A concept in Anaximander's ancient philosophical system -- 'The Apeiron' -- that has largely been ignored for 2500 years, is suddenly starting to capture more present-day attention, and for good reason. It is an important evolutionary idea, and also has some important connections to present-day personality theory.
Think of Darwin for a minute and his idea that 'functionally extreme' genes -- like a giraffe's long neck -- will become the 'norm' after generations and generations of breeding because the 'giraffes with the longest necks' will be the giraffes that can get to the furthest leaves in the highest trees and thus have an evolutionary advantage over giraffes with smaller necks.
As appealing as this Darwinian idea may seem for some of us on the surface of things, it does not stand up to tests of either deeper logic or observation -- i.e., particularly, the actual observed evolutionary history of giraffes.
A nice little essay that you can find here, http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic10/giraffe.htm
pretty well kills the speculative Darwinian notion of how giraffes actually came to have long necks.
Evolutionary theory -- to the extent that it actually 'fits' with the way the world works both inside and outside of us -- is much more complicated and wholistic than any argument that Darwin presented to us. And it is not limited to strictly 'genes'.
Anaximander can be viewed as an 'evolutionary theorist' -- the first in known Western history -- in a number of different ways. For example, Anaxamander believed that man evolved from 'fish' which is probably every bit as true as Darwin's belief that man evolves from 'apes'. In fact, man probably evolved from 'amoeba' -- the simplest known organism on earth. Indeed, it would seem that every more highly complex organism has evolved from less complex organisms 'below' it in the evolutionary chain of life.
However, we have to be careful how we define 'evolutionary intelligence' because in the end it may turn out that even 'cockroaches' and 'viruses' may have more evolutionary intelligence than man.
The degree of 'complexity' of an organism does not necessarily increase its likelihood of survival. Sometimes more 'complex' organisms can be defeated, taken down, by less complicated organisms such as a man or woman dying to a virus.
Having said this, Anaximander offered us some very primitive but at the same time sophisticated ideas about evolutionary theory that still have relevance today.
Anaximander gave us our first primitive -- but sophisticated -- look at 'Chaos Theory'.
Let us imagine a theatre that has both a 'main, front stage' and a 'behind the curtains, back stage'.
So it is with life, argued Anaxamander. Life originited out of 'The Shadows' -- 'the back stage of life' -- which Anaxamander called 'The Apeiron'.
The Apeiron is a swirling mass of 'undifferentiated opposites' that eventually start to become 'differentiated', particularly into 'opposites' that make their way onto the main stage of life -- which is what we now call 'The Universe'.
Now I am not saying that this was all laid out clearly by Anaximander in the exact same manner that I am trying to lay it out clearly here, but Anaximander certainly laid down the foundation for this type of 'dualistic and dialectic evolutionay theorizing'.
So let us imagine that the Universe (the main stage of life) has as its backdrop -- The Apeiron (the backstage of life).
The Apeiron -- the Chaotic Shadows of Life -- send into the Universe a swirling mass of 'differentiated opposites' that 'compete' with each other for time and energy on 'The Main Stage of Life'.
From these 'competitions' for time, energy, and attention in The Universe emerge 'winners' and 'losers'. The winners stay on The Main Stage of Life; and the losers retreat back to The Apeiron -- the background Shadows of Life to 're-energize' looking for new ways to 'mutate' and 'evolve' so that when they come back onto the Main Stage of Life again, they do so with 'increased power, intelligence, and energy' -- with the goal of 'overcoming' their 'opposite nemesis' -- the opposite characteristic that 'defeated it in battle' the first time the two appeared together competing for energy, time, and attention on The Main Stage of Life.
And when the previously 'losing entity or characteristic' gathers enough energy and power in The Apeiron to 'overcome' and 'defeat' its opposite entity or characteristic on The Main Stage of Life -- the same entity or characteristic that defeated it before, well, a that point in time, you have a 'reversal of fortunes' and the previous winner now becomes the loser and has to retreat back into The Shadows of The Apeiron looking for new ways to find more 'intelligence', 'power', and 'energy'.
In the poetic words of Anaxamander,
.....................................................................................
From Wikipedia, Anaximander
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Simplicius mentions that Anaximander said all these "in poetic terms", meaning that he used the old mythical language. The goddess Justice (Dike) keeps the cosmic order. This concept of returning to the element of origin was often revisited afterwards, notably by Aristotle,[20] and by the Greek tragedian Euripides: "what comes from earth must return to earth."[21] Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, stated that Anaximander viewed "...all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance."[22] (Wikipedia, Anaximander)
..........................................................................................................
This is an exciting -- 'modern' -- way of looking at both evolutionary theory and energy theory.
From a mythological and/or religous perspective, it as if our Creator -- 'God' or 'The Gods' -- were bored with their life, took all the 'harmonious, wholistic' pieces of life, and started 'chopping them up' into 'opposite pieces'. It was like a 'Humpty Dumpty' board game in which The Gods chopped Humpty Dumpty into a practically infinite number of 'opposite and opposing pieces' -- and sent them into the Universe in 'fragments' and in 'disarray'. It was like a game of 'Scrambles' in which The Gods sent 'trillions of little opposing pieces of life' swirling into The Universe with the purpose of 'finding' each other and 'regaining wholism, unity, and harmony'. To which we now give the name 'homeostatic balance'.
Now according to this 'Multi-Dialectic Theory of Evolution and Energy' to which I am now extrapolating from Anaximander's foundational roots, in a mythological sort of way, we can distinguish between both different types of 'evolution' and different types of 'energy'.
For example, we can differentiate between 'unionized evolution' and 'individuated evolution', as well as between 'constructive evolution' and 'deconstructive evolution'.
Molecules come together and tear apart. Molecules 'construct' and 'deconstruct'. So too do people. And so too do ideas, lifestyles, theories, philosophies....
Energy is conserved and it is recycled. It is 're-distributed'.
Energy begins in The Apeiron and it ends in The Apeiron.
'Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity'.
Energy starts in the Unconscious. And it ends in The Unconscious.
The life of one organism is often dependent on the death of another -- so that energy can be 're-cycled'. This sets up an evolutionary game of 'cat and mouse', 'predator and prey', each trying to defeat each other and 'hang onto their little corner of life'.
'Energy' can be divided in a 'trillion different ways' -- dialectically.
We can talk about 'positive energy' vs. 'negative energy';
'Constructive energy' vs. 'deconstructive energy';
'Masculine energy' (testosterone, 'yang') vs. 'feminine energy' (estrogen, 'yin');
'Orderly energy' vs. 'disorderly energy';
'Narcissistic energy' vs. 'altruistic energy';
'Rational energy' vs. 'irrational or romantic energy';
'Apollonian energy' vs. 'Dionysian enegy';
'Christian energy' vs. 'anti-Christian energy';
The energy of the 'id' vs. the energy of 'the superego';
The energy of the 'nurturing superego' vs. the energy of the 'rejecting superego';
The energy of the 'Conscious' vs. the energy of 'The Unconscious';
The energy of 'The Personna' vs. the energy of 'The Shadow'.
And on and on we could continue to go...ad infinitum...
The universe has been laid out in front of us in terms of a whole host of swirling, competing and co-operating, attracting and repelling -- opposites.
And man's personality -- man's psyche and soul -- can be laid out in exactly this same manner as reflecting just a very small but significant part of the collossal, overall structure and dynamics of the universe.
Man is essentially a mass of swirling potential and actual, dominant and submerged (suppressed, repressed, disowned, disengaged, alienated, dissociated...), opposite characteristics, energies, and ideas.
Now Anaxamander's 'Chaos and Competing Opposite Powers' Theory is starting to take on an exciting modern day existence.
For example,
Anaximander meets Nietzsche...in The Birth of Tragedy...
According to Nietzsche, the ancient Greeks had an appreciative awareness of the potential 'tragedy' in man due to man's inability to 'harmonize' his competing 'Dionsyian' and 'Apollonian' energies within him, and the inherent outcome of the battle usually ending in one form of self-destruction or another... This idea would later become central to Classic Freudian Theory.
Anaximander meets Freud...in The 'Life' vs. 'Death' Instinct
Anaximander's concept of 'The Apeiron' is amazingly similar to Freud's concept of 'The Id' with the only distinction being that Freud limited the id to 'biological impulses' -- meaning mainly 'life' and 'death', 'sexual' and 'aggressive' impulses...but in the end was that any limitation at all if it was meant to describe all of man's life and death impulses, energies, and movements...
For example, we could say that 'oxygenation' is a 'life force' whereas 'oxidation' is a 'death force' and they both originate in the confines of 'The Id-Apeiron', eventually to both make their presence known on 'The Main Stage' in the body and the personality of man, wrestling for superiority until one day 'oxidation, disease, and death' eventually win the battle over man's life -- and returns man's life back to 'The Apeiron'.
Anaxamander meets Jung...
Jung argued that 'The Unconscious was compensation for The Conscious' -- in other words, whatever did not exist in our conscious personality, our 'personna' if you will, the side of our personality that we show to society, did exist in our Unconcious or 'Shadow' as a 'submerged or suppressed or repressed potential opposite characteristic and capability'. Thus, in Jungian theory, we have the existence of what might be called 'The Shadow-Apeiron' (or SA -- which could alternatively stand for 'Secret Appeal'. If we include Freudian Theory and call it 'The Shadow-Id-Apeiron', then 'SIA' might alternatively stand for 'Secret Interests Accumulating').
Thus, we could say that if a person is 'dominantly heterosexual', then within the confines of 'The SIA', he or she has the opposing latent capability for 'homosexuality'.
Alternatively, if a person is 'dominantly homosexual', then within the confines of The SIA, he or she has the opposing latent capability for heterosexuality.
If a person is 'bisexual', then he or she has the capability of bringing either heterosexuality or homosexuality up from the SIA to The Central Ego and onto the 'Main Stage of Life'...
At this point, we have evolved from Anaxamander's Theory through Nietzsche's 'BT' (Birth of Tragedy) Theory through classic Freudian Theory, through Jungian Theory, and into 'DGB Multi-Dialectic Integrative Personality Theory'.
In DGB Theory, the evolution of the personality can be seen to take the following format, from bottom (unconscious) to top (conscious):
The Structure of The Psyche:
1. The Undifferentiated Apeiron (UA):
2. The Secret (God-Given) Talent Apeiron (STA) (The Self or Soul):
3. The Mythological-Symbolic Apeiron (MSA) (The Collective Unconscious):
4. The Personal Past Apeiron (PPA) (The Personal Unconscious and Transference Template):
5. The Shadow-Id Apeiron (SIA) (Secret Interests Accumulating):
6. The Dream and Nightmare Weaver (DNW):
7. The Righteous (Rebellious) Apollonian Underego (RAU):
8. The Narcissistic-Dionysian Underego (NDU):
9. The Altruistic-Co-operative Underego (ACU):
10. The Altruistic-Nurturing Superego (ANS):
11. The Narcissistic-Dionysian Superego (NDS):
12. The Righteous-(Rejecting/Exciting) Apollonian Superego (RAS):
13. The Central Mediating Ego (CME):
And there -- without further explanation and discourse yet -- you have the foundational structure of DGB Integrative Personality Theory.
Let me just finish by saying, that with the birth of each new personality, each new individual, you have the potential birth of a new 'Superman' or 'Superwoman'. But you also have the potential for a new 'Birth of Tragedy'. It depends very much on whether The Central Mediating Ego is able to maintain control and harmonious balance over internal and external influences on the ongoing evolution of the personality. Or whether The CME is overwhelmed and/or undermined and sabotaged by either, or both, of those same set of internal or external influences.
That is where I will leave you today.
-- dgb, Jan. 9th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Central Ego Theory (Health and Pathology): Floor 4: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions
We have just finished talking about our senses and our sensory-perceptions -- our bridges and/or gateway between our inner and outer world, as well as between our subjective and objective world.
As philosophically impossible as it may be to separate our 'subjective' and 'objective' worlds (or in Kant's terminology, our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' worlds, respectively), still it is just about equally impossible to walk away from this distinction and pretend it doesn't exist.
We ignore, deny, disown, or are simply not aware of the (or 'our') 'objective' world around and in us -- at our own peril. This objective world is quite different from the more 'subjective' world of our own senses and cognitive-evaluative processes that have the critical function of 'mapping out' in our 'awareness or consciousness' or what I am calling our 'Central Ego' the objective world that we live in, that we need to live in -- and that we need to survive in.
Thus, as Alfred Korzybski has stated in his classic book on epistemology and language, 'Science and Sanity' (1933, you can find a nice, short synopsis of it here: http://www.worldtrans.org/essay/scisanity.html), our 'subjective', ('intensional', 'phenomenal') world of consciousness relates to our more 'objective' ('extensional', 'noumenal') world that we have to live in to survive, just like a 'map' relates to the 'territory' that map is supposed to usefully/functionally represent.
In this regard, if there is a significant 'misrepresentation' in terms of an 'error' that is made in the construction and the layout of the map that does not accurately correspond to the internal or external territory that this map is supposed to represent -- well then, we are going to make a 'wrong turn' because of this error and the map can be viewed as 'dysfunctional' to its 'structural misrepresentation' of the territory that it is supposed to be 'accurately representing'.
Now, no 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'word' or 'symbol' or 'abstraction' or 'generalization' is every going to perfectly represent the 'objective territory' that it is supposed to represent. All maps are going to entail a certain degree of imperfections, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the precision and expertise of the 'map-maker'. In addition, every different person who tries to put together a map of the same, or similar, 'objective territory' is going to have their own private motivations, personal interests and in short -- 'subjective, narcissistic bias'. This also then, is going to impact the outcome of the structure of each person's individual conceptual-cognitve map, meaning that every persons cogntive-conceptual maps even of the supposedly 'same objective territory' are going to be at least partly different, and often times, radically different based on the 'functional intent' of the map.
It is in this world of similar and different -- sometimes radically different -- individual and collective, conceptual-cognitive maps, that different people are going to try -- or not try -- to agree with each other in the similarity and/or differences of their individual/group/cultural/religious/economic/philosophical/psychological/political/artistic maps...
Individual and group bias, as well as different ways of 'abstracting' or 'viewing' things can cause great difficulty in both human communication, and in human agreement.
Two different people can look at exactly the same picture or the same scene and see or experience something totally different based on the nature of their particular 'internal, subjective, conceptual-cognitive-emotional world'...
As soon as we start to appreciate these individual and collective differences in our conceptual-cogntive-emotional maps, and realize that people's individual and collective perspectives are based as much on our 'interpretations and evaluations of the alleged facts', as they are on 'the assumed facts' themselves, the sooner we can move in a communication and action direction that may help us to overcome and/or tolerate these differences with our neighbour. Or not. Humans like to get their own way.
To a greater or lesser extent, we are all 'control freaks' who expend great energy on controlling our internal and/or external worlds. Sometimes this 'control fixation' is functional, other times it may be dysfunctional, neurotic, pathological, depending on the context of the situation and how far overboard we go...
The opposite of 'over-control' -- what Freud called the 'anal personality' is 'under-control' which in Freudian terminology we might call the 'oral personality'. Like the prototype of the 'feeding baby', the oral personality type always wants to be 'fed'...food, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, property, material goods, attention...and so on...
The oral peronality type tends to be 'impulsive' and 'spontaneous' as opposed to the very 'self-controlled' and 'planning' nature of the anal personality type. 'The bi-polar anal-oral type' swings back and forth both ways between opposite ends of the spectrum...controlled, controlled, controlled...and then perhaps under the influence of alchohol....let loose, let loose, let loose...Ideally, we should all be able to swing flexibly back and forth along all parts of the 'oral-anal bi-polar spectrum' according to the context of the situation, and without the extreme levels of 'dysfunctionality' that are usually attached to the 'neurotic or pathological bi-polar personality type'...
Similarily, 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' can reflect opposite ends of another bi-polar spectrum...
And so too can the opposite bi-polarities of 'association' and 'distinction'.
We associate together what we view as being similar, while we distinguish apart what we view as being different. In this regard, both 'associative' and 'differential' thinking are essential to the overall well-being of the rational-empirical, map-making human being...and in this regard also, we need to distinguish between our ability to 'abstractify and generalize' on the one hand, vs. 'specify' or 'concretize' on the other hand...
I have used, and will continue to use, the term 'subjective-objective world' to show the dialectic, integrative nature of these two worlds -- i.e. we live in them both simultaneously and they are impossible to separate except by concepts.
Still, if I am walking across the road and get hit by a car that I didn't see coming, you can very easily see that our 'subjective, cognitive (sensory-perceptual) or conceptual map' of the world that this 'map' is supposed to be representing -- i.e., our 'inside or outside 'objective' world' -- is not always right. Indeed, it can be 'dead wrong' and we can be dead on the ground because our internal cognitive-conceptual maps were at serious odds with what was or wasn't really happening in our objective world. We missed the car fast approaching us on the street and in circumstances like this our objective, 'real' world can have the 'last word' on us -- in terms of serious, even life-threatening consequences.
Thus, the importance of our 'sensory-perceptual system' in terms of giving us 'the raw data' from our outside world (or inside bodily world) that we need to act -- and sometimes act very quickly -- on in order to save ourselves from serious, sometimes even life-threatening consequences.
In this regard, our sensory-perceptual system is crtically important to us in terms of providing our 'Central Ego' with the information it/we need to make important decisisons in our life.
Room 400: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions, Differences...
Next up, after our sensory-perceptual system -- as we proceed up 'the abstraction ladder' to our 'reasoning process' is our system of inferences, interpretations, generalizations, associations...the process by which we make a 'jump into the interpretive or inferential unknown' based on 'connecting' or 'associating' the information we are seeing or hearing in front of our face or ears with our always evolving network of 'past experiences' and the 'generalizations' that we have made -- or are making now -- based on these past experiences.
The older we get, the vaster this 'network' or 'template' of past experiences along with 'any associated generalizations and/or interpretations connected with them' becomes. Some of these generalizations and associations can be very functional, and very important in our current decision-making process. Others of these, can be very 'neurotic', 'dysfunctional', and/or 'pathological'.
It all depends on our 'reasoning process' -- the reasoning process of our Central Ego, and how 'rational-empirical' this process was and whether it is still relevant in this current 'here and now situation'. At some point in our experiential history, we made a 'cognitive leap' from 'Observation A' to 'Interpretation A'. Is the interpretive assumption that we made at this time, and/or are making now, still relevant -- or is it outdated, and/or relevant to a different context and/or setting and/or different set of circumstances? These are important 'learning' and/or 'reasoning' factors that may or may not be critically important to the situation at hand that we are judging now.
If we want our decision-making, problem-solving, and/or conflict-resolving judgements to be 'good', to be 'functional', to be 'pragmatic', to be 'ethical', etc. to us (whatever 'ethical value system' we may want to use after we have all the 'raw sensory' and then 'sensory-perceptual' and 'interpretive' data available to us), then we need all of our sensory information, our sensory-perceptions, and our interpretive-assumptions' to provide a 'rock solid foundation' for the type of value judgements and decision-making choices that we are about to apply to this ideally and hopefully 'solid information base' that we are utilizing to help us make a good decision.
If our 'foundational sensory-perceptual-interpretive information' is not good, then how can our decision-making process be good after it? Everything builds on the strength and/or weakness of the information below it and preceding it as we 'pyramid upwards into the more abstractive levels of our reasoning and evaluation process'...
What we leave out and/or what we misinterpret and/or misjudge -- depending on the importance of the problem under evaluation -- may be capable of coming back to haunt us which is why it is imperative relative to certain critical problem-issues to get our facts, assumptions, interpretations, generalizations, associations, extrapolations, distinctions right...or at least 'good enough' to efficiently 'move us in the right direction' of solving our problem, and/or resolving our conflict that is causing us grief...
-- dgb, Dec. 12th, 14th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
As philosophically impossible as it may be to separate our 'subjective' and 'objective' worlds (or in Kant's terminology, our 'phenomenal' and 'noumenal' worlds, respectively), still it is just about equally impossible to walk away from this distinction and pretend it doesn't exist.
We ignore, deny, disown, or are simply not aware of the (or 'our') 'objective' world around and in us -- at our own peril. This objective world is quite different from the more 'subjective' world of our own senses and cognitive-evaluative processes that have the critical function of 'mapping out' in our 'awareness or consciousness' or what I am calling our 'Central Ego' the objective world that we live in, that we need to live in -- and that we need to survive in.
Thus, as Alfred Korzybski has stated in his classic book on epistemology and language, 'Science and Sanity' (1933, you can find a nice, short synopsis of it here: http://www.worldtrans.org/essay/scisanity.html), our 'subjective', ('intensional', 'phenomenal') world of consciousness relates to our more 'objective' ('extensional', 'noumenal') world that we have to live in to survive, just like a 'map' relates to the 'territory' that map is supposed to usefully/functionally represent.
In this regard, if there is a significant 'misrepresentation' in terms of an 'error' that is made in the construction and the layout of the map that does not accurately correspond to the internal or external territory that this map is supposed to represent -- well then, we are going to make a 'wrong turn' because of this error and the map can be viewed as 'dysfunctional' to its 'structural misrepresentation' of the territory that it is supposed to be 'accurately representing'.
Now, no 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'word' or 'symbol' or 'abstraction' or 'generalization' is every going to perfectly represent the 'objective territory' that it is supposed to represent. All maps are going to entail a certain degree of imperfections, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the precision and expertise of the 'map-maker'. In addition, every different person who tries to put together a map of the same, or similar, 'objective territory' is going to have their own private motivations, personal interests and in short -- 'subjective, narcissistic bias'. This also then, is going to impact the outcome of the structure of each person's individual conceptual-cognitve map, meaning that every persons cogntive-conceptual maps even of the supposedly 'same objective territory' are going to be at least partly different, and often times, radically different based on the 'functional intent' of the map.
It is in this world of similar and different -- sometimes radically different -- individual and collective, conceptual-cognitive maps, that different people are going to try -- or not try -- to agree with each other in the similarity and/or differences of their individual/group/cultural/religious/economic/philosophical/psychological/political/artistic maps...
Individual and group bias, as well as different ways of 'abstracting' or 'viewing' things can cause great difficulty in both human communication, and in human agreement.
Two different people can look at exactly the same picture or the same scene and see or experience something totally different based on the nature of their particular 'internal, subjective, conceptual-cognitive-emotional world'...
As soon as we start to appreciate these individual and collective differences in our conceptual-cogntive-emotional maps, and realize that people's individual and collective perspectives are based as much on our 'interpretations and evaluations of the alleged facts', as they are on 'the assumed facts' themselves, the sooner we can move in a communication and action direction that may help us to overcome and/or tolerate these differences with our neighbour. Or not. Humans like to get their own way.
To a greater or lesser extent, we are all 'control freaks' who expend great energy on controlling our internal and/or external worlds. Sometimes this 'control fixation' is functional, other times it may be dysfunctional, neurotic, pathological, depending on the context of the situation and how far overboard we go...
The opposite of 'over-control' -- what Freud called the 'anal personality' is 'under-control' which in Freudian terminology we might call the 'oral personality'. Like the prototype of the 'feeding baby', the oral personality type always wants to be 'fed'...food, sex, drugs, alchohol, money, property, material goods, attention...and so on...
The oral peronality type tends to be 'impulsive' and 'spontaneous' as opposed to the very 'self-controlled' and 'planning' nature of the anal personality type. 'The bi-polar anal-oral type' swings back and forth both ways between opposite ends of the spectrum...controlled, controlled, controlled...and then perhaps under the influence of alchohol....let loose, let loose, let loose...Ideally, we should all be able to swing flexibly back and forth along all parts of the 'oral-anal bi-polar spectrum' according to the context of the situation, and without the extreme levels of 'dysfunctionality' that are usually attached to the 'neurotic or pathological bi-polar personality type'...
Similarily, 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' can reflect opposite ends of another bi-polar spectrum...
And so too can the opposite bi-polarities of 'association' and 'distinction'.
We associate together what we view as being similar, while we distinguish apart what we view as being different. In this regard, both 'associative' and 'differential' thinking are essential to the overall well-being of the rational-empirical, map-making human being...and in this regard also, we need to distinguish between our ability to 'abstractify and generalize' on the one hand, vs. 'specify' or 'concretize' on the other hand...
I have used, and will continue to use, the term 'subjective-objective world' to show the dialectic, integrative nature of these two worlds -- i.e. we live in them both simultaneously and they are impossible to separate except by concepts.
Still, if I am walking across the road and get hit by a car that I didn't see coming, you can very easily see that our 'subjective, cognitive (sensory-perceptual) or conceptual map' of the world that this 'map' is supposed to be representing -- i.e., our 'inside or outside 'objective' world' -- is not always right. Indeed, it can be 'dead wrong' and we can be dead on the ground because our internal cognitive-conceptual maps were at serious odds with what was or wasn't really happening in our objective world. We missed the car fast approaching us on the street and in circumstances like this our objective, 'real' world can have the 'last word' on us -- in terms of serious, even life-threatening consequences.
Thus, the importance of our 'sensory-perceptual system' in terms of giving us 'the raw data' from our outside world (or inside bodily world) that we need to act -- and sometimes act very quickly -- on in order to save ourselves from serious, sometimes even life-threatening consequences.
In this regard, our sensory-perceptual system is crtically important to us in terms of providing our 'Central Ego' with the information it/we need to make important decisisons in our life.
Room 400: Inferences, Interpretations, Generalizations, Associations, Distinctions, Differences...
Next up, after our sensory-perceptual system -- as we proceed up 'the abstraction ladder' to our 'reasoning process' is our system of inferences, interpretations, generalizations, associations...the process by which we make a 'jump into the interpretive or inferential unknown' based on 'connecting' or 'associating' the information we are seeing or hearing in front of our face or ears with our always evolving network of 'past experiences' and the 'generalizations' that we have made -- or are making now -- based on these past experiences.
The older we get, the vaster this 'network' or 'template' of past experiences along with 'any associated generalizations and/or interpretations connected with them' becomes. Some of these generalizations and associations can be very functional, and very important in our current decision-making process. Others of these, can be very 'neurotic', 'dysfunctional', and/or 'pathological'.
It all depends on our 'reasoning process' -- the reasoning process of our Central Ego, and how 'rational-empirical' this process was and whether it is still relevant in this current 'here and now situation'. At some point in our experiential history, we made a 'cognitive leap' from 'Observation A' to 'Interpretation A'. Is the interpretive assumption that we made at this time, and/or are making now, still relevant -- or is it outdated, and/or relevant to a different context and/or setting and/or different set of circumstances? These are important 'learning' and/or 'reasoning' factors that may or may not be critically important to the situation at hand that we are judging now.
If we want our decision-making, problem-solving, and/or conflict-resolving judgements to be 'good', to be 'functional', to be 'pragmatic', to be 'ethical', etc. to us (whatever 'ethical value system' we may want to use after we have all the 'raw sensory' and then 'sensory-perceptual' and 'interpretive' data available to us), then we need all of our sensory information, our sensory-perceptions, and our interpretive-assumptions' to provide a 'rock solid foundation' for the type of value judgements and decision-making choices that we are about to apply to this ideally and hopefully 'solid information base' that we are utilizing to help us make a good decision.
If our 'foundational sensory-perceptual-interpretive information' is not good, then how can our decision-making process be good after it? Everything builds on the strength and/or weakness of the information below it and preceding it as we 'pyramid upwards into the more abstractive levels of our reasoning and evaluation process'...
What we leave out and/or what we misinterpret and/or misjudge -- depending on the importance of the problem under evaluation -- may be capable of coming back to haunt us which is why it is imperative relative to certain critical problem-issues to get our facts, assumptions, interpretations, generalizations, associations, extrapolations, distinctions right...or at least 'good enough' to efficiently 'move us in the right direction' of solving our problem, and/or resolving our conflict that is causing us grief...
-- dgb, Dec. 12th, 14th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Central Ego Theory (Health and Pathology): Epistemology, Narcissism, Ethics, Choice and Action (1979-2010)
Floor 3: The Mezzanine
In the beginning there is 'existence'.
Or is there 'essence' in the beginning?
Hegel's Hotel pursues the idea of an 'essence-existence duality and dialectic'.
Meaning in the beginning there is both essence and existence -- a chicken and egg conundrum.
In Part 1, we will explore and classify the different elements of the 'existence and consciousness' part of this puzzle called 'man'.
In Part 2, we will explore the 'essence and unconsciousness' part of the same puzzle.
Room 300: Sensuality, Perception, Narcissism, Attention, Interest -- and Subjective Bias
Sensuality is the bridge between our internal-subjective and external-objective world.
The two worlds -- our internal and external -- are 'dialectically connected' by a combination of our senses and our actions.
Our senses are our first bridge to both our outside and inside world. Without our senses their would be no 'consciousness'....no sense of 'being alive'....
Our senses take us on a teeter totter -- or even a roller coaster -- ride through life.
Up, down, and back up again, or back down again. Like the thermostat in our house or a pendulum swinging. Stopping at a point of 'evaluative indifference' -- which is not likely to last very long -- before the teeter totter-roller coaster- pendulum starts to swing 'up' or 'down' again... 'up' in our more pleasurable moments' and 'down' in our more 'unpleasurable' moments...
Our senses are the 'thermostat of our life experience' from moment to moment throughout the day and night...
Our senses are 'dialectically charged'. By this, I mean that they are the bridges to both our external (objective) and our internal (subjective ) world. They are the bridge between our 'existence' and our 'essence'. They are the bridge to what is happening around us and what 'catches our interest' amongst the myriad of things and processes that are happening around us at any moment of the day or night.
But at the same time, our senses are the bridge to our thoughts, our beliefs, our assumptions, our opinions, our theories, our values, our feelings...all the way down into our our 'unconsciousness' through our multitude of 'transferences' and 'memories' and 'fantasies' and 'archetypes' and 'symbols' and 'myths' and 'Gods' to our very 'spirit and soul'
Our senses -- and feelings -- can be partly 'pathologized' by what we 'program' into them. But at the same time, our sense are our 'key' to 're-finding ourselves and our lives' when we have gone astray, become 'alienated' from ourselves -- meaning acting in a way that defies our senses and feelings, ignores them, disowns them, suppresses them, represses them, disavows them, dissociates them, betrays them, abandons them...Abandon our senses and feelings and we abandon ourselves; we alienate ourselves from our selves... Thus, our senses and feelings become our 'roadmap', our 'key', to re-discovering our selves...who we are, and what we need to be and become...
The difference between our 'senses' and our 'feelings' is that our senses operate mostly at a 'skin level' whereas our 'feelings' are connected to the 'pounding or not pounding of our heart' and how we interpret the activity or lack of activity of our heart as 'joy', 'anger', 'rage', 'love', 'hate', 'attraction', 'repulsion', 'anxiety', 'fear', 'sadness', 'grief', 'depression'...and so on...
Our feelings are generally more susceptible to 'pathology' than our senses are because our feelings are greatly affected by our thoughts, interpretations, generalizations, associations, discriminations, and judgements -- all of which can easily become 'pathologized' if we take our thoughts down a 'bad path'...
Connected to our 'senses' is the role of 'perception' in our 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning', as we journey through the cognitive-emotional processes of 'interest', 'attention', 'narcissism', 'epistemology', 'ethics', 'impulse', 'memory', 'association', 'fantasy', 'choosing', and the 'final path to behavioral action'...
The close attachment between our senses and our perception leads to the dilalectic idea of 'sensory perception'...where 'recognition' factors from past experience -- and associative connections to these past experiences -- are 'fitted onto' what we believe we are presently 'seeing', 'hearing', 'reading', 'smelling'...
In its most general sense, this is the meaning of the concept of 'transference' where a 'scene from our past' is associatively connected to a 'scene that we are living through right now in our present'...
In Freudian conceptuology, 'transference' usually refers to a 'false connection' between a particular 'early childhood experience' (or 'fantasy' as developed in later Freudian theory after 1896) -- and/or an 'associatively connected set of experiences and/or fantasies' -- and what we are going through now in the 'experience of the present moment'.
However, as noted in later Psychoanalytic literature, 'transferences' are not always completely false -- many times there may be an 'associative relevance and meaningful connection' between what we have experienced in the past and what we are experiencing now; and secondly, this 'true' or 'false' connection between our past and present experience does not always have to be connected to 'childhood'....often these 'associative connections' are built on top of either very good or very bad personal experiences, in the latter case a 'trauma' or 'tragedy' that again does not always have to be connected back to childhood, instead, perhaps the associative connection may stem back to say, for example, a former 'lover'...or perhaps an 'assault' that occurs during our teenage or adult years...
Usually, however, the most profoundly influential 'transferences' in our character structure can be traced back to early childhood, before the age of about 7 years old....when our character structure is still in its most formative years...
Transferences stem from our inner unconscious world and become connected to many of our thoughts, feelings and senses...and in this sense -- i.e., the sense that man is not always a 'perfectly good thinker' -- can 'pathologize' them...if the whole 'transference complex' has been sufficiently 'warped' and become sufficiently 'neurotic' as is very often the case... No one gets out of childhood 'scott-free'...
And no one's thinking is always perfectly rational and 'rational-empirical' in the 'immediacy and concreteness of the moment'...especially, when we start to get frustrated, anxious, angry, and/or enraged by things, people and/or processes that just do not seem to be falling into line with what we want...
Personal narcissism can easily upset the 'objectivity' of our senses...indeed, will upset the objectivity of our senses, giving us 'information' that is 'uniquely construed', 'subjectively biased', even 'subjectively distorted by our unique individual narcissistic bias'...
This is what makes us 'human....all too human'...
Still, our senses -- and our sensory-perceptions that result from them -- represent the life-blood of our existence -- and our essence -- our dialectically connected 'existence-essence'. They represent one of the two gateways or bridges between our inner and outer world -- our 'actions' representing the other gateway or bridge between our inner and outer world...
Our senses represent our first 'subjective map' of what's going on in both our internal and external world. All other information in our cognitive system -- and particularly in what I am calling here our 'Central Ego' -- is built from the right or wrong (or partly both) sensory maps that give us a cognitive-evaluative reflection of what is happening in our external world, our internal world -- and between them.
Our Central Ego is our 'Self' at our most 'conscious, subjective' level, but, in this regard, certainly capable of epistemological error and 'narcissistic-ethical transgressions', capable of keeping the rest of our conscious and unconscious Self 'under control' at least up to some threshold of tolerance depending on the individual person and the unique context of every 'here and now' and/or 'there and then' situation...
Our Central Ego can be in control of the rest of our personality or conversely bombarded and overwhelmed by other conscious and/or unconscious elements of our 'Larger Entire Self'...
Our 'Wholistic Self' comprises our 'Central Ego' as one major portion of it, but also includes our various 'Specialized, Split Off Ego States' which we can turn into as many 'compartmentalized squares' as is convenient and functional to talk about, the Gestalt 'topdog/underdog' model representing the most simple '2 compartment model', and the Freudian 'superego', 'id', 'ego' model representing a post-Hegelian triadic (3 compartment) model -- 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'.
If you follow what I do in a more Jungian fashion, and start connecting 'Greek-Roman mythological Gods' with 'projected internal split-off ego states', then you could/can go up to significantly more 'ego-archetype compartments', again depending on the limits of convenience, simplicity, and functionality for teaching and learning purposes... for example, the 'Apollo/Dionysus' split, the 'Zeus/Hera' split, the 'Apollo/Eros' split...and so on...
Our 'Wholistic Self' also consists of all aspects of our Unconscious Personality which includes:
1. Our 'Dream-Catcher-Dream Weaver' Function;
2. Our 'Transference-Lifestyle Memory, Impulse, Defense and Compensation(Freudian-Adlerian) Complexes';
3. Our 'Mythological-Religious-Symbolic-Archetype' (Jungian) Complexes;
4. Our 'Split Unconcious Light Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Apollo and other Greek/Roman Gods...);
5. Our 'Split Unconscious Dark Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Dionysus/Bacchus, Narcissius, and other Greek/Roman Gods);
6 . Our 'Genetic Essence and Blueprint Self';
7. Our Undifferentiatied Apeiron or Chaotic Self (Consisting of Attrqcting and Repelling Opposite Potentials Circulating and Percolating Within Us...)
This model might be viewed as overly complicated and overly compartmentalized but it allows us the opportunity to focus in on particular Freudian and post-Freudian, Adlerian and post-Adlerian, Jungian and post-Jungian conceptual structures and dynamics that have not to this day been discussed fully in this manner before. Freud re-integrates with Adler and Jung in Hegel's Hotel, with the symbolic link between Greek, Roman, and Christian Mythology-Religion and 'internal ego states and splits' providing much of the subject matter.
What is the difference between Mythology and Religion?
In 'mythology', we do not treat 'past Gods from past cultures' seriously except in terms of their symbolic value. In 'religion' -- we treat the 'Resident Home God' attached to the particular religion that we are involved in, very seriously. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
From our senses, we move inwards deeper into our 'Central Ego Cogntive-Evaluative Processes'...and then deeper into the psycho-dynamics of our 'Wholistic Self'...
The most important point to remember here is that 'sensory perception' is not a 'passive, objective' experience but rather a 'subjective, active' experience, where our internal past experiences, our wishes, fears, beliefs and values, narcissistic biases... all colour our sensory-perceptual process and provide us with information that is far from 'purely objective', indeed never 'purely and perfectly objective'.
We all view the world through different individual coloured glasses... Sometimes our sensory-perceptions are viewed as being 'good enough' to be basically considered 'objective' or 'truthful' or 'fact' or 'knowledge' but these labels should, and usually are, considered 'conditional' based on the potential arrival of new and different information that may or may not contradict the previous information.
All knowledge is subject to potential change -- either because of the evolutionary, life process itself and its changing nature, and/or because of our changing view of things based perhaps on new and better informantion -- or alternatively, 'worse information' that we either don't know is worse, or don't care is worse. The truth is not always desired by individual and/or collective men and/or women.
Epistemology -- the study of knowledge -- becomes hardest to ascertain when individual and/or collective people -- particularly people in power -- want to keep the truth hidden under the cloak of darkness, and/or under a rhetoric of 'smoke and mirrors'...and expend a lot of energy in doing this...Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. 'Scandals' break out when they are not.
And sometimes, individually and/or collectively, people simply do not want to know the truth. So the truth becomes 'buried under an individual or collective suppression and/or repression'.
An epistemological skeptic, cynic, and/or 'post-modern deconstructionist' might say that we can never know for sure what is happening in our inner or outer world.
Kant was the first epistemologist to clearly say that we 'can't/Kant know for sure what is happening in our objective (in his terminology, 'noumenal') world -- because our senses are imperfect at best, or in Nietzsche's more bombastic rhetoric, distorted by our internal wants and biases.
I say that there is such a thing as 'good enough' knowledge -- good enough to 'structually, dynamically, functionally and pragmatically fit' the life situation that we are dealing with before us, and to use these essentially 'accurate cognitive maps' in order to help us make the appropriate life and self judgements that will ideally help us in our pursuit of life, liberty, health, and happiness.
In the end, or at least first and foremost, it all depends on how badly we want the truth about the context of our life to rule our individual and collective life choices...
If we want to hide the truth, or hide from the truth, then our choices will reflect that. And reflect where our life choices take us, both in the short term and in the long term.
'The truth will set you free.' (Not that I am religious except in a mythological sense of seeking to better understand man's 'religious-psychological-projections', but that is a biblical quote...John 8:32).
Not always but usually the truth will set us free -- providing we can handle the truth when we hear it.
-- dgb, Dec. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
In the beginning there is 'existence'.
Or is there 'essence' in the beginning?
Hegel's Hotel pursues the idea of an 'essence-existence duality and dialectic'.
Meaning in the beginning there is both essence and existence -- a chicken and egg conundrum.
In Part 1, we will explore and classify the different elements of the 'existence and consciousness' part of this puzzle called 'man'.
In Part 2, we will explore the 'essence and unconsciousness' part of the same puzzle.
Room 300: Sensuality, Perception, Narcissism, Attention, Interest -- and Subjective Bias
Sensuality is the bridge between our internal-subjective and external-objective world.
The two worlds -- our internal and external -- are 'dialectically connected' by a combination of our senses and our actions.
Our senses are our first bridge to both our outside and inside world. Without our senses their would be no 'consciousness'....no sense of 'being alive'....
Our senses take us on a teeter totter -- or even a roller coaster -- ride through life.
Up, down, and back up again, or back down again. Like the thermostat in our house or a pendulum swinging. Stopping at a point of 'evaluative indifference' -- which is not likely to last very long -- before the teeter totter-roller coaster- pendulum starts to swing 'up' or 'down' again... 'up' in our more pleasurable moments' and 'down' in our more 'unpleasurable' moments...
Our senses are the 'thermostat of our life experience' from moment to moment throughout the day and night...
Our senses are 'dialectically charged'. By this, I mean that they are the bridges to both our external (objective) and our internal (subjective ) world. They are the bridge between our 'existence' and our 'essence'. They are the bridge to what is happening around us and what 'catches our interest' amongst the myriad of things and processes that are happening around us at any moment of the day or night.
But at the same time, our senses are the bridge to our thoughts, our beliefs, our assumptions, our opinions, our theories, our values, our feelings...all the way down into our our 'unconsciousness' through our multitude of 'transferences' and 'memories' and 'fantasies' and 'archetypes' and 'symbols' and 'myths' and 'Gods' to our very 'spirit and soul'
Our senses -- and feelings -- can be partly 'pathologized' by what we 'program' into them. But at the same time, our sense are our 'key' to 're-finding ourselves and our lives' when we have gone astray, become 'alienated' from ourselves -- meaning acting in a way that defies our senses and feelings, ignores them, disowns them, suppresses them, represses them, disavows them, dissociates them, betrays them, abandons them...Abandon our senses and feelings and we abandon ourselves; we alienate ourselves from our selves... Thus, our senses and feelings become our 'roadmap', our 'key', to re-discovering our selves...who we are, and what we need to be and become...
The difference between our 'senses' and our 'feelings' is that our senses operate mostly at a 'skin level' whereas our 'feelings' are connected to the 'pounding or not pounding of our heart' and how we interpret the activity or lack of activity of our heart as 'joy', 'anger', 'rage', 'love', 'hate', 'attraction', 'repulsion', 'anxiety', 'fear', 'sadness', 'grief', 'depression'...and so on...
Our feelings are generally more susceptible to 'pathology' than our senses are because our feelings are greatly affected by our thoughts, interpretations, generalizations, associations, discriminations, and judgements -- all of which can easily become 'pathologized' if we take our thoughts down a 'bad path'...
Connected to our 'senses' is the role of 'perception' in our 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning', as we journey through the cognitive-emotional processes of 'interest', 'attention', 'narcissism', 'epistemology', 'ethics', 'impulse', 'memory', 'association', 'fantasy', 'choosing', and the 'final path to behavioral action'...
The close attachment between our senses and our perception leads to the dilalectic idea of 'sensory perception'...where 'recognition' factors from past experience -- and associative connections to these past experiences -- are 'fitted onto' what we believe we are presently 'seeing', 'hearing', 'reading', 'smelling'...
In its most general sense, this is the meaning of the concept of 'transference' where a 'scene from our past' is associatively connected to a 'scene that we are living through right now in our present'...
In Freudian conceptuology, 'transference' usually refers to a 'false connection' between a particular 'early childhood experience' (or 'fantasy' as developed in later Freudian theory after 1896) -- and/or an 'associatively connected set of experiences and/or fantasies' -- and what we are going through now in the 'experience of the present moment'.
However, as noted in later Psychoanalytic literature, 'transferences' are not always completely false -- many times there may be an 'associative relevance and meaningful connection' between what we have experienced in the past and what we are experiencing now; and secondly, this 'true' or 'false' connection between our past and present experience does not always have to be connected to 'childhood'....often these 'associative connections' are built on top of either very good or very bad personal experiences, in the latter case a 'trauma' or 'tragedy' that again does not always have to be connected back to childhood, instead, perhaps the associative connection may stem back to say, for example, a former 'lover'...or perhaps an 'assault' that occurs during our teenage or adult years...
Usually, however, the most profoundly influential 'transferences' in our character structure can be traced back to early childhood, before the age of about 7 years old....when our character structure is still in its most formative years...
Transferences stem from our inner unconscious world and become connected to many of our thoughts, feelings and senses...and in this sense -- i.e., the sense that man is not always a 'perfectly good thinker' -- can 'pathologize' them...if the whole 'transference complex' has been sufficiently 'warped' and become sufficiently 'neurotic' as is very often the case... No one gets out of childhood 'scott-free'...
And no one's thinking is always perfectly rational and 'rational-empirical' in the 'immediacy and concreteness of the moment'...especially, when we start to get frustrated, anxious, angry, and/or enraged by things, people and/or processes that just do not seem to be falling into line with what we want...
Personal narcissism can easily upset the 'objectivity' of our senses...indeed, will upset the objectivity of our senses, giving us 'information' that is 'uniquely construed', 'subjectively biased', even 'subjectively distorted by our unique individual narcissistic bias'...
This is what makes us 'human....all too human'...
Still, our senses -- and our sensory-perceptions that result from them -- represent the life-blood of our existence -- and our essence -- our dialectically connected 'existence-essence'. They represent one of the two gateways or bridges between our inner and outer world -- our 'actions' representing the other gateway or bridge between our inner and outer world...
Our senses represent our first 'subjective map' of what's going on in both our internal and external world. All other information in our cognitive system -- and particularly in what I am calling here our 'Central Ego' -- is built from the right or wrong (or partly both) sensory maps that give us a cognitive-evaluative reflection of what is happening in our external world, our internal world -- and between them.
Our Central Ego is our 'Self' at our most 'conscious, subjective' level, but, in this regard, certainly capable of epistemological error and 'narcissistic-ethical transgressions', capable of keeping the rest of our conscious and unconscious Self 'under control' at least up to some threshold of tolerance depending on the individual person and the unique context of every 'here and now' and/or 'there and then' situation...
Our Central Ego can be in control of the rest of our personality or conversely bombarded and overwhelmed by other conscious and/or unconscious elements of our 'Larger Entire Self'...
Our 'Wholistic Self' comprises our 'Central Ego' as one major portion of it, but also includes our various 'Specialized, Split Off Ego States' which we can turn into as many 'compartmentalized squares' as is convenient and functional to talk about, the Gestalt 'topdog/underdog' model representing the most simple '2 compartment model', and the Freudian 'superego', 'id', 'ego' model representing a post-Hegelian triadic (3 compartment) model -- 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'.
If you follow what I do in a more Jungian fashion, and start connecting 'Greek-Roman mythological Gods' with 'projected internal split-off ego states', then you could/can go up to significantly more 'ego-archetype compartments', again depending on the limits of convenience, simplicity, and functionality for teaching and learning purposes... for example, the 'Apollo/Dionysus' split, the 'Zeus/Hera' split, the 'Apollo/Eros' split...and so on...
Our 'Wholistic Self' also consists of all aspects of our Unconscious Personality which includes:
1. Our 'Dream-Catcher-Dream Weaver' Function;
2. Our 'Transference-Lifestyle Memory, Impulse, Defense and Compensation(Freudian-Adlerian) Complexes';
3. Our 'Mythological-Religious-Symbolic-Archetype' (Jungian) Complexes;
4. Our 'Split Unconcious Light Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Apollo and other Greek/Roman Gods...);
5. Our 'Split Unconscious Dark Spirit-Soul' (Mythologically ruled by Dionysus/Bacchus, Narcissius, and other Greek/Roman Gods);
6 . Our 'Genetic Essence and Blueprint Self';
7. Our Undifferentiatied Apeiron or Chaotic Self (Consisting of Attrqcting and Repelling Opposite Potentials Circulating and Percolating Within Us...)
This model might be viewed as overly complicated and overly compartmentalized but it allows us the opportunity to focus in on particular Freudian and post-Freudian, Adlerian and post-Adlerian, Jungian and post-Jungian conceptual structures and dynamics that have not to this day been discussed fully in this manner before. Freud re-integrates with Adler and Jung in Hegel's Hotel, with the symbolic link between Greek, Roman, and Christian Mythology-Religion and 'internal ego states and splits' providing much of the subject matter.
What is the difference between Mythology and Religion?
In 'mythology', we do not treat 'past Gods from past cultures' seriously except in terms of their symbolic value. In 'religion' -- we treat the 'Resident Home God' attached to the particular religion that we are involved in, very seriously. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
From our senses, we move inwards deeper into our 'Central Ego Cogntive-Evaluative Processes'...and then deeper into the psycho-dynamics of our 'Wholistic Self'...
The most important point to remember here is that 'sensory perception' is not a 'passive, objective' experience but rather a 'subjective, active' experience, where our internal past experiences, our wishes, fears, beliefs and values, narcissistic biases... all colour our sensory-perceptual process and provide us with information that is far from 'purely objective', indeed never 'purely and perfectly objective'.
We all view the world through different individual coloured glasses... Sometimes our sensory-perceptions are viewed as being 'good enough' to be basically considered 'objective' or 'truthful' or 'fact' or 'knowledge' but these labels should, and usually are, considered 'conditional' based on the potential arrival of new and different information that may or may not contradict the previous information.
All knowledge is subject to potential change -- either because of the evolutionary, life process itself and its changing nature, and/or because of our changing view of things based perhaps on new and better informantion -- or alternatively, 'worse information' that we either don't know is worse, or don't care is worse. The truth is not always desired by individual and/or collective men and/or women.
Epistemology -- the study of knowledge -- becomes hardest to ascertain when individual and/or collective people -- particularly people in power -- want to keep the truth hidden under the cloak of darkness, and/or under a rhetoric of 'smoke and mirrors'...and expend a lot of energy in doing this...Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. 'Scandals' break out when they are not.
And sometimes, individually and/or collectively, people simply do not want to know the truth. So the truth becomes 'buried under an individual or collective suppression and/or repression'.
An epistemological skeptic, cynic, and/or 'post-modern deconstructionist' might say that we can never know for sure what is happening in our inner or outer world.
Kant was the first epistemologist to clearly say that we 'can't/Kant know for sure what is happening in our objective (in his terminology, 'noumenal') world -- because our senses are imperfect at best, or in Nietzsche's more bombastic rhetoric, distorted by our internal wants and biases.
I say that there is such a thing as 'good enough' knowledge -- good enough to 'structually, dynamically, functionally and pragmatically fit' the life situation that we are dealing with before us, and to use these essentially 'accurate cognitive maps' in order to help us make the appropriate life and self judgements that will ideally help us in our pursuit of life, liberty, health, and happiness.
In the end, or at least first and foremost, it all depends on how badly we want the truth about the context of our life to rule our individual and collective life choices...
If we want to hide the truth, or hide from the truth, then our choices will reflect that. And reflect where our life choices take us, both in the short term and in the long term.
'The truth will set you free.' (Not that I am religious except in a mythological sense of seeking to better understand man's 'religious-psychological-projections', but that is a biblical quote...John 8:32).
Not always but usually the truth will set us free -- providing we can handle the truth when we hear it.
-- dgb, Dec. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
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