Saturday, May 26, 2012
Our 'Time-Metre' -- Time....Slip-Sliding Away....
Time....slip-sliding away...
And aging....
Which we can choose to either
Rage against...or accept more serenely....
Indeed, our own self-destructive reactions and/or obsessive-compulsive-addictions may ....
Be speeding up the process...
Or we can step inside our own 'self-psychotherapy room'...
Or someone else's psychotherapy room...
Do our best to integrate our conflicting forces...
And/or turn our destructive impulses into more creative ones...
Find some sense of peace and harmony within ourselves....
Work faster and harder if we need to....
Still find time for play, relaxation, friends, family, community...
Stay away from all self-destructive play pens....
And walls without padding...
Breathe....
And move on...
It is perhaps a cliche....
But I will say what has been said many times before me...
Live your life with love and caring, with spiritual-romantic-passion....and finish your destiny...
The way you want to finish it...
Entropy and apathy are your enemies...
They rob you...
Of the passion and energy that...
You can, and should,
Be investing in your....
Time-metre...
Time....faster and faster...
Slip-sliding away.
-- dgb, May 26, June 5, 6. 10, 12, August 14, 2012, May 19th, 2014.
-- David Gordon Bain
From Kant to Korzybski To GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology (Written October 10, 2010)
Kant's epistemology was important but too perfectionistic to be practically applicable. This is where Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, and Alfred Korzybski all needed to step in to save epistemology from a Kantian death.
You see, Kant was both right and wrong at the same time. He drew our attention to the 'subjective-objective -- or Kantian -- split'. He correctly ascertained that none of us could get outside of our own minds, bodies, and senses in order to 'fully know' the 'complete objectivity' of the 'real object'.
In other words, there will always be human error involved in the sensory and interpretive perception (or perceptual interpretation) and evaluation of any 'external object'.
This is a given. And speaking as a person whose eyesight is definitely not the same now as it was when I was 20 years old and my vision was '20-20', and could hit an eighty mile an hour fastball...the importance of our senses is likely to become more and more appreciated as we begin to lose their 'accuracy' with age.
So what Kant was missing here, given the perfectionist that he was, was the idea of 'perceptual and conceptual representation' being important -- indeed, essential -- to our survival, even if it was imperfect.
In Kantian epistemology, there is essentially no distinction between 'physics' and 'metaphysics' because even physics becomes 'metaphysical' because no one can step outside of themselves -- and outside of their own senses and perceptual-conceptual-evaluation system -- to get a 'perfect representation of any physical object'.
In this regard, technically speaking, all physics becomes metaphysics because, paraphrasing Kant, no one can 'perfectly know the real ('noumenal' was the technical term Kant used back then) object'.
Technically, that may be true but we do not need 'perfect knowledge' in order to survive, and indeed, will never achieve 'perfect knowledge' unless we are talking about a math question like 2 plus 2 equals 4. Here -- and only here -- can we achieve 'perfect knowledge'.
All other knowledge, we can view as 'imperfect' and 'subject to change' based on 'new incoming information' which may -- on the basis of new or different observation, preferrably from more than one source, logical, interpretive deduction, common sense, and so on -- effectively 'over-rule, other past, outdated forms of information and/or purported knowledge'.
Such was the case, for example, with 'the world becoming conceptually round' as opposed to 'conceptually flat', and 'the Earth becoming conceputalized as revolving around the Sun' as opposed to 'conceptualized as the Sun revolving around the Earth' (i.e., 'The Copernican Revolution'). The 'objective world' did not change in either of these cases of 'revolutionized conceptuology and epistemology' -- it was just man's generalized 'view' or 'perspective' of the 'objective or real or noumenal world' that changed.
So, whereas Kant said that we 'Kant Know' our 'real, objective, noumenal world' because of the inherent subjectivity of our Sensory-Perceptual-Interpretive-Evaluative' ('SPIE') System, each of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, and Korzybski would say that we 'Can Know' our 'real, objective, noumenal world' -- it is just that this knowledge is always going to be imperfect, never perfect -- again, because of the inherent subjectivity tied up to our SPIE System. But our knowledge can still be 'good enough' to function properly, particularly if we learn a set of 'good rules' to 'good epistemological functioning'.
This DGB concept of 'Good Enough Epistemology' can be compared to Donald Winnicott's Object Relations concept of 'Good Enough Mothering'.
As long as we can see the car coming as we cross the street, our 'internal epistemology' can be considered 'good enough epistemology' even if we cannot see 'every little scratch or dent' on the car coming our way.
Alternatively, if we 'don't see the car coming', then our 'internal epistemology can be considered not good enough for purposes of functional survival'.
Whereas Kant basically told us that we cannot use a 'representative model' of the 'external, real, objective, (noumenal) world', because we have no way of 'knowing' whether the 'representative model' is right or not, on the other hand, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Korzysbki, all agreed to disagree with Kant, not choosing to be quite so 'anally retentive and technically perfectionistic', and argued instead in favor of a 'probability of accuracy' of a 'representation model' as long as certain 'epistemological rules' were adhered to.
Korzybski went the furthest of the three (Russell, Wittgenstein, and Korzybski) in this regard, laying down a set of 'epistemological rules' that he turned into a 'school' of philosophy and epistemology called 'General Semantics'.
What Russell, Wittgenstein, and Korzybski did that was different than what Kant would not do is, they provided a 'range and a degree of probability' of 'truth value' of particular 'assumed or proclaimed truth assertions/ statements'.
This is essentially the same 'pragmatic' way of 'establishing truth' as what our courts of law do when they say that 'the man has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt'. (That is not to say that innocent men and women can't still be convicted guilty on the basis of 'conceptualized false truths' -- with Kant rolling over in his grave and saying, 'I told you so'...)
But we all have to function on the basis of what we think or believe are 'truths' -- even if they aren't. In this regard, a distinction can be made between 'iron clad truths' and 'evolving, uncertain truths' but even this distinction is not iron clad because how many of our so-called 'iron clad truths' have been shown to be 'untruths' over time?
It happens all the time over time because both the world inside and outside of us is always changing -- and some of our 'conceptual representation skills and results' improve over time because of advances in technology such as the microscope, the telescope, the hearing aid, the MRI, the CT Scan, the Ultra Sound Machine, the Xray Machine...and so on...
Other than that, the only iron-clad truths that remain indisputable over time, and more time, are truths such as: 2 plus 2 equals 4.
Unfortunately, man cannot live only on the basis of 'mathematical truths' -- which means that we still need to find some fascimile of 'epistemological truth' in the works of the likes of Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, David Hume, Kant, Hegel, Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, and Ayn Rand...
This is what Hegel's Hotel is still evolving to do, DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis is still evolving to do, and 'Central Ego Functioning and Dysfunctioning' is aiming to do.
The results of this work on 'The Central Ego' will then be integrated with the rest of the DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic Model as we move along.
Enough for today...The world is calling me...
-- dgb, Oct. 18th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain...
Thursday, May 24, 2012
On Consciousness: Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and DGB Editorial Remarks
In process...May 26th, 2012....
I have tried for the most part to stay away from the most mind-numbing problems of the Big Philosophers....but I can't stay away from them completely....A few of the problems -- most notably, issues concerning consciousness and the self -- are attached to any so called model of the human psyche, the self, and/or the personality....
So what is consciousness? Let's start with The Grand Doubter -- Renes Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes said that he/you/I can doubt anything we want to but we can't doubt the reliability and the actuality of our own consciousness. 'I think, therefore I am.' was his main philosophical motto that he became famous for.
Agreed! I have no trouble with that assertion. I could sit here for the next five minutes and just start writing down everything that came to my mind. It would probably be more interesting -- and more 'psycho-dramatic' -- than the essay that I am writing. Because this is the essence of Psychoanalysis -- or at least Freudian Psychoanalysis -- 'free association', invented by Freud gradually somewhere between 1892 and 1895.
So I could sit here rattling off free associations from my consciousness -- and what further can we say: that these streams of consciousness are from my 'self'? Or from my 'self-representation'? Or from thin air?
It wouldn't take me very long to get to a point of 'psychological resistance' because as soon as someone tells you to say whatever comes immediately to your mind, you are going to likely think automatically of the worst -- and/or most extreme -- thing that could or would come to your mind. That would seem to be some sort of 'automatic law of mind'. Or am I overgeneralizing? Perhaps you would think of the most boring things you could possibly say -- and then say them. That would probably get the person off your case who is 'trying to penetrate your innermost consciousness' after an hour or maybe less (hopefully, you are not paying $200 an hour for this) -- and then you could go back to thinking what you wanted to think about -- privately.
The same would probably go here. In my conceptuology of 'The Self' (we are getting ahead of ourselves a little here), there is a 'Central Ego' -- which is our main personal centre of functioning, deciding, associating, discriminating, choosing -- and choosing what communications to make public through our 'Public Personna-(Ego)' (Jung influenced) vs. choosing what we wish to keep to ourselves in what I am calling our 'Conscious Private Shadow-(Ego)' (which is different from both Jung's concept of 'The Shadow' and Freud's concept of 'The Id' -- both of the latter two concepts of which are deemed 'unconscious' as opposed to the phenomenon that I am discussing here and saying involves 'conscious self-restraint in the moment' -- not unconscious lack of awareness or 'defensive, purposeful unconscious lack of awareness', i.e., 'repression'. We are talking conscious suppression here, not repression).
Now, if we have 'consciousness', can we say that this consciousness is germinating from our 'Self'? Or our 'self-representation (i.e., 'self-image')? Or no self at all? (David Hume's argument calling the 'Self' just a 'convenient generalization' but not 'reality-based' because we cannot see any such generalization as 'The Self'.)
In contrast, it would seem that both Descartes and Kierkegaard associate consciousness with The Self as being one and the same thing (or very closely related)...Again, turning back to Descartes, we have his statement: 'I think, therefore I am' (my living, breathing Self).
And again, Descartes stated that we can't doubt the existence of our own consciousness....consciousness being our most immediate connection to our living, breathing Self....and visa versa...
Yet Kierkegaard took issue with this point arguing that you can doubt consciousness just as presumably you can doubt yourself or your Self.
However, in this regard, Kierkegaard was moving away from Descartes intended meaning and changing what Descartes meant by (our 'first and primary immediacy') of consciousness.
Descartes wasn't talking about 'what our consciousness was supposed to represent' because, most certainly, we can doubt this. And this was what Kierkegaard was writing about when he argued that we most certainly can doubt our consciousness -- i.e., what it represents, and whether what it represents is 'real' or not....
I have tried for the most part to stay away from the most mind-numbing problems of the Big Philosophers....but I can't stay away from them completely....A few of the problems -- most notably, issues concerning consciousness and the self -- are attached to any so called model of the human psyche, the self, and/or the personality....
So what is consciousness? Let's start with The Grand Doubter -- Renes Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes said that he/you/I can doubt anything we want to but we can't doubt the reliability and the actuality of our own consciousness. 'I think, therefore I am.' was his main philosophical motto that he became famous for.
Agreed! I have no trouble with that assertion. I could sit here for the next five minutes and just start writing down everything that came to my mind. It would probably be more interesting -- and more 'psycho-dramatic' -- than the essay that I am writing. Because this is the essence of Psychoanalysis -- or at least Freudian Psychoanalysis -- 'free association', invented by Freud gradually somewhere between 1892 and 1895.
So I could sit here rattling off free associations from my consciousness -- and what further can we say: that these streams of consciousness are from my 'self'? Or from my 'self-representation'? Or from thin air?
It wouldn't take me very long to get to a point of 'psychological resistance' because as soon as someone tells you to say whatever comes immediately to your mind, you are going to likely think automatically of the worst -- and/or most extreme -- thing that could or would come to your mind. That would seem to be some sort of 'automatic law of mind'. Or am I overgeneralizing? Perhaps you would think of the most boring things you could possibly say -- and then say them. That would probably get the person off your case who is 'trying to penetrate your innermost consciousness' after an hour or maybe less (hopefully, you are not paying $200 an hour for this) -- and then you could go back to thinking what you wanted to think about -- privately.
The same would probably go here. In my conceptuology of 'The Self' (we are getting ahead of ourselves a little here), there is a 'Central Ego' -- which is our main personal centre of functioning, deciding, associating, discriminating, choosing -- and choosing what communications to make public through our 'Public Personna-(Ego)' (Jung influenced) vs. choosing what we wish to keep to ourselves in what I am calling our 'Conscious Private Shadow-(Ego)' (which is different from both Jung's concept of 'The Shadow' and Freud's concept of 'The Id' -- both of the latter two concepts of which are deemed 'unconscious' as opposed to the phenomenon that I am discussing here and saying involves 'conscious self-restraint in the moment' -- not unconscious lack of awareness or 'defensive, purposeful unconscious lack of awareness', i.e., 'repression'. We are talking conscious suppression here, not repression).
Now, if we have 'consciousness', can we say that this consciousness is germinating from our 'Self'? Or our 'self-representation (i.e., 'self-image')? Or no self at all? (David Hume's argument calling the 'Self' just a 'convenient generalization' but not 'reality-based' because we cannot see any such generalization as 'The Self'.)
In contrast, it would seem that both Descartes and Kierkegaard associate consciousness with The Self as being one and the same thing (or very closely related)...Again, turning back to Descartes, we have his statement: 'I think, therefore I am' (my living, breathing Self).
And again, Descartes stated that we can't doubt the existence of our own consciousness....consciousness being our most immediate connection to our living, breathing Self....and visa versa...
Yet Kierkegaard took issue with this point arguing that you can doubt consciousness just as presumably you can doubt yourself or your Self.
However, in this regard, Kierkegaard was moving away from Descartes intended meaning and changing what Descartes meant by (our 'first and primary immediacy') of consciousness.
Descartes wasn't talking about 'what our consciousness was supposed to represent' because, most certainly, we can doubt this. And this was what Kierkegaard was writing about when he argued that we most certainly can doubt our consciousness -- i.e., what it represents, and whether what it represents is 'real' or not....
Friday, May 18, 2012
A Discussion of Two Hegelian Philosophical Assertions: 1. 'The Truth is the Whole.'; and '2. The Absolute is Mind': Hegelian Classical Philosophy vs. DGB Post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectic (Pluralistic), Humanistic-Existential Philosophy
Re-done...Sunday, May 20th, Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012...
'The truth is the whole.' Hegel said that. Here is its partly larger context borrowed from the online Hegel Glossary.
.....................................................................................................................................
Now, there are a number of points that we can take issue with here. Hegel had a habit of 'getting lost' in in his own words and contradicting himself in the process. Let's take Hegel's first assertion. 'The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) -- this is the supreme definition of the Absolute.'
This is a non-starter. We define words significantly in terms of contrast. 'The Absolute' should, by definition, include everything except 'the non-absolute'.
'The mind' does not include everything. It is a 'non-absolute' concept and/or phenomenon. For example, it doesn't include 'the body'. 'The mind' doesn't include 'the world' (except as we represent it inside our mind). It may or may not mean the exact same thing as 'Spirit'. Usually, we mean something a little different than 'mind' when we use the term/concept 'spirit'.
Similarily, 'the mind' does not usually mean the same thing as 'God'.
So, in my opinion, Hegel gets off to a rather rocky, confusing, overgeneralized start when he describes/defines 'The Absolute as Mind.' No -- Professor Hegel, that does not work for me. How about this. 'The Absolute is 'Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God' -- with 'God' probably being the most 'nebulous' of these five entities. Does/did the world have a 'Creator'? Quite possibly -- the world is so 'intelligently designed'. Can we call this 'Creator' -- 'God'? Sure, why not. Most people who believe that the world has/had a Creator usually refer to this Creator as -- 'God'. Does this 'God' still rule over us and determine our fate? Maybe. Probably unlikely.
My skepticism rules here -- and says 'no' -- but I do believe in 'coincidental non-coincidences' or alternatively, 'non-coincidental coincidences' that subjectively seem to have 'Fate' or 'God's Hand' steering what just happened....That is about as 'metaphysical' or 'religious' as I will get unless it is down a 'deist's-pantheist's path'....Sometimes in the most breath-taking and/or intimate of encounters, I do feel what I would call a 'Godly presence' in such an encounter....
Anyway, here is the first major difference between Hegelian Classical Dialectic Philosophy and DGB Multi-Dialectic (Pluralistic), Humanistic-Existentilal Philosophy. Hegel uses a '1 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (The Mind) -- and I use a '5 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God).
Now, let's get back to Hegel's assertion that 'The truth is the whole.' Hegel is creating a 'historical paradigm' here meaning that 'the truth' can only be ascertained -- historically, i.e., through the historical, evolutionary development of some phenomenal process.
Here, Hegel contradicts himself again.
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development.'
Well, if 'the whole was or is the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development' -- then 'the whole' can only mean 'death' because 'death' is the only thing that can mark the completeness of 'a thing's essential nature reaching its own completeness'. Either that, or you probably have to argue that a thing -- including a person -- never 'fully actualizes its own essential nature to its own completeness'. I like the latter idea better actually, but otherwise, you have to declare that death marks the end of a thing's/person's 'essential nature' trying to complete itself unless you want to try to argue that 'our spirit' can keep trying to 'complete itself' in 'heaven' or in 'hell'. I take myself out of that argument.
So, according to Hegel, if 'the truth is the whole' and 'the whole is the essential nature of a 'thing-in-itself' taken to its own 'completeness' -- then it would seem that Hegel has to be saying that 'a thing' can only be defined 'in its wholeness' -- at death.
I don't like that idea.
In contrast, when Spinoza tried to argue the same essential principle -- the idea that the truth is the whole, he meant something quite different -- Spinoza meant that the truth has to be determined 'contextually in relation to the rest of the world (and God) as opposed to contextually within the course of its historical evolutionary development (Hegel).
If I were to argue that 'the truth is the whole', I would start with Spinoza's definition and then add in Hegel's idea of 'evolutionary self-development' at any one point in time and place, as opposed to Hegel's idea of defining the truth, as the whole, at the time of a thing's 'evolutionary completeness' -- which essentially, in my books, either means 'death', or it means 'evolutionary completeness' never arrives in 'time and space'....because man, both as an individual, and as a species, is always evolving -- this process never stops except to the extent that our individual and/or species evolution is stopped by death. And this I would hardly define as 'the completeness and the truth of the whole'.
Thus, in defending the idea that 'the truth is the whole', I would be arguing this assertion, first and foremost, in a Spinozian, wholistic, pantheistic sense, and secondly in a modified, Hegelian historical, evolutionary sense -- frozen in time (if we could do this) at the point in time that has specifically captured our most intense, interest....
Even then, we would have to look at the 'subjective, epistemological gaps' in our own 'sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative' ('spie') process when compared and contrasted against 'the world in itself' as no man or woman on earth would be able to 'completely comprehend and/or capture the world's full 'essence -- frozen in time, and/or evolving in time' apart from our own narcissistic biases and epistemological imperfections....and also our process of dividing and classifying the world into different conceptual and theoretical paradigms.
Paradoxically, this is both 'necessary' from a 'survival' point of view, but also 'always insufficient' from a Kantian perfectionistic perspective, as man -- both individually and collectively -- will always come up 'epistemologically short' in 'sensing-perceiving-interpeting-evaluating' the world from any perspective, any paradigm'...
As Kant forcefully stated (with my own modifications and amplifications): We Kant know the world-in-itself -- except through the lenses of our own epistemological imperfections which, at times, may be 'good enough' for us to live, healthy, meaningful lives despite these epistemological imperfections, while at other times, and/or for other people, the more severe contents of their epistemological imperfections may 'cost them their lives' or 'drag them through the mud of the nastier part of human existence'.
Nothing is deterministic. Chaos meets predictability. Co-operation meets competition. Narcissism meets altruism. Love meets hate. The world -- and man's mind and spirit -- operate in terms of opposites both attracting and/or repelling -- setting up the existence of phenomenological and conceptual dichotomies, paradoxes, contradictions, often hypocrisies....Spinoza meets Schopenhauer....in a romantic world -- or potentially romantic world -- that can be both beautiful (Spinoza) and brutally nasty (Schopenhauer).
None of us is smart enough to know every possible paradigm....and all the possible permuations between the different paradigms...as well as all of the different possible conceptual and/or theoretical modifications/extensions/extrapolations of any one paradigm...
Conceptual and theoretical paradigms can have meaning -- important meaning -- but they should not be confused with 'the wholistic-world-in-itself'.
Every conceptualized paradigm is partial truth and partial fiction....'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same as the 'thing-in-itself' or
'the process-in-itself'...or the 'structure-in-itself''....anything we see and generalize about, abstract about, associate about, classify about, involves 'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same thing as what we are representing inside our head that is a 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'paradigm' for something else that it is supposed to stand for, that we can never fully know all the endless characteristics about.....That is my 21st century interpretation of Kantian epistmology and metaphysics...
However, emerging beyond Kant's epistemology and metaphysics is the fact that we can all be 'good enough epistemologists' -- metaphysics or no metaphysics -- to live a long and meaningful life where we don't have to metaphorically or literally 'jump off a building' just because Kant said -- and rightfully so -- that we can't be, or won't ever be, 'perfect epistemologists'... Let's just say that our 'epistemological knowledge' in any one subject area is going to be somewhere between an 'empty glass of water' and a 'full glass of water'....depending on how much time, energy, and intellect we have invested into our realm of investigation, with certain epistemological generalizations generally helping us to be better epistemologists rather than worse....
Here is one set of principles that I have synthesized from Kant and Korzybski....
We live in two 'subjective-epistemological' worlds and 'one objective-metaphysical' world at the same time:
1. Our always partly mystifying, objective, metaphysical world beyond our senses and abstractions that we can never completely know, and sometimes we don't know at all -- even if or when we think we do;
2. Our 'Subjective-Sensory-Perceptual-Interpretive-(Empirical) World' that we can utilize to know most directly 'Our Objective-(Noumenal)-World-In-Itself-Outside-Our-Senses' that we -- presumably -- are trying, under most normal, healthy circumstances, to try our best to 'accurately understand and represent';
3. Our 'Abstactive-Assumptive World' -- i.e. Our World of 'Assumptions, Abstractions, Beliefs, Biases, Classifcations, Concepts, Discriminations, Dreams, Ethics, Evaluations, Factoids, Generalizations, Stereotypes That We Often See As Total Truisms When They Are Sometimes Better Described As Treasonary Truths...'
We all have to live in all three worlds....at the same time...or within seconds or minutes apart from each other....
But we should aim to tred most carefully in our Abstractive-Assumptive World because this is the world inside our head (Korzybski called it our 'intensional world')that is most likely to be most disconnected from 'The Objective-(Noumenal) World In Itself'.... that can have a monumental effect on our lives if one of our 'assumptive disconnects' leads us spinning into chaos from a dangerous abstractive precipice...
Stepping inside and outside of different abstractive paradigms -- trying different ones on for 'size' and 'fitness' -- and often, even better, synthesizing and synergizing these different paradigms -- can often leave us 'more free' in terms of 'more conceptual flexibility' in our ongoing, personal, evolutionary development.
If one paradigm doesn't work well in one particular context -- say, a certain clinical case -- then, we can step out of the particular theory or paradigm by which we were trying to better understand the client's case history, and perhaps work inside a different paradigm, or perhaps even better still, a mixture of synergizing different paradigms...
At least that is the paradigm that I am presently working within...and will continue to develop....both philosophically and psychologically...
-- dgb, May 18th-22nd, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in process....
'The truth is the whole.' Hegel said that. Here is its partly larger context borrowed from the online Hegel Glossary.
The Absolute (a.k.a. "God")
"The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) - this is the supreme definition of the Absolute." Philosophy of Mind § 384.
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development." Preface, Phenomenology of Mind 81-82."The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) - this is the supreme definition of the Absolute." Philosophy of Mind § 384.
.....................................................................................................................................
Now, there are a number of points that we can take issue with here. Hegel had a habit of 'getting lost' in in his own words and contradicting himself in the process. Let's take Hegel's first assertion. 'The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) -- this is the supreme definition of the Absolute.'
This is a non-starter. We define words significantly in terms of contrast. 'The Absolute' should, by definition, include everything except 'the non-absolute'.
'The mind' does not include everything. It is a 'non-absolute' concept and/or phenomenon. For example, it doesn't include 'the body'. 'The mind' doesn't include 'the world' (except as we represent it inside our mind). It may or may not mean the exact same thing as 'Spirit'. Usually, we mean something a little different than 'mind' when we use the term/concept 'spirit'.
Similarily, 'the mind' does not usually mean the same thing as 'God'.
So, in my opinion, Hegel gets off to a rather rocky, confusing, overgeneralized start when he describes/defines 'The Absolute as Mind.' No -- Professor Hegel, that does not work for me. How about this. 'The Absolute is 'Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God' -- with 'God' probably being the most 'nebulous' of these five entities. Does/did the world have a 'Creator'? Quite possibly -- the world is so 'intelligently designed'. Can we call this 'Creator' -- 'God'? Sure, why not. Most people who believe that the world has/had a Creator usually refer to this Creator as -- 'God'. Does this 'God' still rule over us and determine our fate? Maybe. Probably unlikely.
My skepticism rules here -- and says 'no' -- but I do believe in 'coincidental non-coincidences' or alternatively, 'non-coincidental coincidences' that subjectively seem to have 'Fate' or 'God's Hand' steering what just happened....That is about as 'metaphysical' or 'religious' as I will get unless it is down a 'deist's-pantheist's path'....Sometimes in the most breath-taking and/or intimate of encounters, I do feel what I would call a 'Godly presence' in such an encounter....
Anyway, here is the first major difference between Hegelian Classical Dialectic Philosophy and DGB Multi-Dialectic (Pluralistic), Humanistic-Existentilal Philosophy. Hegel uses a '1 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (The Mind) -- and I use a '5 Star' definition of 'The Absolute' (Mind-Body-Spirit-World-God).
Now, let's get back to Hegel's assertion that 'The truth is the whole.' Hegel is creating a 'historical paradigm' here meaning that 'the truth' can only be ascertained -- historically, i.e., through the historical, evolutionary development of some phenomenal process.
Here, Hegel contradicts himself again.
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development.'
Well, if 'the whole was or is the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development' -- then 'the whole' can only mean 'death' because 'death' is the only thing that can mark the completeness of 'a thing's essential nature reaching its own completeness'. Either that, or you probably have to argue that a thing -- including a person -- never 'fully actualizes its own essential nature to its own completeness'. I like the latter idea better actually, but otherwise, you have to declare that death marks the end of a thing's/person's 'essential nature' trying to complete itself unless you want to try to argue that 'our spirit' can keep trying to 'complete itself' in 'heaven' or in 'hell'. I take myself out of that argument.
So, according to Hegel, if 'the truth is the whole' and 'the whole is the essential nature of a 'thing-in-itself' taken to its own 'completeness' -- then it would seem that Hegel has to be saying that 'a thing' can only be defined 'in its wholeness' -- at death.
I don't like that idea.
In contrast, when Spinoza tried to argue the same essential principle -- the idea that the truth is the whole, he meant something quite different -- Spinoza meant that the truth has to be determined 'contextually in relation to the rest of the world (and God) as opposed to contextually within the course of its historical evolutionary development (Hegel).
If I were to argue that 'the truth is the whole', I would start with Spinoza's definition and then add in Hegel's idea of 'evolutionary self-development' at any one point in time and place, as opposed to Hegel's idea of defining the truth, as the whole, at the time of a thing's 'evolutionary completeness' -- which essentially, in my books, either means 'death', or it means 'evolutionary completeness' never arrives in 'time and space'....because man, both as an individual, and as a species, is always evolving -- this process never stops except to the extent that our individual and/or species evolution is stopped by death. And this I would hardly define as 'the completeness and the truth of the whole'.
Thus, in defending the idea that 'the truth is the whole', I would be arguing this assertion, first and foremost, in a Spinozian, wholistic, pantheistic sense, and secondly in a modified, Hegelian historical, evolutionary sense -- frozen in time (if we could do this) at the point in time that has specifically captured our most intense, interest....
Even then, we would have to look at the 'subjective, epistemological gaps' in our own 'sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative' ('spie') process when compared and contrasted against 'the world in itself' as no man or woman on earth would be able to 'completely comprehend and/or capture the world's full 'essence -- frozen in time, and/or evolving in time' apart from our own narcissistic biases and epistemological imperfections....and also our process of dividing and classifying the world into different conceptual and theoretical paradigms.
Paradoxically, this is both 'necessary' from a 'survival' point of view, but also 'always insufficient' from a Kantian perfectionistic perspective, as man -- both individually and collectively -- will always come up 'epistemologically short' in 'sensing-perceiving-interpeting-evaluating' the world from any perspective, any paradigm'...
As Kant forcefully stated (with my own modifications and amplifications): We Kant know the world-in-itself -- except through the lenses of our own epistemological imperfections which, at times, may be 'good enough' for us to live, healthy, meaningful lives despite these epistemological imperfections, while at other times, and/or for other people, the more severe contents of their epistemological imperfections may 'cost them their lives' or 'drag them through the mud of the nastier part of human existence'.
Nothing is deterministic. Chaos meets predictability. Co-operation meets competition. Narcissism meets altruism. Love meets hate. The world -- and man's mind and spirit -- operate in terms of opposites both attracting and/or repelling -- setting up the existence of phenomenological and conceptual dichotomies, paradoxes, contradictions, often hypocrisies....Spinoza meets Schopenhauer....in a romantic world -- or potentially romantic world -- that can be both beautiful (Spinoza) and brutally nasty (Schopenhauer).
None of us is smart enough to know every possible paradigm....and all the possible permuations between the different paradigms...as well as all of the different possible conceptual and/or theoretical modifications/extensions/extrapolations of any one paradigm...
Conceptual and theoretical paradigms can have meaning -- important meaning -- but they should not be confused with 'the wholistic-world-in-itself'.
Every conceptualized paradigm is partial truth and partial fiction....'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same as the 'thing-in-itself' or
'the process-in-itself'...or the 'structure-in-itself''....anything we see and generalize about, abstract about, associate about, classify about, involves 'man-made, conceptual constructionism' which is not the same thing as what we are representing inside our head that is a 'map' or 'model' or 'theory' or 'paradigm' for something else that it is supposed to stand for, that we can never fully know all the endless characteristics about.....That is my 21st century interpretation of Kantian epistmology and metaphysics...
However, emerging beyond Kant's epistemology and metaphysics is the fact that we can all be 'good enough epistemologists' -- metaphysics or no metaphysics -- to live a long and meaningful life where we don't have to metaphorically or literally 'jump off a building' just because Kant said -- and rightfully so -- that we can't be, or won't ever be, 'perfect epistemologists'... Let's just say that our 'epistemological knowledge' in any one subject area is going to be somewhere between an 'empty glass of water' and a 'full glass of water'....depending on how much time, energy, and intellect we have invested into our realm of investigation, with certain epistemological generalizations generally helping us to be better epistemologists rather than worse....
Here is one set of principles that I have synthesized from Kant and Korzybski....
We live in two 'subjective-epistemological' worlds and 'one objective-metaphysical' world at the same time:
1. Our always partly mystifying, objective, metaphysical world beyond our senses and abstractions that we can never completely know, and sometimes we don't know at all -- even if or when we think we do;
2. Our 'Subjective-Sensory-Perceptual-Interpretive-(Empirical) World' that we can utilize to know most directly 'Our Objective-(Noumenal)-World-In-Itself-Outside-Our-Senses' that we -- presumably -- are trying, under most normal, healthy circumstances, to try our best to 'accurately understand and represent';
3. Our 'Abstactive-Assumptive World' -- i.e. Our World of 'Assumptions, Abstractions, Beliefs, Biases, Classifcations, Concepts, Discriminations, Dreams, Ethics, Evaluations, Factoids, Generalizations, Stereotypes That We Often See As Total Truisms When They Are Sometimes Better Described As Treasonary Truths...'
We all have to live in all three worlds....at the same time...or within seconds or minutes apart from each other....
But we should aim to tred most carefully in our Abstractive-Assumptive World because this is the world inside our head (Korzybski called it our 'intensional world')that is most likely to be most disconnected from 'The Objective-(Noumenal) World In Itself'.... that can have a monumental effect on our lives if one of our 'assumptive disconnects' leads us spinning into chaos from a dangerous abstractive precipice...
Stepping inside and outside of different abstractive paradigms -- trying different ones on for 'size' and 'fitness' -- and often, even better, synthesizing and synergizing these different paradigms -- can often leave us 'more free' in terms of 'more conceptual flexibility' in our ongoing, personal, evolutionary development.
If one paradigm doesn't work well in one particular context -- say, a certain clinical case -- then, we can step out of the particular theory or paradigm by which we were trying to better understand the client's case history, and perhaps work inside a different paradigm, or perhaps even better still, a mixture of synergizing different paradigms...
At least that is the paradigm that I am presently working within...and will continue to develop....both philosophically and psychologically...
-- dgb, May 18th-22nd, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in process....
Monday, May 14, 2012
Upcoming DGB Papers...On The Top Of My Mind....As Of May 17th, 2012...
These 'papers-to-be' hold the greatest degree of interest for me in the near future....given the time and energy to write them...before they slip away from my main focus of interest....
1. Philosophical 'Constructions' and 'Counter-Constructions' On 'Consciousness' and 'The Self'....From Hume To Kierkegaard... (Part 2);
2. My First Seminar At The Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute -- and Some Ideas Spawned By The Presentation ('Under The Skin: Hate, The Superego, and The Body -- By Alessandra Lemma, DClin Psych);
3. A Critique of Freud's 1911 Paper: Two Principles of Mental Functioning;
4. A Critique of Freud's Definition of 'The Id' -- As Being 'The Structual Reservoir of The Instincts'; and As Being 'Solely Confined To The Unconscious';
5. Dread and Anguish: A Partial Transference Analysis of Soren Kierkegaard's Character Structure -- and Philosophy;
6. We Are All Serial Rejecters: Intimately Understanding The Psychoanalytic Concept of 'Identification With The Aggressor';
7. A Tribute To The 100th Anniversary of Freud's Remarkable Essay: 'Dynamics of The Transference' (1912) -- With Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP-DGB) Extensions;
8. On The Different Types of Dialectic Exchanges Between Our 'Superior Ego-States', Our 'Inferior Ego-States', Our 'Private-Shadow Ego' and Our 'Public-Personna-Ego' -- and Our 'Mediating, Negotiating, Conflict-Resolving, Central Ego';
9. Different Types of 'Childhood Ego-Traumacies' and Their Respective, Different Types of Introjected and Compensatory Defense-Mechanisms;
10. Traumacy-Transference Serial Fantasies and Serial Eroticism;
11. Lacan, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Korzybski...On Words, Concepts, Meaning, Knowledge, Power, Structuralism and Anti-Structuralism, Constructionism and Deconstructionism, Modernism and Post-Modernism;
12. The World (and Self) as Desire and Restraint, Impulse and Defense, Will and Counter-Will, Representation and Counter-Representation, Awareness and Non-Awareness, Consciousness and Non-Consciousness, Competition and Co-operation, Master and Slave, Contact and Avoidance, Narcissism and Altruism, Attachment and Detachment, Pleasure and Unpleasure, Testosterone and Estrogen, Yin and Yang, Life and Death....And The Synthesis and Synergy of All of These Dialectic Engaging BiPolarities....As Well as Endless Parade of More...
13. Attachment Theory and Detachment Theory, Gaze Theory and Non-Gaze Theory -- Post-Hegelian DGB Style -- In The Infant, The Child, and The Adult;
14. Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche -- and Attachment-Detachment, Gaze-Non-Gaze Theory;
15. Another Look At The GAP-DGB Model of The Personality And Its Most Recent Modifications and Revisions;
16. Introjection and Extrojection, Thesis, Anti-Thesis, Synthesis, Synergy: The Healing Humanistic-Existential, Multi-Dialectic, Pantheistic Spirit -- i.e., A GAP-DGB, Post-Hegelian 21st Century Phenomenology of Mind, Body, and Spirit.
-- dgb... May 17th, 2012....
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Creations Are Still Evolving...
Friday, May 11, 2012
Philosophical Underpinnings of Consciousness, The Self, The Dialectic Self, and The Multi-Dialectic Self: Hume to Kierkegaard to DGB Philsosophy-Psychology (Part 1)
Finished...May 14th, 2012...
Tonight, I am going to start to play rhetorical, philosophical ping pong with 'the bigwigs' -- 'the heavyweight philosophers' -- or at least some of them centered around the period of 'German Idealism' (late 1700s to early 1800s).
Let's start with Kant. Kant's famous distinction was between our 'phenomenal (subjective) world' and our 'noumenal (objective) world'. Within our phenomenal world are 'phenomena' which are designed to 'appear' as 'representations' of 'the things-in-themselves' that exist in our nomenal (objective) world.
Kant's famous epistemological dictum was that 'We can't (kant) know what exists in our noumenal (objective) world -- we can't know the things-in-themselves that exist in this world -- because it lies beyond the border of our senses -- it lies in, or exists in, a 'metaphysical world' that is beyond the capability of our senses to capture this (noumenal/objectiv) world -- and everything in it -- at least in a 'completely perfect' idealistic, epistemological sense.
Which brings us to the weakness in Kant's philosophy. Who says that we have to capture everything that exists, or captures our attention to, in our noumenal/objective world -- perfectly. Obviously, that will never happen which brings us to the point that there will always be a 'gap' between the sensory and/or conceptual constructions of our internal-subjective-phenomenal world and the noumenal/objective world that our phenomenal world is supposed to represent.
The question then becomes -- from a practical, functional, epistemological point of view -- how significant is the gap between our phenomenal representations and our objective-noumenal world? If we see a car coming, and we jump out of the way of it, out of harm's way, then our senses have done their 'functional, evolutionary job' -- i.e., in this case, kept us alive.
If our senses, had missed the 'existence' of the fast oncoming car -- the noumenal-objective car as well as its internal sensory representation, and we had been hit by the car, then our senses didn't do their evolutionary job, or our attention was occupied elsewhere and we weren't watching the road, and the potential danger on the road.
Thus, from a practical, functional point of view, we can distinguish between 'good enough structural-dynamic representation' or 'good enough epistemology' and 'not good enough epistemology' -- depending on the significance in the gap (error in structural-dynamic representation') between our subjective-phenomenal world and our objective-noumenal world. Functionality and survival have the last say in this matter.
Once the car smashes into our 'self-body', it becomes 'safe to assume' that our 'objective-noumenal world' and 'our subjective-phenomenal world' have collided in a way that is capable of putting us either into the hospital or the morgue.
We will backtrack in chronological history to Hume in a moment, but first let me make a 'trialectic distinction' as opposed to Kant's 'dialectic distinction of '(subjective) phenomenal' vs. '(objective) noumenal' world.
The trialectic or 'triangular' distinction that I wish to make here is between 1. our 'objective-noumenal-world; 2. our subjective-objective-sensory-empirical world; and 3. our 'subjective-generalized-abstractive-conceptual world'.
Now, almost all of the animal kingdom has superior senses to man in at least one dimension or another. Our senses are not the usual reason why man is usually 'on top of the food chain hierarchy' unless man uses some type of instrument like a 'telescope' or 'binoculars' to heighten his 'sensory capabilities and functions'.
Here are some of the main reasons why man is usually at the top of the animal hierarchy in terms of his/her evolutionary capabilities.
1. Man is a superior thinker to all other animals in the animal kingdom in such areas as: distinction/differentation, association, generalization, conceputal abstraction, theorizing, map-making, paradigm-making, symbolizing, language making and communicating, logic, cause and effect, creative imagination, synthesis...
2. Man is a tool and weapon-maker;
3. Man -- using a combinaton of written language and 'lessons learned from both the recent and the distant past' -- is a 'time-binder' over history;
4. Man usually uses a combination of his entangled 'competitive spirit' and his 'co-operative spirit' to his evolutionary advantage;
5. Man can be both a 'pack predator' and a 'pack protector' in whatever numbers are necessary.
Now, let's turn back the pages of history to David Hume.
Hume claimed that 'man had no self' -- a rather radical proclamation to say the least.
But you have to know what 'perspective' or 'paradigm' Hume was coming from...
Hume was an 'empiricist' -- usually a philosopher, psychologist, and/or scientist who believes essentially that the only 'knowledge' that is 'trustable' is the knowledge that comes in through our senses, and nothing more.
In this regard, Hume was probably the most radical, extreme empiricist in the history of western philosophy. Hume kept the 'paradigm' of empiricism within its strictest possible limits, and in doing so, he probably undermined what he was attempting to do in eliminating all sources and extensions of 'rationalism', 'abstractionism', 'generalization-making', and 'concept-making'. By the time Hume got finished with 'man', there was 'no man left' -- at least no 'abstracting, generalizing man' -- just a 'sensory watchdog' who had no business jumping to any type of interpretive conclusions whatsoever. By the time Hume finished with man, man was essentially 'mindless' because anything coming out of man's mind that was not 'sensory information' -- was essentially 'useless' or 'discarded' information.
So for Hume there was no 'God' which is fine -- there are many intelligent people, in the world, both past and present who are, or have been, 'atheists' or 'agnostics'. The logic being either: 1. atheism: 'I can't see God; therefore God does not exist.'; and 2. agnosticism: 'I can't see God; therefore I don't know if God exists or not.'
However, then Hume 'attacked' the concept of 'Self' or 'self' and concluded that 'man has no self' because 'the self' cannot be 'empirically seen' (except in its bodily form) -- beyond this, 'the self' is an essentially useless, abstractive, mythological concept or generalization -- just like 'God' is. Or so, that was Mr. Hume's line of reasoning. But as you can see, Mr. Hume was still 'reasoning' to support his own line of 'empirically airtight, rigid, abstraction, generalization, and concept-free, thinking'. But it's a 'generalization' even to say that 'man has no self'.
Man, according to Mr. Hume, is to be 'trained as a watchdog' -- and as soon as man attempts to be 'rational' or 'abstractive' or to 'turn an observation into a generalization or a concept' -- 'wack, across the hand with a ruler'. ('negative reinforcement' to support 'sensory awareness' with no 'justifiable abstractive conclusions' to follow behind any of our observations, or to follow 'any set of observations' that may point us to any kind of reasonable or unreasonable, 'generalizable consclusion'). Mr. Hume, according to his own line or paradigm of 'logical reasoning', had the only key left to 'logical reasoning' -- and that was 'never to attempt any type of logical reason' (except his 'own brand of sterile, suffocating, empiricism').....which 'left man with eyes as big as saucers -- and no 'mind-brain' behind these eye saucers'). Such was the 'lifeless, empirically airtight world' of David Hume. Smart guy. But took 'empiricism' just a little too far -- as Hegel would say -- 'to the point of its own self-destruction'. 'Empiricism' -- just like any and every other concept that man can think of -- has both a 'life instinct or force' and a 'death instinct or force' -- and David Hume took empiricism to the point where its 'death instinct' killed empiricism.
That was good because it was just another demonstration how 'dialectic, bipolar concepts' are usually 'functionally superior' to 'one-sided, unilateral theories and paradigms.
Thus, 'empiricism' eventually gave way to its much stronger, evolutionary 'offspring' -- the dialectic, bipolar concept of 'rational-empiricism' which took the strengths of 'empiricism' and balanced its 'weaknesses' with 'rationalism'. And at the same time, the new dialectic concept took the strengths of 'rationalism' and balanced the latter concept's weaknesses' with 'empiricism'. Voila! Dialectic conceptuology and paradigm-making once again 'wins out' over its 'one-sided' competition! The Enlightenment became stronger with the birth of rational-empiricism...and slowly, a general but distinct awareness of the logic behind 'dialectic reasoning' was starting to percolate and overflow -- in Idealistic Germany.
Which is what took us from Hume to Kant.
Now Kant 'kant' be generalized and idealized as the first 'dialectic thinker' although he started the ball rolling in this direction in 'Enlightenment influenced, Romanticism influenced, Idealistic late 18th century and early 19th century Germany'.
To be sure, we have had 'dialectic thinkers' in philosophy since the beginning of recorded philosophy -- Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse ('yin' vs. 'yang' and the need for 'dialectic balance between yin and yang')...
However, in Idealistic Germany, a greater conscious awareness of the benefits of 'dialectic thinking' was starting to surface. And this dialectic awareness started with Kant -- probably even the Romanticists before him who were trying to integrate man's 'rationalism' with his 'romanticism' -- an integrative process that Spinoza started almost a hundred and fifty years before the German Romanticists.
Now, two things need to be stated here. Firstly, Kant was not entirely free of 'Aristolean, Either/Or' thinking. Nor should any of us be. Because at times, we all need to make 'either/or choices'.
Aristotle's brand of 'either/or thinking' involved an either/or choice between 'supposedly black or white -- no gray -- classification categories'.
In contrast, Kierkegaard's brand of 'either/or thinking' was a 'choice between existential choices'....
There -- you see how it's done -- I just created a new 'either/or classification category' between 'Aristotlean either/or categorical thinking' and 'Kierkgaardian either/or existential thinking'. And a new 'either/or' classification category is created....
So along comes Kant -- having freshly read the provocative Mr. David Hume -- upon which Kant's classic philosophical treatise -- 'Critique of Pure Reason' (I think it should have been called 'Critique of Pure Empiricism') was based as a 'counter-thesis' or alternatively, a 'synthesis' between rationalism and empiricism....
And Professor Kant sets up this Aristolean, dualistic set of 'classification categories' between 'the world that appears to us' (our 'subjective-phenomenal world') and the world of 'things-in-themselves' (our 'noumenal world' or what today we would probably call our 'objective world' which lies 'outside' of our senses).
Now, in walks Professor Bain (that's me...just joking about the 'Professor' part but according to Freud every joke is a subliminary message from the 'phantasy world' of our unconscious id...)
And 'imaginary' Professor Bain proceeds to add two more 'categorical imperatives' to go with Kant's categorical dualism: 1. our objective (noumenal) world that lies beyond the realm of our senses; 2. our subjective-phenomenal-sensory-empirical world' that aims as best it can to 'capture' our objective-noumenal world; 3. our subjective-abstractive-conceptual world that aims to give more interpretive meaning to whatever came in through our empirical senses; and 4. our subjective-evaluative-judging-world of incoming stimulus from our objective-noumenal world-and/or-transference-cognitive-emotional-existential-behavioral choices'... (Breathe..)
Call this a part of our 'multi-dialectic plethora of worlds and paradigms' that we need to somehow functionally integrate or synthesize together in order that we can live in 'one wholistic, subjective-objective, humanistic-existential world that makes coherent, meaningful sense to us' -- or not.
-- dgb, May 11th-14th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
....................................................................................................................
Tonight, I am going to start to play rhetorical, philosophical ping pong with 'the bigwigs' -- 'the heavyweight philosophers' -- or at least some of them centered around the period of 'German Idealism' (late 1700s to early 1800s).
Let's start with Kant. Kant's famous distinction was between our 'phenomenal (subjective) world' and our 'noumenal (objective) world'. Within our phenomenal world are 'phenomena' which are designed to 'appear' as 'representations' of 'the things-in-themselves' that exist in our nomenal (objective) world.
Kant's famous epistemological dictum was that 'We can't (kant) know what exists in our noumenal (objective) world -- we can't know the things-in-themselves that exist in this world -- because it lies beyond the border of our senses -- it lies in, or exists in, a 'metaphysical world' that is beyond the capability of our senses to capture this (noumenal/objectiv) world -- and everything in it -- at least in a 'completely perfect' idealistic, epistemological sense.
Which brings us to the weakness in Kant's philosophy. Who says that we have to capture everything that exists, or captures our attention to, in our noumenal/objective world -- perfectly. Obviously, that will never happen which brings us to the point that there will always be a 'gap' between the sensory and/or conceptual constructions of our internal-subjective-phenomenal world and the noumenal/objective world that our phenomenal world is supposed to represent.
The question then becomes -- from a practical, functional, epistemological point of view -- how significant is the gap between our phenomenal representations and our objective-noumenal world? If we see a car coming, and we jump out of the way of it, out of harm's way, then our senses have done their 'functional, evolutionary job' -- i.e., in this case, kept us alive.
If our senses, had missed the 'existence' of the fast oncoming car -- the noumenal-objective car as well as its internal sensory representation, and we had been hit by the car, then our senses didn't do their evolutionary job, or our attention was occupied elsewhere and we weren't watching the road, and the potential danger on the road.
Thus, from a practical, functional point of view, we can distinguish between 'good enough structural-dynamic representation' or 'good enough epistemology' and 'not good enough epistemology' -- depending on the significance in the gap (error in structural-dynamic representation') between our subjective-phenomenal world and our objective-noumenal world. Functionality and survival have the last say in this matter.
Once the car smashes into our 'self-body', it becomes 'safe to assume' that our 'objective-noumenal world' and 'our subjective-phenomenal world' have collided in a way that is capable of putting us either into the hospital or the morgue.
We will backtrack in chronological history to Hume in a moment, but first let me make a 'trialectic distinction' as opposed to Kant's 'dialectic distinction of '(subjective) phenomenal' vs. '(objective) noumenal' world.
The trialectic or 'triangular' distinction that I wish to make here is between 1. our 'objective-noumenal-world; 2. our subjective-objective-sensory-empirical world; and 3. our 'subjective-generalized-abstractive-conceptual world'.
Now, almost all of the animal kingdom has superior senses to man in at least one dimension or another. Our senses are not the usual reason why man is usually 'on top of the food chain hierarchy' unless man uses some type of instrument like a 'telescope' or 'binoculars' to heighten his 'sensory capabilities and functions'.
Here are some of the main reasons why man is usually at the top of the animal hierarchy in terms of his/her evolutionary capabilities.
1. Man is a superior thinker to all other animals in the animal kingdom in such areas as: distinction/differentation, association, generalization, conceputal abstraction, theorizing, map-making, paradigm-making, symbolizing, language making and communicating, logic, cause and effect, creative imagination, synthesis...
2. Man is a tool and weapon-maker;
3. Man -- using a combinaton of written language and 'lessons learned from both the recent and the distant past' -- is a 'time-binder' over history;
4. Man usually uses a combination of his entangled 'competitive spirit' and his 'co-operative spirit' to his evolutionary advantage;
5. Man can be both a 'pack predator' and a 'pack protector' in whatever numbers are necessary.
Now, let's turn back the pages of history to David Hume.
Hume claimed that 'man had no self' -- a rather radical proclamation to say the least.
But you have to know what 'perspective' or 'paradigm' Hume was coming from...
Hume was an 'empiricist' -- usually a philosopher, psychologist, and/or scientist who believes essentially that the only 'knowledge' that is 'trustable' is the knowledge that comes in through our senses, and nothing more.
In this regard, Hume was probably the most radical, extreme empiricist in the history of western philosophy. Hume kept the 'paradigm' of empiricism within its strictest possible limits, and in doing so, he probably undermined what he was attempting to do in eliminating all sources and extensions of 'rationalism', 'abstractionism', 'generalization-making', and 'concept-making'. By the time Hume got finished with 'man', there was 'no man left' -- at least no 'abstracting, generalizing man' -- just a 'sensory watchdog' who had no business jumping to any type of interpretive conclusions whatsoever. By the time Hume finished with man, man was essentially 'mindless' because anything coming out of man's mind that was not 'sensory information' -- was essentially 'useless' or 'discarded' information.
So for Hume there was no 'God' which is fine -- there are many intelligent people, in the world, both past and present who are, or have been, 'atheists' or 'agnostics'. The logic being either: 1. atheism: 'I can't see God; therefore God does not exist.'; and 2. agnosticism: 'I can't see God; therefore I don't know if God exists or not.'
However, then Hume 'attacked' the concept of 'Self' or 'self' and concluded that 'man has no self' because 'the self' cannot be 'empirically seen' (except in its bodily form) -- beyond this, 'the self' is an essentially useless, abstractive, mythological concept or generalization -- just like 'God' is. Or so, that was Mr. Hume's line of reasoning. But as you can see, Mr. Hume was still 'reasoning' to support his own line of 'empirically airtight, rigid, abstraction, generalization, and concept-free, thinking'. But it's a 'generalization' even to say that 'man has no self'.
Man, according to Mr. Hume, is to be 'trained as a watchdog' -- and as soon as man attempts to be 'rational' or 'abstractive' or to 'turn an observation into a generalization or a concept' -- 'wack, across the hand with a ruler'. ('negative reinforcement' to support 'sensory awareness' with no 'justifiable abstractive conclusions' to follow behind any of our observations, or to follow 'any set of observations' that may point us to any kind of reasonable or unreasonable, 'generalizable consclusion'). Mr. Hume, according to his own line or paradigm of 'logical reasoning', had the only key left to 'logical reasoning' -- and that was 'never to attempt any type of logical reason' (except his 'own brand of sterile, suffocating, empiricism').....which 'left man with eyes as big as saucers -- and no 'mind-brain' behind these eye saucers'). Such was the 'lifeless, empirically airtight world' of David Hume. Smart guy. But took 'empiricism' just a little too far -- as Hegel would say -- 'to the point of its own self-destruction'. 'Empiricism' -- just like any and every other concept that man can think of -- has both a 'life instinct or force' and a 'death instinct or force' -- and David Hume took empiricism to the point where its 'death instinct' killed empiricism.
That was good because it was just another demonstration how 'dialectic, bipolar concepts' are usually 'functionally superior' to 'one-sided, unilateral theories and paradigms.
Thus, 'empiricism' eventually gave way to its much stronger, evolutionary 'offspring' -- the dialectic, bipolar concept of 'rational-empiricism' which took the strengths of 'empiricism' and balanced its 'weaknesses' with 'rationalism'. And at the same time, the new dialectic concept took the strengths of 'rationalism' and balanced the latter concept's weaknesses' with 'empiricism'. Voila! Dialectic conceptuology and paradigm-making once again 'wins out' over its 'one-sided' competition! The Enlightenment became stronger with the birth of rational-empiricism...and slowly, a general but distinct awareness of the logic behind 'dialectic reasoning' was starting to percolate and overflow -- in Idealistic Germany.
Which is what took us from Hume to Kant.
Now Kant 'kant' be generalized and idealized as the first 'dialectic thinker' although he started the ball rolling in this direction in 'Enlightenment influenced, Romanticism influenced, Idealistic late 18th century and early 19th century Germany'.
To be sure, we have had 'dialectic thinkers' in philosophy since the beginning of recorded philosophy -- Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse ('yin' vs. 'yang' and the need for 'dialectic balance between yin and yang')...
However, in Idealistic Germany, a greater conscious awareness of the benefits of 'dialectic thinking' was starting to surface. And this dialectic awareness started with Kant -- probably even the Romanticists before him who were trying to integrate man's 'rationalism' with his 'romanticism' -- an integrative process that Spinoza started almost a hundred and fifty years before the German Romanticists.
Now, two things need to be stated here. Firstly, Kant was not entirely free of 'Aristolean, Either/Or' thinking. Nor should any of us be. Because at times, we all need to make 'either/or choices'.
Aristotle's brand of 'either/or thinking' involved an either/or choice between 'supposedly black or white -- no gray -- classification categories'.
In contrast, Kierkegaard's brand of 'either/or thinking' was a 'choice between existential choices'....
There -- you see how it's done -- I just created a new 'either/or classification category' between 'Aristotlean either/or categorical thinking' and 'Kierkgaardian either/or existential thinking'. And a new 'either/or' classification category is created....
So along comes Kant -- having freshly read the provocative Mr. David Hume -- upon which Kant's classic philosophical treatise -- 'Critique of Pure Reason' (I think it should have been called 'Critique of Pure Empiricism') was based as a 'counter-thesis' or alternatively, a 'synthesis' between rationalism and empiricism....
And Professor Kant sets up this Aristolean, dualistic set of 'classification categories' between 'the world that appears to us' (our 'subjective-phenomenal world') and the world of 'things-in-themselves' (our 'noumenal world' or what today we would probably call our 'objective world' which lies 'outside' of our senses).
Now, in walks Professor Bain (that's me...just joking about the 'Professor' part but according to Freud every joke is a subliminary message from the 'phantasy world' of our unconscious id...)
And 'imaginary' Professor Bain proceeds to add two more 'categorical imperatives' to go with Kant's categorical dualism: 1. our objective (noumenal) world that lies beyond the realm of our senses; 2. our subjective-phenomenal-sensory-empirical world' that aims as best it can to 'capture' our objective-noumenal world; 3. our subjective-abstractive-conceptual world that aims to give more interpretive meaning to whatever came in through our empirical senses; and 4. our subjective-evaluative-judging-world of incoming stimulus from our objective-noumenal world-and/or-transference-cognitive-emotional-existential-behavioral choices'... (Breathe..)
Call this a part of our 'multi-dialectic plethora of worlds and paradigms' that we need to somehow functionally integrate or synthesize together in order that we can live in 'one wholistic, subjective-objective, humanistic-existential world that makes coherent, meaningful sense to us' -- or not.
-- dgb, May 11th-14th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
....................................................................................................................
Newest Full Table of Contents For Hegel's Hotel
Hegel's Hotel: A Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit For The 21st Century
Floor 1: Introductory Essays For A New, Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy-Psychology;
Floor 2: More Introductory Essays on The Application of MDHE Logic, Negotiation, and Creative-Integrative Thinking (Paradigm Switching and Synergizing);
Floor 3: DGB-GAP Philosophy-Psychology: Anaxamander, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Janet, Freud, Adler, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Berne, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Perls...Synthesized and Synergized...
Floor 4: Ancient Greek Mythology and Philosophy;
Floor 5: Ancient Eastern Philosophy;
Floor 6: Ancient Roman Mythology and Philosophy;
Floor 7: Scholistic (Medieval, Religious) Philosophy;
Floor 8: Early Scientific Philosophy
Floor 9: Spinoza -- Rationalism, Early Romanticism, and Pantheism;
Floor 10: British Empiricism (Locke to Hume);
Floor 11: The Enlightenment and The Birth of Capitalism (Diderot, Adam Smith...);
Floor 12: Europeon Romanticism (Rousseau, Goethe...);
Floor 14: German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling...);
Floor 15: Hegel;
Floor 16: Marx's Dialectic Critique of Capitalism and The Rise of Eastern Socialist-Communism;
Floor 17: Schopenhauer: The Narcissism and Brutality of Man;
Floor 18: Kierkegaard: 'Either/Or', 'Fear and Trembling', Dread, Despair, Freedom...
Floor 19: Nietzsche: 'Anti-Chritianity' and The Rise of 'The Superman';
Floor 20: Freud and Psychoanalysis;
Floor 21: The Rise of Existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Kafka...)
Floor 22: Language-Semantics-Cogntive-Health Philosophy: Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Hayakawa;
Floor 23: Post-Hegelian Philosophy: Foucault and Derrida (Power and Deconstruction);
Floor 24: Ayn Rand: Objectivism and Capitalism;
Floor 25: Erich Fromm: 'Escape From Freedom', 'Man For Himself', Humanistic Socialism, and 'The Sane Society';
Floor 26: Maxwell Maltz and Nathaniel Branden: 'Psycho-Cybernetics' and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem';
Floor 27: Cognitive Actitivies and Non-Activities -- Good and Bad -- of 'The Central Ego';
Floor 28: Applications For a 21st Century Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit;
Floor 29: American Politics, Free Trade, Lobbyism, and Global Capitalism;
Floor 30: Canadian Politics, Free Trade, Lobbyism, and Global Capitalism;
Floor 31: Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Ethical Capitalism;
Floor 32: Feminine Rights, Masculine Rights, and The Humanistic-Existential Dialectic-Democratic Balance of Equal Rights;
Floor 33: A Tribute To My Father's 21 Century, Canadian Romantic Poetry;
Floor 34: Final Essays: Summing Up....
Floor 35: Most Recent Essays....
-- dgb, May 11th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Floor 1: Introductory Essays For A New, Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy-Psychology;
Floor 2: More Introductory Essays on The Application of MDHE Logic, Negotiation, and Creative-Integrative Thinking (Paradigm Switching and Synergizing);
Floor 3: DGB-GAP Philosophy-Psychology: Anaxamander, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Janet, Freud, Adler, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Berne, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Perls...Synthesized and Synergized...
Floor 4: Ancient Greek Mythology and Philosophy;
Floor 5: Ancient Eastern Philosophy;
Floor 6: Ancient Roman Mythology and Philosophy;
Floor 7: Scholistic (Medieval, Religious) Philosophy;
Floor 8: Early Scientific Philosophy
Floor 9: Spinoza -- Rationalism, Early Romanticism, and Pantheism;
Floor 10: British Empiricism (Locke to Hume);
Floor 11: The Enlightenment and The Birth of Capitalism (Diderot, Adam Smith...);
Floor 12: Europeon Romanticism (Rousseau, Goethe...);
Floor 14: German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling...);
Floor 15: Hegel;
Floor 16: Marx's Dialectic Critique of Capitalism and The Rise of Eastern Socialist-Communism;
Floor 17: Schopenhauer: The Narcissism and Brutality of Man;
Floor 18: Kierkegaard: 'Either/Or', 'Fear and Trembling', Dread, Despair, Freedom...
Floor 19: Nietzsche: 'Anti-Chritianity' and The Rise of 'The Superman';
Floor 20: Freud and Psychoanalysis;
Floor 21: The Rise of Existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Kafka...)
Floor 22: Language-Semantics-Cogntive-Health Philosophy: Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Hayakawa;
Floor 23: Post-Hegelian Philosophy: Foucault and Derrida (Power and Deconstruction);
Floor 24: Ayn Rand: Objectivism and Capitalism;
Floor 25: Erich Fromm: 'Escape From Freedom', 'Man For Himself', Humanistic Socialism, and 'The Sane Society';
Floor 26: Maxwell Maltz and Nathaniel Branden: 'Psycho-Cybernetics' and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem';
Floor 27: Cognitive Actitivies and Non-Activities -- Good and Bad -- of 'The Central Ego';
Floor 28: Applications For a 21st Century Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit;
Floor 29: American Politics, Free Trade, Lobbyism, and Global Capitalism;
Floor 30: Canadian Politics, Free Trade, Lobbyism, and Global Capitalism;
Floor 31: Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Ethical Capitalism;
Floor 32: Feminine Rights, Masculine Rights, and The Humanistic-Existential Dialectic-Democratic Balance of Equal Rights;
Floor 33: A Tribute To My Father's 21 Century, Canadian Romantic Poetry;
Floor 34: Final Essays: Summing Up....
Floor 35: Most Recent Essays....
-- dgb, May 11th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Sunday, May 6, 2012
DGB Philosophy vs. Kierkegaardian Philosophy: On The Spirit and The Self
Finished....Sunday May 6th, 2012...dgb
I feel myself entangled in a part of Kierkegaard's spirit -- one of his more morbid ones. Consequently, the perceived need to write this essay and to differentiate the area or areas where I feel common philosophical and/or existential ground with Kierkegaard vs. our areas of philosophical -- and consequently psychological -- difference.
Now, I could write for a week or a month on Kierkegaard's various philosophical perspective -- indeed, I already partly have. The 'God, Abraham, and Isaac parable' has intrigued me for quite a while, I have written previous essays on it, and no doubt I shall return to it at least one more time in the future. A new essay in this regard has already formulated in my mind.
One idea of interest that has captured the focus of my attention recently is the idea of 'triangulation'.
Triangulation can be 'the servant' of either our 'life' or 'death instinct (impulse, wish, force). It can be either a 'predatory' force or it can be a 'self-healing, spiritual' force' -- it all depends on what forces are 'triangulating'.
For example, in the 'God, Abraham, and Isaac parable', we can view a particular 'triangulation of forces' playing themselves out where one force was obviously 'dominant' (God), and the other two forces playing out the 'dichotomy or bipolarity of 'subservience' vs. 'rebellion' with subservience winning until God finally 'relented' and stopped what would have otherwise been a very 'savage, uncivil, immoral -- unGodly act'.... Would Jesus Christ have even thought of instigating such an unGodly act -- the slaying and sacrificing of Isaac? I think the answer is clearly 'no'. Which sets up a 'bipolarity that we need to understand better between 'God' -- the 'alpha male' -- and 'Jesus Christ' -- the 'all-loving, healing, more feminine-like male'. A kind of 'yin' and 'yang' (mythological) phenomenon going on between Jesus Christ and God... It's funny....we all can look back at Ancient Greece and view 'Zeus' and 'Apollo' and 'Dionysus' and 'Narcissus' and 'Ares' and 'Aphrodite' all as different 'mythological gods' ...and the same goes for Roman mythology....and yet millions of people today cannot fathom the idea of viewing their own religion as 'a present-day mythological paradigm, created by man, and projected by man, from the inner workings of his deepest psyche to the contents and the 'mythological figures' of the particular religion... And quite frankly, that can get pretty scary -- actually probably equally scary when you start to see the powers of Wall Street and the powers of The Church both converge in their own separate ways into the way politicians think (or profess to think) -- at least partly, if not more than partly -- to 'please' their 'monetary' campaign 'beneficieries'. As an aside here, didn't Obama campaign that he was going to stand up against 'monetary, special interest, lobbyist groups'?
Probably won't happen in a million years unless or until the voting public demands that politicians address the problem of 'all special interest groups that donate money -- and expect something back for their contributions. In the taxi business, we used to call that 'feeding'. Or worded otherwise, collusion on the foundation of 'kickbacks'.
Ahe death of ethics in poitics and business...in the spirit of human greed and narcissism....Something I can at least give the Church the credit for at least partly doing ethical and altruistic battle against...
I got partly waylaid by religion and politics above but much of it comes together like a jig-saw puzzle.
This essay was partly 'inspired' -- in a partly negative, Schopenhauerian sense -- by a television program that I have been watching the last two days on 'apex predators' and 'pack predators'. From which arose partly the idea of 'triangulation' -- or at least the 'death instinct' side of triangulation.
A great white shark 'triangulates' its intended prey.
World War 11 fighter pilots used to 'triangulate' their intended targets.
We have two sets of eyes and ears in order to 'triangulate'.
I said that I was going to take this down a partly morbid, Kierkgaardian path...
Before we talk about our Phoenix rising from the ashes....(another mythological parable which does not mean that it doesn't have something intensely meaningful to say to us....depending on how we interpret the parable...
'Predatory pack hunters.'
Wolves, lions, dingos, painted dogs, hyenas, even chimpanzees...
Chimpanzees -- they share 98 percent of our human DNA...
For those of us who are old enough, we think of the chimpanzee from the old Tarzan movies....Or we think of chimpanzees as largely if not wholly 'vegetarian'....
They're not. They are serious, predatory pack hunters -- surrounding smaller monkeys in the trees, and bringing them down...
It's hard to view this and not to think about soldiers marching off to war...some police getting out of control in the handling of protesters...urban street gangs...bully gangs -- both boy and girl gangs -- at school taking down a solitary child...
And this brings me to the point of this essay...
Kierkegaard begins the book 'The Sickness Unto Death' (1849) with the series of lines:
'Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the Self. But what is the Self? The Self is a relation which relates itself to its own Self...' (Donald Palmer, Kierkegaard For Beginners, 1996, p. 65)
And I have to stop Kierkegaard right there before he goes any further.
Because Kierkegaard asked the wrong first question.
Where Kierkegaard asks the initial question, 'What is Spirit'?, I ask the counter question: What Spirit? Our Apollonian Spirit for law and order and justice? Our Dionysian Spirit? Our Narcissistic Spirit for Greed? Our Jesus Christ, Altruistic Spirit? Our 'Enlightenment, Democratic Spirit'? Our 'Our Aphroditian or Rousseauian or Goethean, Romantic Spirit'? Our Ares Spirit for War? Our sadistic spirit for cruelty and the desire for causing pain? Our 'predatory pack hunter' spirit? Our 'authoritarian spirit'? Our 'submissive' spirit?
When we look at man's Self....and man's Spirit...the first thing that we have to acknowledge is how deeply divided and conflicted this 'Spirit' can be...We are not talking about just 'One Spirit' -- although usually when we talk about man, we talk about the 'best of man's spirit', not the worst...We talk about man's 'religious spirit' or 'Christian Spirit' or 'Altruistic Spirit' or 'Democratic Spirit' or 'Egalitarian Spirit'....We don't talk about man's 'spirit for power, greed, revenge, cruelty...and even potential death wishes...whether child or adult, aimed at another, or aimed at ourselves....We don't talk about our 'Schoepenhaurean, 'Lord of The Flies', Spirit'....
And here we come back to Kierkegaard and 'The Sickness Unto Death'...
And to the idea of 'self-triangulation'...
For man is the only animal to my knowledge that can 'bury himself in self-condemnation and self-hatred'....And that process occurs -- ironically and paradoxically -- in the same 'mode of operation' as 'self-psychotherapy' and 'spiritual healing' -- through the process of self-triangulation...
I cannot help but visualize the scene I witnessed on tv tonight with a pride of lions taking down an elephant -- surrounding and jumping on it from all sides -- without envisioning the same type of scene, metaphorically speaking, happening inside the human psyche when 'Our Central Ego' is triangulated and taken down from all sides by a harshly cruel and righteously rejecting 'Superego', and by one, two, or all three of our 'Underdog egos' or 'Underegos' -- our Righteous, Rejecting Underego, our Narcissistic-Hedonististic Underego, and even our Co-operative-Compliant Underego -- our Central Ego -- and with it our Wholistic Self -- becomes ravaged and eaten alive like by a pride of hungry lions...this, in my opinion, is what makes up Kierkegaard's 'Sickness Unto Death'...
We plunge into an existential abyss....
Can we rise from the abyss? Can we rise from the ashes...like The Phoenix...
There is only one way to go about this...
We need a more encouraging, caring Internal Support System...'A United, Forward-Moving, Internal Parliament or Senate'...that surrounds our Central Ego...not a 'psyche full of hungry, predatory lions'....
In order to bring back the confidence and self-esteem...
Of our previously self-triangulated, eaten alive, Central Ego...
To bring us back from our 'Sickness Unto Death'...
-- dgb, May 6th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain....
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations, Integrations, and New Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
I feel myself entangled in a part of Kierkegaard's spirit -- one of his more morbid ones. Consequently, the perceived need to write this essay and to differentiate the area or areas where I feel common philosophical and/or existential ground with Kierkegaard vs. our areas of philosophical -- and consequently psychological -- difference.
Now, I could write for a week or a month on Kierkegaard's various philosophical perspective -- indeed, I already partly have. The 'God, Abraham, and Isaac parable' has intrigued me for quite a while, I have written previous essays on it, and no doubt I shall return to it at least one more time in the future. A new essay in this regard has already formulated in my mind.
One idea of interest that has captured the focus of my attention recently is the idea of 'triangulation'.
Triangulation can be 'the servant' of either our 'life' or 'death instinct (impulse, wish, force). It can be either a 'predatory' force or it can be a 'self-healing, spiritual' force' -- it all depends on what forces are 'triangulating'.
For example, in the 'God, Abraham, and Isaac parable', we can view a particular 'triangulation of forces' playing themselves out where one force was obviously 'dominant' (God), and the other two forces playing out the 'dichotomy or bipolarity of 'subservience' vs. 'rebellion' with subservience winning until God finally 'relented' and stopped what would have otherwise been a very 'savage, uncivil, immoral -- unGodly act'.... Would Jesus Christ have even thought of instigating such an unGodly act -- the slaying and sacrificing of Isaac? I think the answer is clearly 'no'. Which sets up a 'bipolarity that we need to understand better between 'God' -- the 'alpha male' -- and 'Jesus Christ' -- the 'all-loving, healing, more feminine-like male'. A kind of 'yin' and 'yang' (mythological) phenomenon going on between Jesus Christ and God... It's funny....we all can look back at Ancient Greece and view 'Zeus' and 'Apollo' and 'Dionysus' and 'Narcissus' and 'Ares' and 'Aphrodite' all as different 'mythological gods' ...and the same goes for Roman mythology....and yet millions of people today cannot fathom the idea of viewing their own religion as 'a present-day mythological paradigm, created by man, and projected by man, from the inner workings of his deepest psyche to the contents and the 'mythological figures' of the particular religion... And quite frankly, that can get pretty scary -- actually probably equally scary when you start to see the powers of Wall Street and the powers of The Church both converge in their own separate ways into the way politicians think (or profess to think) -- at least partly, if not more than partly -- to 'please' their 'monetary' campaign 'beneficieries'. As an aside here, didn't Obama campaign that he was going to stand up against 'monetary, special interest, lobbyist groups'?
Probably won't happen in a million years unless or until the voting public demands that politicians address the problem of 'all special interest groups that donate money -- and expect something back for their contributions. In the taxi business, we used to call that 'feeding'. Or worded otherwise, collusion on the foundation of 'kickbacks'.
Ahe death of ethics in poitics and business...in the spirit of human greed and narcissism....Something I can at least give the Church the credit for at least partly doing ethical and altruistic battle against...
I got partly waylaid by religion and politics above but much of it comes together like a jig-saw puzzle.
This essay was partly 'inspired' -- in a partly negative, Schopenhauerian sense -- by a television program that I have been watching the last two days on 'apex predators' and 'pack predators'. From which arose partly the idea of 'triangulation' -- or at least the 'death instinct' side of triangulation.
A great white shark 'triangulates' its intended prey.
World War 11 fighter pilots used to 'triangulate' their intended targets.
We have two sets of eyes and ears in order to 'triangulate'.
I said that I was going to take this down a partly morbid, Kierkgaardian path...
Before we talk about our Phoenix rising from the ashes....(another mythological parable which does not mean that it doesn't have something intensely meaningful to say to us....depending on how we interpret the parable...
'Predatory pack hunters.'
Wolves, lions, dingos, painted dogs, hyenas, even chimpanzees...
Chimpanzees -- they share 98 percent of our human DNA...
For those of us who are old enough, we think of the chimpanzee from the old Tarzan movies....Or we think of chimpanzees as largely if not wholly 'vegetarian'....
They're not. They are serious, predatory pack hunters -- surrounding smaller monkeys in the trees, and bringing them down...
It's hard to view this and not to think about soldiers marching off to war...some police getting out of control in the handling of protesters...urban street gangs...bully gangs -- both boy and girl gangs -- at school taking down a solitary child...
And this brings me to the point of this essay...
Kierkegaard begins the book 'The Sickness Unto Death' (1849) with the series of lines:
'Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the Self. But what is the Self? The Self is a relation which relates itself to its own Self...' (Donald Palmer, Kierkegaard For Beginners, 1996, p. 65)
And I have to stop Kierkegaard right there before he goes any further.
Because Kierkegaard asked the wrong first question.
Where Kierkegaard asks the initial question, 'What is Spirit'?, I ask the counter question: What Spirit? Our Apollonian Spirit for law and order and justice? Our Dionysian Spirit? Our Narcissistic Spirit for Greed? Our Jesus Christ, Altruistic Spirit? Our 'Enlightenment, Democratic Spirit'? Our 'Our Aphroditian or Rousseauian or Goethean, Romantic Spirit'? Our Ares Spirit for War? Our sadistic spirit for cruelty and the desire for causing pain? Our 'predatory pack hunter' spirit? Our 'authoritarian spirit'? Our 'submissive' spirit?
When we look at man's Self....and man's Spirit...the first thing that we have to acknowledge is how deeply divided and conflicted this 'Spirit' can be...We are not talking about just 'One Spirit' -- although usually when we talk about man, we talk about the 'best of man's spirit', not the worst...We talk about man's 'religious spirit' or 'Christian Spirit' or 'Altruistic Spirit' or 'Democratic Spirit' or 'Egalitarian Spirit'....We don't talk about man's 'spirit for power, greed, revenge, cruelty...and even potential death wishes...whether child or adult, aimed at another, or aimed at ourselves....We don't talk about our 'Schoepenhaurean, 'Lord of The Flies', Spirit'....
And here we come back to Kierkegaard and 'The Sickness Unto Death'...
And to the idea of 'self-triangulation'...
For man is the only animal to my knowledge that can 'bury himself in self-condemnation and self-hatred'....And that process occurs -- ironically and paradoxically -- in the same 'mode of operation' as 'self-psychotherapy' and 'spiritual healing' -- through the process of self-triangulation...
I cannot help but visualize the scene I witnessed on tv tonight with a pride of lions taking down an elephant -- surrounding and jumping on it from all sides -- without envisioning the same type of scene, metaphorically speaking, happening inside the human psyche when 'Our Central Ego' is triangulated and taken down from all sides by a harshly cruel and righteously rejecting 'Superego', and by one, two, or all three of our 'Underdog egos' or 'Underegos' -- our Righteous, Rejecting Underego, our Narcissistic-Hedonististic Underego, and even our Co-operative-Compliant Underego -- our Central Ego -- and with it our Wholistic Self -- becomes ravaged and eaten alive like by a pride of hungry lions...this, in my opinion, is what makes up Kierkegaard's 'Sickness Unto Death'...
We plunge into an existential abyss....
Can we rise from the abyss? Can we rise from the ashes...like The Phoenix...
There is only one way to go about this...
We need a more encouraging, caring Internal Support System...'A United, Forward-Moving, Internal Parliament or Senate'...that surrounds our Central Ego...not a 'psyche full of hungry, predatory lions'....
In order to bring back the confidence and self-esteem...
Of our previously self-triangulated, eaten alive, Central Ego...
To bring us back from our 'Sickness Unto Death'...
-- dgb, May 6th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain....
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations, Integrations, and New Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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