Thursday, September 20, 2007
A Short Mission Statement of Hegel's Hotel: The DGB Philosophy Forum
The purpose of Hegel's Hotel: The DGB Philosophy Forum is to promote the healthy use of the dialectic (dialogue, discussion, debate, negotiation, integration) for personal, social, economic, political, legal, and other cultural reasons. The two biggest obstacles that tend to stop or stifle the healthy use of the dialectic are: 1. human narcissism -- an overblown me, me, me attitude; and human righteousness -- an either-or attitude that tends to block out all reasonable discussion. Oftentimes, these two out-of-balance, even pathological human traits combine together -- human righteousness masking an underlying narcissistic agenda. Usually, a healthy use of the dialectic for negotiation, integration, and conflict resolution purposes requires that both people or both parties in the dialectic get in touch with any and all narcissistic agendas on both sides of the negotiation table -- and move towards more central ground. Ignoring or trying to hide these agendas, manipulating facts and issues, putting up smoke screens, trying to coerce and-or intimidate the opponent, aiming for a win-lose as opposed to a win-win resolution -- these are all signs of a narcissistic as opposed to an ethical, humanistic-existential dialectic and tends to leave both parties resentful and non-trusting of the other party which is particularly unhealthy in any desired ongoing, long-term relationship. Ethical simply refers to negotiating with integrity. And humanistic-existential simply refers to negotiating with a balanced perspective of both self-assertiveness and social sensitivity. dgb, Sept. 21st, 2007.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Names, Names, Names...
It seems I've almost had more trouble figuring out a name for my philosophy than I have had figuring out the contents (process and the structure) of the philosophy itself. And yes, I know that in the realms of names, ideas, and theories 'simplest' is usually the best way to go (look up 'Occam's Razor' if you are not familiar with it), but in seeking a 'distinguishing feature' of my philosophy from all the rest, new names keep arising -- some more technical than the simplest of the bunch.
Here are some of the names I've either gone through and/or am still dwelling on, roughly in chronological order from oldest to newest (and simplest to more technical). All of these names are acceptable in my books -- I have used, am using, and/or am about to use, any and all of them at different points in time.
1. Gap Philosophy
2. DGB (Dialectical Gap-Bridging) Philosophy
3. Gap-DGB Philosophy
4. Gap Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existentialism (Gap MDHE Philosophy or GMDHE)
5. DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanisitic-Existentialism (DGB MDHE Philosophy)
Thus, the two most distinguishing features of my philosophy are: 1. it's 'multi-dialectic' feature (see the 'dialectic' section for more clarification in this area) in combination with its 'humanistic-existential' feature.
The closest academically recognized school of philosophy-psychology to mine is Perls' Gestalt Therapy. It is no coincidence in this regard because I spent more than 12 years off and on studying and/or experiencing Gestalt Therapy (mainly between 1980 and 1991). It was through Perls -- and Jung and Freud -- that I arrived eventually at Hegel. And it is Hegel who is the number 1 star of my 'philosophy show' with all due respect to Nietzsche and Perls who are probably 'my best two supporting actors'. In no particular, Freud, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Spinoza, Fromm, Korzybski, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Locke, Kant, Diderot, Votaire, Rousseau, Jefferson, Kierkegaard, Marx, Adam Smith, Schopenhauer, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida have all all played -- and are still playing -- significant roles in the ongoing evolution of Gap-DGB Philosophy. For those of you who venture into 'Hegel's Hotel' before it is finished -- which could be another 3 to 5 years -- I welcome you here, and hope you get something significant out of it that you either were or weren't looking for. However, please understand and be tolerant of the fact that the work and all of the essays that will eventually be contained in it are not finished yet -- I'm at about 100 essays now and aiming for something over 500 essays. This is intended to be my signature life work.
Enjoy -- and/or I hope this work will take you to an integrative place of 'higher knowledge' and 'more balanced well-being'.
dgb, Sept. 17th, 2007.
Here are some of the names I've either gone through and/or am still dwelling on, roughly in chronological order from oldest to newest (and simplest to more technical). All of these names are acceptable in my books -- I have used, am using, and/or am about to use, any and all of them at different points in time.
1. Gap Philosophy
2. DGB (Dialectical Gap-Bridging) Philosophy
3. Gap-DGB Philosophy
4. Gap Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existentialism (Gap MDHE Philosophy or GMDHE)
5. DGB Multi-Dialectic, Humanisitic-Existentialism (DGB MDHE Philosophy)
Thus, the two most distinguishing features of my philosophy are: 1. it's 'multi-dialectic' feature (see the 'dialectic' section for more clarification in this area) in combination with its 'humanistic-existential' feature.
The closest academically recognized school of philosophy-psychology to mine is Perls' Gestalt Therapy. It is no coincidence in this regard because I spent more than 12 years off and on studying and/or experiencing Gestalt Therapy (mainly between 1980 and 1991). It was through Perls -- and Jung and Freud -- that I arrived eventually at Hegel. And it is Hegel who is the number 1 star of my 'philosophy show' with all due respect to Nietzsche and Perls who are probably 'my best two supporting actors'. In no particular, Freud, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Spinoza, Fromm, Korzybski, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Locke, Kant, Diderot, Votaire, Rousseau, Jefferson, Kierkegaard, Marx, Adam Smith, Schopenhauer, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida have all all played -- and are still playing -- significant roles in the ongoing evolution of Gap-DGB Philosophy. For those of you who venture into 'Hegel's Hotel' before it is finished -- which could be another 3 to 5 years -- I welcome you here, and hope you get something significant out of it that you either were or weren't looking for. However, please understand and be tolerant of the fact that the work and all of the essays that will eventually be contained in it are not finished yet -- I'm at about 100 essays now and aiming for something over 500 essays. This is intended to be my signature life work.
Enjoy -- and/or I hope this work will take you to an integrative place of 'higher knowledge' and 'more balanced well-being'.
dgb, Sept. 17th, 2007.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Going Across
Man often finds himself on the plank between the dread of a meaningless existence and the fear of failing or looking foolish. These are the twin abysses of man's existence looming precariously below him on both sides of his bold or petrified, progressive or regressive, 'going-across' of the proverbial Nietzschean tightrope -- the tightrope from being to becoming. Have courage my friend, have courage. Don't look back and don't look down.
- dgb, September 13th, 2007.
- dgb, September 13th, 2007.
Feedback on 'Going Across' From Paul Baioni (New Orleans)
Email from one of my first readers, Paul Baioni,
Good morning Dave,
The struggle within man arises due to his failure to be "in touch" with
his
inner self. He battles the voids, creating a lack of confidence in his
beliefs, questioning his "purpose" resulting in poorly defined
priorities.
Man is a creation of highly complicated reactions. We can not
understand
that of which we have no knowledge. Lacking clearly defined priorities
creates confusion. This confusion is part of the natural evolution of
an IP (Individual Philosophy, my clarification) creating internal anxiety. Anxiety accentuates the voids, immobilizing
action for fear of failure or making a mistake.
Nietzsche was right. Have courage to accept who you are, where you are
in
your life, and the rest will take care of itself. Be true to your inner
self, easing the anxiety, smoothing the voids. Learn from the past,
don't
dwell, and never fear the future, embrace it, for only the future,
never the
past, presents opportunity.
Paul
Good morning Dave,
The struggle within man arises due to his failure to be "in touch" with
his
inner self. He battles the voids, creating a lack of confidence in his
beliefs, questioning his "purpose" resulting in poorly defined
priorities.
Man is a creation of highly complicated reactions. We can not
understand
that of which we have no knowledge. Lacking clearly defined priorities
creates confusion. This confusion is part of the natural evolution of
an IP (Individual Philosophy, my clarification) creating internal anxiety. Anxiety accentuates the voids, immobilizing
action for fear of failure or making a mistake.
Nietzsche was right. Have courage to accept who you are, where you are
in
your life, and the rest will take care of itself. Be true to your inner
self, easing the anxiety, smoothing the voids. Learn from the past,
don't
dwell, and never fear the future, embrace it, for only the future,
never the
past, presents opportunity.
Paul
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wrestling With A Name For My Evolving Philosophy
For years now, I have been wrestling with a name for my evolving philosophy and what I am trying to do here. You may see a multitude of different -- or partly different -- names given to it in different essays. Some technical, others less technical. Acronyms are dangerous because unless you fill your reader in quickly as to what the acronym means, it will have no meaning. I might as well be writing in Latin. I've tried to alleviate this problem by briefly saying what I mean by 'Hegel's Hotel', 'Gap', and 'DGB' in the sub-text just below my title.
'Hegel's Hotel' can be viewed as an online book of philosophy essays divided into about 25-30 different blogsites on different topics, with about 10-20 essays per blogsite. These different blogsites and the contents within each of them are under construction as we speak, some more further advanced than other.
There are certain themes that will return in my work over and over and over again.
One is the danger of 'uncontrolled, rampant narcissism' on a personal level, a family level, a business level, a social and cultural level, and a political level. I do not advocate -- like many religions do -- suppressing and/or repressing all forms and levels of narcissism and hedonism (the two are inter-related: 'narcissism' equals self-centredness or basically selfishness; hedonism equals the pursuit of pleasure on a purely sensual and/or broader level depending on how tightly or loosely we want to define it). Rather, I stress the need to balance narcissistic and hedonistic tendencies and impulses with socially empathetic humanistic-existential values and ethics.
Two is the danger of uncontrolled righteous intolerance both within oneself and within one's family, social, business, political and legal environment. Religious and political intolerance are two important sub-areas of what I am writing about here. Righteous intolerance, unbridled -- like narcissism -- leads to all sorts of nasty things like alienation, discrimination, hate, violence, war, destruction, and self-destruction in all varieties and forms.
There is a place for righteous rage if it is related to civil matters. Some of these philosophy papers are a good place for it. Social activism -- whether in written and/or oral-political format -- is a good place to direct civil rage. Get to the right target; don't take it out on your ex-wife or worse, your kids, who are only taking advantage (even if it is unfairly) of existing laws. Get to the source -- the politiicans and lobbyists who worked hand in hand to create these laws and/or have the power to now change them. Internalized righteous rage can lead to self-destruction and/or misplaced aggression. Either let go of your rage and/or direct it democratically to the right place; then let go of it before it destroys you.
My righteous rage can fly off the charts (even as I try to keep it grounded and under control) when we start getting into matters of 'family justice'. One of my blogs is dedicated to this subject matter -- or at least will be. Righteous (and to be sure, partly narcissistically biased) papers that I wrote years ago are still waiting to be re-written on my family law blogsite. So too are any new essays regarding this issue of Canadian law treating separated fathers as second class citizens -- or 'donkeys' is a metaphor i will also use -- because they are being unfairly financially burdened to the point of borderline collapsing. I will say no more at this time.
The philosophical solution or process I offer is a mixture of integrated post-Spinozian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, and 'post other philosophers and psychologists' philosophy.
I am generally looking to 'dialectically bridge gaps' between opposing perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles. That is, unless I am aiming to philosophically 'deconstruct' political and legal imbalances and injustices (as in the case of Canadian family law).
In short, my philosophy is mainly post-Hegelian dialectical integrationism (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis or 'Dialectical Gap-Bridging' as I call it, shortedned to 'DGB', which narcissistically speaking, also just happens to be the initials of my name -- David Gordon Bain).
There you have it -- 'Hegel's Hotel: The DGB (Dialectical) Philosophy Forum' -- in a nutshell. You are welcome to offer editorial feedback and/or essay contributions if you are so motivated. You can send your essay(s) to: dgbainsky@yahoo.com and I will include your essay in my forum if I think it 'moves the forum forward in a democratic and professional manner'. You do not have to agree with me -- I have already included essays by people who have disagreed with some point or thesis that I have made (such as my father and an email friend I met through these blogsites from New Orleans who has disagreed with me on the 'freedom vs. determinism' issue, and on one of my essays against 'American Unilateralism'). All I expect from you is a certain level of grammatical and logical coherence, as well as clarity, force, and professionalism in your rhetorical perspective (standards that I may or may not always live up to myself).
dgb, September 12th, 2007, updated Oct. 17th, 2007.
'Hegel's Hotel' can be viewed as an online book of philosophy essays divided into about 25-30 different blogsites on different topics, with about 10-20 essays per blogsite. These different blogsites and the contents within each of them are under construction as we speak, some more further advanced than other.
There are certain themes that will return in my work over and over and over again.
One is the danger of 'uncontrolled, rampant narcissism' on a personal level, a family level, a business level, a social and cultural level, and a political level. I do not advocate -- like many religions do -- suppressing and/or repressing all forms and levels of narcissism and hedonism (the two are inter-related: 'narcissism' equals self-centredness or basically selfishness; hedonism equals the pursuit of pleasure on a purely sensual and/or broader level depending on how tightly or loosely we want to define it). Rather, I stress the need to balance narcissistic and hedonistic tendencies and impulses with socially empathetic humanistic-existential values and ethics.
Two is the danger of uncontrolled righteous intolerance both within oneself and within one's family, social, business, political and legal environment. Religious and political intolerance are two important sub-areas of what I am writing about here. Righteous intolerance, unbridled -- like narcissism -- leads to all sorts of nasty things like alienation, discrimination, hate, violence, war, destruction, and self-destruction in all varieties and forms.
There is a place for righteous rage if it is related to civil matters. Some of these philosophy papers are a good place for it. Social activism -- whether in written and/or oral-political format -- is a good place to direct civil rage. Get to the right target; don't take it out on your ex-wife or worse, your kids, who are only taking advantage (even if it is unfairly) of existing laws. Get to the source -- the politiicans and lobbyists who worked hand in hand to create these laws and/or have the power to now change them. Internalized righteous rage can lead to self-destruction and/or misplaced aggression. Either let go of your rage and/or direct it democratically to the right place; then let go of it before it destroys you.
My righteous rage can fly off the charts (even as I try to keep it grounded and under control) when we start getting into matters of 'family justice'. One of my blogs is dedicated to this subject matter -- or at least will be. Righteous (and to be sure, partly narcissistically biased) papers that I wrote years ago are still waiting to be re-written on my family law blogsite. So too are any new essays regarding this issue of Canadian law treating separated fathers as second class citizens -- or 'donkeys' is a metaphor i will also use -- because they are being unfairly financially burdened to the point of borderline collapsing. I will say no more at this time.
The philosophical solution or process I offer is a mixture of integrated post-Spinozian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, and 'post other philosophers and psychologists' philosophy.
I am generally looking to 'dialectically bridge gaps' between opposing perspectives, philosophies, lifestyles. That is, unless I am aiming to philosophically 'deconstruct' political and legal imbalances and injustices (as in the case of Canadian family law).
In short, my philosophy is mainly post-Hegelian dialectical integrationism (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis or 'Dialectical Gap-Bridging' as I call it, shortedned to 'DGB', which narcissistically speaking, also just happens to be the initials of my name -- David Gordon Bain).
There you have it -- 'Hegel's Hotel: The DGB (Dialectical) Philosophy Forum' -- in a nutshell. You are welcome to offer editorial feedback and/or essay contributions if you are so motivated. You can send your essay(s) to: dgbainsky@yahoo.com and I will include your essay in my forum if I think it 'moves the forum forward in a democratic and professional manner'. You do not have to agree with me -- I have already included essays by people who have disagreed with some point or thesis that I have made (such as my father and an email friend I met through these blogsites from New Orleans who has disagreed with me on the 'freedom vs. determinism' issue, and on one of my essays against 'American Unilateralism'). All I expect from you is a certain level of grammatical and logical coherence, as well as clarity, force, and professionalism in your rhetorical perspective (standards that I may or may not always live up to myself).
dgb, September 12th, 2007, updated Oct. 17th, 2007.
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