Slow
Dance
This
is a poem
written by a teenager with cancer.
She wants to
see how many
people get her poem.
It is quite the poem
Please pass it
on.
This
poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a
New York
Hospital .
It was sent
by
a medical doctor -
Make sure to read what is in the closing statement
AFTER THE
POEM.
SLOW DANCE
Have you ever
watched
kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to
the
rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a
butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the
fading
night?
You better slow down.
Don't
dance so
fast.
Time is short.
The music
won't
last.
Do you run through each day
On
the
fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear
the
reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie
in your
bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through
your head?
You'd better
slow down
Don't dance so
fast.
Time is
short.
The music won't
last.
Ever told your
child,
We'll do it
tomorrow?
And in your
haste,
Not see
his
sorrow?
Ever lost
touch,
Let a good
friendship die
Cause you
never ha d time
To call
and say,'Hi'
You'd
better slow down.
Don't dance
so fast.
Time
is short.
The music won't
last.
When you run
so fast to get somewhere
You
miss half the fun of getting
there.
When you worry and hurry
through your
day,
It is like an unopened
gift....
Thrown
away.
Life is not a
race.
Do take it
slower
Hear the
music
Before the song is
over.
------------
--------
FORWARDED
E-MAILS ARE TRACKED TO OBTAIN THE TOTAL
COUNT.
Dear All:
PLEASE pass this mail on to everyone you know -
even to those you don't
know! It is the request of a special girl who will soon
leave this world
due to cancer.
This young girl has 6 months l eft
to live,
and as her dying wish, she wanted to send a letter telling everyone to
live their life to the fullest, since she never will.
She'll
never make it to prom, graduate from high school,
or get married and have a
family of her own.
By you sending
this to as many people as
possible, you can give her and her family a
little hope, because with every name
that this is sent to, The American
Cancer Society will donate 3 cents per name
to her treatment and recovery
plan. One guy sent this to 500 people! So I know
that we can at least send
it to 5 or 6. It's
not even your money, just
your
time!
PLEASE PASS ON AS A LAST REQUEST.
Dr.
Dennis Shields, Professor
Department of Developmental and
Molecular
Biology
1300
Morris Park
Avenue
Bronx , New York
10461
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
DGB Editorial Opinions on Freud vs Masson and More... (Part 1, Freshly updated, July 10th, 2009.)
Let me begin by giving you a 'caveat emptor' here and now. I am current engaged in by far my most vigorous investigation into the history of Psychoanalysis that is turning up new and different information each and every day that I didn't know previously. Thus, each and everyone of my essays -- including this one -- is a part of an ongoing evolutionary process for me in my creative vision and elucidation of the internal structure and building process of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Thus, an essay of this type right here -- and every one I like it that I write on the subject and history of Psychoanalysis is necessarily of a strong, quickly evolving nature -- strong new information entering my interpretive and evaluative process often necessitating sudden, perhaps radical changes in judgment contingent on this new information entering and being assimilated into my cognitive system, my 'Central Ego' if you wish.
I can only imagine -- and speculate -- that the same type of scenario might have been also at work with Freud around 1895-1900. Fast changing clinical information may have easily -- or with great difficulty -- stimulated new theoretical conclusions and generalizations for Dr. Freud back in this very controversial and provocative time period. His judgments may have been -- and indeed, this is historically recorded as being -- the case as Freud went through this highly fertile (for good and/or for bad) and highly volatile period from 1895 to 1900 moving very quickly in relatively chronological order from Traumacy Theory to Seduction Theory to a systematic combination of Screen Memory Theory, Dream Interpretation Theory, Childhood Sexuality Theory, and Oedipal Theory.
The particular Freudian change from Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory to Oedipal Theory -- a 180 degree turn in Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory -- is the change that still has academics and professionals debating -- often with furious righteousness on both sides of the academic and professional, political fence -- the relative good and bad merits and consequences of Freud having made such a radical changeover in theory complete with its even more radical implications relativ eto therapeutic interpretation, evaluation, and technique.
In terms of public, academic, and professional volatility, the period from about 1980 to 1992 probably greatly outmatches the original period of 1896-1900 when Freud first had to defend his 'Abandonment of Seduction (Sexual Child Abuse) Theory against friends and foes alike; in the period of 1880 to 1892 was relatively alone (with some growing support that he listed in the 1992 version of his most controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory') to face the colossal wrath of the entire Psychoanalytic Establishment -- worldwide.
I have to smile at least a little (even as I feel compassion and empathy too) at the dark humor and irony of perhaps Masson experientially answering his own question that he posed historically to the world (and to Freud): Why did Freud abandon his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory when there was at least some element of truth to it that needed to be looked at? Maybe Masson fully experienced the answer to that question between 1980 and 1985. Hell hath no fury like a society that doesn't want to talk about child sexual abuse. This topic was very high on the 'politically incorrect' scale back in 1896. Things hadn't changed much by 1980 as Masson took the full brunt of finding out.
Now, was Masson fair in his rather harsh character interpretation and judgment of Freud?
Writes Masson:
'I may disapprove of what I call Freud's loss of moral courage, but I cannot claim that I understand it. (Jeffrey Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, Preface to the 1985 edition, pg. xxii.)
Now it is important to note that Masson was making an inferential interpretation and harsh judgment here into Freud's motivation and character for abandoning the seduction theory on information that is far from epistemologically clear. Masson stated that he didn't profess to know why 'Freud lost moral courage'; just that he did lose moral courage.
My question to Masson on this matter is how is this assumptive and judgmental claim relative to Freud's personality on Masson's part -- based on conflicting and totally unclear epistemological evidence around Freud's motivation for abandoning the seduction theory -- any less an example of 'character defamation' than what Masson accused Janet Malcolm of doing to Masson in her long article in The Newyorker around Masson's judgment of Freud which was probably the start of 5 to 10 years of living Hell for Masson as he was fighting with The Psychoanalytic Establishment, the media, the public, and Janet Malcolm and the Newyorker in court for 10 years (which according to internet information on Jeffrey Masson that I just read the other day ended in The Newyorker's favor.
One might be tempted to say, 'What goes around comes around?' There -- I just said it.
Now Masson is right that the whole scenario back around 1896 and after this up to about 1900 ended up in a change in various parts of his overall theory -- with the Seduction (Sexual Assault) Theory changing to the Oedipal (Repressed Incestuous Sexual Fantasy) Theory -- that when applied on a hardline basis with no moderation and no flexibility was a terrible changeover in theory.
Applied on a hardline basis, the post-1900 Oedipal Theory would practically guarantee that a woman sexually assaulted in childhood would not epistemologically and/or ethically be given a 'fair shake' just as I am not sure that Masson between 1980 and 1992 gave Freud a 'fair shake' in terms of 'character motivation' for a radical change in theory that was at least partly a collosal mistake. Competing theories can explain Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory that do not neccesitate the rather huge abstractive, interpretive character judgment that goes with Masson's words, 'loss of moral courage'.
Most notable of these alternative competing theories is the theory that Freud found out that one of his clients had 'lied' to him about a supposedly 'real infantile memory' that was instead a 'fantasy-memory' that never happened at all. This story was reported by the client -- treated by Freud -- to a German psychiatrist, Leopold Lowenfeld afterwards and written up in the psychiatrist's book, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, in 1899.
If Freud changed his theory based strongly on this piece of clinical evidence, it would not imply that Freud 'lost any moral courage'. Rather, it would imply that Freud was trying to keep his theories in touch with the truth and reality of the evidence he was collecting in the clinical world. And if the clinical evidence -- or at least part of it -- suggested that some of Freud's clients were deliberately and/or unintentionally confusing 'real memories' for 'fantasy memories', then Freud was bound by his scientific integrity to 'stick to his clincal evidence' and to build his theories from this clinical evidence; not from clinical evidence that didn't exist. If this was indeed what happened, then Freud can hardly be interpreted as having lost his 'moral courage' -- just replacing a 'leaky' theory with an even leakier one. A bonehead, colossal theoretical mistake perhaps by Freud but not a 'loss in moral courage'. Freud's main theoretical problem was his tendency to 'overgeneralize and overcompensate'; not in my mind a lack of moral courage -- of course, I am speculating just as Masson was; neither of us have a telepathic connection to what was going on in Freud's mind at this time.
Masson's argument is at least partly tempting to believe. Aren't most of us at least tempted on a day to day basis to bend our ethics and moral for the sake of saving our job, career, and income. I see it happen around me every day in my corporate world and I generally keep my mouth shut when I know that my corporate bosses simply don't want to hear what I really believe. Call that 'narcissistic-corporate-survival-pragmatism' if you wish. And/or just call it a 'loss of moral courage'.
One has to judge the strength of the cultural-political-legal-socio-economic resistance, duress, and leverage against an individual person by the society -- or a portion of the society -- that they live in before anyone is labeled as 'lacking in moral courage'.
How many people even have the freedom to write anything close to the type of things I am writing about here in Hegel's Hotel with the type of editorial comments that I am making in half the countries around the world such as North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanastan, and many, many more...Do the millions of people in these countries all 'lack moral courage'. Or are they afraid for their survival, afraid for their very lives?
Strong political, legal, ideological, and/or socio-economic leverage often 'bends moral individual courage' on the basis of either feeling a strong need to protect one's own narcissistic safety and/or for the sake of narcissistic (economic) gain. Isn't that at least partly why you moved to New Zealand, Dr. Masson? To get out of the firestorm of psychiatry and into a new field of study that was both more pleasant and more economically viable?
In your own words, Dr. Masson -- unless you were misquoted:
“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”
How many of us can say that we have never compromised our moral-ethical integrity for the sake of narcissistic gain and/or preventing narcissistic loss? Some people may be more or less guilty of this transgression than others, some people may be guilty of this transgression more or less often than others, but let us not be the first ones to throw stones at someone else unless we feel entirely guilt-free which is a hard claim for any of us to make in an authoritarian corporate world, and a politically correct world where political, corporate, legal, and economic leverage is being applied to each and everyone of us, each and every day.
Does this mean that our whole society lacks 'moral courage'? Maybe.
I know that I personally cringe every time I start to write something on some politically incorrect topic such as: 'invasion of individual privacy and loss of civil rights through corporate and government internet spying'; reverse discrimination and loss of men's civil rights relative to domestic justice and sexual issues between men and women...and I could list off a few more equally provocotive and controversial topics but I won't.
I guess this means that perhaps I lack moral courage. But, at the same time, I don't see too many other people writing about these topics. Does this mean that other people do not see what is happening? Or does it more likely mean that they are too scared to write about an issue that can be used to 'tar and feather' them.
It is for this latter reason mainly that these topics, for the most part, remain 'civilly buried, civilly suppressed, civilly repressed...'
Call it 'social repression or suppression'.
Even this whole issue of 'childhood memories' still remains a political powderkeg
Now it can be easily argued that Freud indeed did lose 'moral courage' after the storm of professional controversy he stimulated in his reading presentation of probably the most infamous little essay ever written by Freud -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896. (Well, maybe Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' rivaled 'The Aetiology' in terms of immediate and/or long-term controversy.)
A letter from Freud to Fliess on April 26th, 1896, 5 days after the presentation, reports:
A lecture on the aetiology of hysteria at the Psychiatric Society met with an icy reception from the asses, and from Krafft-Ebing the strange comment: It sounds like a scientific fairy tale. And this after one has demonstrated to them a solution to a more than thousand-year old problem, a "source of the Nile"! They can all go to hell. (Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, p. 9.)
However, Freud hardly seems contrite or cowered in the aftermath of Kraft-Ebing's -- and the rest of the membership's -- critical onslaught that nigh. Indeed, at this point in time -- as throughout his entire career -- Freud comes across as every bit the righteous-rebellious unbowed soldier, like Hannibal perhaps, Freud's hero, or like Custer continuing to fight to his death, in The Battle Of Little Bighorn, Custer's Last Stand, in Montana in 1876 on June 25th, almost 20 years to the day that Freud probably felt like he was fighting to his death against the Psychiatric Society at that most emotionally volatile meeting.
Freud didn't lose moral courage although one could hardly blame him if he did with the amount of social, professional, political -- and perhaps economic -- pressure that was being applied against him by the medical community, or that could have been.
Maybe Freud felt 'just a snippet' of what he was bound to keep getting if he had kept pressing the truth and value of The 'Seduction Theory' that he was 'so sure' of back then but then soon was to dismiss over the next four years like 'awakening from a bad dream'.
Maybe a more accurate barometer of the full extent of the negative pressure that could have been applied against Freud politically, economically, and socially was approximately the negative treatment that Masson received between 1980 and 1985 -- for going where Freud generally chose not to go to after 1896: the unwanted public awareness and knowledge of childhood sexual abuse.
So, Dr. Masson, if you had it to do all over again -- would you do it again? Would you live 1980-1992 all over again. Was it worth it? The ten year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker that didn't even end in your favor.
What were the words that particularly disturbed you -- someone calling you an 'intellectual gigolo' -- Gee, I can think of probably millions of men who would have worn that mantle proudly -- including myself.
Plus, can we really blame Janet Malcolm on that one -- unless she made up these words herself or took them from you or someone else and then quoted it from someone who didn't say them. That would be an unethical display of journalism.
At the same time, maybe you, yourself Dr. Masson, got a little too cocky and a little too arrogant in an unguarded moment. What was it? Something about -- opening all the windows in Anna Freud's house -- and letting some women in? Again 25 years after you may or may not have said it -- I support you fully if you did indeed say it. Bravo! Get some fresh air and new feminine energy into Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment.
Get some feminine perspectives into The Psychoanalytic Institute -- not as suppressed and repressed hysterical clients (although even Anna O and Emma Ekstein were enlightening, even in their respective traumacies and tragedies.
No, what The Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment needs is a new influx of Psychoanalytic students and graduates -- independent intellectuals, therapists, theorists and individuals in their own right with separate 'wills to power' and 'wills to truth' and 'wills to psychological and psycho-therapeutic excellence'. Not all these authoritarian patriarchs who continue to hang on to Freud like he is the one and only last lifeboat on the Titanic.
I have no Psychoanalytic reputation to protect. And I don't have enough money that anyone would want to take me to court.
Like Spinoza, and believe me, as much as Spinoza remains one of my greatest philosophical idols and role models, I don't profess to have a tenth of the ethical fortitude that he did (when your editorial opinion could cost you a 'beheading', or a 'hanging', or an 'excommunication from society' or a 'burning at the stake' like St. Joan of Arc, or a 'coerced poisoning' like Socrates, then you know that you are really dealing with a man or woman with an ultimate display of courage... still, like Spinoza, I prefer to operate in a 'non-partisan' environment where there is not serious leverage and pressure being applied to me to say one thing, and not another, because I am being paid to say be biased.
The Seduction Theory in and by itself is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing. Not every female and/or male child is sexually assaulted in childhood even if the number and percentage of female children that are sexually assaulted climbs significantly higher and higher the older each and every female -- and for that matter, male -- child gets.
Similarly, the Oedipal Theory too is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing particularly the more you treat the Oedipal Theory literally as opposed to symbolically and metaphorically.
Thesis: Seduction Theory. Anti-Thesis: Oedipal Theory.
That which divides us, defines us.
Two opposing bi-polar sexual theories dissociated and alienated from each other. Each drawing energy away from the middle. Each drawing 'theoretical partisans' away from the middle. The one is about 'Narcissistic Traumatic Memory'. The other is about 'Narcissistic Pleasurable Fantasy'.
If you are a post-Aristolean or a post-Kierkgaardian philosopher', you say to yourself, 'Either/Or'. 'Pick one'. 'The left door or the right door'. 'The left path or the right path.' 'The left paradigm or the right paradigm'. And if you are lucky, you may get a 'round peg of reality' that fits into a 'round hole of theory'. Or visa versa. If you are not lucky, and your theory doesn't fit the clinical facts, then you might: a) traumatize your client for trying to impose a 'false reality' on him or her; b) re-traumatize a client by doing the same thing -- and repeating what the client's childhood assaulter, for example, quite likely was saying to the client as a child: essentially, 'This didn't happen'; c) you alienate, dissociate -- and perhaps even lose the client (eg. Freud's case of Dora) because you try to 'impose on the client a false reality'.
In contrast, if you are a 'post-Hegelian philosopher like myself who believes in the value and authenticity of 'dialectic logic', then you see 'the creative energy and functional value of integrating opposite or paradoxical ideas'. Why? Because life is paradoxical -- ignited by opposites being attracted to each other, and energized by each other, in their conflicting-attracting, bi-polar characteristics and energies.
Who was it? -- Plato, in a part of The Symposium (the part on love) -- who had one of his various creative characters saying that men and women used to be 'united' as 'hermaphrodites'. But then some wise or smart or sadistic -- or 'jokerman' for a -- God decided that he would 'split men-women-hermaphrodites in half' so that they would become disconnected and alienated from each other and themselves until they found each other again in -- united love.
Male-Female, Testosterone-Estrogen, 'Yin-Yang'.
People -- and academics -- do not come close to fully understanding and appreciating how similar Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, The Han Philosophers, Hegel, and Darwin were in their respective evolutionary West, East, and Central Theories.
Particularly Hegel and Darwin -- lumped in with Freud, Fliess, and Jung.
It does not take rocket science to see how close Hegel and Darwin were in there respective theories with Hegel's theory of Epistemological and Existential Evolution and Alienation (The Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind', 1807) both pre-dating and subsuming Darwin's later even more controversial and provocative theory of evolution ('On the Origin of the Species, 1859').
Thesis: Female/Estrogen/Egg/Yin
Anti-thesis: Male/Testosterone/Sperm/Yang
Dialectic-Synthesis-Integration: Child/Shared DNA/Mixed Testosterone and Estrogen, Mixed Female and Male Energy, Mixed, Physiological and Psychological Bi-Sexuality.
Hegel's 'Dialectic Logic and Theory' simply followed, traced, and structurally was patterned after -- 'The Dialectic Nature of Life and Evolution'.
Hegel simply connected all the dialectic dots and lines and put them all together -- or at least most of them.
I have the decided advantage of having 200 more years of human intellectual evolution at my ready disposal -- at a click of my 'mouse' and a 'tapping of my keys'.
Wow! I am so phenomenally -- and phenomenologically -- lucky!
Each and everyone of us living today with any kind of serious and/or obsessive interest in human evolution and the history of ideas -- is technologically blessed.
My dad, back in the 1970s, partly foresaw this day coming when he was 'marketing his software and audio-visual hardware' -- and talked to me and his customers about a 'generic and customized information highway'.
Which brings me back to Freud, Psychoanalysis, The Seduction Theory, The Oedipal Theory -- and 'a creative bi-polar integration, orgasm, and cross-fertilization, of ideas, encounters, relationships...and DNA'.
Who said that ideas -- and drab old, patriarchal Psychoanalysis -- couldn't be sexually exciting and 'bi-polarly, bi-sexually energizing? Yin and yang. Estrogen and testosterone. Sperm and eggs. Men and women. Coming together -- and balancing together -- both internally and externally in creative, dialectic-democratic harmony. I forgot to mention Cannon's classic 'Wisdom of The Body' which also 'harmonizes dialectic logic' -- in the field of biology, chemistry, and physics. Freud and Jung 'harmonized dialectic logic' in psychology.
And with all of these 'allusions to sexuality and bi-sexuality', I am starting to write like Freud, Fliess, Wilhelm Reich, and Fritz Perls all rolled into one -- many of them 'psychoanalytic bad boys' before Jeffrey Masson rolled into town and perhaps took the cake.
I'm a taxi dispatcher, not a Psychoanalyst. (You see how we label ourselves according to our jobs and careers.)
But there is one thing that I can take out of taxi dispatching that can easily be applied to Psychoanalysis.
If I am dispatching late at night and I have a large area of potential customers north of Toronto to cover -- and say I have four taxi drivers to work with -- I will try my best to distribute those cars evenly over the area that I need to cover as a dispatcher and they need to cover as drivers. Such as: Upper Left Hand Quadrant (Richmond Hill), Lower Left Hand Quadrant (Thornhill), Lower Right Hand Quadrant (Lower Markham), Upper Right Hand Quadrant (Upper Markham).
Similarly, if I only have one driver to work with, I am going to try to place him right in the center of our whole area of business.
That makes logical sense -- so that the driver is essentially 'equi-distance' from any prospective customer who may phone in.
The same can be said for any 'ideal' Psychoanalytic Theory.
If you have a 'left-handed' theory of Psychoanalysis, then you are going to discriminate against 'right-handed clients'. And if you have a 'right-handed theory of Psychoanalysis, you are going to discriminate against 'left-handed clients'.
Idealistically, what Psychoanalysis needs is a 'Centralist Psychoanalytic Theory' that is 'equi-distant' and 'non-discriminatory' against any type of Psychoanalytic customer -- a theory that can move flexibly to either the left or the right, up or down, to serve a client properly.
That is the type of theory that Psychoanalysis needs. And that is the type of theory that I will try my best to describe in more and more detail as we move along in our future essays on this topic.
That is enough for today.
-- dgb, July 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Thus, an essay of this type right here -- and every one I like it that I write on the subject and history of Psychoanalysis is necessarily of a strong, quickly evolving nature -- strong new information entering my interpretive and evaluative process often necessitating sudden, perhaps radical changes in judgment contingent on this new information entering and being assimilated into my cognitive system, my 'Central Ego' if you wish.
I can only imagine -- and speculate -- that the same type of scenario might have been also at work with Freud around 1895-1900. Fast changing clinical information may have easily -- or with great difficulty -- stimulated new theoretical conclusions and generalizations for Dr. Freud back in this very controversial and provocative time period. His judgments may have been -- and indeed, this is historically recorded as being -- the case as Freud went through this highly fertile (for good and/or for bad) and highly volatile period from 1895 to 1900 moving very quickly in relatively chronological order from Traumacy Theory to Seduction Theory to a systematic combination of Screen Memory Theory, Dream Interpretation Theory, Childhood Sexuality Theory, and Oedipal Theory.
The particular Freudian change from Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory to Oedipal Theory -- a 180 degree turn in Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory -- is the change that still has academics and professionals debating -- often with furious righteousness on both sides of the academic and professional, political fence -- the relative good and bad merits and consequences of Freud having made such a radical changeover in theory complete with its even more radical implications relativ eto therapeutic interpretation, evaluation, and technique.
In terms of public, academic, and professional volatility, the period from about 1980 to 1992 probably greatly outmatches the original period of 1896-1900 when Freud first had to defend his 'Abandonment of Seduction (Sexual Child Abuse) Theory against friends and foes alike; in the period of 1880 to 1892 was relatively alone (with some growing support that he listed in the 1992 version of his most controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory') to face the colossal wrath of the entire Psychoanalytic Establishment -- worldwide.
I have to smile at least a little (even as I feel compassion and empathy too) at the dark humor and irony of perhaps Masson experientially answering his own question that he posed historically to the world (and to Freud): Why did Freud abandon his Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory when there was at least some element of truth to it that needed to be looked at? Maybe Masson fully experienced the answer to that question between 1980 and 1985. Hell hath no fury like a society that doesn't want to talk about child sexual abuse. This topic was very high on the 'politically incorrect' scale back in 1896. Things hadn't changed much by 1980 as Masson took the full brunt of finding out.
Now, was Masson fair in his rather harsh character interpretation and judgment of Freud?
Writes Masson:
'I may disapprove of what I call Freud's loss of moral courage, but I cannot claim that I understand it. (Jeffrey Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, Preface to the 1985 edition, pg. xxii.)
Now it is important to note that Masson was making an inferential interpretation and harsh judgment here into Freud's motivation and character for abandoning the seduction theory on information that is far from epistemologically clear. Masson stated that he didn't profess to know why 'Freud lost moral courage'; just that he did lose moral courage.
My question to Masson on this matter is how is this assumptive and judgmental claim relative to Freud's personality on Masson's part -- based on conflicting and totally unclear epistemological evidence around Freud's motivation for abandoning the seduction theory -- any less an example of 'character defamation' than what Masson accused Janet Malcolm of doing to Masson in her long article in The Newyorker around Masson's judgment of Freud which was probably the start of 5 to 10 years of living Hell for Masson as he was fighting with The Psychoanalytic Establishment, the media, the public, and Janet Malcolm and the Newyorker in court for 10 years (which according to internet information on Jeffrey Masson that I just read the other day ended in The Newyorker's favor.
One might be tempted to say, 'What goes around comes around?' There -- I just said it.
Now Masson is right that the whole scenario back around 1896 and after this up to about 1900 ended up in a change in various parts of his overall theory -- with the Seduction (Sexual Assault) Theory changing to the Oedipal (Repressed Incestuous Sexual Fantasy) Theory -- that when applied on a hardline basis with no moderation and no flexibility was a terrible changeover in theory.
Applied on a hardline basis, the post-1900 Oedipal Theory would practically guarantee that a woman sexually assaulted in childhood would not epistemologically and/or ethically be given a 'fair shake' just as I am not sure that Masson between 1980 and 1992 gave Freud a 'fair shake' in terms of 'character motivation' for a radical change in theory that was at least partly a collosal mistake. Competing theories can explain Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory that do not neccesitate the rather huge abstractive, interpretive character judgment that goes with Masson's words, 'loss of moral courage'.
Most notable of these alternative competing theories is the theory that Freud found out that one of his clients had 'lied' to him about a supposedly 'real infantile memory' that was instead a 'fantasy-memory' that never happened at all. This story was reported by the client -- treated by Freud -- to a German psychiatrist, Leopold Lowenfeld afterwards and written up in the psychiatrist's book, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, in 1899.
If Freud changed his theory based strongly on this piece of clinical evidence, it would not imply that Freud 'lost any moral courage'. Rather, it would imply that Freud was trying to keep his theories in touch with the truth and reality of the evidence he was collecting in the clinical world. And if the clinical evidence -- or at least part of it -- suggested that some of Freud's clients were deliberately and/or unintentionally confusing 'real memories' for 'fantasy memories', then Freud was bound by his scientific integrity to 'stick to his clincal evidence' and to build his theories from this clinical evidence; not from clinical evidence that didn't exist. If this was indeed what happened, then Freud can hardly be interpreted as having lost his 'moral courage' -- just replacing a 'leaky' theory with an even leakier one. A bonehead, colossal theoretical mistake perhaps by Freud but not a 'loss in moral courage'. Freud's main theoretical problem was his tendency to 'overgeneralize and overcompensate'; not in my mind a lack of moral courage -- of course, I am speculating just as Masson was; neither of us have a telepathic connection to what was going on in Freud's mind at this time.
Masson's argument is at least partly tempting to believe. Aren't most of us at least tempted on a day to day basis to bend our ethics and moral for the sake of saving our job, career, and income. I see it happen around me every day in my corporate world and I generally keep my mouth shut when I know that my corporate bosses simply don't want to hear what I really believe. Call that 'narcissistic-corporate-survival-pragmatism' if you wish. And/or just call it a 'loss of moral courage'.
One has to judge the strength of the cultural-political-legal-socio-economic resistance, duress, and leverage against an individual person by the society -- or a portion of the society -- that they live in before anyone is labeled as 'lacking in moral courage'.
How many people even have the freedom to write anything close to the type of things I am writing about here in Hegel's Hotel with the type of editorial comments that I am making in half the countries around the world such as North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanastan, and many, many more...Do the millions of people in these countries all 'lack moral courage'. Or are they afraid for their survival, afraid for their very lives?
Strong political, legal, ideological, and/or socio-economic leverage often 'bends moral individual courage' on the basis of either feeling a strong need to protect one's own narcissistic safety and/or for the sake of narcissistic (economic) gain. Isn't that at least partly why you moved to New Zealand, Dr. Masson? To get out of the firestorm of psychiatry and into a new field of study that was both more pleasant and more economically viable?
In your own words, Dr. Masson -- unless you were misquoted:
“ "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'"[9] ”
How many of us can say that we have never compromised our moral-ethical integrity for the sake of narcissistic gain and/or preventing narcissistic loss? Some people may be more or less guilty of this transgression than others, some people may be guilty of this transgression more or less often than others, but let us not be the first ones to throw stones at someone else unless we feel entirely guilt-free which is a hard claim for any of us to make in an authoritarian corporate world, and a politically correct world where political, corporate, legal, and economic leverage is being applied to each and everyone of us, each and every day.
Does this mean that our whole society lacks 'moral courage'? Maybe.
I know that I personally cringe every time I start to write something on some politically incorrect topic such as: 'invasion of individual privacy and loss of civil rights through corporate and government internet spying'; reverse discrimination and loss of men's civil rights relative to domestic justice and sexual issues between men and women...and I could list off a few more equally provocotive and controversial topics but I won't.
I guess this means that perhaps I lack moral courage. But, at the same time, I don't see too many other people writing about these topics. Does this mean that other people do not see what is happening? Or does it more likely mean that they are too scared to write about an issue that can be used to 'tar and feather' them.
It is for this latter reason mainly that these topics, for the most part, remain 'civilly buried, civilly suppressed, civilly repressed...'
Call it 'social repression or suppression'.
Even this whole issue of 'childhood memories' still remains a political powderkeg
Now it can be easily argued that Freud indeed did lose 'moral courage' after the storm of professional controversy he stimulated in his reading presentation of probably the most infamous little essay ever written by Freud -- 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', 1896. (Well, maybe Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' rivaled 'The Aetiology' in terms of immediate and/or long-term controversy.)
A letter from Freud to Fliess on April 26th, 1896, 5 days after the presentation, reports:
A lecture on the aetiology of hysteria at the Psychiatric Society met with an icy reception from the asses, and from Krafft-Ebing the strange comment: It sounds like a scientific fairy tale. And this after one has demonstrated to them a solution to a more than thousand-year old problem, a "source of the Nile"! They can all go to hell. (Masson, Assault on Truth, 1992, p. 9.)
However, Freud hardly seems contrite or cowered in the aftermath of Kraft-Ebing's -- and the rest of the membership's -- critical onslaught that nigh. Indeed, at this point in time -- as throughout his entire career -- Freud comes across as every bit the righteous-rebellious unbowed soldier, like Hannibal perhaps, Freud's hero, or like Custer continuing to fight to his death, in The Battle Of Little Bighorn, Custer's Last Stand, in Montana in 1876 on June 25th, almost 20 years to the day that Freud probably felt like he was fighting to his death against the Psychiatric Society at that most emotionally volatile meeting.
Freud didn't lose moral courage although one could hardly blame him if he did with the amount of social, professional, political -- and perhaps economic -- pressure that was being applied against him by the medical community, or that could have been.
Maybe Freud felt 'just a snippet' of what he was bound to keep getting if he had kept pressing the truth and value of The 'Seduction Theory' that he was 'so sure' of back then but then soon was to dismiss over the next four years like 'awakening from a bad dream'.
Maybe a more accurate barometer of the full extent of the negative pressure that could have been applied against Freud politically, economically, and socially was approximately the negative treatment that Masson received between 1980 and 1985 -- for going where Freud generally chose not to go to after 1896: the unwanted public awareness and knowledge of childhood sexual abuse.
So, Dr. Masson, if you had it to do all over again -- would you do it again? Would you live 1980-1992 all over again. Was it worth it? The ten year lawsuit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker that didn't even end in your favor.
What were the words that particularly disturbed you -- someone calling you an 'intellectual gigolo' -- Gee, I can think of probably millions of men who would have worn that mantle proudly -- including myself.
Plus, can we really blame Janet Malcolm on that one -- unless she made up these words herself or took them from you or someone else and then quoted it from someone who didn't say them. That would be an unethical display of journalism.
At the same time, maybe you, yourself Dr. Masson, got a little too cocky and a little too arrogant in an unguarded moment. What was it? Something about -- opening all the windows in Anna Freud's house -- and letting some women in? Again 25 years after you may or may not have said it -- I support you fully if you did indeed say it. Bravo! Get some fresh air and new feminine energy into Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment.
Get some feminine perspectives into The Psychoanalytic Institute -- not as suppressed and repressed hysterical clients (although even Anna O and Emma Ekstein were enlightening, even in their respective traumacies and tragedies.
No, what The Psychoanalytic Institute and Establishment needs is a new influx of Psychoanalytic students and graduates -- independent intellectuals, therapists, theorists and individuals in their own right with separate 'wills to power' and 'wills to truth' and 'wills to psychological and psycho-therapeutic excellence'. Not all these authoritarian patriarchs who continue to hang on to Freud like he is the one and only last lifeboat on the Titanic.
I have no Psychoanalytic reputation to protect. And I don't have enough money that anyone would want to take me to court.
Like Spinoza, and believe me, as much as Spinoza remains one of my greatest philosophical idols and role models, I don't profess to have a tenth of the ethical fortitude that he did (when your editorial opinion could cost you a 'beheading', or a 'hanging', or an 'excommunication from society' or a 'burning at the stake' like St. Joan of Arc, or a 'coerced poisoning' like Socrates, then you know that you are really dealing with a man or woman with an ultimate display of courage... still, like Spinoza, I prefer to operate in a 'non-partisan' environment where there is not serious leverage and pressure being applied to me to say one thing, and not another, because I am being paid to say be biased.
The Seduction Theory in and by itself is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing. Not every female and/or male child is sexually assaulted in childhood even if the number and percentage of female children that are sexually assaulted climbs significantly higher and higher the older each and every female -- and for that matter, male -- child gets.
Similarly, the Oedipal Theory too is grossly reductionistic and overgeneralizing particularly the more you treat the Oedipal Theory literally as opposed to symbolically and metaphorically.
Thesis: Seduction Theory. Anti-Thesis: Oedipal Theory.
That which divides us, defines us.
Two opposing bi-polar sexual theories dissociated and alienated from each other. Each drawing energy away from the middle. Each drawing 'theoretical partisans' away from the middle. The one is about 'Narcissistic Traumatic Memory'. The other is about 'Narcissistic Pleasurable Fantasy'.
If you are a post-Aristolean or a post-Kierkgaardian philosopher', you say to yourself, 'Either/Or'. 'Pick one'. 'The left door or the right door'. 'The left path or the right path.' 'The left paradigm or the right paradigm'. And if you are lucky, you may get a 'round peg of reality' that fits into a 'round hole of theory'. Or visa versa. If you are not lucky, and your theory doesn't fit the clinical facts, then you might: a) traumatize your client for trying to impose a 'false reality' on him or her; b) re-traumatize a client by doing the same thing -- and repeating what the client's childhood assaulter, for example, quite likely was saying to the client as a child: essentially, 'This didn't happen'; c) you alienate, dissociate -- and perhaps even lose the client (eg. Freud's case of Dora) because you try to 'impose on the client a false reality'.
In contrast, if you are a 'post-Hegelian philosopher like myself who believes in the value and authenticity of 'dialectic logic', then you see 'the creative energy and functional value of integrating opposite or paradoxical ideas'. Why? Because life is paradoxical -- ignited by opposites being attracted to each other, and energized by each other, in their conflicting-attracting, bi-polar characteristics and energies.
Who was it? -- Plato, in a part of The Symposium (the part on love) -- who had one of his various creative characters saying that men and women used to be 'united' as 'hermaphrodites'. But then some wise or smart or sadistic -- or 'jokerman' for a -- God decided that he would 'split men-women-hermaphrodites in half' so that they would become disconnected and alienated from each other and themselves until they found each other again in -- united love.
Male-Female, Testosterone-Estrogen, 'Yin-Yang'.
People -- and academics -- do not come close to fully understanding and appreciating how similar Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, The Han Philosophers, Hegel, and Darwin were in their respective evolutionary West, East, and Central Theories.
Particularly Hegel and Darwin -- lumped in with Freud, Fliess, and Jung.
It does not take rocket science to see how close Hegel and Darwin were in there respective theories with Hegel's theory of Epistemological and Existential Evolution and Alienation (The Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind', 1807) both pre-dating and subsuming Darwin's later even more controversial and provocative theory of evolution ('On the Origin of the Species, 1859').
Thesis: Female/Estrogen/Egg/Yin
Anti-thesis: Male/Testosterone/Sperm/Yang
Dialectic-Synthesis-Integration: Child/Shared DNA/Mixed Testosterone and Estrogen, Mixed Female and Male Energy, Mixed, Physiological and Psychological Bi-Sexuality.
Hegel's 'Dialectic Logic and Theory' simply followed, traced, and structurally was patterned after -- 'The Dialectic Nature of Life and Evolution'.
Hegel simply connected all the dialectic dots and lines and put them all together -- or at least most of them.
I have the decided advantage of having 200 more years of human intellectual evolution at my ready disposal -- at a click of my 'mouse' and a 'tapping of my keys'.
Wow! I am so phenomenally -- and phenomenologically -- lucky!
Each and everyone of us living today with any kind of serious and/or obsessive interest in human evolution and the history of ideas -- is technologically blessed.
My dad, back in the 1970s, partly foresaw this day coming when he was 'marketing his software and audio-visual hardware' -- and talked to me and his customers about a 'generic and customized information highway'.
Which brings me back to Freud, Psychoanalysis, The Seduction Theory, The Oedipal Theory -- and 'a creative bi-polar integration, orgasm, and cross-fertilization, of ideas, encounters, relationships...and DNA'.
Who said that ideas -- and drab old, patriarchal Psychoanalysis -- couldn't be sexually exciting and 'bi-polarly, bi-sexually energizing? Yin and yang. Estrogen and testosterone. Sperm and eggs. Men and women. Coming together -- and balancing together -- both internally and externally in creative, dialectic-democratic harmony. I forgot to mention Cannon's classic 'Wisdom of The Body' which also 'harmonizes dialectic logic' -- in the field of biology, chemistry, and physics. Freud and Jung 'harmonized dialectic logic' in psychology.
And with all of these 'allusions to sexuality and bi-sexuality', I am starting to write like Freud, Fliess, Wilhelm Reich, and Fritz Perls all rolled into one -- many of them 'psychoanalytic bad boys' before Jeffrey Masson rolled into town and perhaps took the cake.
I'm a taxi dispatcher, not a Psychoanalyst. (You see how we label ourselves according to our jobs and careers.)
But there is one thing that I can take out of taxi dispatching that can easily be applied to Psychoanalysis.
If I am dispatching late at night and I have a large area of potential customers north of Toronto to cover -- and say I have four taxi drivers to work with -- I will try my best to distribute those cars evenly over the area that I need to cover as a dispatcher and they need to cover as drivers. Such as: Upper Left Hand Quadrant (Richmond Hill), Lower Left Hand Quadrant (Thornhill), Lower Right Hand Quadrant (Lower Markham), Upper Right Hand Quadrant (Upper Markham).
Similarly, if I only have one driver to work with, I am going to try to place him right in the center of our whole area of business.
That makes logical sense -- so that the driver is essentially 'equi-distance' from any prospective customer who may phone in.
The same can be said for any 'ideal' Psychoanalytic Theory.
If you have a 'left-handed' theory of Psychoanalysis, then you are going to discriminate against 'right-handed clients'. And if you have a 'right-handed theory of Psychoanalysis, you are going to discriminate against 'left-handed clients'.
Idealistically, what Psychoanalysis needs is a 'Centralist Psychoanalytic Theory' that is 'equi-distant' and 'non-discriminatory' against any type of Psychoanalytic customer -- a theory that can move flexibly to either the left or the right, up or down, to serve a client properly.
That is the type of theory that Psychoanalysis needs. And that is the type of theory that I will try my best to describe in more and more detail as we move along in our future essays on this topic.
That is enough for today.
-- dgb, July 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Email From My Dad: On Cancer Treatment
Hi Dave:
I have written to you about your Mom.
About you then...
Your comments and hard positions relative to your health do not surprise, but they do sadden me. You are right to say on some things we will never agree. I don't like cirrhosis, but you address cancer, so let's talk about cander with cirrhosis hidden in our back pocket.
Let me quote a poem I read recently, written by a person 13 years after her first diagnosis of breast cancer, and following recurrence:
Oh, you evil thing!
How dare you!
You invade my body
But not my soul.
You may claim my breast
but not my spirit.
You lurk in unknown places
Waiting to spring
Waiting to grow.I will fight you
To my last breath
You may try to rape me of
my life.
But I will fight you
You will try to overcome me
But I know what you are?
You are cancer
And you will not win!
Thirteen years later, I am still winning and still smiling. There is life after cancer.
Pat Gallant
Miscouche, PEI
In a separate article she writes: I have cancer, it does not have me.
It came, I dealt with it. It came knocking once more. I dealt with it once more.
Cancer that dreaded word. I learned all I could about it. It is not an instant death sentence. But it can be, if not caught in time. I talked about it to anyone who would listen, but I did not worry about it. I live my life knowing it is always lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. "Surpise, I am back!"
My perspective on life has changed. The cliches "Don't sweat the small stuff. One day at a time. Don't count the days...make the days count." These are what I live by.
I realized I wanted to do something for others so I began volunteering at our local ospital. I feel that in some small way I am contribvuting to the lives of others who are also dealing or living with this disease. I've learnedit arrives in your life, turns it upside down, then quietly lurks in your mind forever. Bit it did't take over my life. I wouldn't let it. It has changed me physcially but made me stronger emotionally.
Some worry constantly; some forget about it, and move on. I tend to keep alert, do my check-ups and will deal when and if it comes back again. Life is too precious to waste on waiting and fearing the other shoe will dropl
Live, love, laugh and appreciate those you love and htose who supported you in those times of need.
.........................................
Your Mom has a differing view to such things than I do David. She tends to think "What will be will be," and some days that seems like good thinking. But on most days it makes me furious, and sick to my stomach. Life is precious. You are dead a long long time. One fights for every moment or should. Determination and grit - are they the same?...a will to face it down and do what has to be done...comply with the changes and do them religiously all the rest of your life. It can make a difference against all the odds - , any doctor will tell you how important the will to live can be in a life and death struggle. produce in the face of long odds.
Cancer treatment (as are many other treatments for other diseases)have evolved to a point where the surviving numbers are very different than once they were, especially with early detection.
A close extended family member said he would never face radiation or chemo...never he roared..but he changed his mind with the chips down...unfortunately he left it late in the day ..and now one wonders.
Dad
I have written to you about your Mom.
About you then...
Your comments and hard positions relative to your health do not surprise, but they do sadden me. You are right to say on some things we will never agree. I don't like cirrhosis, but you address cancer, so let's talk about cander with cirrhosis hidden in our back pocket.
Let me quote a poem I read recently, written by a person 13 years after her first diagnosis of breast cancer, and following recurrence:
Oh, you evil thing!
How dare you!
You invade my body
But not my soul.
You may claim my breast
but not my spirit.
You lurk in unknown places
Waiting to spring
Waiting to grow.I will fight you
To my last breath
You may try to rape me of
my life.
But I will fight you
You will try to overcome me
But I know what you are?
You are cancer
And you will not win!
Thirteen years later, I am still winning and still smiling. There is life after cancer.
Pat Gallant
Miscouche, PEI
In a separate article she writes: I have cancer, it does not have me.
It came, I dealt with it. It came knocking once more. I dealt with it once more.
Cancer that dreaded word. I learned all I could about it. It is not an instant death sentence. But it can be, if not caught in time. I talked about it to anyone who would listen, but I did not worry about it. I live my life knowing it is always lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. "Surpise, I am back!"
My perspective on life has changed. The cliches "Don't sweat the small stuff. One day at a time. Don't count the days...make the days count." These are what I live by.
I realized I wanted to do something for others so I began volunteering at our local ospital. I feel that in some small way I am contribvuting to the lives of others who are also dealing or living with this disease. I've learnedit arrives in your life, turns it upside down, then quietly lurks in your mind forever. Bit it did't take over my life. I wouldn't let it. It has changed me physcially but made me stronger emotionally.
Some worry constantly; some forget about it, and move on. I tend to keep alert, do my check-ups and will deal when and if it comes back again. Life is too precious to waste on waiting and fearing the other shoe will dropl
Live, love, laugh and appreciate those you love and htose who supported you in those times of need.
.........................................
Your Mom has a differing view to such things than I do David. She tends to think "What will be will be," and some days that seems like good thinking. But on most days it makes me furious, and sick to my stomach. Life is precious. You are dead a long long time. One fights for every moment or should. Determination and grit - are they the same?...a will to face it down and do what has to be done...comply with the changes and do them religiously all the rest of your life. It can make a difference against all the odds - , any doctor will tell you how important the will to live can be in a life and death struggle. produce in the face of long odds.
Cancer treatment (as are many other treatments for other diseases)have evolved to a point where the surviving numbers are very different than once they were, especially with early detection.
A close extended family member said he would never face radiation or chemo...never he roared..but he changed his mind with the chips down...unfortunately he left it late in the day ..and now one wonders.
Dad
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Classic Hegelian Historical Determinism vs. DGBN Post-Hegelian Historical Existentialism
I operate within a predominantly Hegelian paradigm. That should not come as much of a surprise for those you who may have read any of my other essays and/or those of you who can see Hegel's name plastered all over the title of my network of blogsites.
Classic Hegelian Philosophy can easily be viewed as a brand of historical determinism.
The swinging pendulum theory: one person or group of people advance a particular philosophy, and either through power, intimidation and/or coercion - or alternatively through some brand of negotiaition, compromise and/or consent (some form of democracy) - proceed in a particular direction until this particular brand of philosophy runs its course, and exposes its particular weakness or weaknesses which inevitably must happen because every brand of philosophy focuses on one direction of movement while ignoring or marginalizing another.
Every particular philosophy has its own 'darker side of the moon'. The only philosophy that it can be argued that doesn't is Hegel's dialectic philosophy because it anticipates the historical movement from 1. thesis; to 2. anti-thesis; to 3. synthesis. And start all over again at a new stage of evolution. In classic Dialectic Hegelian evolution theory, this progression in terms of swinging back and forth between opposite bi-polarities towards some sort of 'dialectic balance' in the middle is anticipated. Thus, we can say that Hegel advanced a particular philosophical brand of historical determinism.
However, I myself, have trouble with this 'non-modified brand of Hegelian Idealism.' So did/do a lot of philosophers. To name almost a handful of them: Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
Marx turned to dialectic materialism rather than dialectic idealism. According to Marx's view on things - which has a lot of validitiy (Marx understood the full ramifications of human and Capitalist narcissism - although he didn't realize that Sociaists and Communists could be just as narcissistic) - to repeat, according to Marx's perspective on things, 'Who's getting the money, especially within a Capitalist system, controls how and why things are done; not some sort of idealistic philosophy which generally turns out to be a sham, a false, deceitful philosophical ideology. The only thing that Marx got wrong really was that the leaders and goverments who adopted Marx's only idealistic ideology on Socialism and Communism (meaning primarily Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung) turned out to be far worse in this state of affairs than anything the West had to offer. Thus, at least one major conclusion can be made from this:
Narcissism is a human trait, and dominant behavior that is completely independent of economics and economic philosophy. It is certainly tied to economics but can be equally found in Liberalism and Conservatism, Republicans and Democrats, Capitalists and Socialists, Western leaders and Eastern leaders, Church and non-Church.
Obviously, these are broad generalities that do not adequately explain the presence of love, altruism, empathy, sympathy, and caring in human behavior.
But the idea of narcissism being dominant in human behavior does bring us to the ideas of Schopenhauer who said essentially the same thing - that narcissism rules all human behavior, indeed all life and death processes. And life is more cruel and ugly than not. A more or less Cultural Darwinian rendition of 'Survival of The Fittest' - and watch behind your back because you don't always know who is ready to plunge - or has already plunged - the proverbial knife into your back. Corporate and Government Politics 101 - East and West.
So Marx didn't like Hegel's brand of philosophical idealism - thus, he turned it upside down and made it Dialectic Materialism. The exchange of one brand of historical determinism for another.
Schopenhauer didn't like Hegel's 'Perfect Formula' leading to 'Absolute Knowedge'. Life is basically lived in the gutter - and any 'rosy picture and/or story' to try to justify this state of affairs is nothing but balderdash, mythology, and cover up. A 'pretty disguise' to hide man's 'Lord of The Flies' existence. The best thing you can do according to Schopenhauer is:
1. Take up Buddhism and 'not want' (Gee, that is an easy thing to do!);
2. Go to a theatre and see a good Greek Tragedy and vicariously live all your raw emotions about life. (Call that 'catharsis'.)
3. Go to an art gallery and enjoy some good art paintings.
Aside from this, 'Life is the pits', according to Schopenhauer. 'There are no cherries.' (Just illusions which he called 'representations'.)
Schopenhauer is considered by many to be the Father of Irrationalism (Maybe Hobbes, the Cynics, the Skeptics, the Stoics...all beat him to the punch...) Schopenhauer's philosophy seeped into Nietzsche's first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy'. And it partly seeped into Existentialism in general. If you hear someone say that Existentialism believes that 'Life is irrational, absurd...', well, consider that to be the Schopenhauer influence with existentialist writers like Doestevsky, Camus, and Kafka all adding their particular brand to the same idea.
Then there was Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard hated both Hegel's Collosal Abstractionism - and Hegel's Historical Determinism.
'Life is analyzed backwards but lived forwards.' is one of Kierkegaard's most famous quotes.
Meaning that we determine our own future; it is not determined for us.
Meet the counter-thesis or anti-thesis to Historical Determinism - Historical Existentialism.
Individual existentialism. Individuals and groups with strong wills - clash. And one person - or one group of people - comes up on top, either forcefully, or democratically.
No one can tell who this is going to be until it happens. Man determines his own fate - existentially. Choices and behaviors can change the direction of history. Nothing is written in stone. Nothing is determined. Did anybody know what the outcome of Word War 11 was going to be until that outcome became apparent? No.
Some elements of historical and cultural and economic and psychological determinism all have their respective effects on human character and human behavior. But in the end - choice matters. Individual and collective decisions matter. Voting matters. Democracy matters. And no one can forsee what the outcome of these individual and collective choice are going to be - until they happen.
This is the critical counter-punch to historical determinsm. Call it historical existentialism.
-- dgbn, June 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...
Classic Hegelian Philosophy can easily be viewed as a brand of historical determinism.
The swinging pendulum theory: one person or group of people advance a particular philosophy, and either through power, intimidation and/or coercion - or alternatively through some brand of negotiaition, compromise and/or consent (some form of democracy) - proceed in a particular direction until this particular brand of philosophy runs its course, and exposes its particular weakness or weaknesses which inevitably must happen because every brand of philosophy focuses on one direction of movement while ignoring or marginalizing another.
Every particular philosophy has its own 'darker side of the moon'. The only philosophy that it can be argued that doesn't is Hegel's dialectic philosophy because it anticipates the historical movement from 1. thesis; to 2. anti-thesis; to 3. synthesis. And start all over again at a new stage of evolution. In classic Dialectic Hegelian evolution theory, this progression in terms of swinging back and forth between opposite bi-polarities towards some sort of 'dialectic balance' in the middle is anticipated. Thus, we can say that Hegel advanced a particular philosophical brand of historical determinism.
However, I myself, have trouble with this 'non-modified brand of Hegelian Idealism.' So did/do a lot of philosophers. To name almost a handful of them: Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
Marx turned to dialectic materialism rather than dialectic idealism. According to Marx's view on things - which has a lot of validitiy (Marx understood the full ramifications of human and Capitalist narcissism - although he didn't realize that Sociaists and Communists could be just as narcissistic) - to repeat, according to Marx's perspective on things, 'Who's getting the money, especially within a Capitalist system, controls how and why things are done; not some sort of idealistic philosophy which generally turns out to be a sham, a false, deceitful philosophical ideology. The only thing that Marx got wrong really was that the leaders and goverments who adopted Marx's only idealistic ideology on Socialism and Communism (meaning primarily Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung) turned out to be far worse in this state of affairs than anything the West had to offer. Thus, at least one major conclusion can be made from this:
Narcissism is a human trait, and dominant behavior that is completely independent of economics and economic philosophy. It is certainly tied to economics but can be equally found in Liberalism and Conservatism, Republicans and Democrats, Capitalists and Socialists, Western leaders and Eastern leaders, Church and non-Church.
Obviously, these are broad generalities that do not adequately explain the presence of love, altruism, empathy, sympathy, and caring in human behavior.
But the idea of narcissism being dominant in human behavior does bring us to the ideas of Schopenhauer who said essentially the same thing - that narcissism rules all human behavior, indeed all life and death processes. And life is more cruel and ugly than not. A more or less Cultural Darwinian rendition of 'Survival of The Fittest' - and watch behind your back because you don't always know who is ready to plunge - or has already plunged - the proverbial knife into your back. Corporate and Government Politics 101 - East and West.
So Marx didn't like Hegel's brand of philosophical idealism - thus, he turned it upside down and made it Dialectic Materialism. The exchange of one brand of historical determinism for another.
Schopenhauer didn't like Hegel's 'Perfect Formula' leading to 'Absolute Knowedge'. Life is basically lived in the gutter - and any 'rosy picture and/or story' to try to justify this state of affairs is nothing but balderdash, mythology, and cover up. A 'pretty disguise' to hide man's 'Lord of The Flies' existence. The best thing you can do according to Schopenhauer is:
1. Take up Buddhism and 'not want' (Gee, that is an easy thing to do!);
2. Go to a theatre and see a good Greek Tragedy and vicariously live all your raw emotions about life. (Call that 'catharsis'.)
3. Go to an art gallery and enjoy some good art paintings.
Aside from this, 'Life is the pits', according to Schopenhauer. 'There are no cherries.' (Just illusions which he called 'representations'.)
Schopenhauer is considered by many to be the Father of Irrationalism (Maybe Hobbes, the Cynics, the Skeptics, the Stoics...all beat him to the punch...) Schopenhauer's philosophy seeped into Nietzsche's first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy'. And it partly seeped into Existentialism in general. If you hear someone say that Existentialism believes that 'Life is irrational, absurd...', well, consider that to be the Schopenhauer influence with existentialist writers like Doestevsky, Camus, and Kafka all adding their particular brand to the same idea.
Then there was Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard hated both Hegel's Collosal Abstractionism - and Hegel's Historical Determinism.
'Life is analyzed backwards but lived forwards.' is one of Kierkegaard's most famous quotes.
Meaning that we determine our own future; it is not determined for us.
Meet the counter-thesis or anti-thesis to Historical Determinism - Historical Existentialism.
Individual existentialism. Individuals and groups with strong wills - clash. And one person - or one group of people - comes up on top, either forcefully, or democratically.
No one can tell who this is going to be until it happens. Man determines his own fate - existentially. Choices and behaviors can change the direction of history. Nothing is written in stone. Nothing is determined. Did anybody know what the outcome of Word War 11 was going to be until that outcome became apparent? No.
Some elements of historical and cultural and economic and psychological determinism all have their respective effects on human character and human behavior. But in the end - choice matters. Individual and collective decisions matter. Voting matters. Democracy matters. And no one can forsee what the outcome of these individual and collective choice are going to be - until they happen.
This is the critical counter-punch to historical determinsm. Call it historical existentialism.
-- dgbn, June 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap Bridging Negotiations...are still in process...
An Email to My Dad: On The Right to Free Choice of Medical Treatment -- Orthodox and/or Alternative -- and The Dialectic Struggle Between The Two...
Hi Dad,
Mom seemed to be doing pretty well while we were down there. What happened? Does she need the stimulation of more people being around her to keep her energized? Are her unstable fluctuations of blood sugar levels -- and/or the remnants of her stroke -- still robbing her of all necessary mobility and energy?
I wonder if she may simply be kayoed by trying to balance too many medications? Obviously the fear of taking her off of any of these medications is huge.
Regarding prostate problems -- and particularly the threat and/or reality of cancer -- it is very hard if you are a man these days to decide which way you choose to fight it based on conflicting advice from two entirely different paradigms of medicine. I know if it was me, I would go down fighting with vitamins and herbs. I will simply never resort to radiation and chemotherapy. Radiation and chemotherapy is the end -- either they destroy your life, period, and/or they destroy your quality of life while they destroy your quantity of life. I guess, on this, we will perhaps always disagree. The one thing I have been able to protect so far is my prostate. So maybe that is one place where my knowledge is good. Obviously, once BPH turns to cancer, you are talking about a different kettle of a fish which is why it is so important not to get to this point. I stand by the formula of mixing both testosterone and thermogenic enhancing herbs, vitamins, minerals, herbs, foods -- specifically, A,C,E, selenium, zinc, pumpkin seed, saw palmetto, netttle, ginger, cayenne, garlic, tumeric (curcimen), radishes, horse radish, gingko biloba, tribulus... -- with phytoestrogens (soya milk) and cruciferous veggies (broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower...) and the usual trumpeted veggies -- carrots, beets, spinach, and seaweed (kelp, spirulina, chlorella...)
I know that I have overdone it in some of my herb taking -- as i experiment with different things -- looking back at things now, I say that it is just important not to go overboard on herb taking as it is not to get into double digit medications....otherwise one's liver will start to collapse under the stress of trying to make sense of all these different things it is getting hit with. The best intentioned medications and herbs can quickly turn toxic and rob the body of all health and energy if the sum total of them is too much for the liver/body to handle.
I think I may have OD'd on hawthorne which is an herb designed to improve circulation but which can -- like any herb or medication -- become toxic if taken too much of. This is my theoretical conclusion at this time -- I have no empirical grounds of proof. Combine 4 capsules of hawthorne (and/or gingko biloba) with alcohol, no liver support -- and i might have invited what happened to me a couple of years ago. Two ERCP operations might have only exasperated and prolonged what the original problem was -- a toxified liver that needed better nutritional support and less herbal overload. And no alcohol. Why did i do it? A better sexual night that evening with my girlfriend. How many people out there have done -- or continue to do -- something potentially self-destructive in the name of sex. David Carradine is possibly -- I repeat possibly -- the latest and most extreme example of this type of human behavior. There are, I pretty strongly believe, many aging males out there -- and females -- who want to hold on to their sex lives for as long as possible even if the path they choose for doing this might ultimately lead to, or speed up, their self-destruction and death. Like everywhere else in life -- balance is needed. People are probably more likely to go 'out of balance' relative to their sexual behavior than any other type of human behavior. Or maybe sex and work might jointly hold this title together.
I don't have time to get sick. I don't have the money to afford to get sick. I can't afford to lose either my brain power or my physical energy and mobility. I would sooner die working and eating responsibly -- nutritionally -- than experience the faster and more immobilizing toxic, death spiral of radiation and/or chemotherapy. Even surgery, I will avoid at all costs.
I either look after my body nutritionally -- the right way -- or I will go down trying. Personally, I will take my chances with soya milk, dark green foods, green tea, beet juice, carrot juice, berry juice, organic apple cider and lemon juice, digestive enzymes, fibre, and protein -- mixed with the right fats such as uncooked extra virgin oil, flaxseed oil -- than experience the death spiral of radiation and chemotherapy.
My 'anti-cancer' agents are soya milk, cruciferous veggies, carrots and carrot juice, berry juice, red clover, green tea -- if this doesn't work then I will simply let cancer and/or cirrhosis destroy me over its time -- I need 3 years to finish Hegel's Hotel, and I need to help you, mom, and my kids as much as possible in that time....There can be no fast death spirals, I need to be as healthy as possible during this time. I will hold on to my quality of life for as long as i can -- even if it may or may not be at the expense of my 'quantity of life'. What quality of life is there left in the toxic bombardment of radiation and chemotherapy? That is a living death where all mind and body functions come crashing down to a bed-ridden and toilet clinging nausea. The cancer is bad enough in itself -- why add two more carcinogenic agents in the name of a theorized return to health. This may be the right decision for some people it; it is not the right decision for me.
I will defend my right to make the best perceived choices that I possibly can to keep myself alive and healthy and mobile and able to carry on an informed, intelligent conversation, able to write an intelligent essay, with whoever the person is who I am with -- and i will defend this right to make my own decisions -- again til the day I die. I would sooner die making my own choices to the end than have this choice taken out of my hands in the name of someone who claims to know better than I. That person is not in my mind, not in my body, not living the life I want to live -- and may have been taught according to a paradigm that may or may not one day come crashing down -- or at least partly down -- under the weight of its own imperfections. Wherever and whenever there is serious money involved -- whether it be in the sphere of surgery and prescription medication or in the sphere of the herbal business -- one needs to remain seriously skeptical and aware of the potential conflict of interest of the person -- and/or industry -- who/that is giving you the supposedly 'best advice'.
I want to keep all herbs on the health store shelves -- unless there is clear and significance evidence relative to a clear and significant danger relative to the use of the particular herb. To be sure, more and more intelligent and reasonable knowledge is important and needed -- in the herbal industry, in the government health inspection agencies, and in the minds of individual users.
I can understand -- and support -- the reason for ephedra being taken off health stores shelves. There have been too many 'accidents' associated with it. Ephedra is like a super dose of caffeine that constricts the arteries -- which in the case of additional stress to the body such as extreme exercise and/or plaque-filled arteries could/can be deadly.
Hawthorne and gingko biloba -- to my knowledge -- work in a different way as 'thermogenic agents'. They open the arteries up as opposed to constricting them like ephedra and caffeine. Thus, logically speaking, it would seem that ephedra and caffeine could/can pose a serious health risk to any 'artery-and-circulation-challenged person' (high bad cholesterol in the arteries, high blood pressure, diabetics) whereas hawthorne and gingko biloba offer the potential therapeutic benefit of 'opening the arteries up'. Thus, it is no coincidence that hawthorne and gingko biloba would be -- and are being -- used to improve circulation in the name of improved sexual functioning whereas ephedra and caffeince could/can be expected to do the opposite.
However, in the case of hawthorne and gingko biloba -- as with such prescription drugs as Viagra and Cialis -- one has to be aware of the potentially dangerous complications of impaired liver function.
It is in this last regard that I plead guilty of my own health negligence -- taking too many hawthorne and/or gingko biloba capsules on a night when I had been drinking and wanted everything to end on the right note with my girlfriend. The next day -- or shortly afterwards -- I was admitted into the hospital with serious liver problems -- bad jaundice, outrageously high liver enzyme levels, and I would be in and out of the hospital for most of that summer -- from May to August -- trying to get my liver back to normal again. I walked away from a liver biopsy that I perhaps shouldn't have but I was sick of being sick, and I was sick of being in the hospital. I nursed my liver back to workable standards and my skin colour back to normal colour. But a few months later, thinking i was healthy and on top of things again, I started up social drinking again which was probably a big mistake. A year and a half later -- this past April 1st -- I was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. March 27th of this year was the last day I had a drink. Whether this -- and my choice of primarily self-treatment -- is putting me on the path to self-recovery or the continuation of a self-destructive and death spiral remains to be seen. I have been avoiding blood-tests which I need to do. I have been avoiding an MRI (don't want any more bad news) which I need to get it together and get it done. I see the same liver specialist in July that I walked away from two years ago. I need to get those two tests done before I see him. I don't know how long in advance you need to book an MRI. I still don't want a liver biopsy.
Right now I feel reasonably healthy. Or at least I go to work each day, function reasonably normal -- even if I am functioning mainly on half a liver. I was told that my 'left lobe' is my good lobe -- and is compensating for some of the work that my 'right lobe' is not doing. Hang in there left lobe! Don't desert me!
All of this is to say that the 'dialectic power struggle and/or integrative synthesis' between Orthodox Western Medicine and Alternative, Natural Health Medicine has real consequences with real people. Like me and you -- and mom.
What is happening in the scientific laboratories and in the editorial health and medical magazines -- in terms of a dialectic Post-Hegelian struggle for power, money, and/or a more idealistic integration -- is also being waged in the minds of every day, non-medical people. Like me and you -- and mom.
As long as I have enough life and energy in this aging mind and body of mine, as long as I can write to my readers, as long as i can embrace and encounter the people who are most important to me, as long as I can go to work each day, pay my bills, help you, mom, and my children, as long as I can live long enough to finish Hegel's Hotel, as long as I have enough strength and exuberance to meet each and every day with reason and passion -- to appreciate each and every day for each and every new experience that it brings me...to see you and mom continuing to smile...
Life is good.
The opposite must be avoided at all costs.
-- love Dave
-- dgbn, June 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Mom seemed to be doing pretty well while we were down there. What happened? Does she need the stimulation of more people being around her to keep her energized? Are her unstable fluctuations of blood sugar levels -- and/or the remnants of her stroke -- still robbing her of all necessary mobility and energy?
I wonder if she may simply be kayoed by trying to balance too many medications? Obviously the fear of taking her off of any of these medications is huge.
Regarding prostate problems -- and particularly the threat and/or reality of cancer -- it is very hard if you are a man these days to decide which way you choose to fight it based on conflicting advice from two entirely different paradigms of medicine. I know if it was me, I would go down fighting with vitamins and herbs. I will simply never resort to radiation and chemotherapy. Radiation and chemotherapy is the end -- either they destroy your life, period, and/or they destroy your quality of life while they destroy your quantity of life. I guess, on this, we will perhaps always disagree. The one thing I have been able to protect so far is my prostate. So maybe that is one place where my knowledge is good. Obviously, once BPH turns to cancer, you are talking about a different kettle of a fish which is why it is so important not to get to this point. I stand by the formula of mixing both testosterone and thermogenic enhancing herbs, vitamins, minerals, herbs, foods -- specifically, A,C,E, selenium, zinc, pumpkin seed, saw palmetto, netttle, ginger, cayenne, garlic, tumeric (curcimen), radishes, horse radish, gingko biloba, tribulus... -- with phytoestrogens (soya milk) and cruciferous veggies (broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower...) and the usual trumpeted veggies -- carrots, beets, spinach, and seaweed (kelp, spirulina, chlorella...)
I know that I have overdone it in some of my herb taking -- as i experiment with different things -- looking back at things now, I say that it is just important not to go overboard on herb taking as it is not to get into double digit medications....otherwise one's liver will start to collapse under the stress of trying to make sense of all these different things it is getting hit with. The best intentioned medications and herbs can quickly turn toxic and rob the body of all health and energy if the sum total of them is too much for the liver/body to handle.
I think I may have OD'd on hawthorne which is an herb designed to improve circulation but which can -- like any herb or medication -- become toxic if taken too much of. This is my theoretical conclusion at this time -- I have no empirical grounds of proof. Combine 4 capsules of hawthorne (and/or gingko biloba) with alcohol, no liver support -- and i might have invited what happened to me a couple of years ago. Two ERCP operations might have only exasperated and prolonged what the original problem was -- a toxified liver that needed better nutritional support and less herbal overload. And no alcohol. Why did i do it? A better sexual night that evening with my girlfriend. How many people out there have done -- or continue to do -- something potentially self-destructive in the name of sex. David Carradine is possibly -- I repeat possibly -- the latest and most extreme example of this type of human behavior. There are, I pretty strongly believe, many aging males out there -- and females -- who want to hold on to their sex lives for as long as possible even if the path they choose for doing this might ultimately lead to, or speed up, their self-destruction and death. Like everywhere else in life -- balance is needed. People are probably more likely to go 'out of balance' relative to their sexual behavior than any other type of human behavior. Or maybe sex and work might jointly hold this title together.
I don't have time to get sick. I don't have the money to afford to get sick. I can't afford to lose either my brain power or my physical energy and mobility. I would sooner die working and eating responsibly -- nutritionally -- than experience the faster and more immobilizing toxic, death spiral of radiation and/or chemotherapy. Even surgery, I will avoid at all costs.
I either look after my body nutritionally -- the right way -- or I will go down trying. Personally, I will take my chances with soya milk, dark green foods, green tea, beet juice, carrot juice, berry juice, organic apple cider and lemon juice, digestive enzymes, fibre, and protein -- mixed with the right fats such as uncooked extra virgin oil, flaxseed oil -- than experience the death spiral of radiation and chemotherapy.
My 'anti-cancer' agents are soya milk, cruciferous veggies, carrots and carrot juice, berry juice, red clover, green tea -- if this doesn't work then I will simply let cancer and/or cirrhosis destroy me over its time -- I need 3 years to finish Hegel's Hotel, and I need to help you, mom, and my kids as much as possible in that time....There can be no fast death spirals, I need to be as healthy as possible during this time. I will hold on to my quality of life for as long as i can -- even if it may or may not be at the expense of my 'quantity of life'. What quality of life is there left in the toxic bombardment of radiation and chemotherapy? That is a living death where all mind and body functions come crashing down to a bed-ridden and toilet clinging nausea. The cancer is bad enough in itself -- why add two more carcinogenic agents in the name of a theorized return to health. This may be the right decision for some people it; it is not the right decision for me.
I will defend my right to make the best perceived choices that I possibly can to keep myself alive and healthy and mobile and able to carry on an informed, intelligent conversation, able to write an intelligent essay, with whoever the person is who I am with -- and i will defend this right to make my own decisions -- again til the day I die. I would sooner die making my own choices to the end than have this choice taken out of my hands in the name of someone who claims to know better than I. That person is not in my mind, not in my body, not living the life I want to live -- and may have been taught according to a paradigm that may or may not one day come crashing down -- or at least partly down -- under the weight of its own imperfections. Wherever and whenever there is serious money involved -- whether it be in the sphere of surgery and prescription medication or in the sphere of the herbal business -- one needs to remain seriously skeptical and aware of the potential conflict of interest of the person -- and/or industry -- who/that is giving you the supposedly 'best advice'.
I want to keep all herbs on the health store shelves -- unless there is clear and significance evidence relative to a clear and significant danger relative to the use of the particular herb. To be sure, more and more intelligent and reasonable knowledge is important and needed -- in the herbal industry, in the government health inspection agencies, and in the minds of individual users.
I can understand -- and support -- the reason for ephedra being taken off health stores shelves. There have been too many 'accidents' associated with it. Ephedra is like a super dose of caffeine that constricts the arteries -- which in the case of additional stress to the body such as extreme exercise and/or plaque-filled arteries could/can be deadly.
Hawthorne and gingko biloba -- to my knowledge -- work in a different way as 'thermogenic agents'. They open the arteries up as opposed to constricting them like ephedra and caffeine. Thus, logically speaking, it would seem that ephedra and caffeine could/can pose a serious health risk to any 'artery-and-circulation-challenged person' (high bad cholesterol in the arteries, high blood pressure, diabetics) whereas hawthorne and gingko biloba offer the potential therapeutic benefit of 'opening the arteries up'. Thus, it is no coincidence that hawthorne and gingko biloba would be -- and are being -- used to improve circulation in the name of improved sexual functioning whereas ephedra and caffeince could/can be expected to do the opposite.
However, in the case of hawthorne and gingko biloba -- as with such prescription drugs as Viagra and Cialis -- one has to be aware of the potentially dangerous complications of impaired liver function.
It is in this last regard that I plead guilty of my own health negligence -- taking too many hawthorne and/or gingko biloba capsules on a night when I had been drinking and wanted everything to end on the right note with my girlfriend. The next day -- or shortly afterwards -- I was admitted into the hospital with serious liver problems -- bad jaundice, outrageously high liver enzyme levels, and I would be in and out of the hospital for most of that summer -- from May to August -- trying to get my liver back to normal again. I walked away from a liver biopsy that I perhaps shouldn't have but I was sick of being sick, and I was sick of being in the hospital. I nursed my liver back to workable standards and my skin colour back to normal colour. But a few months later, thinking i was healthy and on top of things again, I started up social drinking again which was probably a big mistake. A year and a half later -- this past April 1st -- I was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. March 27th of this year was the last day I had a drink. Whether this -- and my choice of primarily self-treatment -- is putting me on the path to self-recovery or the continuation of a self-destructive and death spiral remains to be seen. I have been avoiding blood-tests which I need to do. I have been avoiding an MRI (don't want any more bad news) which I need to get it together and get it done. I see the same liver specialist in July that I walked away from two years ago. I need to get those two tests done before I see him. I don't know how long in advance you need to book an MRI. I still don't want a liver biopsy.
Right now I feel reasonably healthy. Or at least I go to work each day, function reasonably normal -- even if I am functioning mainly on half a liver. I was told that my 'left lobe' is my good lobe -- and is compensating for some of the work that my 'right lobe' is not doing. Hang in there left lobe! Don't desert me!
All of this is to say that the 'dialectic power struggle and/or integrative synthesis' between Orthodox Western Medicine and Alternative, Natural Health Medicine has real consequences with real people. Like me and you -- and mom.
What is happening in the scientific laboratories and in the editorial health and medical magazines -- in terms of a dialectic Post-Hegelian struggle for power, money, and/or a more idealistic integration -- is also being waged in the minds of every day, non-medical people. Like me and you -- and mom.
As long as I have enough life and energy in this aging mind and body of mine, as long as I can write to my readers, as long as i can embrace and encounter the people who are most important to me, as long as I can go to work each day, pay my bills, help you, mom, and my children, as long as I can live long enough to finish Hegel's Hotel, as long as I have enough strength and exuberance to meet each and every day with reason and passion -- to appreciate each and every day for each and every new experience that it brings me...to see you and mom continuing to smile...
Life is good.
The opposite must be avoided at all costs.
-- love Dave
-- dgbn, June 10th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Saturday, June 6, 2009
A New, Updated Table Of Contents for Hegel's Hotel...June 6th, 2009.
I am back from vacation -- 10 days or so on the East Coast of Canada (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia) -- and it is time for another re-organization of Hegel's Hotel.
I will be adjusting the old Table Of Contents to reflect this new edition of The Table of Contents, ASAP. (This could take up to a week or so.)
I will also give you a brief overview of expected essays to come in the near future.
Essays are organized in two ways in Hegel's Hotel: 1. chronologically from newest to oldest essays (in the 'Most Recent Papers' section although the chronological order is not perfect); and 2. by subject matter and logic of presentation of which I will start to create a new classification system as of today.
Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy -- A Multi-Integrative Philosophy For The 21st Century
Table of Contents
Blog (Floor) Number:
01. Table of Contents
02. Most Recent Papers
03. The DGBN Post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Paradigm
04. More on The DGBN Post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Paradigm
05. The Ancient Dialectic Philosophers, West and East (Pre-Socrates)
06. The Sophists, Parmenides, and Socrates
07. Plato and Aristotle
08. Post-Aristotlean Roman Philosophy
09. Scholastic (Early Religious) Philosophy
10. Early Scientific Philosophy
11. Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
12. British Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
13. Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 1: Adam Smith (Capitalism)
14. Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 2: Epistemology, Human Rights, Politics: Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Paine, Jefferson...
15. German Idealism: Kant (The 'Subjective-Objective Split'), Fichte (Wholistic Nationalism), Schelling (Dialectic Unity, Holism, Pantheism), Hegel (Dialectic Triadic Philosophy: 1. Thesis, 2. Anti-Thesis, 3. Synthesis)
16. 19th Century Romanticism: Rousseau...
15. Marx: Dialectic-Materialism, Socialism, Communism
16. Schopenhauer: Irrationalism
17. Existentialism: Hegel to Sartre
18. Nietzsche
19. British Utilitarianism
20. American Pragmatism: James, Dewey
21. Russell and Wittgenstein
22. General Semantics: Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa
23. The Evolution of Evolution Theory
24. The Philosophy of Science: Kuhn vs. Popper
25. Hypnosis to Clinical Psychology: Charcot, Janet, Freud
26. Freud and Breuer: Early Unconscious Traumacy Theory
27. Freud: The Seduction Theory
28. Freud: Screen Memories
29: Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
30: Freud: Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal Theory
31: Freud: Sexual Instincts and Objects
32. Freud: The Evolution of Transference Theory
33. Freud: On Narcissism
34. Freud vs. Adler
35. Freud: The Repetition Compulsion and Death Instinct Theory
36. Freud: The Id, Superego, and Ego
37. Freud: Ego-Splitting and Object Relations
38. Ferenczi
39. Jung
40. Object Relations: Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip
41. Self-Psychology: Kohut
42. Transactional Analysis: Berne
43. Erich Fromm: Humanism and Neo-Freudianism
44. Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy
45. Integrating Humanism and Existentialism
46. Post-Modernism and Power: Foucault
47. Structuralism
48. Deconstruction: Derrida
49. Ayn Rand and Objectivism
50. Psycho-Cybernetics
51. Nathaniel Branden and The Psychology of Self-Esteem
52. Jeffrey Masson's Assault on Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory
53. Central Ego Functioning (Problem-Solving)
54. DGBN Ethics: Multi-Dialectic-Democratic-Homeostatic-Humanistic-Existentialism
55. DGBN Multi-Dialectic (Multi-Bi-Polar)Personality Theory
56. DGBN Narcissistic, Learning, and Transference Theory
57. A DGBN Rendition of Ego States and Ego-Splitting
58. Dialectic Extremism as Philosophical and Psychological Pathology
59: Building Better Problem-Solving and Conflict-Resolving Strategies
60. Multi-Dialectic Psychotherapy
61. Gods, Myths, Religion, Philosophers, and Psychologists
62. Gods, Myths, Religion, Spirituality, Pantheism, Humanism
63. Canadian Politics/Economics
64. American Politics/Economics
65. Equal Rights/Equal Responsibilities
66. The British North America Act vs. Trudeau's Revised Canadian Constitution
67. Canadian Family Law
68. Domestic Assault and Canadian Law
69. Sexual Assault and Canadian Law
70. Egalitarian Feminism vs. Narcissistic Feminism
71. Egalitarian Masculinism vs. Narcissistic Masculinism
72. Feminism and Lobbyism
73. Masculinism and (An Absence of) Lobbyism
74. Narcissistic Lobbyism, Special Interest Groups, Partisan Funding, and Legislative Narcissistic Overcompensation
75. Affirmative Action as Racial and Sexual Profiling, Preferentialism, and Reverse-Discrimination
76. Proposed Changes in The Structure and Process of Lobbyism
77. The Changing Nature/Face of Minority/Marginalized Groups - and Power
78. DGBN Political Theory and Canadian Law
79. Federal-Provincial Dialectic Relations, Laws, and Money Transfers
80. Dialectic Relations Between Parliament and The Senate
81. Politics, Law, Business and Economics
82. Employers, Employees, and Union Dialectic Relations
83. 21st Century Romantic Philosophy and The Arts
84. Altruism and Community Work
85. Concluding Essays
86. Contact, Awarenesses, Aphorisms, Short Opinions...
It has taken me about 3 years to write the number of papers that can now be found on the various blogsites of Hegel's Hotel. I estimate that it will take me about another 3 years to finish Hegel's Hotel. Not quite up to the length of time it took Kant to finish his classic philosophical treatise, 'The Critique of Pure Reason', which I think took Kant about 9 years to write, working, I believe, pretty well full time on it.
Anyways, my treatise has a long way to go to approach anywhere near Kant's idolized standard. I do not pretend to have the intellect of Kant or any of the great philosophers but by the time I am through, if my work reaches the level of my own realistic self-ideal, I would my work to be one of, if not the, greatest integrative philosophy projects in the history of Western philosophy...
But...'Down David, down'...I am perhaps letting my egotism and narcissism get the better of me at the expense of a more humble approach that might be more appropriate...
Still, I remember something that Dolly Parton said on the Larry King Show which I liked and will now paraphrase to the best of my memory:
'Sometimes you have to blow your own horn to let people know you are coming'.
Anyways, at this point in time I will target March 3rd, 2012 as my completion date, my 57th birthday, and the 105th anniversary of Freud and Jung meeting for the first time (March 3rd, 1907).
(Google... DGBN Philosophy...to get to my largest network of visible blogsites...)
Let hope and optimism reign supreme for the rest of 2009, despite all of our economic and political traumacies, trials and challenges these days.
- DGB, June 6th-8th, 2009.
- David Gordon Bain
- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
..............................................................................
I will be adjusting the old Table Of Contents to reflect this new edition of The Table of Contents, ASAP. (This could take up to a week or so.)
I will also give you a brief overview of expected essays to come in the near future.
Essays are organized in two ways in Hegel's Hotel: 1. chronologically from newest to oldest essays (in the 'Most Recent Papers' section although the chronological order is not perfect); and 2. by subject matter and logic of presentation of which I will start to create a new classification system as of today.
Hegel's Hotel: DGBN Philosophy -- A Multi-Integrative Philosophy For The 21st Century
Table of Contents
Blog (Floor) Number:
01. Table of Contents
02. Most Recent Papers
03. The DGBN Post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Paradigm
04. More on The DGBN Post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Paradigm
05. The Ancient Dialectic Philosophers, West and East (Pre-Socrates)
06. The Sophists, Parmenides, and Socrates
07. Plato and Aristotle
08. Post-Aristotlean Roman Philosophy
09. Scholastic (Early Religious) Philosophy
10. Early Scientific Philosophy
11. Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz
12. British Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
13. Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 1: Adam Smith (Capitalism)
14. Enlightenment Philosophy, Part 2: Epistemology, Human Rights, Politics: Diderot, Voltaire, Montesque, Paine, Jefferson...
15. German Idealism: Kant (The 'Subjective-Objective Split'), Fichte (Wholistic Nationalism), Schelling (Dialectic Unity, Holism, Pantheism), Hegel (Dialectic Triadic Philosophy: 1. Thesis, 2. Anti-Thesis, 3. Synthesis)
16. 19th Century Romanticism: Rousseau...
15. Marx: Dialectic-Materialism, Socialism, Communism
16. Schopenhauer: Irrationalism
17. Existentialism: Hegel to Sartre
18. Nietzsche
19. British Utilitarianism
20. American Pragmatism: James, Dewey
21. Russell and Wittgenstein
22. General Semantics: Alfred Korzybski and S.I. Hayakawa
23. The Evolution of Evolution Theory
24. The Philosophy of Science: Kuhn vs. Popper
25. Hypnosis to Clinical Psychology: Charcot, Janet, Freud
26. Freud and Breuer: Early Unconscious Traumacy Theory
27. Freud: The Seduction Theory
28. Freud: Screen Memories
29: Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
30: Freud: Childhood Sexuality, Oedipal Theory
31: Freud: Sexual Instincts and Objects
32. Freud: The Evolution of Transference Theory
33. Freud: On Narcissism
34. Freud vs. Adler
35. Freud: The Repetition Compulsion and Death Instinct Theory
36. Freud: The Id, Superego, and Ego
37. Freud: Ego-Splitting and Object Relations
38. Ferenczi
39. Jung
40. Object Relations: Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip
41. Self-Psychology: Kohut
42. Transactional Analysis: Berne
43. Erich Fromm: Humanism and Neo-Freudianism
44. Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy
45. Integrating Humanism and Existentialism
46. Post-Modernism and Power: Foucault
47. Structuralism
48. Deconstruction: Derrida
49. Ayn Rand and Objectivism
50. Psycho-Cybernetics
51. Nathaniel Branden and The Psychology of Self-Esteem
52. Jeffrey Masson's Assault on Freud's Abandonment of The Seduction Theory
53. Central Ego Functioning (Problem-Solving)
54. DGBN Ethics: Multi-Dialectic-Democratic-Homeostatic-Humanistic-Existentialism
55. DGBN Multi-Dialectic (Multi-Bi-Polar)Personality Theory
56. DGBN Narcissistic, Learning, and Transference Theory
57. A DGBN Rendition of Ego States and Ego-Splitting
58. Dialectic Extremism as Philosophical and Psychological Pathology
59: Building Better Problem-Solving and Conflict-Resolving Strategies
60. Multi-Dialectic Psychotherapy
61. Gods, Myths, Religion, Philosophers, and Psychologists
62. Gods, Myths, Religion, Spirituality, Pantheism, Humanism
63. Canadian Politics/Economics
64. American Politics/Economics
65. Equal Rights/Equal Responsibilities
66. The British North America Act vs. Trudeau's Revised Canadian Constitution
67. Canadian Family Law
68. Domestic Assault and Canadian Law
69. Sexual Assault and Canadian Law
70. Egalitarian Feminism vs. Narcissistic Feminism
71. Egalitarian Masculinism vs. Narcissistic Masculinism
72. Feminism and Lobbyism
73. Masculinism and (An Absence of) Lobbyism
74. Narcissistic Lobbyism, Special Interest Groups, Partisan Funding, and Legislative Narcissistic Overcompensation
75. Affirmative Action as Racial and Sexual Profiling, Preferentialism, and Reverse-Discrimination
76. Proposed Changes in The Structure and Process of Lobbyism
77. The Changing Nature/Face of Minority/Marginalized Groups - and Power
78. DGBN Political Theory and Canadian Law
79. Federal-Provincial Dialectic Relations, Laws, and Money Transfers
80. Dialectic Relations Between Parliament and The Senate
81. Politics, Law, Business and Economics
82. Employers, Employees, and Union Dialectic Relations
83. 21st Century Romantic Philosophy and The Arts
84. Altruism and Community Work
85. Concluding Essays
86. Contact, Awarenesses, Aphorisms, Short Opinions...
It has taken me about 3 years to write the number of papers that can now be found on the various blogsites of Hegel's Hotel. I estimate that it will take me about another 3 years to finish Hegel's Hotel. Not quite up to the length of time it took Kant to finish his classic philosophical treatise, 'The Critique of Pure Reason', which I think took Kant about 9 years to write, working, I believe, pretty well full time on it.
Anyways, my treatise has a long way to go to approach anywhere near Kant's idolized standard. I do not pretend to have the intellect of Kant or any of the great philosophers but by the time I am through, if my work reaches the level of my own realistic self-ideal, I would my work to be one of, if not the, greatest integrative philosophy projects in the history of Western philosophy...
But...'Down David, down'...I am perhaps letting my egotism and narcissism get the better of me at the expense of a more humble approach that might be more appropriate...
Still, I remember something that Dolly Parton said on the Larry King Show which I liked and will now paraphrase to the best of my memory:
'Sometimes you have to blow your own horn to let people know you are coming'.
Anyways, at this point in time I will target March 3rd, 2012 as my completion date, my 57th birthday, and the 105th anniversary of Freud and Jung meeting for the first time (March 3rd, 1907).
(Google... DGBN Philosophy...to get to my largest network of visible blogsites...)
Let hope and optimism reign supreme for the rest of 2009, despite all of our economic and political traumacies, trials and challenges these days.
- DGB, June 6th-8th, 2009.
- David Gordon Bain
- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
Are still in process....
..............................................................................
Friday, June 5, 2009
Our Essence and Our Wall
Our 'Essence' and our 'Wall' -- together comprising the actuality of our existence...our 'compromise-formation' between the two of them at any given moment, the one pure honesty, as honest as we can get, the other, our wall of resistance against such unbridled honesty, the content including our innermost vulnerabilities, and/or innermost narcissistic desires, the two together making up our resulting energy field -- or its absence -- as we walk into a room, noting people or individuals who make us feel more comfortable, more at home, enlarging the boundaries of our Essence -- more Essence, less Wall; or the reverse: more Wall, less Essence, as the boundaries of our Essence recede in the company of someone or someones who makes us feel less comfortable, more on top of our defenses...
And so each and every day, each and every moment, goes by with changing energy fields emulating from us, based partly on the positive and/or negative stereotypes that we bring with us, inside of us, based on relationships and encounters that we have had in the past, and also based on our changing comfort zones in the presence of individuals and/or people who stimulate us in positive and/or negative manners that influence us to share more of our Essence -- or more of our Wall.
-- dgb, April 22nd, 2009; modified and updated June 4th, 2009.
And so each and every day, each and every moment, goes by with changing energy fields emulating from us, based partly on the positive and/or negative stereotypes that we bring with us, inside of us, based on relationships and encounters that we have had in the past, and also based on our changing comfort zones in the presence of individuals and/or people who stimulate us in positive and/or negative manners that influence us to share more of our Essence -- or more of our Wall.
-- dgb, April 22nd, 2009; modified and updated June 4th, 2009.
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