donald Meichenbaum, PhD is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Waterloo, and founding member of The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment. He holds the dual distinction of having been voted "one of the ten most influential psychotherapists of the century" (reported in the American Psychologist) and being the most cited psychology researcher at a Canadian university.
........................................................................................................
This first DGB model of the personality in 1979, as well as expressing the dominance of my 'rational-empirical' and 'cognitve' approach to psychotherapy at the time also showed the beginnings of my 'humanistic' and 'humanistic-existential' approach to psychotherapy with influences such as Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, and more...The Fritz Perls influence would become much more developed in the 1980s and lead me to Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis, the study of Object Relations, Eric Berne and the study of Transactional Analysis, Jeffrey Masson and The Seduction Theory Controversy, Carl Jung and Jungian Psychology, G.W.Hegel the main philosophical creator of 'dialectic philosophy and psychology' which would lead to the dominant perspective in my thinking, , and from Hegel and the study of Dialectic Philosophy, the study of Western -- and a tidbit of Eastern -- Philosophy in general...
Finally, very very slowly over about 30 years, my latest significant influence by Carl Jung would awaken the 'mythologist' in me which was very much a 'Shadow' of my 1979 personality and would be for some 20 to 30 years after that...I am just starting to 'feel comfortable' with this new, creative element of my personality...as I write now...in 2010....
In 1979, I had not even significantly grasped the essence of the 'dialectic approach' that would in the 2000s stimulate the birth of my major integrative philosophical-psychological perspective and work -- a conglomeration of some 1000 essays or more that are so far strewn in disorganized fashion throughout -- 'Hegel's Hotel'...
I have just now started a derrivative of Hegel's Hotel called -- Freud's Hotel... And there will be probably many more derrivatives coming to spread out all of my work and its myriad of different philosophical and psychological influences...
Hegel's Hotel remains very much a still disorganized work in progress, with hopefully more and more organizational sub-classifications coming in the upcoming months...
My most recent model of the personality combines a 'nuclear family model' of the personality comprised of different internalized, 'compartment-ego-states'; with a larger mythological model of the personality that features elements of Greek and Roman Mythology, as well as Christian and Anti-Christian Mythology/Religion...
It is hard to adequately explain the model without a diagram but try to envision this...
Jesus on The Cross -- The Archetype Image of Our Central Ego -- with the concept-mythological images of 'heaven', 'air', 'romantic fire', 'water', and 'the earth' and 'sensual-sexual fire and the underground' being featured along the different sections on the cross -- 'Heaven' at the top', 'air, sky, and wind' a little further down on the top of the cross...'romantic fire' on the left hand side of the cross, 'water' on the right-hand side of the cross, 'the earth' towards the bottom of the cross, and 'sexual fire and the underground or underworld at the very bottom of the cross....
Now think of the 'light-soul' in the top part of the cross that features 'heaven' (Zeus, Jupitor, God), and the 'dark-soul' in the bottom part of the cross that features sensual- sexual fire and the underground (Dionysus, Satan, Hades, Pluto, Hell...)...
Now think of 'The Id' and 'The Shadow' as representing personality elements on the way to the deepest underground of the personality....And think of the Creative and Destructive Unconscious or Subconscious that respectively reflect images from either our 'Light-Soul' or our 'Dark-Soul'...or a combination of both...
And also on the way to the deepest Underground of our personality we have our 'Transference Templates, Memories, Images, Figures, Scenes, and Complexes'....as well as our 'Genetic Mythological Templates, Archetypes, Symbols, Figures, Scenes, and Complexes'...our Transference Templates and Complexes influenced by our childhood experiences, family dynamics, and upbringing; our Mythological Templates and Archetypes reflecting a much deeper, more archaic, primitive part of our human heritage and history...
Think of all these different factors as potentially 'bombarding internal forces' on our Central Ego -- on our personal, internalized, 'Jesus Christ Archetype' that can either be our 'Master Problem-Solver and Spiritual Self-Healer' or conversely become 'crucified' by the overwhelming barrage of different forces from all areas of the inside of personality, particularly from the deepest Underground of our personality...
In the most successful behavioral functions of our Central Ego -- our Master Spiritual Self-Healer, Problem-Solver, Mediator, Integrator, and Conflict-Resolver -- we put 'Humpty Dumpty back together again...we even reunite God and Satan in a new, creative energetic, functional relationship in which Satan becomes 'the prodigal, estranged and demonic Angel, that is detoxified, healed, and re-welcomed back into heaven...but not a completely 'angelic, God dominated Heaven above the sky'...but rather a new 'integrative, Heaven on earth, a Garden of Eden, with Adam, Eve, and The Snake all living harmoniously together....with both spiritual and sensual-sexual aspects of this relationship as well as rational and romantic components, idealistic and realistic components, and a sense of strong Earth-bound rootedness, stability, and security combining with various ventures into the sky, the water, and the different fires of the personality, contact and withdrawal in all relationships and in all aspects of the psyche, convergence and divergence, separation and union, separating as two...and coming back again as one...in a back and forth, productive, creative cycle..
In effect, our 'Light-Soul' and our 'Dark-Soul' are harmonized into something that may not be 'angelic' but that is a combination of what man essentially is -- a 'Centaur', a combination of both spiritual and sensual-sexual components...part man...and part animal...united harmoniously in the same being...at least until another internal, agitating force...sets the whole 'temporarily united' personality into 'imbalance' again...
This 'spiritual-sensual-and/or-sexual' bi-polarity is only one of a thousand potential different competing and/or attracting 'bi-polarities' in man that need to be successfully 'negotiated' and 'integrated' -- or, if our Central Ego is not strong enough to hold out against the barrage of all these internal competing forces, we could, in a state of a 'nervous breakdown' or something leading up to it, or see ourselve overcome by dark forces in our personality, see or not see ourselves become essentially the archetype of Jesus Christ 'crucified on the cross'...
Have I made the essential dynamics of my model and its various components reasonably clear? Or have I 'mythologically' lost you?
This is where I stand now on Nov 10th, 2010, at least on an abstractified level, with more of the particular details to follow...some of them I have already outlined in past essays...
It is a far cry from the model I presented to Dr. Meichenbaum in 1979....
Things change...
Have a good day!
-- dgb, Nov. 10, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Collisions Between Different Mythological Figures in 'The House of God' -- Man's Psyche, Man's Mind, Man's Heart, Man's Spirit and Soul
Coming up....
What I am going to do in this paper is to integrate particular elements of Greek, Roman, and Christian mythology/religion with Spinozian Pantheism, modern-day Jungian Mythological Psychology...and of course...my own unique individual perspective on things...dgb, Nov. 10th, 2010...
..................................................................................................................................
What I am going to do in this paper is to integrate particular elements of Greek, Roman, and Christian mythology/religion with Spinozian Pantheism, modern-day Jungian Mythological Psychology...and of course...my own unique individual perspective on things...dgb, Nov. 10th, 2010...
..................................................................................................................................
Apollo Speaks...
Speaks Apollo...I love thinking from the neck up...That way I stay out of trouble...I am the God of Truth, Justice, Light, and 'Rational, Ethical Enlightenment'....long before the 'Enlightenment Philosophers made their particular appearance -- and opinions known -- in the course of Western History...I am essentially 'The God' that the Enlightenment Philosophers worshipped...
I have an 'alter-ego', or a 'competitive God' -- Dionysus -- who doesn't think anything like me, indeed, he doesn't think -- he feels -- but that is why Dionysus is always getting himself into trouble, or let me rephrase that -- that is why Dionysus is always 'seducing men and women into trouble'....as Western Culture's first and main predecessor to what would eventually become even more sinister in Western mythology and the beginning of the Christian religion -- i.e., 'The Anti-Christian Devil'...or 'Satan'...
Think from your neck up, and no matter what you do, don't let Dionysus into your head, because if you do, you are only asking for trouble, inviting trouble, allowing yourself to be seduced into trouble as Dionysus very seductively and manipulatively seeks to get you 'out of your head and into your senses'... Don't let him in, because if you do, you are allowing yourself to become Dionysus' 'play thing'...and further down the road, down the path to the Underground...Dionysus will eventually take you to Hades, which was the Greek mythological version of what would be called 'Pluto' in Roman mythology...and then essentially 'Hell' -- the 'Den of Satan' -- in Christian mythology/religion...
If you don't want to become the 'Devil's Plaything'....
Then follow me, not Dionysus...
Thus, Apollo speaks...
-- dgb, Nov. 10th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
............................................................................................................
Hades
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Hades
Hades with Cerberus (Heraklion Archaeological Museum)
Hades with Cerberus (Heraklion Archaeological Museum)
King of the underworld
God of the Dead and Riches
Abode Underworld
Symbol Cerberus, Cap of invisibility, or Helm of Darkness, Cypress, Narcissus and Key of Hades
Consort Persephone
Parents Cronus and Rhea
Siblings Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Zeus
Children Macaria
Roman equivalent Pluto, Dis Pater, Orcus
Hades (Άδης or Ἀΐδας; from Greek ᾍδης, Hadēs, originally Ἅιδης, Haidēs or Άΐδης, Aidēs, meaning "the unseen"[1][2]) refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive ᾍδου, Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative, too, came to designate the abode of the dead.
In Greek mythology, Hades was considered to be the oldest male child of Cronus and Rhea. According to myth, he and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed rulership over the universe ruling the underworld, air, and sea, respectively; the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, was available to all three concurrently. Because of his association with the underworld, Hades is often interpreted in modern times as the Grim Reaper[citation needed], even though he was not.
By the Romans Hades was called Pluto, from his Greek epithet Πλούτων Ploutōn (πλοῦτος, wealth), meaning "Rich One". In Roman mythology, Hades/Pluto was called Dis Pater and Orcus. The corresponding Etruscan god was Aita. Symbols associated with him are the Helm of Darkness and the three-headed dog, Cerberus.
The term hades in Christian theology (and in New Testament Greek) is parallel to Hebrew sheol (שאול, grave or dirt-pit), and refers to the abode of the dead. The Christian concept of hell is more akin to (and communicated by) the Greek concept of Tartarus, a deep, gloomy part of hades used as a dungeon of torment and suffering.
I have an 'alter-ego', or a 'competitive God' -- Dionysus -- who doesn't think anything like me, indeed, he doesn't think -- he feels -- but that is why Dionysus is always getting himself into trouble, or let me rephrase that -- that is why Dionysus is always 'seducing men and women into trouble'....as Western Culture's first and main predecessor to what would eventually become even more sinister in Western mythology and the beginning of the Christian religion -- i.e., 'The Anti-Christian Devil'...or 'Satan'...
Think from your neck up, and no matter what you do, don't let Dionysus into your head, because if you do, you are only asking for trouble, inviting trouble, allowing yourself to be seduced into trouble as Dionysus very seductively and manipulatively seeks to get you 'out of your head and into your senses'... Don't let him in, because if you do, you are allowing yourself to become Dionysus' 'play thing'...and further down the road, down the path to the Underground...Dionysus will eventually take you to Hades, which was the Greek mythological version of what would be called 'Pluto' in Roman mythology...and then essentially 'Hell' -- the 'Den of Satan' -- in Christian mythology/religion...
If you don't want to become the 'Devil's Plaything'....
Then follow me, not Dionysus...
Thus, Apollo speaks...
-- dgb, Nov. 10th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
............................................................................................................
Hades
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Hades
Hades with Cerberus (Heraklion Archaeological Museum)
Hades with Cerberus (Heraklion Archaeological Museum)
King of the underworld
God of the Dead and Riches
Abode Underworld
Symbol Cerberus, Cap of invisibility, or Helm of Darkness, Cypress, Narcissus and Key of Hades
Consort Persephone
Parents Cronus and Rhea
Siblings Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Zeus
Children Macaria
Roman equivalent Pluto, Dis Pater, Orcus
Hades (Άδης or Ἀΐδας; from Greek ᾍδης, Hadēs, originally Ἅιδης, Haidēs or Άΐδης, Aidēs, meaning "the unseen"[1][2]) refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive ᾍδου, Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative, too, came to designate the abode of the dead.
In Greek mythology, Hades was considered to be the oldest male child of Cronus and Rhea. According to myth, he and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed rulership over the universe ruling the underworld, air, and sea, respectively; the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, was available to all three concurrently. Because of his association with the underworld, Hades is often interpreted in modern times as the Grim Reaper[citation needed], even though he was not.
By the Romans Hades was called Pluto, from his Greek epithet Πλούτων Ploutōn (πλοῦτος, wealth), meaning "Rich One". In Roman mythology, Hades/Pluto was called Dis Pater and Orcus. The corresponding Etruscan god was Aita. Symbols associated with him are the Helm of Darkness and the three-headed dog, Cerberus.
The term hades in Christian theology (and in New Testament Greek) is parallel to Hebrew sheol (שאול, grave or dirt-pit), and refers to the abode of the dead. The Christian concept of hell is more akin to (and communicated by) the Greek concept of Tartarus, a deep, gloomy part of hades used as a dungeon of torment and suffering.
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