Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Biology, Psychoanalysis, and Daoism: Sexual Energy, Id Energy, and Qi Energy

June 26th, 27th, 2015

Finished!


I am going to do a little 'time-traveling' in this essay. Sometimes the most important ideas in human philosophy are the ones that go the furthest back in human history. In this regard, the idea of 'bipolarity' goes back about as far in human philosophy as recorded human philosophy goes. 

For good reason. Look around you and the phenomenon of polarity or bipolarity can be found almost anywhere you look. Male and female. Old and young. Or old and new. Big and small. Alive and dead. Left and right. Conservative and Liberal. Up and down. Air and earth. Fire and Water...

On and on we could go both with these 'polar phenomena' in themselves, and with the words that I use to represent them -- words generally being used to 'represent' the phenomena that we 'see' or 'infer' or 'value' in the world we live in, in the same sense that a 'map' is used to 'structurally represent' the 'real territory' that this map is supposed to (but sometimes doesn't accurately) represent. (Koryzybski, General Semantics). 

Now I view Korzybski's work (Science and Sanity) in the 1930s as being some of the best work on Language, Meaning, Philosophy, and Psychology that Western history has ever seen. Korzybski's work overlaps with Wittgenstein's philosophy/epistemology, the latter of whom wrote about some of the same core ideas as Korzybski relative to 'accurate representation' (you could probably put Bertrand Russell in that group as well) but not in the same kind of drawn out 'treatise-like detail (General Semantics) that Korzybski did. Stretching back further into history than these three philosopher-epistemologists was Kant who basically claimed that we 'kant know anything' -- a rather provocative, controversial statement when Kant finally finished writing 'The Critique of Pure Reason'.

Based on epistemological scepticism of an only slightly lesser degree than his predecessor, David Hume -- the ultimate empiricist who said 'if you can't see it, don't believe it -- Kant posited a 'sensory-perceptual-conceptual-theoretical bubble'  between man's 'intake' of 'knowledge' (the 'phenomenal' world) and the world of 'things-in-themselves' (the 'noumenal world) which man could never truly 'know' without 'perceptual-conceptual distortion'. 

From this rather 'distressing' idea of Kant's (at least to some), and the fact that I like to think in terms of metaphors and symbolism and mythologies as well as 'juxtaposing bipolar ideas' together in rather odd, unorthodox, 'post- Hegelian dialectic ways' -- comes my own bipolar dialectic concepts of 'fictional facts' or 'factual fictions' or 'functional mythologies' of which this developing work here is likely going to be full of them. 

I like to develop functional clinical metaphors and mythologies -- which involve comparisons between different realms of human study such as between biology, mythology, cosmology, philosophy, psychology, spirituality -- with psychoanalysis being at the centre of this comparative, associative universe -- where, for example, biology, psychology, and bio-psychology can be viewed as involving the 'introjection' of certain mythological-spiritual and philosophical schools of thought (Greek Mythology, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao tse, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski...) and conversely -- and dialectically -- human mythology-spirituality, and philosophy can be viewed as involving the 'projection' of man's inner biology and 'bio-psychology'.

It is upon this idea, this assumption that I started building my 'multi-bipolar model of the human psyche' with Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Korzybski, and Cannon providing much of the unconscious, bio-psychological base of this model. Specifically, as Anaximander was postulating a universe that started with 'Chaos' or 'The Apeiron', so too, I was postulating an 'internal bio-psychology' that started with an 'internal Abyss' and a 'Chaotic-Disorganized-Mystifying-Needful-Driving-Passionate Dionysian Id-Ego' (Freud's Id) which starts to evolve and develop with a combination of internal 'God-Nature-Genetic-Given-Capabilities-or-Gifts' and the onset/onslaught of 'life experiences' of a new-born baby being 'evicted' from the womb -- and thrown out into an 'Abyss' of 'Chaos'. 

Here -- unlike Freud, but more like Lacan -- I postulate a more 'organized and organizing, associating, differentiating, classifying, bipolarizing Apollonian Id-Ego'. Family and culture start to play a bigger and bigger influence on the evolving development of the 'id-ego' as from a more 'uncivilized state' it moves -- in most cases -- to a more and more 'civilized-id-restraining state of consciousness.

As our more 'uncivilized' and 'civilized' id-ego states clash with each other -- much like hundreds or thousands or millions of bipolar phenomena clash with each other in different ways -- for dominance in a way that is beautifully described by Anaximander back somewhere before 550 BC in his 'chaos-bipolarity-conflict' theory that nets a 'winning, dominant' polarity' and a 'losing, submissive polarity' -- the first taking over 'the limelight' of cosmic existence, the second being relegated to 'the shadows' of cosmic existence -- and what Anaximander was describing philosophically in this manner, I am describing as a 'factual fiction' inside our human body, mind, and 'bio-psychology'.

In this regard, extrapolating from Anaximander's ancient philosophy, I time-travel again and borrow from Jung when Jung says that what is dominant in our conscious mind (the limelight) tends to be submissive in our unconscious mind (the shadows), and what is dominant in our unconscious mind (the shadows) tends to be submissive in our conscious mind (the limelight). 

Thus, in this respect, our subconscious or unconscious mind tends to both support and compensate for the 'gaps' in our often 'one-sided', conscious mind. In other words, the human mind -- and body -- is built -- created -- on what might be called 'dialectic-bipolar evolutionary growth'.

Now, it is this dialectic-bipolar-evolutionary-growth principle that is the fundamental principle of Anaximander's brilliant 'Chaotic-Bipolar-Conflict-and-Evolution' philosophical theory from sometime before 550 BC that stretches and time-travels (as well as distance-travels but we will get to this shortly) all the way to Hegel's classic philosophical work -- arguably the most important philosophical treatise and grand narrative in Western human history -- 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1806?) -- that I now 'introject bio-psychologically into the 'essence of the human soul' that becomes the most important component of the humanistic-existential-psychoanalytic-spiritual-pantheistic model that I am trying to communicate to you -- or with you.

It is this model that I call 'Hegel's Hotel' which can be viewed as a metaphor that we can either 'project externally into a philosophy and/or even build as an architectural philosophy-psychology-spiritual institute, and/or alternatively it can be 'introjected' into a 'model of the personality' that is meant to describe in a 'mindful way, the splitting or dividing up of the inside of our mind in such a fashion that, once we learn this model, can allow us to follow our cognitive-emotional activities into whatever 'ego-state' or 'ego-position' that these activities may take us (as classified by the model which can be viewed as a 'fictional-factual-spiritual-mythology').
Still with me? We have already done a lot of time-traveling. I have a few more places that I would like to go such as firstly -- Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy'.

This fabulous little book -- Nietzsche's first work that was a brilliant extrapolation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit but shortly afterwards rejected by Nietzsche himself as being 'too Hegelian' -- adds another dichotomous, paradoxical, bipolar element to 'Hegel's Hotel'. 
Nietzsche's thesis in this important but largely overlooked philosophical work, adds a 'tragic' element to Hegel's dialectic philosophy that harks back also to Anaximander's philosophy of 'clashing, warring opposites' -- and that is that what can 'lead us to spiritual human bliss in terms of either a 'homeostatic-dialectic-philosophical-psychological-spiritual balance' and/or a 'celebration of extreme human achievement and self-empowerment' (which we can call 'Nietzsche's or Zarathustra's Mountain') can also end tragically and horrifically in human despair when we can't get to this place of human accomplishment and/or human balance -- when the clash between Dionysus and Apollo, between the more civilized and less civilized man, between polar opposites -- between superego and id, between persona and shadow, between inferior and superior, secure and insecure self -- doesn't reach harmony at all but rather -- 'drops off of Nietzsche's Existential Rope' -- and back down into our deepest abyss, either death or the closest thing to it -- Chaos -- which we can either perish in, or climb our way back out of again...like we did when we were born into this existence -- unknowing of anything, until we start to exercise our 'gifts', our 'capabilities' -- or not.

So here I will postulate the meeting of Freud's life and death instinct -- in man's phenomenology of spirit -- or phenomenology of tragedy. 'To be or not to be -- that is the question.' (Hamlet, Shakespeare). 

More time traveling. Let's travel back to ancient China at about the same time that Anaximander was philosophizing in that part of Europe that would now be called Turkey. Asian Turkey Back then, it was a part of Greece. Miletus, Ionia. Right on the borderline between Europe and Asia and close to Persia as well.

Should we consider it entirely coincidental that one of the forefathers of ancient Chinese philosophy -- Lao tse -- one of the main creators of one of the main schools of Chinese philosophy -- Daoism/Taoism -- developed a school of philosophy that can easily be compared to the philosophy of Anaximander from Miletus, Ionia?

Both created 'dialectic bipolar philosophies'. The biggest difference between the two schools of philosophy is that Anaximander's philosophy was mainly one of 'dialectic competition and conflict' -- the opposite bipolarities in a dialectic, bipolar spectrum taking turns 'dominating' each other and 'submitting' to each other, the first dominating the limelight, the second dominating the shadows; whereas in Lao tse's school of Daoism the two 'conflicting parts in a bipolar spectrum' -- 'yin' 'and 'yang' -- can be balanced in 'co-operation' and 'dialectic harmony' or in biological language -- 'homeostatically balanced' -- to create 'The Path' with 'qi energy' being labelled as the 'essential life energy force'.

In this regard, Anaximander's dialectic philosophy can be viewed as a 'dualistic-dialectic competition and conflict for power' model of philosophy which if not 'dialectically balanced towards equilibrium and harmony' in a Lao-tse/Daoist type manner of 'balancing yin and yang' can result in what Nietzsche labeled as 'The Birth of Tragedy' and what Freud labeled as 'the death instinct'.

Hegel straddles the middle -- determininstically in a historical manner-- arguing (my extrapolation) that whether the dialectic conflict within any bipolar spectrum is balanced peacefully (Lao tse), or whether it is balanced over time by competition, power, war and strife, is a moot point -- either way, 'dialectic evolution' is going to take place through the dialectic process of what we can now view as a 'triadic' or 'triangular' model of: 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis'.  

 However, ideally for mankind, it is better to aim to achieve dialectic evolution or 'trialectic equilibrium and synergy' the Lao tse (democratically dialectic way) as opposed to the Anaximander (power-driven, dualistic, take no prisoners, leave no survivors, way).

The history and evolution of mankind can be viewed as an oscillation between the Anaximander-power-driven, conquest and conquer, approach to dialectic evolution as opposed to the more 'yin-yang', democratic-negotiation, let's aim for peace and harmony, equilibrium and harmony, approach to dialectic evolution.

The dichotomy and paradox of the oscillation of these two opposing approaches to dialectic evolution -- dictatorship vs. democracy -- can be viewed as constituting the essential paradox of man's internal 'phenomenology of spirit' as can also be construed as an internal playoff between what Freud called 'the life instinct vs. the death instinct' -- because the power and war-driven dictatorship vs. rebellion and anarchy approach is invariably going to lead to much more 'pre-mature and violent death'.

What we have here is the essence of a 'TOE' theory -- a 'Theory of Everything' that -- philosophically speaking -- can be viewed as being bigger than the Persian or Macedonian or Mongolian Empire -- all put together -- that can be viewed as connecting, Cosmology, Mythology, Spirituality, Religion, Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Neurology, Psychology, Bio-Psychology and Philosophy, Politics.... Normalcy vs. Pathology...and The Pathology of Normalcy...

What we have here could quite possibly be viewed as 'The Grandest of all Grand Narratives'.

What other connecting links can I make here? Lao tse and Jung. Lao tse's 'qi energy' being linked to Jung's definition of 'libido' as 'life energy'.
Now to bring Freud back into the picture, we need to do a little more 'energy translating'. Freud's 'id energy' can be construed either more concretely as 'sexual energy' when compared and contrasted to Lao tse's qi energy and Jung's life energy, and/or Freud's id energy could be construed as a 'mixture of life and death energy (Eros and Thanatos) in man's 'Phenomenology of Life vs. Death Spirit' as construed by man's oscillation between the drive for control and power vs. the drive for democracy and egalitarian civil rights and participation in the democratic.

The resulting 'direction of this dialectically and/or trialectically charged Path' can take us towards either 'Nietzsche's Birth and Path of Tragedy' or it can take us towards 'Nietzsche's Celebration of The Synthesis and Synergy of The Apollonian-Dionysian Spirit and Achievement of man'  whether this be on the metaphorically 'tallest mountain' or whether this be in 'the re-integration of Apollo and Dionysus in 'the caves of our unconscious'.

What we now need to do in terms of defining 'The Pathology of Normalcy' is to describe the different types of 'blockages of energy' whether this be construed as 'qi energy', 'life energy', and/or 'sexual energy'. 

And in order to do this, we need to return to Freud's 'old brand of bio-psychology -- and his supposedly outdated, and often dismissed hydraulic model'. 

We will do this in the next essay.

Have a great day!

-- dgb, June 27th, 2015,

-- David Gordon Bain