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,
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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)
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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...
