Floor 2: Introductory Essays on Hegel's Hotel and The Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Paradigm

The Four Cornerstones of Gap-DGB (Quantum-Dialectic) Philosophy-Psychology

2009-04-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

The 'Hegelian dialectic style of logical reasoning' is associated with the philosophy of G.W. Hegel (1770-1831) and was/is one of the most important, revolutionary ideas in the history of Western Philosophy. It ranks right up there with the 'Copernican Revolution' and 'The Darwinian Revolution' -- indeed, The Hegelian Dialectic Revolution was a philosophical precursor to The Darwinian Revolution and far less biologically restrictive, rather, much more broadly and solidly based in all areas of 'living mutations' and 'human philosophical, biological, medical, cultural, political, legal, economic, psychological, mythological, spiritual, religious, and artistic revolution...and evolution...the idea being that it is through 'revolution' -- and this means 'philosophical' and 'conceptual' revolution as well as 'physical revolution' -- that you get 'evolution'...

Karl Marx would later 'turn Hegelian Dialectic Idealism on its head' -- or at least 'reduce' it to only one particular 'human spectrum' by emphasizing 'Socialist and Communist Idealism' as restricted to the realm of 'dialectic-materialistic-economic revolution and evolution' as opposed to Hegel's much more general, all-encompassing, and non-partisan idealistic form of revolution and evolution.

'Hegel's dialectic philosophy and logic was eventually captured in the famous 'dialectic formula': 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis' (which was never directly stated in this fashion by Hegel).

Indeed, if you combine Hegel's idea of the dialectic with Walter Bradford's idea of 'homeostasis', you have arguably the most powerful 'one-two' punch of ideas in the history of Western philosophy.

Now I have never seen Hegel's philosophy of the dialectic from 'The Phenomenology of Mind' (1807) combined in the same sentence with Cannon's concept and philosophy of 'homeostasis' found in his book 'The Wisdom of The Body' (1932). But to me, it is an obvious 'integrative fit'.

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Homeostasis
The concept of homeostasis was first articulated by the French scientist Claude Bernard (1813-1878) in his studies of the maintenance of stability in the milieu interior. The term itself was coined by American physiologist Walter Cannon, author of The Wisdom of the Body(1932).
"Homeostasis" is derived from the Greek words for "same" and "steady." The term refers to ways the body acts to maintain a stable internal environment in spite of environmental variations and disturbances. Both the mind/brain and the body are endowed with a multitude of automatic mechanisms of feedback-inhibition that counteract influences tending toward disequilibrium.

Homeostatic stability is advantageous in the realm of osmoregulation, temperature-control, and the regulation of blood sugar levels. (From the internet.)

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In the same manner, that the mind and body is controlled internally by homeostatic counter-balancing functions, the same thing can be witnessed to be true on a social and cultural level in every aspect of man's existence, and indeed, arguably on every level in the planet's existence.

'Homeostasis' or 'homeostatic balance' seems to be one of the lowest common denominator principles of life.

We can talk about the balance of politics, the balance of law, the balance of the market, the balance of power, the balance of nature, and in these different regards, distinguish between 'political homeostasis', 'legal homeostasis', 'economic and market homeostasis', 'power homeostasis', and 'ecological homeostasis'.

Furthermore, it can easily be argued, as Hegel mainly has (I am just putting a few more philosophical pieces together here and adding some exclamation marks onto the end of these philosophical pieces), that all of man's external, internal, social and cultural homeostatic functions (such as all of the ones listed above) are interconnected with both the idea and the phenomenon of the dialectic.

In short, it is through the methodology and/or process of the dialectic that homeostasis manages itself back and forth from thesis to anti-thesis to synthesis, and alternatively, from polar extremism to homeostatic (dialectic) balance.

Indeed, the Hegelian Philosophy of 'Dialectic Evolution' is every much as viable a theory of evolution as Darwin's Theory of Evolution. In fact, Hegel's theory of dialectic evolution: 1. preceded Darwin's theory of genetic evolution; 2. can be viewed as encompassing Darwin's theory of evolution; and 3. is intellectually, pragmatically, existentially, and generically superior to Darwin's theory of genetic evolution.

In short, Hegel's theory of evolution is a better theory of evolution than Darwin's mainly because: 1. it is much broader in its 'worldly, historical, and evolutionary scope'; and 2. it has much more general and specific functional application value.

Indeed, if there was an 'Intelligent Designer' ('God' if you will) who created the world, and/or even the entire universe, it would seem very, very possible and logical that He/She/It designed it according to, first and foremost, the principle of homeostasis, and secondly the principle of the dialectic as the 'cosmic homeostatic, thermostatic methodology of moving from polar extremism to homeostatic-dialectic balance as a means of maintaining optimal health and fitness on all levels of human, animal, plant, and ecological life'.

This has been a 'subconscious to conscious' 37 year project on my part getting philosophically to where I just brought you here. It started with one of the first books I read in high school that really excited me -- 'Psycho-Cybernetics' by Maxwell Maltz. Maltz preached many of the same ideas about 'balance'...shifting off balance towards one extreme or another...and then 'counter-balancing' to bring things 'back on the right track again'.

I have just broadened the scope of what Maltz was talking about and applied Maltz's principle 'psycho-cybernetics' which can be traced back to both Cannon's theory of homeostasis and, before that, to Hegel's principle of the dialectic which if we want to keep going back deeper and deeper into history, we can probably also trace back to Hegel's main German influences, Schelling perhaps, Fichte and Kant for sure, and if we really want to go back to both the beginning of Western and Eastern philosophy, we could definitely add the ideas of Heraclitus and Anaxamander from Greece, and Lao Tse and the creators of Daoism from China (specifically, the ideas of 'yin' (feminine energy) and 'yang' (masculine energy) providing the healthy balance of all mankind (and indeed, the whole cosmos).

To summarize, if you want to know what the 'four major cornerstones' of DGB Philosophy-Psychology...are, they are this: Hegel's dialectic philosophy integrated with Cannon's principle of 'homeostasis' such that we can talk about 'homeostatic-dialectic balance' which reaches back as far as both Ancient Greek philosophy (Anaxamander and Heraclitus) as well as ancient Chinese dialectic philosophy which arguably probably dates back earlier than the earliest Greek philosophy (Thales and Anaxamander are on record as being the earliest known Greek philosophers), and/or/but which likely includes such major Chinese philosophers as Confucius and Lao Tse (and/or whoever else was involved in the creation of the principles of 'yin' and 'yang' -- and the beginning of 'Daoism'. There is some historical uncertainty in the earliest beginnings of 'yin', 'yang', and 'Daoism').

Thus, we can identify the four major cornerstones of dialectic philosophy -- and in particular DGB Post-Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy as;

1. Pre-Socratic (Ancient Greek) Dialectic Philosophy;

2. Ancient Chinese Philosophy ('yin', 'yang', 'Daoism');

3. Hegel and the rest of German Idealistic (and 'Counter-Idealistic') Philosophy as most notably detailed in Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit';

4. Cannon's theory of 'homeostasis' and 'homeostatic balance' as most notably detailed in his most famous book, 'The Wisdom of The Body'.

-- DGB, Sept 26th, 2006, updated April 13th and Dec. 29th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain

The Purpose of Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy (Democratic-Dialectics For The Mind, Body, and Soul)

2008-10-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

The purpose of 'Hegel's Hotel' -- the integrated network of blogsites that comprises this philosophical forum and treatise -- is to provide a multi-integrative, dialectic-democratic, humanistic-existential approach to the study and practise of philosophy -- and all of its cultural and environmental extensions: psychology, politics, business and economics, law and order, equal rights, history, science, holistic health and medicine, hobbies, art, sports... and all other aspects of human culture -- that blends many of the best ideas from the past, and from a wide assortment of different schools of thought, with an equally wide assortment of innovative, new ideas from the present -- combined in such a fashion as to make them highly applicable in both the smaller, therapeutic setting, and in the larger, more general setting of life.

It is this integration of old and new ideas that makes Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy (Dialectic-Democratics For The Mind, Body, and Soul) , a new experience, a new 'gestalt' to use the German expression -- and unique in the marketplace.

Hegel's Hotel is dedicated to all of my most important mentors -- both the mentors who I have found through the books that I have read, and the mentors who are always there for me in the 'ups and downs' of my personal life -- all of whom I view as my 'idols' and my 'shining beacons of light and warmth', especially on those coldest and/or darkest days of doom and/or gloom...including:

1. G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), the most important philosopher in Western History, in my view -- to him I thank for helping me create the 'paradigm' or 'architecture' for Hegel's Hotel; and to his classic book, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807), of which this philosophical work is written to be a 21st century continuation, modification, and expansion of...

2. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Nietzsche may have rejected Hegel and Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy but to me, Nietzsche remains a supreme 'dialectic philosopher' for two reasons: 1. His first work 'The Birth of Tragedy' was totally 'dialectic' in its structure (which Nietzsche asserted later was to the detriment of the book, as he began to move away from Hegel and the dialectic perspective -- Not so says this philosopher here: it was to Nietzsche's detriment and to the detriment of Nietzsche's philosophy that he moved away from Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy and 'The Birth of Tragedy (BT)' which can be viewed as a precursor to 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis' -- and indeed all of 20th Century Clinical Psychology in its emphasis on the principle of 'homeostatic or dialectic balance'. Nietzsche once wrote that: 'Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.' This too, is a Hegelian (or post-Hegelian perspective) and Nietzsche proved this point in his own life and in his own philosophy. In philosophically walking away from BT, Nietzsche became obsessed with 'Dionysus' (The Greek God of wine, dancing, celebration, and pleasure) at the expense of ignoring 'Apollo' (The Greek God of law and order, justice, truth and reason...). He did the same thing in tearing down Christianity and Religion without being able to see and/or acknowledge that Christianity and Religion in general play important 'life-serving' functions in human society in terms of bringing people together in harmony under one roof with one essential united, integrated cause (family, community, roots, and mutual 'I-WE' support...). Instead, Nietzsche could only see the 'pathological-self-destructive' elements in Christianity and Religion -- and offered a 'counter-extremist philosophical position'. In essence, Nietzsche became 'The Anti-Christ' and in so doing he may have 'freed' many people from their religious chains but in so doing, Nietzsche was at least partly opening up a new 'Pandora's Box': The Pandora's Box of The Anti-Christ: live fast, die fast -- drugs, alcohol, partying, sex...party til you drop...the life and death of my ex-girlfriend's sister - 'the party queen', the life of the party: she got into 'crack' or 'coke' in her mid to late 20s and died like an AIDS patient in a coma, taken off life support, at 39. I could easily die in the bars myself in a year or two if I let 'my internal Dionyus' completely control my life; fortunately, I believe, I have the reins of 'my internal Apollo' -- and a solidly balanced 'Apollonian-Dionysian' girlfriend pulling me back to a life of better 'homeostatic balance'. Which was where Nietzsche started before he unfortunately abandoned the solid post-Hegelian, dialectic philosophical principles of -- BT.

The Gestalt Institute of Toronto which taught me the dialectic-democratics of mind, body, and soul for the greater part of ten years in the 1980s, and which ultimately led me back through the psychology of Jung and Freud -- to the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel.

3. General Semantics (and my Grade 12 English teacher, Mr. Kress, who introduced me to General Semantics), as extrapolated by the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, (Science and Sanity, 1933)and his number one student, S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, originally written in 1938, originally published in 1941, updated many times since) who in turn introduced me to the study of psychology -- and then philosophy.

4. My son (Michael Bain) and daughter (Jennifer Bain) who are just starting their adult lives and who I hope continue to live happy, healthy lives.

5. My father, Gordon Bain, who has always been my number one source of idealistic, inspirational philosophical vision...

6. My mother, Viola Bain, and my long-time girlfriend of almost 10 years, Sharida Ali, both of whom are so easy to take for granted, because their presence is just always there, but both of whom have provided me with the type of family roots and grounding without which anything else would likely be meaningful -- and/or even talked about by me in any type of coherent, and reasonable fashion.

Question: Where do the best of the theologies of the respective Christian and Muslim (and probably all the most important) religions meet?

Answer: Within the core roots and boundaries of the family, the community -- and helping others (not trying to destroy them).

- dgb, October 18th, 2008.

A List of 21 Important Concepts in DGB Philosophy (To Be Defined and Described Later)

2008-09-30T18:27:00.001-07:00

Most of the 'pieces' of what you will learn in DGB Philosophy can be found in different formats and renditions elsewhere: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Daoism, The Han Philosophers, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Diderot, Adam Smith, Tom Paine, Jefferson, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Adler, Jung, Fairbairn, Fromm, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Fritz Perls, Sartre, Betrand Russell, Foucault, Derrida...all have something to important to say that I have found different ways of 're-stating' and/or 'newly integrating' their respective philosophical and/or psychological messages into what I am calling DGB Philosophy.

Ideally speaking, I would like 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy' to be the ultimate integative philosophy treatise of the 21st century. Now obviously, time will tell whether I ever come anywhere close to this lofty ambition or not. But I have confidence in my integrating abilities and continually evolving knowledge here. Every week I manage to add about two or three more essays to the evolving structure and process of Hegel's Hotel.

Most of the foundation of Hegel's Hotel has already been laid, and realistically speaking, I think I probably need about another 3 to 5 years to finish the entire structure of Hegel's Hotel. I expect that Hegel's Hotel will be my one and only philosophical accomplishment in my lifetime if for no other reason than the fact that Hegel's Hotel is big enough to contain my life's philosophical work.

A case could be made that Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' is the most important influencing force on 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy'. Indeed, I will make that case myself even though I have not come close yet to seriously reading it. If you have ever tried to pick up 'The Phenomenology' and read it, you will begin to understand why. Regardless, the two key messages in 'The Phenomenology' have be re-stated and re-interpreted in literally thousands and thousands of different books. Indeed, I would list Hegel's 'The Phenomenology' as the number 1 most important philosophical work in both Western and Eastern history. Perhaps Kant's 'The Critique of Pure Reason' deserves some consideration here -- but I would say secondary consideration for the sole reason that without Kant's influence on Hegel (and perhaps Fichte's) there might have been no 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Anyways, I will leave this debate for those of you who may be so inclined as to pick it up.

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A/ The two key ideas in 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' that directly or indirectly turned the world upside down...

1. The 'Hegelian' evolutionary cycle of: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3. synthesis although as any knowledgeable Hegelian scholar will tell you, Hegel never used these exact words. Still, with or without the words attached to this theory of 'dialectic evolution', this is still the most important idea, the most important theory, in the history of Western Philosophy. At least from my DGB philosophy perspective. Indeed, it is more important than Darwin's theory of evolution for two reasons: 1. it pre-dates Darwin's theory of evolution by over 50 years (1807 vs. 1859); and 2. it encompasses Darwin's theory of evolution (1. testosterone and male sperm -- 'thesis'; 2. estrogen and female egg -- 'anti-thesis' -- or visa versa, I'm not sexist; 3. united testosterone and estrogen, sperm and egg, resulting in a genetically integrated or synthesized 'child' or 'offspring' -- 'synthesis).

2. The 'master/slave' relationship: Marx jumped all over this idea; and so did the 'existentialists'. Marx's philosophy revolutionized the Eastern world -- not necessarily for the better, as three of the most sociopathic leaders in the history of the East -- Lenin, Stalin, and Mao tse Tung -- unfortunately, liked what they read in Marx. In this regard, Hegelian dialectical philosophy 'bi-polarized the world' leading to both 'extreme political left' and 'extreme political right' interpretations and reactions. In the latter regard, Hegel was influenced by Fichte, and Fichte's personality and philosophy were both pathological, influencing the rise of German Nationalism, anti-semitism, and Nazism, whereas Hegel, to my knowledge, definitely didn't have any 'anti-semitic' qualitities in him, nor does his philosophy. The worst that you might say about Hegel was that he was 'pro-Napoleon', or 'a pre-German Nationalist', or that he was a 'fair weather political philosopher' who tried not to stir up any trouble with the government who he was close to, and at least partly supported by. Hegel's description of the 'master/slave' relationship also brought into discussion the concept of 'alienation' which opened up the door to what, through Kiekegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and others would become the philosophical 'school' or 'related but detached network of schools' known today as 'existentialism' and/or 'humanistic-existentialism'.

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B/ The 20 Most Influenctial Philosophers (or Sets Of Philosohers) Relative to DGB Philosophy...

1. Hegel
2. Nietzsche
3. Perls
4. Freud
5. Fromm
6. Korzybski and Hayakawa (General Semantics)
7. Spinoza
8. Adler
9. Jung
10. Derrida
11. Foucault
12. Nathaniel Branden, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand (The Spirit of Humanistic Capitalism)
13. Marx (The Spirit of Humanistic Socialism)
14. Bacon (The Spirit of Science and Rational-Empiricism)
15. Locke and Hume (Empiricism and Empirical-Extremism/Skepticism respectively)
16. Alexander and Heraclitus (The Earliest Western Dialectic philosophers)
17. Daoism, neo-Confucionism, and The Han Philosophers ('yin' and 'yang')
18. Plato and Aristotle (The Ultimate Idealist and The Ultimate Realist-Empiricist. Together, they make up much of the foundation of Western philosophy.)
19. The Post-Freudians: Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Berne...
20. Jeffrey Masson: The Ultimate anti-Classical Freudian.

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C/ The 12 Most Important Philosophical Works (or sets of Works) Relative to DGB Philosophy

1. Hegel, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807
2. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1872
3. Perls, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, 1947
4. Strachey's 24 volume collection of Freud's complete works, 1964
5. 'The Philosophy for Beginners' Series
6. Erich Fromm, 1947, Man For Himself, 1947
7. Hayakawa, 1949, 'Language in Thought and Action', 1949
8. W.B.Cannon, 1932, 'The Wisdom of The Body', 1932
9. Korzybski, 1933, 'Science and Sanity', 1933
10. Erich Fromm, 1955, 'The Sane Society', 1955
11. Nathaniel Branden, 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem', 1969
12. Maxwell Maltz, 'Pscyho-Cybernetics', 1960

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D/ 21 Important Concepts In DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...

1. Bi-Polarity (Multi-Bi-Polarity, Bi-Partisan Agreement, Opposite Polarities, Paradoxes...)

2. The Dialectic (The dialectic process, dialectic-democracy, dialectic negotiating, dialectic dancing, dialectic agreement, dialectic balance, dialectic-democratic balance)

3. Gods, Idols, and Archetypes

4. Anti-gods, villains, and demons

5. Ego-States

6. Gaps, Voids, Abysses, Chasms

7. Superior and Inferior Power Functions (Processes, Organs, Ego-states, Power Dialectics...)

8. Homeostatic Balance (Dialectic Balance, Dialectic-Democratic Balance, Homeostatic Balance Dialectics, Win-Win Dialectics...)

9. Projection

10 Introjection and Identification

11. Distinction (differentation) and Association

12. 'Loose' and 'tight' associations

13. 'Positive' and 'negative' stereotyping

14. Transference ('Positive' and 'negative' transferences, Transference Complexes, Transference Memories, Transference Scenes...)

15. Compensation (Compensatory attitudes, beliefs, values, behaviors, lifestyles, philosophies, transferences...)

16. Narcissism and Altruism

17. Truth and Sophism

18. Empiricism and Rationalism

19. Concreteness and Abrstraction ('Being grounded' and 'flying high with words and abstractions')

20. Classifying, labelling, 'negative labelling', confusing a 'negative label' with the 'reality of the situation and/or the person'.

21. Reductionism and wholism

-- dgb, Sept. 30th, 2008, updated October 1st, 2008.

About Me...and My Network of Philosophical-Psychological...Blogsites: Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy (The Dialectics of Mind, Body, and Spirit)

2008-09-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

Good day! My name is David Bain. I write about philosophy, psychology, politics, and more...I have an Honours B.A. in psychology. I live in Newmarket, Ontario, about 30 miles and minutes north of Toronto. I have a classy girlfriend of 9 years - Sharida - who works and lives in Toronto. I have two children from a previous relationship: Michael, 23, living in Newmarket, and Jennifer, 18, living in Nova Scotia.

My life mission is to finish a growing number of linked blogsites on philosophy, psychology, politics and other cultural topics. My perspective is mainly 'integrative, centralist, and multi-dialectical (Post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential)' drawing from a whole range of philosophical and psychological influences such as: Hegel, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, The Han Philosophers, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Marx, Tom Paine, Diderot, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Korzybski, Foucault, Derrida, Freud, Adler, Jung, Berne, Perls, and many more...The issues and subject matters are extensive as well - pretty well anything and everything is game for discussion.

My network of blogsites is called: 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology' and can be found by simply googling...DGB Philosophy...

- dgb, July 18th, 2008.
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Here are some commendations on Hegel's Hotel...and I thank the readers cited here, most appreciatively, for their most encouraging feedback. It is feeback like this that keeps me motivated, and re-vitalized, helping me to continue writing at a good pace in order to one day finally finish building the metaphorical 'skyscraper' I am calling 'Hegel's Hotel'...

- dgb, Sept. 21st, 2008.

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Hi David Gordon Bain,

That's a great great blog post. I especially like the quotes at the end. I especially like the unfortunately true one by Thomas Paine: "The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."

I also like your point about the benefit of balancing being strong-willed with being a good listener. I am especially interested with the mix of philosophy with social and political activism.

Also, I want to invite you to join my Philosophy Forum.

Thanks, Scott

May 8, 2008 4:04 AM

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What a wonderful view and expansion of Hegel you offer!

Please continue to unfold it for us.
Do your offer an E Mail notice lists of new posts? I signed up for the TSS feed,

Thanks
Forrest at// fateanalysis@wordpress.com
radical gene psychology@blogspot.com
December 22, 2007 8:50 AM
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Evan said...

Wow. What a fabulous post and project. Wishing you every possible success witht the building of Hegel's hotel.

I love gestalt, especially the theory. I think Perls, Hefferline and Goodman remains unsurpassed.

I've never trained in a formal course - I think I'm too independant and gestalt seems to have very much compromised with the powers that be and sold its birthright for a mess of recognition (and high salaries, let us not forget).

I think the big issue for gestalt to confront is professionalism. I'll be fascinated to see if this turns up in Hegel's hotel.

I also think you are doing what gestalt should be doing, assimilating, integrating and building. Gestalt is so stuck!

So once again heart-felt thanks and wishes for your success.

June 12, 2007 2:57 AM

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Dave, you do an excellent job of helping the layperson understand your
philosophies and the historical philosophies that you support or disagree with. - Noreen

Finding Truth.

Wow..You trigger thought and reflection on past and present, personal views.
I guess that is a large part of your intention or maybe your responsibility as a true philosopher.

It's interesting, at some point in the journey, regardless of your upbringing , life forces you to choose your beliefs. The universal question:
Does God and heaven really exist? What is the truth?

Thank you for suggesting that I plough my way through it.

- Noreen

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David Gordon Bain is a modern day philosopher with his finger on the integrative, dialectic pulse of life, both past and present! - Noreen

(Noreen, incidently, has become a good friend of mine, and in the relatively short time that I have known her - the last year or so - she has made many,many important contributions to my writing, and to the ongoing 'dialectical evolution' of Hegel's Hotel. - dgb, Aug. 22nd, 2008.)

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Here is an example of one of my latest essays...written on September 11th, updated Sept. 21st, 2008.

DGB 'Sun-Planet Theory', Homeostatic Balance, and Sixteen 'Mythological Idol Fixations' of Extremist Living

1. Introduction

This is brand new DGB Philosophy-Psychology although the ideas have been perculating in my head for a while now...

Think of the sun with the planets revolving around it; in order for people to survive on earth, the earth needs to be situated - and revolving around the sun just rightly - not too far from the sun (or we freeze to death) and not too close to the sun (or we burn to death) - which comes back to the main principle of the creation and/or evolution of life in the universe and on earth: the principle of 'homeostatic balance'.

Once you get this image in your mind - of the sun and planets model and the principle of homestatic balance - you are starting to get a picture of my latest perculating model of the human psyche - a model that borrows from philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics, and mythology. There is some Freud in it (projecting and introjecting), some Jung in it (archetypes and Greek Gods), lots of philosophy in it (such as the different 'eras' or 'periods' of philosophy), and running right through the middle of this model are the priniciples of: 1. 'multi-dialectic exchange, interchange, negotiation, power and control maneuvers'; and 2. 'homeostatic (or multi-dialectic) balance.

I remember reading a book a long time ago - perhaps when I was in university (1974-1979) called, 'Man The Manipulator'. I will research the book and come back to you with the author shortly. I believe the author(s) had some training in both Gestalt Therapy and Jungian Psychology.

Anyways, my present model here reminds me somewhat of what the author(s)in that book were also trying to get at which was basically that (and I will paraphrase in my own words here and now): any 'particualar style of interconnected thought, feeling, impulse, restraint and/or behavior' or what Jung would call a 'complex' or Alfred Adler would call a person's 'lifestyle' has a combination of both positive and negative attributes attached to it (strengths and weaknesses). It's like perhaps the most important statement that Hegel ever made (and again I am both paraphrasing and extending his thought): Every thought, impulse, characteristic, restraint, theory, perspective, lifestyle...carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction...Or worded otherwise, anything taken too far, will eventually explode, implode, self-destruct, poison, and/or take you off the deep end with it...Any form of extremism will eventually lead to your self-destruction...

Which brings us back to the principle of 'homeostatic - and/or dialectical - balance'. Here is my post-Hegelian-extension of Hegel's famous formula: The life cycle follows the pattern of: 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; and 3 synthesis (which - my DGB extension - pulls man and all of evolutionary life back to the 'central position of homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance'. 'Not too strong (eg. The Republicans), not too weak (eg. The Democrats) but just right...'The Republican-Democrats or the Democratic-Republicans'. This is the post-Hegelian, bi-polarity synthesizing goal of DGB Philosophy.

Here is my extension of the famous Hegelian formula:

Thesis plus anti-thesis or counter-thesis creatively negotiated together equals homeostatic and/or dialectical balance which in turn provides a compensatory form of psycho- and/or philosophical and/or bio-chemical therapy for all different forms of philosophical and psychological and bio-chemical extremism.

I don't have the technical capability within this blogsite to create the type of model I wish to create with a 'sun' or 'planet' in the centre with all of its revolving planets or moons. So you will have to imagine this.

I have already written a number of different papers that can be found below this essay on 'Gods, Myths, Archetypes, and Self-Energy Centres...' This essay only becomes the essay that starts to pull them all together into one model of the personality.

At centre stage is the 'main energy centre in the personality' - The Central Mediating Ego' (psychological model) which can also be called the 'Hegelian Ego' (philosophical model: thesis plus counter-thesis equal synthesis and homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance) or Zeus (mythological model) or 'The Sun' (planetary model).

Here are some of the 'revolving planets in similar and/or different human lifestyles, complexes, and/or personalities'...

2. Sixteen 'Mythological Idol Fixations' of Extremist Living'

1. Idols of The Tribe or The Crowd: (Crowd Pleasers, victims of peer pressure...)Don't get caught up and lost in the ideas and behaviors of the crowd or the 'herd' as Nietcsche would put it - like lemmings you can be taken over a cliff. Think and feel and act independently as well as co-dependently;

2. Idols of The Cave (Hermits, Loners, Thinkers, Philosophers, Introverts, Shy People, Self-Infatuated People...): Don't get caught up and lost within yourself. You will suffocate there. If or when you do, come back out of yourself, and reach out to a person and/or people. This is your therapy;

3. Idols of The Sky (The Greek God, Uranus) (Idealists, Visionaries, Entepreneurs, Architects, pilots, astronauts, skydivers...): Come back to earth young man or woman, come back to earth and re-ground yourself. Your therapy consists of 'touching earth again and feeling the soil beneath your feet, the ground and trees all around you);

4. Idols of The Earth (in Greek mythology, the godesses Gaea): (Empiricists, people who are afraid to take a risk, people who need security above all else in their lives). Take a risk young man or woman, take a risk! This is your therapy. Fly high into the sky and see how high you can soar;

5. Idols of The Theatre (The Magician, The Sophist, The Actor, The Fraud...: Don't be fooled by others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors; and similarily, don't fool others using sophistry, illusion, smoke and mirrors. Be congruent, be honest, be yourself. Your therapy consists of re-finding your self and who you really are;

6. Idols of Zeus (Authority, Power, Title): Don't be fooled by, or fool others, using a mantle of exploitive authority, power, and/or title. The best leaders can both talk with wisdom and charisma while listening to the wisdom of others. The worst leaders have a self-inflated opinion of themselves and can talk, even act with power and/or violence but they can't listen, and they don't care about others. They are strictly for themselves. Your therapy here consists of 100 hours of community work to try to help cure your self-inflated narcissism. Helping others - altruism - is what you are trying to learn here, and truly caring about others;

7. Idols of The Word: Don't be fooled or fool others using a web of words that don't mean what they claim to mean, or you claim them to mean. If your words don't fit your meaning, then perhaps its time to go back to Grade 1, go back to 'the pointing game', or 'the fitting game', show that your words reflect your actions, and your actions reflect your words. To the extent that they don't - your words are fraudulent and the more you use them this way, the more of a fraud your whole person is. Your therapy consists of going back to square one and making your actions fit your words and visa versa;

8. Idols of Apollo: Don't spend your whole life following the God of Righteousness - i.e., Apollo - because it will create for you a one-sided life. You need to show tolerance and non-jugment at times also. This is your therapy - to practise being 'non-righteous';

9. Idols of Dionysus: Don't get lost in the pursuit of hedonism, narcissism, pleasure, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, partying, the fast life (Your therapy - maybe practise Budhism or abstinence for a while, see what it is like to live without your addiction, what you are scared of, and how you can overcome this;

10. Idols of Aphrodite: Don't get lost in - or consumed by - love. It will throw everything else in your life out of balance and leave you weak and vulnerable to loss, betrayal, abandonment, rejection - if you fall in love too easily with the person who is going to create a self-fulling prophecy and your worst nightmare for you. You need to stay grounded, develop your own strengths and not 'project Gods' onto everyone you meet. Your therapy is to imagine that you yourself are the God for a while...;

11. Idols of War (The Greek God, Aries): Don't get caught up in - and consumed by war. It will eat you up and destroy you. You think that you can destroy your enemies but for every new person who you kill, you are probably creating at least a handful of new enemies. Your therapy lies in developing 'creative ways of negotiating towards win-win solutions', not seeing everyone as your potential enemy - and treating him or her like it, making your world a more dangerous place than it needs to be;

12. Idols of Hades (God of The Underworld): Don't get caught up and lost in illicit and/or illegal activities. It will bring on your self-destruction perhaps faster than anything else, particularly if you are nurturing hate, power, revenge, and violence. What goes around will eventually come around. You will get yours in the end...What was that Martin Luther King quote that Obama liked so much - something like...'The cosmic arc is long but bends towards justice'.;

13. Idols of Speed (The Greek God, Hermes): Don't get caught up in, and consumed by speed. Live in the fast lane, die in the fast lane.

14. Idols of Athena (Goddess of Patriotism): Patriotism can be a dangerous thing if you get too caught up, and consumed by it. It breeds righteosness and intolerance - 'It's my way or the highway'. You will eventually distance yourself, alienate, and/or be subsumed by more powerful groups than you that don't buy your 'patriotic lines';

15. Idols of Hera (Goddess and Protector of Marriage): Marriage can be a beautiful thing but it can also be a strifeful thing. Don't completely lose yourself - and your identity - in marriage. Be the person you always were. Develop your own talents and potential even as the two of you seek to evolve together in the relationship. Flexibility and tolerance is important - and not 'couping each other up in tight boxes that you both suffocate in' (or one person suffocates in by submitting to the other's domination). Win-win negotiatins in marriage are essential;

16. Idols of Narcissus (God of Self-Idolation): Don't become so absorbed in yourself that you can't see the people around you and their own trials and tribulations. In the myth of Narcissus, Narcissus looked into a pool of water, saw his reflection, and fell in love with himself. Be sensitive to the needs, want, feelings, thoughts, and problems of others. This is your therapy.

These are 'The DGB 16 Mythological Idols of Lifestyle and Personaliy Extremism' (we can find many others), and DGB Philosophy-Psychology seeks to pull every one of these 'idol fixations' away from their 'orbit of extremism' and back into 'the homeostatic balance of the personality-as-a-whole'.

'Health' is generally half-way between bi-polar forms of psycho, physio, and/or philosophical pathology on each opposite exteme side. Generally, the more extreme, the more pathological.

- dgb, Sept. 11th, 2008, modified Sept. 21st, 2008.

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Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy (The Phenomenology of Mind, Body, and Spirit)

...Table of Contents

Floor(Blog)1: Table of Contents, Commendations, Links

Floor(Blog)2: Introductory Essays

Floor(Blog)3: More On The Dynamics of The Dialectic Perspective

Floor(Blog)4: Most Recent Essays

FLoor(Blog)5: Anaxamander vs. Heraclitus (Power vs. Balance)

Floor(Blog)6: Early Eastern Philosophy ('Yin/Yang')

Floor(Blog)7: Heraclitus vs. Parmenides (Change vs. Permanence)

Floor(Blog)8: The Sophists vs. Socrates (Narcissistic Rhetorical Sophism vs. Rhetorical Integrity)

Floor(Blog)9: Plato vs. Aristotle (Idealism vs. Realism)

Floor(Blog)10: Roman Narcissistic Hedonism and The Fall of Rome

Floor(Blog)11: Early Religious (Scholastic) Philosophy (Anti-Narcissism)

Floor(Blog)12: Early Scientific (Rational-Empirical) Philosophy (Bacon)

Floor(Blog)14: Rationalism, Pantheism, Wholism (Spinoza)

And many more floor (blogs) still to be built, about 50 'floors' in total when it is finished...with about 25 floors dedicated to the history and evolution of dialectical philosophy, and another 25 floors dedicated to current DGB Philosophy...I am aiming for about 500 essays plus in total by the time I can say 'Hegel's Hotel' is more or less finished...

Of course, 'quantity' is only as good as the intrinsic value of the 'quality' contained within the 'quantity'...otherwise, 'quantity' is 'birdfeed'...and I like my birds too much in my backyard to feed them 'crap'; similarily, I value your readership and my integrity too much to sit here and waste thousands of hours of my life writing 'crap' that is a waste of both my time and yours...'

Thus, I want each and every one of my essays to say something meaningful before I leave it as finished...otherwise, it will eventually be rejected and go the way of the dinosaur...Evolution extinguishes that which is meaningless and non-functional...Everything that exists in nature has a meaningful function and is an important part of the 'rational-pantheistic-whole(God, man, and Nature linked together ideally, in cosmic, spiritual, differential harmony. (Spinoza taught me that.)

- david gordon bain, updated Sept. 21st, 2008.

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Classification Systems, Mythological Entities, Post-Hegelian Ideas - and 'The Multi-Dialectic Force of God'

2008-09-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it can be rather amusing to look at the supposed 'differences' between philosophy and psychology. Philosophy - at least 'Deconstructive, Post-Modern' Philosophy' - often seeks to 'deconstruct' what psychology has 'constructed'. I am thinking mainly of the type of Deconstructive Philosophy that David Hume 'created for himself' and other radical philosophical skeptics to follow in his footsteps - where, for example, he denied the 'existence' of what is usually taken for granted in the realm of psychology - 'The Self'. What's with this?

Well, Hume's 'deconstructive logic' - as much as you (I) may feel like strangling him at times - does carry some epistemological weight although if you follow it where Hume took it, then you will be left with very little 'epistemological knowledge' left to carry in your mind. Indeed, in Humean philosophy, not even the 'mind' would likely exist. In effect, all generalizations are to be distrusted and disbanded because 'if you can't see them, then they don't exist'. Essentially, Humean Philosophy - as well as being the logical extension and application of 'empiricism taken to the limit and beyond...('radical empiricism) - was basically also the philosophical bridge between Heraclites' brand of pre-Socratic ancient Greek Philosophy ('You can't step into the same river twice') and the radical empirical philosophy-psychology of 'Behaviorism' that was to follow Hume into the 20th century as developed mainly by B.F. Skinner.

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From the internet...(Google: Greek Philosophy, Heraclitus...)

Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this changethe Logosform the essential foundation of the European world view. Everytime you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos.

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From Wikipedia (Google: B.F.Skinner)

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 August 18, 1990) was an influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform [1][2]and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7] [8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.[10] [11]

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Following 'Humean-Skinnerian logic' - You may be able to see your 'phyisical, empirical self' if you look at a mirror but if you look at the same mirror you are not going to see your 'Psychological Self' - therefore - empirically speaking at least - it does not exist.

The same goes for such Freudian concepts as 'Ego' and 'Id' and 'Superego'. If you can't see them, then they don't exist. (Of course back in Hume's day, they couldn't see 'bacteria' and 'viruses' but that was not to say that they didn't exist. Things and living entities that you don't see can still kill you - indeed, they are probably more dangerous such as 'the car you don't see'.)

In philosophy, you learn about 'epistemology' (the study of knowledge) whereas in Freudian - or Post-Freudian - Psychology, you learn about 'Central Ego Function' -and then you would probably proceed to start studying 'epistemology' as one of the main 'ego functions or processes' within the confines of 'The Central Ego'.

In other words, in psychology, it is almost like we 'need' to 'invent internal structural systems' - kind of like 'organs in the mind' - except that there is no, physical empirical basis on which to believe that these 'ego structures' actually exist except as 'mythological entities' much like 'Gods' - with the same intended purpose: to explain things which are otherwise difficult if not downright impossible to explain.

It would be easy to argue - and I will take up this argument again on behalf of David Hume - that this is one of man's central 'mental features or characteristics': making up 'things' or 'structures' that don't exist - or worded another way - 'turning physical or psychological processes (Would Hume even accept the existence of 'psychological and/or epistemological processes? - you can't see them!) into non-existent, and totally man-made 'conceptual structures or constructions' - and calling them 'real'!

In fact, this is one of the main problems with 'classification systems' in general: they 'conceptually funnel' knowledge into particular categories that may or may not exist - 'phenomenomologically', 'biologically', 'physically', 'chemically', and so on...

'Black and white man-made categories or classification systems' don't allow for the existence of 'hybrids' - or anything that exists outside of the mind of the classifyer and the classifyer's 'classification system' until someone pipes up and says: 'I don't like this particular classification system; I'm going to make a new one up that is much better...(We can read on the internet this morning about the first man to 'have a baby'! Life doesn't believe in always following nice, neat, clean, man-made classification systems or categories...)

Thus, for anyone who has set about the task of learning a particular branch of knowledge, it is important to know that you are basically at the mercy - and the power - of the particular person or organization 'who has structured and classified in the knowledge in a particular way' so that you only get to learn about the type of knowledge that is 'inside the classification box'; not outside. This is why you often here the cry - 'Think outside the box'. That is, 'think outside the 'Classification Box' - or you might miss some important types of knowledge that otherwise will not be taught to you.

Thus, there is value in constantly changing up any 'Classificaiton Box' - or 'flexibly being able to smoothly move from one Classification Box to another - such as Psychoanalysis, Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Behavorial Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, and so on - just as there is value in being able to speak and understand different languages - each language making up another different type of 'Classification Box'.

This is why 'DGB Philosophy' uses a lot of 'hyphenated words' - like 'DGB Philosophy-Psychology'. 'DGB' not only narcissistically stands for my name - David Gordon Bain - it also, stands for what I philosophically do - which is 'dialectically bridge gaps (dgb)' between different phiilosophical systems, different psychological systems, bringing philosophical and psychological systems together...and every other type of system dialectically together in an effort to create a different type of 'hybrid-classification system' that has its own unique form of 'funtionality and value' like dialectically integrating a 'normal gas car with a propane or natural gas or hydrogen or electrical car' so that you improve energy efficiency, reduce your dependency on normal gas but still have normal gas if you can't find a propane or natural gas station or can't run your car on hydrogen or electricity until you take it home and 're-charge' it for a night...

In the case of cars, we can say that our classification system is 'physically or empirically grounded' because you can see the 'gas tank' or the 'propane tank' or the 'natural gas tank' or the 'electical outlet' where you might have to plug your car into another electrical outlet on the wall of your house when you get your car home at night...

However, we can't say the same things about 'The Central Mediating Ego' or 'The Righteous-Ethical Topdog' or 'The Narcissistic Topdog (or Underdog)' or 'The Nurturing-Supportive Topdog' - or 'The Soul' - or 'God'...

These last types of 'classification systems' are 'metaphysical systems' and may even deserve to be called 'Mythological Systems' - meaning not that they may or may not have functional value - but rather, that their 'physical-empirical' basis cannot be proven or verified without a doubt; and on this basis, is subject to 'legitmate epistemological dispute and controversy' - if not downright 'skepticism'. Remember: 'Metaphysics' means basically - 'above and beyond physics' as first categorized by Aristotle.

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From the internet...(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Aristotle's Metaphysics

First published Sun Oct 8, 2000; substantive revision Mon Jun 9, 2008
The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title "Metaphysics" was the treatise by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even describe his field of study as metaphysics'; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works. The title metaphysics' literally, after the Physics' very likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are developed in Aristotle's treatise.

1. The Subject Matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics
2. The Categories
3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being
4. The Fundamental Principles: Axioms
5. What is Substance?
6. Substance, Matter, and Subject
7. Substance and Essence
8. Substances as Hylomorphic Compounds
9. Substance and Definition
10. Substances and Universals
11. Substance as Cause of Being
12. Actuality and Potentiality
13. Unity Reconsidered
14. Glossary of Aristotelian Terminology

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It must be made absolutely clear that unlike Hume and Skinner, I am not saything that metaphysical and mythological systems have no value - because oftentimes I believe they do - rather, what I am saying is that there value may not be in their 'epistemological reality' but rather in their 'Projected-Self-Idealism' and their 'Projected Philosophical Idealism'. As long as we are willing to call a spade a spade - and not say that it is something else, as long as we are willing to admit and own up to the fact that our 'Metaphysical/Mythological Structure or Construction' is exactly that and not necessarily an 'epistmeological reality', that it is our own form of 'projected self-idealism' - then we cannot be accused of being 'epistemologically fraudulent', of trying to propogate some sort of Mythologcial Entity onto the world in the name of 'Epistemological Truth'.

Thus, when I use the term 'God' - I do so 'mythologically' as a 'projected form of self-idealism and philosopohical idealism; nothing more, nothing less. I do not use the term 'God' as an 'epistemological reality' - although admittedly, often it is tempting to go here. Mainly, I use the term 'God', philosophically,metaphysically, mythologically, and spiritually, as a 'projected form of self and philosophical idealism' - although, epistemolgicallly, I will jump one step further...

'Nature' is a physical reality; so too, are 'natural processes' which can be either 'physically (empirically) watched and/or 'reasonably/logically inferred' by 'scientific, and/or rationally-empirical minds'...

It does not take too much 'rational-empirical logic/reason' to jump to the theory of 'intelligent design' - that nature is 'intelligently designed'. Furthermore, it does not take too much more 'rational-empirical logic/reason' to jump to the assumption that if 'nature is intelligently designed', then that possibly/probably? means that somewhere out there, there is - or at least was at one time -an 'intelligent designer'. Dare we call this inferred 'intelligent designer' - 'God' - and if so, does the name 'God' stand on the basis of 'reasonable empirical (natural, physical) evidence - even if there are at least one or more 'metaphysical jumps in logic' that take us from 'Nature' to 'God'?

Well, here's the problem here. Actually, there is more one of them. Firstly, what if 'Nature' - from 'The Earth' to 'Life on Earth' to possibly even 'Life in the rest of the Universe' was simply created by a 'Very Superior Being' who is now dead - like all other forms of life eventually die over time - or a 'Superior Race of Beings' that are/were vastly more intelligent than man, and much further along the 'evolution route'...Are we going to believe in perhaps a different way than Nietzsche meant it, that 'God is dead!', and/or that 'God is/was a Superior Race of Beings'? Secondly, the idea of 'God' is so emotionally laden for most people who believe in 'God' that it is rather obvious that there is much more psychologicallly and philosophically at stake than believing that 'God' is/was simply a 'More Intelligent Being than Man' and/or a 'More Intelligent Race of Beings than God' and/or that if 'God' ever existed at one point in time, it is also quite possible/probable that God is now dead - having died like all of the rest of us will one day...No...this is not why 'God' - and religion - exists for most people who believe in God. Epistemologically, most people believe in God firstly, out of 'purely assumptive Faith' - this is the rather shaky assumptive foundation for their belief in 'God'. But more than this, 'God' exists for most people because they cannot see their own 'projected Idol(s), their own projected 'Self-Energy', and their own 'projected form of Self and Philosophical Idealism' hidden, even buried, beneath their religious beliefs...

To properly understand God and Religion, man has to have the courage to look at his own 'Self-Projected Energy and Philosophical Idealism as a 'compensatory measure' usually taken to alleviate 'underlying psychological-philosophical anxiety' such as 'the fear of death and/or the fear of freedom and/or the fear of being essentially alone in a warm or cold universe of his or her own personal, phenomenonological-existential making...

In essence, the belief in God as an 'epistemological reality' - for the most part (and I can hear millions of angry people wanting to get a piece of me here...) is a 'smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show' for underlying 'existential anxiety'. Still, metaphysically and mythologically, the belief in God can still serve a valuable, functional purpose (like helping us to feel less alone in the world, and helping us to help others in need of help...).

Personally, as a philosophical, metaphysical, mythological, and spiritual entity, I view 'God as 'The Master Dialectical Integrating, Unifying - and Separating -Force' behind all of Nature, Evolution, and Creation...Life for me, is primarily the accidental and/or purposeful 'collision' of similar and/or opposing forces to 'create new chemical and psychological bonds - and to destroy (deconstruct) old ones that are no longer functional...

This is starting to sound like 'Star Wars' here (let the 'Force' be with you! - and we are definitely not talking about Schopenhauer's (or 'Hobbes') philosophical type of 'narcissistic, nasty, brutish killing Life and Death Force here' - although both the world and man can encompass all of this; nor are we talking about Nietzsche's 'Will to Power' or the more humanistic (feminist?) Nietzschean rendition of the 'The Will to Self-Empowerment' although man can show both of these features as well - both in their positive and negative aspects; nor are we totally talking about the types of forces entailed in Freud's metaphysical concepts of 'Life and Death Instinct' playing off against each other although I like parts of this classification system as well but again, this is not completely what I am talking about.

Rather, the metaphysical-mythological-spiritual classification system that I use is more of a combination of: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, the Han Philosophers, Spinoza, Hegel, and Perls...with backup support from Schopenhauer - The world can be, and often is. 'brutish and nasty'!, Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy, Apollo and Dionysus), Freud (Ego, Superego, and Id, life and death instinct, traumacy, seduction, assault, and narcissism), Jung (the Persona, The Shadow, and the Archetypes, and Berne (Nurturing Parent, Righteous Parent, Adult, Adaptive Child, Rebellious Child, Natural Child...), and Perls (Topdog and Underdog), hotseat and empty chair work...)

What I am talking about in terms of the number one 'philosophical and spiritual force' in DGB Philosophy-Psychology supersedes everything that we have talked about in the last paragraph. I am talking about a force that unites Western and Eastern Philosophy - at its best; a force that integrates and unites many of the similar but different philosophical systems that make up the history of Western philosophy - from Thales, Anixamander, Heraclitus, and the Han Philosophers to present day philosophical processes and/or systems such as DGB Philosophy-Psychology.

I am talking about what I consider to be the 'master key stroke of God' - and here I am talking about my own projective ideal system - but also moving beyond this because I am integrating much of Western philosophical and psychological history - not to mention Chinese 'yin' and 'yang' theory. Perhaps I am moving into 'Intelligent Design' Theory - into the realm of theology, the realm of metaphysics and mythology, and who knows - maybe even into the realm of epistemology and 'epistemological truth' on a 'natural basis' at least - because the 'force' I am talking about is so prevalent, so dominating, so all-encompassing, so potentially tied into evolution and creation theory, that it is hard not to believe that there wasn't at least at some point in time an 'Incredibly Intelligent and Sophisticated Designer or Creator' - to which I give the name 'God' behind this Creation. The force that I call the 'master key stroke of God' - is 'The Force of The Dialectic'... This Force is neither good nor bad - it is 'Beyond Good and Evil' (but not in the Nietzschean sense), indeed, often it brings good and evil into the same physical and psychological space...It is 'beyond life and death' and indeed, often encompasses elements of life and death in the same physical and psychological space.

The Force of the Dialectic is largely unpredictable - at work in the 'hot seat and empty chair technique' in Gestalt Therapy; at work in a different way between the Analyst and the client on the 'Psychoanalytic couch situation', at work in any human encounter, any encounter where two or more objects, two or more processes, two or more living entitities, come together, collide together, make love together, make hate together, randomly or on purpose, chaoticallly or with intended purpose, integratively or with no resulting integration...Postives and negatives coming together, positives and positives coming together, negatives and negatives coming together - and either 'finding a chemical fit' - or not. I'm talking about the coming together and breaking apart of 'chemical molecules' on every microscopic and macroscopic level of existence...a dog and a cat coming together and...well...fighting like cats and dogs...or a cat and a dog coming together...and somebody snaps a picture of them 'cuddling together on the same couch'...

This is 'The Dialectical Force' that I am trying to describe here in DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics-Medicine...Others have been here before me...many, many others...but I am just trying to put it altogether in one 'muliti-dialectical-integrative package'. Hegel, was the ultimate 'dialectical mastermind' but he basically only touched on 'epistemology' - he spoke of 'The Absolute' in terms of 'Absolute Knowledge'. Others - Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, have extrapolated in some 'post-Hegelian' way on what Hegel wrote - improving on some of his largest weaknesses.

When I speak of 'The Dialectical Force', I speak not only of the evolution of knowledge but also of the evolution of existence and life - of being and becoming, of life and death. This to me, is the full extent of The Mystical, Metaphysical, partly Mythological Dialectical Force.

For me, The Dialectical Force is the key Creative and Working Force of God.

And that is where I will leave things today on this fine Sunday morning...

- dgb, June 8th, 2008, modified and updated, July 5th, 2008.

Wittgenstein vs. DGB Philosophy -- Part 1: What is Philosophy?

2008-07-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. I spent 3 or 4 hours writing this essay yesterday, to my reasonable satisfaction -- I think it was a good paper -- and then committed the most grievious of errors among bloggers, writers, and web-site owners...I blew it away into cyber-space. I hit the 'paste' button rather than the 'copy' button...A message of warning to any writer/blogger who may not be completely focused on what they are doing...

Anyway, a new day and a new paper. I spent last night kicking myself and mourning the loss of the last one -- now its time to give my head a shake and move on to the next one. And obviously, make sure I don't commit the same mistake again.

I changed the title a bit for this essay. Yesterday's paper was called 'Deconstructing Wittgenstein' whereas this one is called 'Faceoff: Wittgenstein vs. DGB Philosophy. If anyone finds the first essay in your cyber-travels, please let me know. In the meantime, on with the business at hand.

Philosophy, in my opinion, has a bad rap, a bad steretype -- both inside and outside the universities. The stereotype as I see it is of bearded professors, snoring students -- and 'mind games' -- i.e., let's see what kind of logical contortions we can put your mind through today.

I remember five years back or so I went into downtown Toronto to check out a 'School of Philosophy' around Spadina and Bloor. I met with the receptionist and asked what kind of philosophy they taught there. They reinforced the stereotype -- or at least my stereotype of the way philosophy is often taught and presented to students and the general public. I can't remember exactly what the receptionist said, but the gist of it ran something like this. They taught a 'philosophy of soothing stressed out souls' -- kind of like an Eastern, Budhist style of philosophy, a philosophy of meditation, taking your brain to soothing places to relieve it from the day's stressful 'rat race'.

I said that's fine -- but do you teach any Hegel or Nietzsche? What about 'social activist, post-modern, deconstructive' philosophy -- do you teach any of that?

Paraphrasing the receptionist: 'No, we don't teach that kind of philosophy. You have to go somewhere else for that type of philosophy.'

DGB: 'Okay. Thank you.'

Now, 'meditative philosophy' is not where this brain wants to go to...I'm a social activist deep down at heart, even though I've never spent a minute in a social activist group -- other than in the board room of the 'Progressive Canadian Party' here in Newmarket, Ontario. I spent about a year attending their meetings -- a squashed version of the old Progressive Conservative Party that didn't want to merge with The Reform Party. They continue to practise 'PWP' -- Politics Without Power' -- and I decided I could practise 'PWMP' -- Politics With More Power' -- right here at my computer chair without moving a leg from my living room. It's not that I'm lazy or that I didn't like part of the process of being involved in a 'political-social-activist' group; it's just that I hated the group's decision-making inefficiency and felt like i could move my own philosophical and political agenda along faster within the confines of my own blogsite than listen to a group of people that couldn't get their heads together and move together with any kind of quality and efficieny -- in the same direction. Call it one of the drawbacks of 'democracy' if you will, but call it also a lesson in 'group inefficiency'. Regardless, I wanted to move in a different direction. Today, the direction is Ludwig Wittgenstein:

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From Wikipedia...

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.[1] His influence has been wide-ranging and he is generally regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers.

Before his death at the age of 62,[2] the only book-length work Wittgenstein had published was the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Philosophical Investigations, which Wittgenstein worked on in his later years, was published shortly after he died. Both of these works are regarded as highly influential in analytic philosophy.[3][4]

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DGB: Now I am not here to 'bust egos and intellects' -- well, partly I am -- with allegedly one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century. I fancy myself as having a good, healthy intellect but nothing up around the '160 IQ' range -- to the extent that 'IQ measurements' say anything meaningful about intelligence. (You can be the most intelligent guy or girl in the room but if you don't do anything meaningful with it -- for yourself and/or others -- then what good is it? A gift from God, un-utilized?)

My self-stated job as a philosopher is to ground philosophy in clarity, common sense, rational-empiricism, integration, humanistic-existentialism (compassion, freedom, assertiveness, personal/social/group accountability...), and functional practicality (utility).

Relative to Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein, my self-stated job is to bring the reins in on him to some extent, to catch him in his own philosopohical hypocrisies, and to in effect say: 'Woah, Mr Wittgenstein -- slow down here. I don't care how much mind-bending logic you throw at me, you are not going to convince me -- like you did Bertrand Russell, according to at least one source (John Heaton, Introducing Wittgenstein, 1994, 2005, Penguin Books, Canada, Totem (Icon) Books, the USA) that 'there is a hippo in my living room'... There is a point at which philosophy needs to come back to earth and meet common sense -- even defer to common sense -- and that point is here and now.'

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DGB: I am going to use John Heaton as my 'interpreting guide' to Wittgenstein. We are going to aim to teach and practise 'DGB KISS Philosophy' here -- Keep It Simple, Stupid.

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Wittgenstein: The purpose of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. (Introducing Wittgenstein, pg. 40).

DGB: Philosophy -- at least DGB Philosophy -- is about much, much more than the logical clarification of thoughts. The clarification of thoughts is very important but philosophy is also about 'putting good thoughts into action': it is about demonstrating passion and compassion towards people (humanism); it is about being accountable for our own freedom -- or perceived lack of it -- and at least partly accountable for the effect that our actions have on others (humanistic-existentialism). Furthermore, relative to logic, logic can be a useless and/or even dangerous tool in the mind of the wrong person -- just like 'statistics' that can be used to support or denounce any thesis and/or brand of ideology. Again, logic needs to be grounded in common sense, rational-empiricism, humanistic-existentialism, pragmatism and functionality, dialectic-democracy, and divorced from the context of narcissistic, malicious, dictatorial people in order to be worth giving any degree of philosophical credibility to it. And again, logic should not be used to play 'non-sensical mind games' -- unless that is the explicit, agreed upon goal of the 'mental exercise' -- with all due respect, it should not be used to try to convince anyone -- Bertrand Russell, I'm a bit disappointed in you -- that 'there is a hippo in anyone's room' unless someone can empirically (observationally) verify it, and/or the room is in a 'zoo', and/or the room is large enough -- including the door -- to actually contain a hippo, and/or the room is actually in a country where hippos are known to exist...You get my drift...

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Wittgenstein: Philosophy is not a teaching but an activity.

DGB: Then why did Wittgenstein teach? Because he was hired to help students learn the dynamics of the types of cerebral activities that he did very well -- and was being paid to pass on to them. Having said this, additional clarification is needed relative to the goals of DGB Philosophy. Philosophy is a 'multi-dialectic integrative activity' that can be constructed in the shape of a 'six-sided figure': 1. sensual-empirical activity (primarily observation and personal experience); 2. cerebral activity (involving a combination of language, meaning, epistemology, and ethics); 3. emotional activity (involving hopefully a combination of passion and compassion for your own creative, self-assertiveness, as well as a passion and compassion for the well-being of other people); 4. behavioral activity (involving putting all your 'good' thoughts into action -- with lots of room to argue over the meaning of the word 'good'), with the evolving support functions of: 5. teaching (someone knowing what they are doing and being excited about the opportunity of passing what they know onto others); and 6. learning ('You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.' Similarily, you can lead a student to a philosophy class but you can't make him or her learn unless he or she wants to learn.)

That makes this six-sided figure a 'sexagon' -- which I am sure will wake students up and make them quite happy -- or, I guess that should be 'hexagon' -- having corrected myself from the internet; previously snoring philosophy students can go back to sleep again.

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Wittgenstein: A philosophical work consists mainly of elucidations.

DGB: When Wittgenstein wrote: 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus', I'm not sure who he thought he was elucidating -- except himself. I get stuck on the title (which I believe I read was named in reference to a work by Spinoza). Essentially, no-one could understand him. He couldn't get a publisher without the credibility and help of Bertrand Russell. And I'm not sure how much he understood the book. Wittgenstein himself wrote in his preference: 'It's purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.' This hardly seems like a work that is aimed at 'elucidating' and 'clarifying' ideas for readers. This seems to make up a good part of the paradox -- dare I say 'elucidating hypocrisy' -- that makes up Wittgenstein and his philosophy.

When I first started writing DGB Philosophy, my dad used to complain that he couldn't understand a thing I was writing -- and my dad is an intelligent man. Way too much 'techno-garble'. This was a few years ago. I have since tried to simplify my writing, eliminate much of my own techno-garble, and make my work more reader-friendly. I still wanted/want my work to be academically important and of a scholarly nature but with some educational and entertainment compromises for my intelligent lay readers and beginning philosophy students in the name of trying to make my work feel less dry than the Sahara desert.

All philosophical works could/can use a little -- if not a lot -- of Nietzschean fire, excitement, and passion. I like Fritz Perls as a writer who in my opinion was a modern day version of Nietzsche.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fritz Perls
Born July 8, 1893(1893-07-08)
Berlin, Germany
Died March 14, 1970 (aged 76)
Chicago
Occupation psychiatrist and psychotherapist
Spouse(s) Laura Perls
Friedrich (Frederick) Salomon Perls (July 8 1893, Berlin – March 14, 1970, Chicago), better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent.

He coined the term 'Gestalt Therapy' for the approach to therapy he developed with his wife Laura Perls from the 1940s, and he became associated with the Esalen Institute in California in 1964. His approach is related but not identical to Gestalt psychology and the Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy of Hans-Jürgen Walter.

At Gestalt Therapy's core is the promotion of awareness, the awareness of the unity of all present feelings and behaviors, and the contact between the self and its environment.

Perls has been widely evoked outside the realm of psychotherapy for a quotation often described as the "Gestalt prayer". This was especially true in the 1960s, when the version of individualism it expresses received great attention.

Gestalt prayer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "Gestalt prayer" is a 56-word statement by psychotherapist Fritz Perls that is taken as a classic expression of Gestalt therapy as way of life model of which Dr. Perls was a founder.

The key idea of the statement is the focus on living in response to one's own needs, without projecting onto or taking introjects from others. It also expresses the idea that it is by fulfilling their own needs that people can help others do the same and create space for genuine contact; that is, when they "find each other, it's beautiful".

Text of "prayer"

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
(Fritz Perls, 1969)

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Wittgenstein: The result of philosophy is not 'philosophical propositions, but the clarification of propositions. Philosophy should take thoughts that are otherwise turbid and blurred, so to speak, and make them clear and sharp. (Tractatus, 4.112; Introducing Wittgenstein, pg 40).

DGB: I would argue -- I am arguing -- that, in Tractatus, Wittgenstein took a host of intertwined ideas that had the potential to be stated clearly and sharply -- and made them turbid and blurred. DGB Philosophy aims to cut through the smoke and mirrors of the Tractatus and get to what has the potential to be stated more simply, more clearly, and more functionally usefully (i.e., importantly). My main mentor here is Alfred Korzybski, author of 'Science and Sanity', and founder of 'General Semantics'. Personally, I believe that Korzybski was the better linguist, semanticist, and epistemologist -- in fact, I would argue that Korzybski was the best -- and, at the same time, most under-rated -- epistemologist in the history of Western philosophy. The two -- Wittgenstein and Korzybski -- were philosophizing and writing during almost the same period, they wrote about many of the same things -- i.e., the relationship between words, ideas, meaning, and 'things' (existential phenomena), but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of their respective work in this area, I think you will see -- or at least I will do my best to show you -- that Korzybski was by far the more lucid, down-to-earth, thinker. Wittgenstein's Tractatus was written significantly before Korzybski's Science and Sanity even though Korzybski was ten years the older man. Tractatus was first published in 1922, Science and Sanity in 1933. I need to do more research on a proper comparison and contrast between these two linguistic-semantic-epistemologists, but as of right now, the only thing I can see that is similar between their respective ideas on this subject is that pointing is the main means of teaching language and connecting language with 'existential reality'.

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From Wikipedia...

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (July 3, 1879 – March 1, 1950), was called, among many labels, a Polish-American, philosopher and scientist. He is most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.

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DGB: ...I could do a better introduction on Korzybski than this...and will do so at a future time. The Wikipedia introduction only underscores my point that Korzybski deserves more philosophical attention and recognition than he is currently getting. Korzybski influenced the development of a number of significant psychotherapies today including Gestalt Therapy and various forms of Cognitive Therapy such as NLP -- Neuro-Linguistic-Programming... General Semantics itself is a form of 'Linguistic-Semantic-Epistemological Psychotherapy...or let us just say -- Cognitive Therapy.)

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We will come back to Wittgenstein again shortly and discuss/critique his ideas concerning:

1. The relationship between philosophy and science;

2. His theory of the relationship between: words, meaning, phenomena, and epistemology.

I think we have accomplished enough for today. I'm not sure if this essay is better or worse than the one I wrote yesterday but it shares the same basic focus and theme.

Don't talk about clarity -- and leave us chasing the moon.

(Or looking for phantom hippos in our room -- although we, as independent philosophers, need to take at least half the responsibility here if we are actually so stupid as to allow ourselves to get caught up in this type of nonsense and seriously start looking for them.)

If the argument defies both our empirical senses and our common sense -- then exit the argument. Someone's playing with our head. It's a 'mind game' designed to drive us to drink and/or shake your very sanity. I still can't believe Russell let Wittgenstein take him there.

Shame on you, Bertrand! You were a great philosopher -- you have many, many things to feel very proud of -- but Ludwig must have been slipping you some funny stuff in your coffee on this one. How else could he have taken you for such a magic carpet ride?

For everyone else, alive and ticking, have yourselves all a clear and sharp, rational-empirical, humanistic-existential, common-sense day!

-- dgb, July 19th, 2008.

Conceptual Narcissism vs. Conceptual Integrationism

2008-04-28T06:17:00.001-07:00

On 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...'

Introduction: On The Difference Between Conceptual Narcissism and Conceptual Integrationism

Good day! My name is David Bain. For those of you who are not familiar with either me or my work here -- my essays are focused primarily within the integrative realm of philosophy-psychology. Knowledge-wise, I am supported by an Honours degree in psychology from many years back (1974-79), as well as a two year relationship with The Adlerian Institute of Ontario (1980-81) and an on again-off again relationship with The Gestalt Istitute of Toronto (1979-1991) -- this combined with about 20 years of self-education (reading and writing within the confines of my own personal library, bookstores, and/or the internet).

I am in the process of writing a very large integrative philosophy-psychology work consisting of a network of some 50 plus blogsites in various stages of development from almost finished to not started yet. The project is called 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology...'. Each 'floor' of Hegel's Hotel (blogsite) will have a varying number of essays on/in it -- ranging from about 10 to 30 essays. Using simple multiplication, that means I am shooting to finish about 1000 philosophical and psychological essays -- let us say by the time I reach 60 years old, touch wood, God willing. Each essay on each floor-blogsite will metaphorically be considered to make up a 'room' in Hegel's Hotel. Thus, I am shooting to finish 'construction' on a thousand rooms in Hegel's Hotel. (So far, I've probably completed between 100 and 200 full essays -- not including Floor 5 which has a growing number of 'DGB Aphorisms' to the tune of some 50 so far. The link here -- through Google -- is DGB Philosophy, Aphorisms.)

Within the confines of these some 50 plus different blogsites or floors of Hegel's Hotel, I will be -- and/or have been -- writing on a wide assortment of different topics from introductions to dialectical philosophy to freedom vs. determinism to awareness and contact to narcissism to the study of Ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy to the study of epistemology, the study of humanistic-existentialism, the study of ethics, the study of business and economics, the study of politics, the study of law, the study of the Enlightenment, the study of science and medicine, the study of romanticism and the arts, the study of spirituality and religion, and the study of psychology.

Obviously, I don't have enough time in my life to go hugely in depth into each and everyone of these different areas. However, within each realm, I will bring my unique, post-Hegelian, integrative approach to what I want to write about and connect each essay, each blogsite, to my overall thesis which is that 'integrative dialectical evolution' is a process that can be taught and applied to all areas of human culture, living, and activity in a way that is often if not usually superior to an 'adversarial form of righteous-either/or philosophy and lifestyle'.

This may not seem like a profoundly new or provocative thesis but I think that if you have the patience and perseverence -- fueled hopefully by more of my good writing than bad -- you will see that I have some unique contributions to offer the study of philosophy, psychology, politics, business, law, medicine, and more. I hope -- indeed expect -- that there will be good reading and value for both introductory and advanced philosophy and psychology students and professionals alike.

There is a sense in which I could very easily be called a 'Gestalt philosopher'. For a period of 12 years -- from 1979 to 1991 with 'gaps of non-involvement' at different times, I was very intensely and intimately tied up to what I was learning at the Gestalt Institute in Toronto. I had good contacts with a lot of friends I met there, and had/have a lot of respect for the teachings of Gestalt therapists Jorge Rosner (now deceased), Joanne Greenham (present head of the Institute to my last knowledge), Tony Key, and others.

However, there is a sense in which I am kind of like the Gestaltist 'prodigal son' if you will -- I left my involvement with them in 1991, and I haven't been back except, I believe, for one open house, since. So that is about 16 years now that I have not been involved with the Gestalt Institute in Toronto -- although I carry the knowledge I learned at the Institute in everything I write.

Now here I am writing a philosophical treatise and forum called 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology...'. The treatise and forum is being written entirely on the internet as I write, and consists of the growing number of associated blogsites I have already mentioned above.

Now, yes there is a heavy Gestalt influence in the work as a whole, and in each and every essay that I have written. However, there are many other influences as well: Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Adler, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Erich Fromm, Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand, Schopenhauer, Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Jefferson, Diderot, Montasquieu, Kant, Fichte, Locke, Spinoza, the Han Philosophers, Heraclitus, Anaxamander...

So this is not all about Gestalt Therapy applied to philosophy. And yet in a partial sense -- a good size partial sense -- it is. It is not entirely by accident that many of my ..philosophical influences are the same ones who influenced Perls and the evolution of Gestalt Therapy -- for example, Freud, Jung, Korzybski, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heraclitus...

It was through studying Gestalt Therapy that I first became seriously connected to Hegel's philosophical work -- and it was this connection, this bridge if you will, that led me backwards from the study of psychology into the study of philosophy. I largely left behind my study of psychology in 1991, and have been studying philosophy -- through books and the internet -- from 1991 to the present (May, 2008), still continuing.

There is a sense in which almost everything I have developed in this network of blogsites, in each essay, I learned either from watching or experiencing the 'hotseat' in Gestalt Therapy. However, the hotseat was a therapeutic invention by Perls that combined the Hegelian dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis) with Nietzschean urgency and Kierkgaardian immediacy. The purpose of the hotseat and empty chair technique -- one chair with the therapeutic client in it, the other seat facing him, empty -- was to help a person to gain better contact with a person who wasn't present, or to gain better contact within the client's own personality between a dominant side and an opposing more suppressed and neglected side. Through this process, a person 'dialectically alienated' from either someone else (eg., husbqand, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, son, daughter, parent, employer, employee...)and/or within his or her own personality could work hard in the hotseat with openess, honesty, and immediacy to become more 'dialectically integrated' through the therapeutic synthesis of opposing parts in his or her personality in conjunction with finding better 'integrative closure' with 'the alienated other person' in the hot-seat person's outside life (and/or for that matter, someone inside the therapeutic group).

DGB Philosophy does not generally include the raw immediacy of a hot seat but it does contain the process of 'dialectical opposition, contact, negotiation, and integration'.

In DGB Philosophy, we are stepping away from the dynamics of the human psche in the rawest immediacy of the hot seat and empty chair work. However, we are expanding this process to each and every part of human culture and activity -- and then we will come back and connect what we have learned from this philosophical adventure into such areas as narcissism, epistemology, ethics, business and economics, politics, law, science and medicine, spirituality and religion with the DGB perspective (model, theory) on the structure and dynamics of the human psyche.

What goes around comes around. What is projected (viewed as if it is a 'movie' out there in the social world) is then introjected (identified with, internalized) within the 'projector's' own personality (and/or visa versa). The movie or 'psycho-drama' -- both external and internal -- is us.

How narcissistic can we get? The world -- and particularly man's culture both collectively and privately -- is very much a reflection of a man's character, and in both a good and a bad sense, at the same time, his or her personal narcissism.

Personal and collective narcissism very much dominates the human psyche and the human world. Which is not to say that there isn't an important place and a need for the balance and equillibrium of the opposite of human narcissism which includes such things as: altruism, generosity, caring, love, social sensitivity, empathy, helping one's friends and neighbours, caring about the state of the environment, and so on...

There is an important place for a good balance of both narcissism and altruism in both man's psyche, and in the projections of his or her psyche into his private and collective culture, including the structure and process of any human philosophy, psychology, politics, and the rest of culture that he or she may invent.

But still, looking around us for the most part, one cannot help to think and feel that human narcissism dominates -- both in and beyond our Canadian and American culture.

I watch politicians fight with each other in parliament, treat each other disrespectfully, as each and everyone of them chases after a narcissistic, either/or, right or wrong, ideology -- as if theirs was/is the only 'right' ideology on the face of the earth. Sometimes the 'game' they seem to be playing, the 'show' they seem to be putting on, reminds me of something I might see on television wrestling. But if it is not all 'game' and 'show' and politicians actually believe that they are being 'righteously real', then someone needs to show these politicians how to better work with each other, not always against each other -- and respectfully with an 'eye towards a common mutually influenceable gain that will be good for everyone involved, particularly the majority of civilians who are counting on their 'balanced, wholistic, leadership'.

The dialectic can be used righteously, manipulatively and maliciously --'narcissisticly' is the word I will generally use (see my essays on narcissism, google dgb philosophy, narcissism) -- or it can be used judiciously and integratively, utilizing a combination of reason, compassion, common sense, empathy, humanism, ethics, and a balance of personal assertiveness and social altruism(in this sense, is a positive factor in human growth and evolution to the extent that it is kept in line by giving room for the rights and wishes of others -- which is supposed to be what 'democracy' and 'equal rights' is all about.

The same goes for corporations vs. unions or non-union employees, natural health medicine vs. standard, orthodox Western medicine, sports owners vs. athletes taking into account the fans, indeed, any type of human conflict where people have a choice between acting reasonably with each other vs. going off ballistically with each other because they can't see past the noses on their own faces.

As for the issue of my 'classification' as a philosopher, and whether I can or should be called a 'Gestalt philosopher' -- someone who has learned from Gestalt Therapy and extrapolated on these lessons into the realm of philosophy, politics, medicine, religion, art, and the like -- well that is a dialect in its own right between me and members of The Gestalt Institute who I haven't really talked to since 1991. The prodigal son may one day return back to some of his main roots and foundations. Or not. As I learned back at The Gestalt Institute (which has philosophical roots back to the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus (535-475 BC): 'Everything is subject to change.'

In the meantime, a lot of this 'labelling', 'conceptualization', 'classification' and 'boundary' business depends on where you want to draw the line, and why.
Property, money, narcissism, a personal belief in right and wrong -- or perhaps alternatively, an integrative, always expanding, vision of the enlightenment and evolution of mankind.

A distinction can be made between Gestalt Therapy the 'process' and Gestalt Therapy the 'structural content'.

Gestalt Therapy the process involves an unpredictable state of affairs, where nobody really knows what is going to happen or where it is going to end -- where the process of individual growth is going to 'dialectically evolve' to. 'Old boundaries' are constantly being broken down and 'new integrative boundaries' are constantly being formed. Call this life.

Now 'Gestalt Therapy, The School of Psychotherapy' as a network of systematic concepts, rules and directives (such as 'No interpretation or analysis please -- just here-and now, I and Thou, contact!' -- a good rule of thumb but partly restrictive when used without flexibility and context) is -- or at least can be -- quite a bit more 'anal-retentive' and 'narcissistically protective' than 'Gestalt Therapy as I view it as a 'Post-Hegelian, integrative, no school-based, narcissistic, restrictive concepts' process. Because, if for example, Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology starts to re-introduce other ideas from other schools of psychotherapy and/or visa versa, this may not please the 'hard-line Gestalt theorists' any more than it would likely please the hard-line Psychoanalysts, Adlerian Psychologists, Transactional Analysists, Jungian Psychologists, and/or whoever else it is that I plan to bring into this multi-integrative stew that I am calling Hegel's Hotel.

Gestalt Therapy has its own ideational space and boundaries which can be differentiated from Psychoanalysis or Jungian Psychology or Adlerian Therapy or Rational-Emotive Therapy or Behaviorism or any of a hundred different schools of psychology and psychotherapy.

Again, I make the distinction between 'either/or' evolution vs. 'integrative evolution'. Biologically speaking -- and here is where Hegel and Darwin start to meet -- When a man impregnates a woman and a baby is created there is a mixture of 'either/or' evolution and 'integrative evolution' going on here. The child may have the ears of the father, the nose of the mother. The child may look exactly like the mother or the father. This is 'either/or' evolution. Perhaps the father's genes dominate, or the mother's genes dominate and the child almost looks like a clone of the parent with the dominant genes. Or the child can be seen to have a mixture of both parents genes and here we can see the process of 'integrative evolution'. The concept of 'biological diversity' is very much tied up to what I am calling here dialectical integrative evolution -- or put another way -- 'conceptual diversity and a constant renewal of conceptually integrative processes'.

Now let us leave the world of biology and enter the world of philosophy, psychology, politics, law, business... The same two evolutionary processes in every domain of human culture that exist in biology and bio-chemistry -- with sometimes either/or evolution dominating, and other times integrative evolution dominating.

Indeed, the whole ideational evolution process becomes more complicated -- and unfortunately often strangulated into 'non-evolution' or 'negative evolution' -- when you introduce such factors as: capitalism, money, property, corporations, patencies, people's livlihoods, etc...

With the additions of such factors, people not only get narcissistic about their money and their property and their choices of what they want to do -- they also get narcissistic about their ideas. Somewhere back in the 1980s or 90s, I called this phenomenon 'conceptual narcissism'.

Now here is the point: often conceptual evolution and conceptual narcissism collide and conflict with each other, do battle with each other, and become a dialectic in its own particular right, either good or bad, or both. Metaphorically speaking, one might ask the question: 'Which ideational gene is going to dominate? -- the 'narcissitic-either/or gene' or the 'integrative-evolution' gene?

Example. In the 1970s Jeffrey Masson was a fast-rising psychoanalyst and writer. He worked his way up the steep ranks of the many different Psychoanalytic Institutes in both North America and Europe. He got right up to the top -- to Anna Freud -- and was given free access to the Freud Archives. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Masson got into the Freud Archives and he didn't like what he was reading. The issue was Freud's abandonment of his 'traumacy and seduction theory' around 1896-1897. In its place, Freud developed his more (in)famous inter-related theories of distorted childhood memories, childhood sexuality and the Oedipal Complex.

Masson basically came to the conclusion that these latter three theories were garbage -- and that worse than that -- they tended to perpetuate the traumacy of female childhood sexual assault by 'non-legitimizing' them. That is, according to post-1900 Classical Psychoanalytic and Oedipal Theory, a woman's 'memory' of a childhood sexual assault and/or seduction would be taught by and to psychoanalysts to be generally and stereotpically 're-interpreted' as a 'childhood fantasy and distorted memory' due to the young girl's and/or later teenage girl's standard romantic and sexual infatuation with her father. Thus, very few female childhood sexual assaults were being interpreted as what they were -- real assaults. In Masson's words, they were basically being 'clinically suppressed -- and denied existence in the phenomenonology of the client'.

Thus, from a 'clinical interpretation' standpoint, there would be 'no more childhood sexual assaults' in Psychoanalysis because most, if not all, of them were being re-interpreted by psychoanalysts everywhere as 'distorted memories based on underlying female childhood sexuality fantasies'.

Masson broke this scandal open, first in the New York Times in the late 1970s, then in his hugely controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory'. (1984, 1985, 1992 by Jeffrey Masson)

Not unexpectedly, Masson's book didn't go over very well at all with the many different Psychoanalytic Institutes. He was evicted from some and resigned from others. And now he is living in New Zealand and writing books about emotions in animals. No real resolution -- no dialectic conclusion and/or integration -- to the controversy.

Psychoanalysts defended themselves saying that they had the freedom to interpret childhood assaults as being real if they believed that one happened. Aside from this 'real and/or bogus resolution', the conflict seems to have bascially gone underground again. I cannot say for sure because I have not followed the various evolutions and/or non-evolutions of various Psychoanalytic schools of thought. I think many of them have discarded classical Oedipal theory and moved on to different schools of Object Relations and Self Theory. Some -- I do not know what percentage -- have remained loyal to Freud's original Classical/Oedipal theory.

Obviously, if you are a woman who knows that you were sexually assaulted as a child or young teenager, then I would probalby be thinking twice about engaging in Classical Psychoanalysis. There is definitely, in my mind, some element of truth in Masson's book -- the 'proportion' of truth to my present knowledge is still the subject of significant controversy.

In my opinion, the many Psychoanalytic Institutes should not have pushed Masson's book and thoughts aside so quickly without a full and democratic playout of the dialectic controversy. Indeed, writing as a post-Hegelian philosopher, I believe that they should have embraced the dialectic and brought a stale, stagnant sexist Orthodox, 'Classical' Psychoanalysis out of the Victorian age -- and into the age of feminine equality.

Some may say this has happened. Others may say that the whole issue was swept under the carpet. I tend to believe the latter. I have nothing to believe that Orthodox, Classical Psychoanalysis didn't simply retreat to its chauvanistic, paternalistic chambers -- and pretend that Jeffrey Masson's re-awakening of 'The Seduction Theory Controversy' never happened. They acted like most guilty politicians act in the midst of a narcissistic political scandal. Using the 'wait til it blows away' tactic, they try/tried to pretend that nothing happened, avoid/ed all journalists and news reporters -- and hope/d that the scandal will/would blow away from the headlines of all media outlets and public attention.

It has been about 17 years or so since I read Masson's 'Final Analysis': The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst (1991)-- a great read in my opinion about Toronto trained Jeffrey Masson's hugely successful and then completed thwarted attempts to breath fire and oxygen into 'a stagnant old men's patriarchal club'. I'm not sure whether it was coincidence or not -- but I left The Gestalt Institute (1991) close to the same time that I finished reading Masson's book, 'Final Analysis'. For better or for worse, I was through with psychology (at least until now) and moving into philosophy. But I would be back -- I am back -- as I start to plough my way through the blogsite/section of Hegel's Hotel called: 'DGB Integrative Personality Theory'. (Google DGB Philosophy, Personality Theory)

Has 'dialectical determinism and/or freedom' led to any further evolution in Classical, Orthodox Psychoanalysis? I cannot tell you. It certainly needed to be 'feminized' in order to bring it into touch with the evolution of the female psyche, female philosophy, and equal rights in the latter part of the 20th century. I doubt very much that this happened which leaves me with the perhaps outdated impression that Classical Orthodox Psychoanalysis is going the same way as the dinosaur -- towards extinction. Left untouched, it was becoming more and more theoretically irrelevant -- if not downright toxic. This is a generalization to be sure -- perhaps an out of touch one if things have changed significantly since 1991 -- but as I said, I doubt if things have. Obviously, this depends on which 'sub-school' of Psychoanalysis we are talking about -- and/or whether we are talking about the evolution of Psychoanalsyis as a whole vs. the 'relative non-evolution' of the old school, hardline, anal-retentive, boundary protecting, Classical Psychoanalysts...If little had been done to revise the old school, Classic Psychoanalytic perspective on 'libido theory', 'The Oedipal Complex', 'childhood sexuality', and 'distorted unconscious memories' since Freud's death (1931), why would anything and/or anyone likely change Classical Psychoanalysis since 1991? If Masson couldn't do it, who else would?

It is important to make some distinctions here. I am certainly not saying that Psychoanalysis as a whole is irrelevant or toxic. There are many different divisions and sub-divisions of Psychoanalysis some of which are developing more meaningful lines of thought than others in my opinion. From a DGB Philosophy perspective, there are at least eight different divisions of Psychoanalysis that are worth talking about from 1. Traumacy Theory; to 2. Seduction Theory; to 3. Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Complex Theory; to 4. Death Instinct Theory; to 5. Ego, Id, and Superego Theory; to 6. Melanie Klein Early Object Relations Theory; to 7. Ronald Fairbairn later Object Relations Theory, to 8. Kohut and the beginning of 'Narcissistic Transference' and 'Self-Object' Theory.

By 1897, Freud was starting the process of abanadoning Traumacy-Seduction-Sexual Assault Theory altogether -- or at least in main part. Was 'the kitchen getting too hot' for Freud -- as Masson has suggested. Or did Freud find worthy clinical evidence to suggest that these 'so-called female adult memories of childhood seductions and/or sexual assaults' were simply not true? Or elements of both? I believe in the latter. I believe that there was a series of human 'psycho-dramas' that were going down involving Freud and his female patients that contained a mixture of true and false memories, traumatic and narcissistic memories, traumatic and narcissistic adult encounters...in short, a snap shot of human life in general with all its myriad of intertwining complexities.

Life and nature do not believe in 'one-sided, compartmentalized, narcissitic theories' made up by any one man or woman -- even if the man's name was Sigmund Freud who is still idealized and worshipped by many unconditional, Classic, Orthodox Psychoanalytic followers today for the creative brilliance of his ideas, some of which are worthy of this degree of respect, others of which should be 'committed to flames' (to once again use David Hume's immortal words) before they propogate any more forms of toxic psychotherapy into our society today -- just as 'The Traumacy and Seduction Theory' taken too far can as well.

When I am talking about Classical, Orthodox Psychoanalysis then, I am talking about 'the oldest of the old, orthodox guardians of Freud'; I am not talking about Melanie Klein's brand of Psychoanalysis (Object Relations), nor Ronald Fairbairn's brand of Psycoanalysis (a second brand of Object Relations), nor Heinz Kohut's brand of Psychoanalysis (the beginning of Self Psychology in Psychoanalysis -- some of my present ideas on 'healthy' vs. 'unhealthy' narcissism were being developed in the mid to late 1980s just about the same time I first bumped into Kohut's work on narcissism. Kohut had already developed this line of thinking well before me -- he died in 1981 -- nevertheless, it was reinforcing that some of my ideas were going down the path of more 'liberated', current, rebellious psychoanalysts.

Once again I believe in the value of the dialectic and in smart theorists and therapists using the dialectic to full functional advantage. From my perspective -- and I am far from the first person to say this -- it seems that Classical Psychoanalysis if it wants to stay alive and to have any kind of credibility and trust with the general public, especially women, needs to 'feminize' itself and to discard all ideas and practices that discriminate against women in order to bring it into the 21st century. Today, Orthodox, Classical Psychoanalysis is about as culturally relevant as most strict, orhthodox forms of religion are. Living in a past that has long passed them by.

Another example. What would happen if a psychoanalyst ever decided to abandon his or her use of the 'therapeutic couch' and borrow instead the 'hotseat' from Gestalt Therapy? Would this psychoanalyst still be called a psychoanalyst? Probably not by his psychoanalytic peers and superiors. Would he or she more appropriately be called a 'Gestalt Psychoanalyst'? Perls went this direction -- trained originally I believe in Kleinian Psychoanalysis (the beginning of Object Relations) -- until he decided at some point to dump the 'couch' and develop the 'hotseat and empty chair technique. In doing this, Perls 'existentialized' Psychoanalysis. Soon he would call himself a 'Gestalt Therapist'.

Integrative evolutions have happed often enough in the psychotherapy business, as much as they are often discouraged, even blacklisted and scandalized. Some theorists and therapists have integrated Adlerian Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Some theorists and therapists have integrated various forms of Cognitive Therapy with Gestalt Therapy. Perls partly did this himself. He liked Korysbski and General Semantics.

Back in the 1980s, I was integrating Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis -- which is how I got 'GAP' Psychology. Cognitive Therapy, humanistic-existentialism, and Jungian psychology also eventually had an impact on my thinking.

Conceptualizations, classifications, and labels can be stretched or re-tightened according to our wishes and agenda. It could be argued that Freud was a Gestalt Therapist before he was a Psychoanalyst -- much of Freud's early work in the 1990s on traumacy theory could easily be viewed as the real foundation of Gestalt Therapy (before Freud decided to go a different theoretical direction). Freud's Traumacy Theory is just as relevant today as it was when he created back in the late 1880s and early to mid 1890s. It should not have been abandoned, just modified -- which many Psychoanalysts say is exactly what happened. I don't believe them. The 'modification' if that's what it was at the time, became a more or less 'fixed theoretical reality' over time. By the early 1900s, the traumacy was being left further and further behind. It shouldn't have been. Using the Hegelian dialectic, I would have developed a 'narcissistic-traumacy' theory. In fact, I will develop this theory as I move along here. Psychoanalysis needs to integrate; not 'compartmentalize' into a increasing number of 'either/or' theories.

What is the moral of everything that is being said in this essay. How about this?

When you are all ready to get your shorts tied tightly in a knot and turn purple with rage over protecting an idea, a concept, a theory, a philosophy, a paradigm, an ideology, a religous belief, ask yourself this: Can integrative evolution take me to a better place that is better for me and better for the people around me? And if so, then why am I holding on so tightly, so emotionaly, to an idea that may be a better idea once it is blended with other different and maybe even opposing ideas.

Every seen a parent and a child fighting over 'curfew'? Being a taxi driver at one time, I have seen or heard of some of the worst fights you can possibly imagine when it comes to teenage girls battling with parents over 'freedom vs. control and safety (curfew)' isues. 15 year old girls evicted from their homes. Come on, what's with this? Rage is probably usually the best personal indicator that it may be time to think 'negotiate, compromise, integrate'; not get stuck in the personal egotism and/or ethics of 'I am right, you are wrong'. If you want to save your relationship with your teenage son or daughter, maintain your ethical boundaries unless they are seriously outdated in which case you might want to re-think them. But regardless, be willing to negotiate without 'caving in' on your principles, and choose 'contact and immediacy' over maintaining your inflexible, righteous, 'either/or' pride.

A Post-Script: I initially wrote this paper almost a year ago. Now I feel at least partly like a hypocrite. Last August I got into a very stupid but severe argument on the internet with my 18 year old daughter over the end of my support payments to her mother because she was out of school and working. Not reaching any common ground on our beliefs and principles, the fight has left us more or less estranged since then. That's where pride takes you when two stubborn people -- or groups of people -- cannot negotiate and integrate any common ground between them.

The conflict is between holding on hard to your strongest beliefs and values vs. being open-minded enough to look for and find that place in the middle -- or conversely, simply to agree to disagree -- with someone who's ongoing relationship with you is important enough not to jeopardize and sabotage based on an unwillingness on the part of both of you to find some meeting ground in the middle.

On the other side of things, left unbridled by compassion, empathy, and ethical fairness, human righteousness and narcissism knows no boundaries. The irony is this: The tighter and harder a person's conceptual boundaries are, the more all-encompassing is likely to be the extent of his or her personal righteousness and narcissism -- and in this regard, his or her unwillingness to even listen to people, let alone meet them somewhere towards the middle.

-- dgb, originally written May 20th, 2007; modified and updated April 27-28th, 2008.
-- dgb, originally written May 20th, 2007; modified and updated April 27-28th, 2008.

Two Types of Hegelian 'Scholars'; Two Types of Capitalism

2008-04-06T04:59:00.000-07:00

There are two types of Hegelian scholars: 1. the type who are most meticulously familiar with Hegel and his work: and 2. the type who did and/or are doing the most value, relevance, meaning and vision with his work. I call this latter type of 'modified' Hegelian scholar a 'post-Hgelian creative-application scholar'. I include in this latter list such philosphical and psychological creative wonders as: Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, Derrida...

While I respect the work of the first type of Hegelian scholar -- and wish to some point that I had this level of 'technical expertise and familiarlity' with Hegel's work -- I am not sure that I have enough time, energy, and motivation in my life to every get remotely close to this type of 'Hegelian scholarship'.

In contrast, regarding the 'post-Hegelian creative-application scholars' that I listed above, you will see their 'blood and DNA' running everywhere through Hegel's Hotel, and ideally, I would like to some day join the list. Much of my motivation as an individual and as an 'underdog' philosopher -- meaning someone who philosophizes with intent, purpose, and focus from outside the 'normal topdog circles of university, academic life' -- is to show that a person doesn't need to necessarily be in the most elite, academic circles in order to become 'well educated' and to deliver a strong, forceful philosophical message -- ideally again, a 'tour de force' if you will (especially now with the invention of personal websites and blogsites to bridge the gap between 'university' and 'non-university' writers).

Now, I may or may not be able to deliver the full philosophical tour de force that I want to deliver in my lifetime. And/or I may or may not be able to reach my 'underdog' goal of full academic credibility and respect -- with or without my Phd in philosophy. But life is not all about the final destination of where you want to get to. It is also about the process, the encounters, the new awarenesses and the personal discveries you make along the way in trying to get there. Indeed, life is in the process, not the final destination because there is no final destination, just new, different, and creatively wonderful ways of re-inventing yourself -- or not. Life is in the details, the first, middle, and the last steps -- not in the grandiose life plans that never make it to or past the first step.

Ideally, I want my legacy -- at least my 'Hegel's Hotel' legacy -- to be that I was able to appeal to lay, professional, and specialty academic readers alike, and that I was able to combine an integrative philosophcial style and approach in a way that fostered creative vision, relevance, meaning, and pragmatic application.

If I can do all those things in Hegel's Hotel, then Hegel'a Hotel will have been a success. But of course, I am getting ahead of myself. Much, much hard work is still needed to get between here and there.

When things are working best in our capistalist economy, humanistic-existential values are working harmoniously together to support each other, not at odds with each other as when personal narcissism dominates and suppresses all other human values, especially compassion and integrity.

What I idealize as 'humanistic-existential capitalism' as opposed to 'narcissistic capitalism', utilizes integrative Hegelian philosophy to combine personal self-assertiveness, creativity, indeed, even elements of personal confidence, arrogance, egotism, narcissism -- with its 'dialectical dance partners': specifically, social sensitivity, respect, trust, integrity, ethics, compassion, social visiion, and pragmatic social application.

That is where 'Hegel's Hotel' is trying to get to...Again, we have much, much hard work in front of us before we get there.

dgb, Mar. 28th, 2008.

Twelve Characteristics That Make A Good Philosopher

2008-04-06T04:54:00.001-07:00

1. Ability to see the big picture, the whole picture, as well as to see clearly how all the individual pieces come together to affect the whole and fit into the whole...

2. Ability to take the essence of an important idea and to run with it...

3. Ability to make important associations....

4. Ability to make important distinctions....

5. Ability to say what other people are afraid to say -- to risk being 'politically incorrect'...

6. Ability to put together a clear, idealistic but pragmatic vision...

7. Ability to see man's weaknesses and transgressions clearly...

8. Ability to offer hope and optimism...

9. Ability to trigger new awarenesses...

10. Ability to creatively integrate a few or many different sets of similar and/or opposing ideas....

11. Ability to use 'philosophy as a hammer' and/or as a 'surgeon's knife, hammering away at the truth behind man's hypocrisies, double standards, and conflicts of interest...and cutting to the bottom of man's individual and group corruption, making transparent man's illegal, unethical, and/or immoral narcissistic transgressions, draining away the posions that make individual's and society's families, corporations, businesses, government agencies, bureaucracies, legislations, medical institutions, educational institutions, scientific bodies...and other cultural reflections 'psychologically and philosophically sick'...

12. To creatively construct new and pragmatic ways of living, governing, learning, conducting business, and negotiating healthy, 'win-win' conflict resolutions...

dgb, Mar. 30th, 2008.

Two People -- Working Together -- Can Generally Get To A Better Place Than One Working Apart

2008-03-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

Two people -- two minds, two hearts, two spirits, working together -- can generally get to a better place than one. This is the heart of what I mean by 'dialectic philosophy' -- or at least 'dialectic idealism'.

If we want to extend this idea to include more than two people -- which also deserves significant attention -- then we can start to talk about either 'multi-dialectic idealism' and/or 'pluralistic idealism'.

We also have to look at the potential downside of the three idealistic concepts I just introduced -- dialectic idealism, multi-dialectic idealism, and pluralistic idealism. As my main philosophical mentor -- arguably the greatest integrationist in the history of Western philosophy, G.W. Hegel once wrote (and I am paraphrasing from memory with a partical embellishment here because I have lost the home of the original quote -- indeed, I will give public thanks to the person who can find its original home for me) -- Ever idea, every theory, every characteristic carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction. Stated a little differently in my own words, every theory, every idea, every characteristic -- when taken to its extreme or excess, and in so doing, snatching it from its 'natural context' of 'homeostatic balance' with its 'bi-polar opposite' idea, theory, and/or characteristic -- will eventually either explode or implode. In this regard the end result of such conceptual, ethical, and/or behavioral extremism will be pathology, not health.

Two people butting heads against each other, not working together, not working through problems together, not giving and taking, not showing a combination of self-assertion and social sensitivity, not showing honesty, respect, trust, and respect with each other -- is obviously not what I have in mind by dialectic idealism. Rather, this is more what I have in mind by the concept of 'dialectic ineffiency and/or pathology'.

Similarly, I have been in groups of -- let's say 10 people -- that have been totally inefficient in their group activity together and basically a waste of time and energy. People go off on different tangents. They are not listening to each other. They have different agendas. They have different 'narcissistic goals'. Let's call this type of inefficient group activity -- 'multi-dialectic or pluralistic ineffiency'. Even worse, is when people engaged in a controversial debate start resorting to trash-talking, social disrespect, character defamation and the like. This I would call 'multi-dialectic or pluralistic pathology'.

In 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- Friedrich Nietzsche's first book and the one I will most often allude to in my work here as the major philosophical bridge between Hegel and Freud -- Nietzsche opened up the idea of what I will call here as a 'dialectical split' in man's psyche between what I will call here his 'Dionysian Ego' -- a place in our personality that focuses on such thoughts, feelings, character traits, fantasies and actions as: biological impulse, hedonism, pleasure, narcissism, sex, violence, power, revenge, etc.; vs. our 'Apollonian Ego' that focues on such thoughts, traits, and actions as: reason, restraint, fairness, justice, law and order, ethics, righteousness, and the like...

Nietzsche also opened up the idea of 'homeostatic balance' (which can be traced alot further back in Western history than Nietzsche, back to the Pre-Socratic philosophy of Heralcitus) -- meaning that it is imperative that we work to find 'differential unity and harmony' in our personality between our Dionysian Ego and our Apollonian Ego -- not end up in a situation with one side dominating the other and/or 'getting stuck' in some sort of a 'dialecitc impasse or split'. Nietzsche basically thought that Western philosophy and Western man had been dominated by his 'head' since Socrates and Plato -- meaning man's Apollonian Ego (with everything focuing around the process of 'reason' and 'rationality' had basically 'marginalized, suppressed, and repressed' his Dionysian Ego into the deepest depths of his personality and in so doing, had become a man without passion -- a 'dead man walking'. (I am taking some creative liberties here in terms of extrapolating on the essence and philosophical importance of a book that Nietzsche himself later demeaned and marginalized as being too 'Hegelian' in its basic structure and core. In contrast, I think that it was this Hegelian structure and essence that made 'The Birth of Tragedy' so profoundly brilliant and historically important -- as it created a 'gravel roal' for the likes of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Fritz Perls to later 'pave'.

In a similar fashion, I too -- partly connected to my Nietzschean influence -- prefer most of the dynamics of Pre-Socratean Philosophy to the 'Apollonian one-sidedness' of Socratean and Platonic Philosophy. And it is in the depths of ancient Greece, in the depths of the dialectic philosophies of Anaxamander (the first dominant Western dialectic philosopher) and Heraclitus (the second dominant dialectic philosoher) that I reach back and pull out another dialectic split in man's psyche: the split betwwen what I will call his 'Spartan Ego' (his 'will to power and 'might is right' syndrome) and his Athenian Ego (a 'will to democracy, equal rights, social sensitivity, negotiation, integration...')

This second dialectical split in man's personality is being partly 'mythologized' here as no arbitrary classification system ever totally 'fits with' and/or 'matches' phenomenal reality. The more and more we generalize, abstract, and stereotype, the more we must remember that when we do this we lose important individual and particular characteristic of those we abstract, generalize and stereotype. So let us not confuse my partly arbitrary and mythological distinction between the 'Spartan' and 'Athenian' ego with the full extent of the real and particular dynamics that may or may not have been happening back there and then at the time when the Spartans and the Athenians were fighting with each other -- over power and philosophical ideals.

My argument here is that we all have greater or lesser degrees of 'Spartanism' and 'Athenianism' in each of us and that these opposing qualities -- the will to power vs. the will to listen, negotiate, and integrate -- can either 'dialectically split' us (Anaxamander's philosophical realism) and/or 'dialectically harmonize' us (Heraclitus' -- and Obama's -- and my -- philosophical idealism).

I will leave you with one more potential dialectic split in the personality before I leave you with this first synopsis and impression of DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy.

We have taken a brief glance at the deepest, darkest depths of Ancient Greek philosophy and the most important distinction between the philosophical realism of Anaxamander -- opposite qualities fighting each other for power and supremacy and the 'pendulum swing of dominance vs. submission and/or dominance vs. suppression'; vs. the philosophical idealism of Heraclitus and his 'harmonizing and balnncing of opposite qualites -- both being essential to the ongoing life process and wholistic balance of nature.

Now let us take a minute and glance at the darkest depths -- and one of the finest creations -- of ancient Chinese philosophy (probably much more ancient than any of us, or at least most of us, can follow). I am talking about the philosophical creation of 'yin' (feminine qualities) and 'yang' (masculine qualities). Now before any of you ladies start to accuse me -- or the Chinese -- of 'sexual stereotyping', it is important to realize here again that we are talking about partly and arbitrarily 'mythologized' classification distinctions that are meant to at least partly help us to understand a particular biological, psychologicial, philosophical, political, economic, medical, and cultural process -- i.e. the process of 'homeostatic balance' (See Cannon's 'The Wisdom of The Body'). These classification distinctions are not meant to tell us what 'feminine should be' and/or what 'masculine should be'.

What I find shockingly amazing is the degree of closeness in the type of thinking that was going on in the foundations of Ancient Greek philosophy and in the foundations of ancient Chinese philosophy. Both focused on the 'dynamics of the dialectic' and in the idea of 'differential unity' and 'the harmonization of opposites (Heraclitus in the case of the ancient Greeks; the Han Philosophers and probably much further back into ancient Chinese history than the Han Philosophers in the case of dialectic Chinese philosophy. As close as ancient Greek and ancient Chinese philosophy were in their structure, dynamics, and spirit, for over two thousand years, their evolving differences would rule over the foundations of their similarities and it was not really until Marx stood Hegel on his head philosophically, that a particular brand of Western philosophy (Marx's 'dialectical materialism' and his 'Communist Manifesto') that Western and Eastern Philosophy would begin to seriously integrate -- and not with what most people would call ideal, humanistic results. Rather, one has to look at the respective political pathological ideologies of Lenin, Stalin -- and the crushing lack of democracy in China -- and wonder what went wrong?

Today, I look at the evolving 'dialectic negotiation and creative integration' that is going on between Western and Eastern philosophy -- through the ongoing harmonization of Western and Eastern medicine -- and see much more favorable rssults. Western medicine -- if it is to evolve and get better, which it is -- has to 'think outside the Western medical philosophical box', which it has, by introducing the strongly critiquing philosophical forces of alternative and natural medicine both of which are strongly steeped in Eastern -- and Middle Eastern -- medical philosophical foundatins. The degree of integration has not been fast or smooth -- but it is getting there with more and more favorable results -- in my opinion of course.

I don't think I can give you any better a quick introduction to the essence of the spirit and the dynamics behind 'Hegel's Hotel' than what I have given you right here.

Hegel's Hotel is a look at 'the good, the bad, and the ugly' -- all from a primarily post-Hegelian, dialectic, multi-dialectic, and pluralist, integrative perspective.

Before the latest American Democratic nomination, I had no idea in the world who Obama was. Where did he come from? What does he stand for? Wow! His speeches. Where did this man learn to speak so eloquently? Dare we believe his speeches. Dare we believe that there is substance, integrity, good judgment, and depth in this man's character -- not just the same old smooth talking, 'stereotypical used car type of salesmanship', with hypocrisy and political narcissism ruling the day once the man is nominated and/or elected. Dare the American people make themselves vulnerable again to another possible crash of false hopes by believing that this man Obama really has the type of personality, mindset, intelligence, integrity, strength of character, power, and perseverence -- to change Washington? To change how Washington is run? Have we all over-idealized the man? I can't remember people in general getting this mesmerized by the eloguence and hope springing from a man's speeches since -- maybe Martin Luther King? This is pretty heady company. So far I am only comparing the eloquence and the hope inspired by their speeches -- we wait further for the substance of the man, his judgments, and whether he can deliver what he aspires, inspires, and promises to deliver.

The American people do need significant change -- in their economy, in their health care, and in their foreign relations. The whole world needs this significant change. The whole world is watching America and the man they are going to elect as their next president. Can this man bring what America and the world as a whole is looking for? Can Obama bring the particular set of qualities that the American people are hungering most from the politicians that lead them -- honesty, integrity, caring about people, and to sum all the other characteristics up: substance, and with it, a revolutionary change in direction in the way things are done in Washington. Is this man just another fancy speaker -- or is he a man of substance who can really deliver significant amounts on what he promises.

Right now, all I can say is this: From what I have heard in Obama's speeches -- and I am only getting 'soundbites' as he would call them, it seems like we have one very important message that we are both preaching, both trying to get across.

We are both preaching integrationism, not divisionism.

And we are both preaching the 'democratic dialectic' -- open dialogue, debate, respect, trust, the commonality of being human and wanting to live in peace -- as the means of overcming differences in opinion, philosophy and lifestyle, to get us to a place that I will call 'differential unity' or 'the homeostatic balance and dialectic unity of opposing belief systems.

That is the essence of the spirit behind 'Hegel's Hotel'.

And that is a good place to start.

The world today has big, big problems confronting it -- from a polluted environment, to people not being able to make ends meet, to people flat out trying to kill each other in growing numbers. Political killings. Racial killings. Religious killings. Regional killings. Economci killings.

Basically as I see it, we have two essential choices based on tolerance and acceptance on the one side vs. intolerant righteousness and narcissism on the other: we can live together in dialectical integrationism -- or die apart in dialectical divisionism, resentment, rage, hate, power, revenge, and war.

Personally, I pick the former, not the latter.

dgb, March 23rd, 2008.

Homeostatic Balance - In Philosophy, Science, Psychology, Politics, Economics, Law, Religion - Is The Bridge Between Epistemology, Ethics, and Action

2008-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

Good epistemology is like a plane with good, strong wheels. It has to be well grounded - i.e., have good contact with the ground - before it can take off properly and fly and/or return safely from its flight. Bad epistemology is like a plane with no wheels or bad wheels; it has no good contact with the ground (unless and/or until it crashes).

A philosopher too has to be properly grounded before he or she can fly. In this regard, I am not only talking about the philosophers who call themselves philosophers. I am talking about all of us. Because like it or not - formally or informally, overtly or covertly, academically or practically - we are all philosophers. We all have to come up with some sort of understanding of ourselves and the world we live in, what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is real and what is not, and how we should proceed in the world - what type of choices we should make, and/or want to make.

So again - whether we like it or not - we are all philosophers.

And all philosophy starts with epistemology. We have to be properly grounded before we can fly. We have to observe before we reason. We have to know what is real before we search for the ideal. Existence before essense - Sartre, I believe, said that. Being before becoming - I think Fritz Perls might have said that. Realism before idealism, epistemology before ethics, observation before reason...in all cases, the horse before the cart, not the cart before the horse. There is a proper order to things and processes.

Personally, I would even say philosophy before science - you have to examine science's assumptions and narcissistic biases before it can fly - and science before spirituality and religion - again, look to the ground before you look to the sky. You have to be properly grounded and be able to crawl, walk and then run before you can fly.

Many philosophers have argued that you cannot connect epistemology (what is) to ethics (what should be). I disagree with that. You look at the world around you, what is happening in it, how things work, how things function, before man's intervention, and you can see a number of different but related things: that things are linked to each other, that some things are attracted to each other and connect with each other, while other things reject each other and either separate and/or compete with each other. You see that there is life and death, living and dying, growth and decay. You see that the world is full of 'opposites' - plus and minuses, hot and cold, wet and dry, water and fire, earth and sky, males and females, attraction and rejection, union and separation, alkaline and acidic, too much and too little...You see that the world is precariously balanced and that changes have a domino effect that may impact a whole series of changes down the line. In personal circles, things that affect your brother or sister affect you, things that affect your father or mother affect you, things that affect your community affect you, things that are passed in law affect you, things that happen in the economy affect you, that your positive and negative experiences affect you, things that happen in your environment affect you, things that happen half way around the world can affect you, whether it's the weather or whether it's war.

It is impossible to understand the world properly and ourselves properly without understanding the principle of 'homeostatic balance'. (See W.B. Cannon's 'The Wisdom of the Body', 1932). The meeting ground of epistemology and ethics is the principle of homeostatic balance.

You cannot talk about either epistemology or ethics without talking about the principle of homestatic balance. Many of our earliest philosophers - West and East - saw that: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Plato to some extent, Confuscius, the Han Philosophers ('yin', 'yang'...) and others that I am not aware of in the East.

This is the reasoning behind the 'dialectic' as made famous by Hegel and Marx but at least partly pre-empted by other philosophers before them from ancient Greece and China as already mentioned to the German precursors of Hegel and Marx -- specifically, Kant and Fichte, and as romanticized by the 'natural philosophy' of Schelling both before and after Hegel's famous treatise -- 'The Phenomenology of Spirit'.

The main impetus of the dialectic -- which can also be viewed as a 'trialectic' (more on this in a minute) was/is that 'causes' don't generally just work one way - but rather two ways, three ways, and/or many ways. For every action there is a reaction which 'causes' (or 'influences') another action which in turn causes or influences another reaction...and so on ad infinitum...And this is only working on one or two dimensions...add other dimensions and things become even more complicated...Nothing is simple or one-sided when it comes to 'causes'.

This principle of 'dual causality' - the dialectic - or even 'multiple dual causality' or 'pluralist' (multiple) causality works not only outside of us in the world around us but also inside of us as well - in our own bodies and psyches.

Nietzsche saw this in his firt book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (a precursor to the Freudian Birth of Psychoanalysis' with Nietzsche's distinction between 'Dionysian impulse' and 'Apollonian ethics and restraint' both influencing and foreshadowing Freud's later work. Freud continued Nietzsche's line of post-Hegelian, dualistic and dialectic reasoning (the 'id' vs. the 'superego'), Jung too, (the 'persona' vs. the 'shadow'), and Perls too, again in a slightly different but largely similar post-Hegelian, post-Nietzchean dialectic way, (the 'topdog' vs. the 'underdog'),

Cannon's 'The Wisdom of the Body' and his idea of homeostatic balance was a very important evolutionary development that sandwiched the work of biologists and psychologists alike...with philosophers like me following up the rear and connecting the dots...A particular line of philosophy, biology, and psychology were all working from and with the same principle - the principle of homeostatic balance which also could and can be re-wroded as 'dialectical balance' or 'dialectical homeostatic balance'. In other words, if there is one underlying principle to the process of life starting with the phenomenon of 'copulation', it is the principle of 'working the dialectic' or 'working the opposite ends of a bi-polarity spectrum towards the middle in order to achieve 'homeostatic balance' or in my words, killing two birds with one stone - integrating the philosophy of the dialectic with the biological and psychological principle of homeostatic balance - you have what might be called 'dialectical-homeostatic balance'. In other words, man - and all other life forms too - is contantly working the dialectic - an 'exchange program' of either 'uncivil force' or 'civil debate' (and/or any combination of both) in order to achieve an either narcissistic (one-sided) or more 'utilitarian' (many sided) homeostatic balance.

Back to epistemology. There are some epistemological philosophers - indeed, some of our most famous and cherished philosophers - who tried to epistemologically fly before they could crawl, walk, and run. Parmenides and Plato are two of the guiltiest culprits in this regard. Descartes and Spinoza - as much as I like Spinoza - were not far behind. Any philosopher who tried to 'reason' without 'observing with the senses' first was putting the cart before the horse. We call these types of epistemologists 'idealistic epistemologists' (Parmenides, Plato...) or 'Rationalists' (Descartes, Spinoza...). These are the epistemologists who tried to fly before they could crawl, walk, or run. They tried to 'bipass sensory observation'. Their main argument was that sensory observation was flawed - thus, the rationale for 'bipassing' it and trying to use 'logic and reason' alone to get to an 'idealistic' or 'rational' epistemology. Big mistake. It was a recipe for epistelogical pathology and disaster waiting to happen. (Parmenides was Plato's pathological influence in the realm of epistemology - and the consequence was Plato's theory of 'Ideal Forms'.)

Aristotle went a long way towards compenating for, and correcting, the epistemological pathologies and disasters of Parmenides and Plato. Aristotle was more like the Pre-Socratics (Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus...but not Parmenides) in that he started with sensory observation, and then moved up the 'latter of abstraction' to 'reason and logic', 'causes', 'universals', and 'ethics'. In contrast, Plato 'philosophized from the sky' without having any 'epistemological roots and/or wheels on the ground. This was Plato's biggest weakness as a philosopher - and particularly as an epistemologist. Epistemology needs to be emprically based on sensory observation before reason and logic. Plato dismissed sensory observation - and in effect, physics and biology - and this was his greatest undoing as a philosophy. Plato - at least in terms of his philosophy - was a man who was alienated from the physical world around him, and/or dismissed the world around him for its imperfections. And this in turn caused the greatest imperfections in his philosophy. A man or woman alienated from the biology and physics of the earth is a man or woman alienated from the biology and physics of him or herself. And this in turn will affect - adversely at least to my way of thinking - the person's psychology, spirituality, and soul. Both epistemologically and ethically speaking, there needs to be a dialectic (mutual) influence between biology and physics on the one hand and psychology, philosphy, politics, law, econimics, art and culture...on the other hand. Either extreme - idealism without realism or realism without idealism, or biology and physics without philosophy and psychology or philosophy and psychology without biology and physics, or spirituality and religion without science or science without spirituality and religion, or self-assertion without social sensitivity or social sensitivity without self-assertion - will create a one-sided extremist philosophical pathology headed for self-destruction.

The truth is important relative to epistemology. Balance (homeostasis, equilibrium) is important relative to ethics. Here is where epistemology and ethics meet. Biologically speaking. Physically speaking. Philosophically speaking. Psychologically speaking. Medically speaking. Politically speaking. Economically speaking. Legally speaking. Relgiously speaking. In every case, the meeting point of epistemology and ethics revolves around the principle of homeostatic balance or equilibrium. Within ourselves. And outside ourselves in a social, community, political, economic, business, friendship, medical, and religious context. 'Humanistic-existentialism' demands the meeting point between self-assertion and social sensitivity.

Many others - more intelligent than me - have said this in similar and/or different ways. I am just summarizing 2700 years of both Western and Eastern philosophy. This is the goal of DGB Post-Hegelian Philosophy. Hegel said that 'The real is the rational and the rational is the real.' I don't entirely agree with this assertion. Man's rationality - and particularity the 'rationality of balance' - can easily be corrupted and pathologized by his one-sided longing for narcissistic (or anti-narcissistic) extremism (sex, violence, drugs, food, egotism, selfishness, greed, money, righteousness, religion - anything taken way too far...). But in the end, all forms of extremism usually lead you down a path of self-destruction.

Which brings us back to either God's (Religion's) and/or Nature's (Science's) and Philosophy's and Psychology's and Politics and Economics' and Law's Ultimate Truth: Homeostatic Balance as worked on, negotated, and achieved through the dialectic and ideally (in the case of man) democratic process (call this 'dialectic chemistry' if you will) is The Great Uniter of opposite qualities, processes, structures, and people in life. We've heard and probably experienced that 'opposites attract'. We also know that 'opposites can repel'. We can learn much from 'opposite theories' and 'opposite lifestyles'. There is a holy place for 'differential unity' or 'unified differences'. We just have to be creative enough and work hard enough to find it. Mutual rejection is easy. Tit for tat. 'My way or the highway.' It is the person and/or the people who can work through their individual differences to a place of creative, integrative, differential unity -- these are the true leaders and geniuses in life. Religiously and/or spiritually speaking, God is the bridge through the dialectic to differential unity.

dgb, Feb. 16th, 2008, briefly modified, Nov. 23rd, 2009.

Towards a New (Or Old) Philosophical Renaissance

2008-02-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

For me and my DGB Philosophy, life is basically about three things:

1. Making 'either/or' decisions such as Obama vs. McCain in the past election; going to dinner and a movie vs. staying home and saving money with your honey; staying single vs. getting married; staying in a job or leaving it; and so on...

2. 'Juggling pie plates' -- meaning juggling value priorities, and/or attending to our first, most immediate and/or most important priorties first. In this scenario, other value-priorities are not excluded or rejected entirely but rather are left behind for the time being until they become more figural and/or at some point reach our threshold/pedestal of becoming top priority.

3. Integrating our choices, ideas, theories, lifestyle in a fashion that partly compromises our 'either/or choices' but also allows you to split the difference and 'take the edge off of each either/or choice solely by itself' giving you in its place 'good elements' from both parts of your potential either/or choice while not totally 'committing you in either particular direction of your potential either/or choice.

In an 'integrative choice', elements of your two potential choices 'integrate somewhere in the middle' and ideally give you at least part of the the best of both worlds while minimizing the 'repetitive negative side effects' that may be attached to one strict side or the other.

If you are a 'hard-line conservative', you may be accused of having no heart or compassion whereas if you are a 'socialist-oriented liberal', you may be accuse of having a 'bleeding heart' that encourages people to take advantage of you, left, right and centre.

Which is why -- as Aristotle stated -- 'the middle path is usually the best path'.

(Although perhaps not always the most exciting. The extremes in life do tend to generate more drama and excitement but also more 'hard falls'. Choice and degree of risk becomes relevant.)

Still, the most successful and healthy people seem to be the ones who 'integrate their potential bi-polar extremes the best'.

For example, the most successful and psychologically healthy people tend to be both strong-willed, assertive people -- and good listeners at the same time, able to put forth their own points of view with force and conviction while being open-minded enough to attend to other points of view as well.

These are two important pie plates amongst numerous others that people need to juggle. Very few people know how to juggle these two pie plates equally well. Usually people are either too strong-willed and close-minded or they are too passive and inassertive. These polar extremes - without the balance - is what keeps therapists and counsellors, ministers and priests, police offices, human rights activists and lobbyists, legal councils, unions, and politicians busy.

Again, the most successful people - and particularly the most successful leaders - can juggle both these 'plates' equally well, knowing how and when to be assertive and forceful with their ideas, while staying attentive to the needs, interests, and perspectives of others who may think differently and/or have important opposing viewpoints to offer. Our parliaments and our courts are generally too adversarial - putting on a 'dog and pony, smoke and mirrors' show that may make our lawyers, judges, and politicians rich but defies a more objective and integrative search for truth, justice, and civil balance. (added Jan. 26th, 2008, modified and updated again, Dec. 16th, 2008.)

DGB (Dialectic-Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology - my own unique, personal brand of integrative philosophy-psychology which aims to combine some 2700 years of philosophy and 100 plus years of psychology - builds upon these two basic principles over and over again but only as each is appropriate and relevant to the context: 1. making 'either/or' decisions'; 2. juggling philosophical and lifestyle 'pie plates'; and 3. integrating things, ideas, processes, and people.

Finally, sometimes when seemingly practically everyone else is being 'politically correct' and not talking or writing about particular overt and/or covert injustices -even politically and legally sanctioned injustices - it is necessary to take a strong, forceful polar perspective in the name of helping to move this corruption of justice, democracy, and equality, back towards the centre balancing point of the pendulum of justice so that all people can receive equally fair treatment in the name of the law, not just this or that privileged group of people who have gained an 'inside presence and power of influence' that is not democratic and fair to others who have not had their opinions, interests, and/or needs voiced - and who may be paying a heavy civil cost for this unfair treatment.

'Collusion' is when two or more groups of people conspire together - in private places and/or on private phone calls - to make a deal amongst themselves that benefits each other but excludes outsiders in the process who are being marginalized and hurt in the deal and have had no say in this collusion.

Collusion is undemocratic and unhealthy when striving for a fair and equal democracy but at the same time very common-place in narcissistic capiitalist environments where greed and selfishness rules. The corruption, pathology, and toxicity of collusion needs to be made transparent in a healthy democracy.

This is where 'Narcissistic - everyone for themselves - Capitalism' needs to evolve into a more humane and environmentally friendly form of 'Democratic-Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Capitalism.' How do you have a democratic country when the economic and business philosophy and foundation of the country - in both Canada and The USA - is authoritarian; not democratic? It is my opinion that the best companies generally make significant use of some sort of compromised attitude - where workers with less authoritative power still do get well-heard and properly respected for their individual opinions, even if it does goes against the Corporate Status-Quo.

DGB Philosophy intends to put more and more ideas forward over time relative to what kind of changes might be needed to turn Narcissisitic Capitalism into a more Multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential form of Capitalism.

Again, some innovative, enlightened companies have already moved in this direction. Perhaps we can do more. Correction: We need to do more.

Narcissistic (Conservative) Governments and Narcissistic Big Business are often too interconnected in ways that are collusive and non-transparent to the general public.

So too are narcissistic Liberal-Socialist minded Governments who often spend to much time behind closed doors with 'socialist, special interest, lobbyists). Again, 'political-special' interest collusion can result.

When two out of three groups of people have their hands in the 'money-pie' and the third group of people is being marginalized, left out of the equation, uninformed or misinformed, their money in effect being fraudulently used and/or stolen - it is time to start charging and/or keep turning over the politicians who keep practising 'collusion, corruption, and dirty politics' - and likewise in the world of business.

Corporate greed and gouging - including unions - will never be brought under reasonable control until it is confronted by the people being gouge.

DGB Philosophy has important humanistic-existential elements of Karl Marx and Erich Fromm in it, but also important elements of Adam Smith, John Locke, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and my Corporate father in me to run away from my evolving integrative form of idealistic, multi-dialectic, humanistic-existential capitalism.

I -- and hopefully you -- want the workplace to be a place where people are happy to go to and work in; not 'alienating prisons' that people are running to get away from.

We are all guilty of this corruptive mess called politics because we keep letting our politicians get away with fraud - and don't do anything about it. These practises will continue until 'dirty politicians' finally start going to jail. These same politicians would send you or I to jail in a heart beat for conducting the same type of business so why do we continue to let our politicians get away with the illegal behaviors they would send us to jail for?

Why do we allow political narcissism and hypocrisy bring down our democratic nation? We can sit on our hands and do nothing. Or we can do more to not let politicians get away with 'the dirty stuff' they get away with. Democracy starts with the people and ends with the people and how willing they are to be politically active.

When 'Big Government' and 'Big Business' become an end in themselves where huge amounts of money come from the people and don't go back to the people, when the middle and lower class get marginalized, abandoned, and gouged...it is time for the people to take back their government from the politicians who are running it corruptively - or to keep putting new politicians in their until the situation improves. If we continue to do nothing about this situation, then we at least partly deserve what we get - a corrupt government. ('Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.')

Accountability and transparency - these are 'buzz words' that we hear all the time from politcians themselves, especially those on the election circuit. But until politicians start meaning what they say and saying what they mean, until we actually start seeing the types of ethical changes that politicans continually preach about, words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Maybe we should have 'politicians on probation' for one or two years before they are elected in for longer terms.

The more politicians have to answer to the people, the more they behave themselves. They are like athletes - the longer the contracts they get, the less they perform and the more they misbehave. Shorter 'contracts' might breed better politicians.

Politician cannot be trusted to be left alone -- or in cahoots with Big Business or Big Union or Big Socialist Special Interest Groups -- to function in the dark.

Because then the darker side of human nature will take over. Human narcissism - greed and selfishness - will prevail. Hobbes, Machiovelli, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and William Golding (the writer who wrote 'Lord of The Flies'), will be shown to have been the best judges of human nature - i.e., those that wrote about the darker side of human nature or human behavior, because unconfronted, the darker side of human nature or human behavior will rule.

We need a new vision, a new spirit, a new idealism, a new code of ethics. We need some new Enlightenment Philosophers, some new Romantic Philosophers (to compensate for the Enlightenment Philosophers), even some new 'Grand Narrative' Philosophers to compensate for all the 'Post-Modernist' and 'Deconstructionist' philosophers these days. (That is, we need 'Constructionist Philosophers' as well as 'Deconstructionist Philosophers'.)

I know this is asking a lot but we need a fascimile of a new Jefferson, a new Franklin, a new John Locke, a new Diderot, a new Voltaire, Montesque and Tom Paine...We need a new Renaissance. We need a new culture not based strictly on personal narcissism...and we need more people worried about the state of the planet we live on.

We need more idealists who say what they mean and mean what they say - and don't use their 'professed ideology' as a way of winning votes from the public, then do what they want and bend their ideology to their hearts content once they get into power for however many years. The Canadian - and I assume the American - people are sick and tired of 'fraudulent ideology' whether it comes from a politician and/or a businessman.

The paradox of the situation is that Corporate America - while trumpeting the virtues of 'individualism' and the pursuit of 'The American Dream' - are far too often helping to squash this type of idealism and reality. That's what Marx called (fake, narcissistic capitalist) ideology'. (He just called it 'ideology'.)

The '30 hour work week' - a projected idealistic vision back in the 70s and early 80s - is looking more and more like a '50 and 60 hour week' for many today trying to balance their 'expense and stress-laden budget as they strive to just break even without collapsing from exhaustion. (I am presently working a 55 to 60 hour work week in a stress-laden dispatching job so (projectively) I know something of what I am talking about. And there are many, many others who have it much worse than me. At least I make enough money to partly justify my hours even if the rest of my life is paying for it. This past two months - December and January - a 40 hour week would not have come close to meeting my expenses.)

We need to keep encouraging the work of social-political activists like Lou Dobbs even if we don't fully agree with all his opinions. He is offering a new form of political idealism and economics - he calls himslf a 'middle class populist' which I like the sound of. I also like many of his ideas, his delivery, and his courage to not water down or sugar coat his delivery. More power to him! - dgb, jan. 19th, 2008, updated jan. 26th, 2008 updated again Dec. 16th, 2008.

I found this site on the internet full of quotes that I like. (See below for some of them.)
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Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty

-

Milton Friedman, PhD, Nobel Laureate, 1912-2006: Rest in Peace.

"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." - Milton Friedman

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means." -Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p479

"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." - Edmund Burke

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist no. 51.

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes." - Thomas Paine

"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency." - James Bovard in Voting is Overrated

(See the internet site for these and other similar quotes...just google the title: 'Eternal Vigilence is The Price of Liberty')

Aphorisms

2008-01-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

On Differential Unity, Multi-Dialectic-Integrationism, Happiness -- and Evolution

Happiness often lies in integrating differences - in 'negotiating the gaps' between different personal perspectives, philosophies, and lifestyles, between subjective and objective reality, between narcissism and altruism, between assertiveness and social sensitivity, between self and self-possibilities. That is one main reason I call my philosophy-psychology - DGB (Dialectical Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology. (The other is that it just happens to be the initials of my name.)

In my post-Spinozian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian, post-Gestalt brand of philosophy-psychology, I use a lot of hypenated names - names that negotiate and integrate the differences between the unique polar differences of the two hyphenated words that are joined together in 'differential unity'. Call that the most important aim of my particular brand of philosophy-psychology - a search and striving for differential unity and harmony in a way that negotiates and integrates much of the work of many of the famous philosophers and psychologists before me.

Most of my ideas are not brand spanking new but simply reformulated and reintegrated to blend the worlds of different academics together as well as the world of academia and the world of common sense pragmatism -- again in differential unity and harmony. Call this 'Multi-Dialectical-Evolution' -- another re-statement and reformulation of what my philosophy-psychology attempts to do. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Am I being too idealistic? Read my work and make your own judgments and -- if there are ideas and/or practicalities that you like --- make your own 'multi-dialectical integrations'. - dgb, Jan. 12th, 2008

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Man sometimes finds himself on the plank between the dread of a meaningless existence and the fear of failing and/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.

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Ethical Idealism, Realism, and Multi-Dialectic Evolution

Ethical idealism should be part of a cyclical pattern
of: 1. reason - a combination of sensory experience
and sound interpretive logic; 2. humanism - self and
social compassion; 3. existentialism - self and
social responsibility/accountability; 4. realism - a
combination of what really exists and what is
practical to implement, always with an eye towards self and social evolution in its most positive sense; and 5. action - meaning
action taken aimed at dialectically bridging the gap between
your own brand of personal ethical idealism, the idealism of others, and the world as it stands right now. This is what I call: ''DGB Multi-Dialectic Ethical Idealism -- as modified by such factors as: social sensitivity, common sense, realism and pragmatism'. It involves combining your own 'Will to Power and/or Self-Empowerment' with the needs and democratic assertions of those around you, uncorrupted by personal and/or group pathological narcissism.

Unbrideled human narcissism, righteousness, and alienation - or any combination of the three- are the greatest enemies of multi-dialectic ethical idealism. One can also distinguish the difference - although perhaps not in the results and consequences - between the narcissism of 'pathological deficiency' - such as desperate insecurity, poverty, and/or an attempt to survive; vs. the narcissism of 'the predatory socio-pathic personality'' - arrogance, egotism, greed, power, control, pleasure, sex, and/or revenge. The second may sometimes be a compensation for the first. And nothing in the land of dialectics - or life in general - is strictly black and white. All different types, extremes, and variations on a theme exist to leave both lay person and philosopher alike to scratch their collective heads and look for new forms and perspectives of understanding. Call this 'multi-dialectic evolution'.

dgb, Sept. 24th, 2007, updated Dec. 15th, 2007.

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The Spirit of The Dialectic in Hegel's Hotel

2007-11-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

The Unifying Spirit and Force of The Dialectic Between Opposing Polarities

The main thesis of 'Hegel's Hotel' which is the name for the evolving philosophical treatise that this essay belongs to (in honor of the great dialectic philosopher Georg William Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, and his classic book, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit') is simply a re-working of the following adage: The sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.

Re-stated in 'dialectic' terminology, the main thesis for 'Hegel's Hotel' may be stated as this: The integration of dialectical polarities from opposing perspectives (or 'binary opposites') into a working 'synthesis' is often if not generally superior in the quality of its knowledge and application than either of the opposing perspectives taken strictly by itself.

If you multiply this principle of integrative dialectics a hundred or even a thousand times over, then you have the expanded principle of 'multi-dialectical integrationism'. Thus 'DGB' -- Dialectical Gap-Bridging' Philosophy -- could also be reasonably called 'MDIP' -- Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Philosophy'. The first name represents the 'process' of 'dialectic conflict mediation' and of the overall 'process-teaching goal' in both Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' and in my post-Hegelian 21st century extrapolation of it -- 'Hegel's Hotel'; the second name represents the open-ended, integrative dialectic 'results' of the previously mentioned 'dialectic conflict mediatiation and process theory' -- as originally taught in 'The Phenenomenology' and as modified and extrapolated on within my post-Hegelian 'Hegel's Hotel'.

My purpose in Hegel's Hotel is to write about 500 essays in most different areas of philosophy -- history, epistemology, ethics, politics, economics and business, science and medicine, psychology, enlightenment reasoning, romanticism, structuralism, deconstructionism, humanistic-existentialism, ontology and teleology, metaphysics, and more -- in ways that illustrate the theory and application of multi-dialectic-integrationism in many similar and different ways.

In this way of looking at things then, all else being equal, and without trying to paint myself into a philosophical corner that I cannot get out of, a good working balance between socialist and capitalist ideas and applications has the potential to be superior in quality to either Socialism or Capitalism taken by itself. The ideas I am working on in this regard I have already seen partly developed in 'sets of principles like 'Fair Trade' Capitalism and/or the name that I will probably use more often which is 'Humanistic-Existential' Capitalism.

The whole -- including the whole of all knowledge and editorial opinions democratically screened and integrated together -- is potentially superior to any 'righteous either/or, polar extremist' perspective.

The integration of polar perspectives into a 'middle balance' perspective helps to minimize if not eliminate the glaring weaknesses of any polar extremist perspective taken strictly by itself. This is not rocket science. It is partly what we do in politics and law every day. Still however, we can do better. Man -- for whatever reason -- still has an attraction, even an obsession or addiction for -- the righteously and/or narcissistically extreme. It is this quality, perhaps above all else, that continually and repetitively leads man back to the brink of destruction and self-destruction.

'Zero tolerance' generally means 'zero compassion', and zero compassion can cause as many problems in society with people trying to live and integrate together as 'too much compassion and not enough accountability' can cause chaos to run amok. Here too, we need a 'good working balance' in social and political life between accountability and compassion -- without either side 'dominating the other' ('hard-line politics' vs. 'soft-line politics'). We often call this working social and political and legal balance 'fairness' and/or 'justice'. Fairness and justice splits the difference between 'too hard' and 'too soft'.

Almost every essay in this manuscript offers a working example of this thesis in process and motion as it guides itself -- or is guided by me -- towards the negotiation of a 'hopefully better synthesis of opposing perspectives than either of the righteous, unilateral, either/or perspectives that we started with or from.

Now obviously, the case can be reasonably made that any negotiation and integration of opposing ideas that I come up with myself can be construed as a new form of 'unilateralism' as I am only negotiating with myself and no one else. As 'objective' and 'impartial' as I may or may not try to be, I am still full of only partial, limited knowledge and additionally, my own 'subjective, narcissistic biases'. At different times, I play all of the roles of: 'prosecutor', 'council for the defense', and 'judge and jury'. Doesn't this in the end make me just another 'control freak' -- as 'I play both sides towards the middle' -- or at least profess to.

This point is at least partly, if not totally, relevant and well-made (although, once again, it is me making it as I negotiate and integrate my own 'internal dialectic'). However, although this for the most part is a philosophical manuscript written by me, it is open -- or capable of becoming open -- to the alternative contributions of other writers own 'dialectic-democratic' perspectives. As much as I have my own particular point of view -- or am developing it as I move along -- I realize that 'I am not the only fish in the pond', even in the tightly and/or loosely controlled confines of my own manuscript which I would like to see become the starting-point for a new, open, multi-dialectic-democratic forum.

As Hegel wrote, and I am paraphrasing: Every new synthesis becomes the potential and actual starting-point for a new cycle of 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'. This is the continuous cycle of the always evolving dialectic -- of which there are millions of potential and actual 'dialectics' both on the 'biological-existential-phenomenological side of life' and on the more 'man-made conceptual-philosophical side of evolving knowledge and culture'. The genetic offspring of a male and female animal is no less 'dialectical' than the role of a 'liberal-conservative' or a 'socialist-capitalist' negotiating and integrating the opposing polarities of the unilateral liberal vs. the unilateral conservative, or conversely, the unilateral capitalist vs. the unilateral socialist.

This is where Darwin and Hegel meet in 'Hegel's Hotel'. I give priority to Hegel for two reasons: 1. Hegel's 'dialectical theory of evolution' is superior and more all-encompassing than Darwin's in my opinion; and 2. Hegel's theory came first. Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit (or Mind) was published in (1807) whereas Darwin's more restrictive 'The Origin of the Species' was published in 1859. Now, if you really want to dig deep, and I at least partly have, a serious case could be made for rejecting both Hegel and Darwin as the ultimate founder of the theory of 'dialectical evolution' in favor of the ancient Greek philosopher -- Anaxamander (610BC-546BC).

Even another case could be made for the creator of the Chinese dialectical concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'. If that was the Han Philosophers (roughly 207 BC- 9 AD), then creative precedence would have to be given to Anaximander and his idea of 'opposing polarities seeking to dominate each other with neither side ever totally succeeding for more than a certain period of time'). If the remnants of the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' can be traced back even deeper into Chinese history such as back to the 'I Ching' (Book of Changes) which might even pre-date Confucius (551 BC-479 BC), then creative precedence for the beginning of 'dialectical philosophy' -- the idea of opposing polarities 'doing battle' with each other and/or 'compromising in the middle' -- might have to go to China (the beginning of Eastern Philosophy) rather than Greece (the beginning of Western Philosophy). At this point in time, I have to plead ignorant to any possible history of the dialectic in Middle Eastern Philosophy/Religion such as Hinduism, and Arabic or Persian Philosophy. I'm sure a case could probably be made here to.

What I find truly remarkable is that both ancient Eastern and Western man -- with or without communication between each other -- had arrived philosophically at approximately the same place some 2000 years plus before Hegel's classic philosophical work: 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807).

It is this driving philosophical force -- the force of the dialectic from ancient times to now -- that is also the driving force of my essay here and the network of essays that it belongs to in my evolving 'post-Hegelian' dialectical treatise; 'Hegel's Hotel'. (See my profile for the most recent table of contents.)

Welcome to Hegel's Hotel.

dgb, Nov. 1st, 2007, updated Feb. 1st, 2008, April 4th, 2008.

A Short Mission Statement of Hegel's Hotel: The DGB Philosophy Forum

2007-09-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Names, Names, Names...

2007-09-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Going Across

2007-09-14T12:27:00.001-07:00

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.

Feedback on 'Going Across' From Paul Baioni (New Orleans)

2007-09-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

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

Wrestling With A Name For My Evolving Philosophy

2007-09-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

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.

On Terminology and The Mission Statement of This Forum

2007-08-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

Every philosophy has its own terminology and its own mission statement -- some more clearly and simply stated than others.

For our purposes here, 'Gap' stands for the gaps in all of our lives, the gaps between idealism and realism, the gaps between Hegel and Nietzsche, the gaps between Freud and Jung, Conservatism and Liberalism, Capitalism and Socialism, religion and atheism, process and structure, being and becoming...'DGB' stands for David Gordon Bain -- which is myself, the main author and editor of this philosophical forum and my various attempts within each of these individual essays to start with a philosophical and/or pragmatic 'gap' -- a problem if you will -- and build a 'bridge' over each and every one of these endless 'gaps'. You can't get rid of 'gaps' or 'problems' or 'obstacles' or 'conflicts' in life -- they are always there, they are the challenges of life. However, there is a big difference between alienation, righteous and/or narcissistic intolerance and isolationism on the one hand vs. contact, empathy, tolerance, and integrationism on the other hand. Many people never seem to be able to cross the 'dialectical and/or existential abyss' from one to the other.

I am trying to teach a process here that bridges this gap -- that combines the work and ideas of my two favorite philosophers -- G.W. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-19000 -- integrated with my own work in the form of (academically speaking) 'post-Hegelian, Multi-Dialectical Idealism' and 'Post-Nietzshean Self and Social Humanistic-Existential Activism'.

If you are a newcomer to philosophy, please don't be intimidated by the academic terminology. I will do my best to simplify and clarify. For our purposes here, 'Multi-Dialectical-Idealism' refers to integrating and balancing opposing polarities, perspectives, ideas, theories, lifestyles, etc. into a harmonious, energy-laden, whole. 'Humanism' refers to such qualities as kindness, compassion, empathy, social sensitivity, altruism...and 'existentialism' refers to such qualities as freedom, self-assertiveness, self and social responsibility, accountability, the courage to be and to become...

'DGB', as well as standing for my name, also stands for 'Dialectical Gap-Bridging' -- because that is what I am doing: bridging gaps between opposing perspectives using the 'creative dialectic' as my means of getting there, my means of negotiating and integrative philosophical, lifestyle, and/or humanistic-existential differences.

Two derivative acronyms of DGB are: 'DGBN' -- 'Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations' and 'DGBA' -- 'Dialectical Gap-Bridging Activities'. Come explore my philosophical forays. In this section, we will look at some of the different introductions I have written over the years to describe just what it is I am trying to do.

It should be noted that in previous days, I have also referred to this forum as 'Hegel's Hotel' emphasis my indebtedness to Hegel and the over-riding or under-riding influence of Hegel's dialectical method and the resulting evolving structure -- Hegel's Hotel' -- that in my opinion has the capability of incorporating all other philosophies into its' 'thesis, counter-thesis, synthesis' process and structure. This process and structure might also be called 'GAP-DGB Multi-Dialectic Negotiation, Integrationism, and Wholism'. Or if you want to bring the secondary but still extremely important influence of Nietzsche on board, then it could also be called' 'GAP-DGB Multi-Dialectical Humanistic-Existentialism'. For me, Nietzsche is all about 'Dionysianism' vs. 'Apollonianism' (which in Freud's terminology later became 'the id' vs. the 'superego'), and also about 'existential abysses', and the courage to build a bridge from 'being' to 'becoming' across the terrifying, self-freezing, anxiety of whatever your/my own personal existential anxiety (abyss) might look and feel like. Rudolph Dreikurs (1897-1972) -- a prominant Adlerian psychologist -- called this type of 'Nietzschean bridge-walking or rope-climbing' -- 'the courage to be imperfect'. As silly as this may seem, man's greatest dread -- short of dying -- is often the fear of failing, being imperfect, and/or looking foolish in front of other people. This is man's existential abyss -- or at least one of them. The other one is the fear of living a meaningless life, of being insignificant, of not living up to one's capabilities -- the dread of 'non-being', of self-alienation, self-isolation, self-denial and betrayal. Man walks the plank between the dread of a meaningless existence and the dread of failing. These are the 'twin existential abysses of man's existence'.

On television these days, there is a program I like to watch called 'Crossing Jordan'. An interesting title. To me, it is a very 'Nietzschean existential' title. We all can use it -- just substitute your own name for Jordan's. 'Crossing David' -- this is very much a good part of what this philosophical forum is about. I offer myself as both a 'guinea pig' and hopefully a role model, a mentor, if I am successful at doing what I want to do. For me, 'Crossing David' means 'bridging the gap' between 'David-the-dispatcher' (what I currently do for a living) and David-the-philosopher-teacher' (what I am doing here as a hobby but what I want to do for a living, leaving my life as a dispatcher behind).

I think that most of you could probably substitute your name for mine and 'what you are now' vs. 'what you want to be, or where you want to get to, in the future'. Courage, action -- and a 'Nietzschean existential bridge' -- is what it will take you to get from one to the other. In contrast, a 'Hegelian dialectical bridge' is what it will take to get you to 'bridge the gap' between your spouse's, or your teenage teenage child's, or your business partner's, or whoever's -- perspective and your own. Thesis, counter-thesis, and synthesis is the dynamic and structure of the 'Hegelian Dialectical Bridge'; in contrast, vision, courage and action is the dynamic and structure of the 'Nietzschean Existential Bridge'. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, the two together provide the main driving force behind 'GAP-DGB Multi-Dialectical, Humanistic-Existentialism', or as named here, 'The GAP-DGB Philosophy Forum'. Please, if I have triggered any motivation, interest, and/or excitement on your part, join me in my philosophical forays.

DGB, August 6th, 2007.

The Philosophy and Psychology of Opposites

2007-07-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

We have all often heard the expression, 'Opposites attract.' Of course, we also know that opposites can repel. Thus, opposites can either attract and/or repel. Stated differently, there is a psychology truism that runs something like this: 'It is often the same characteristic that attracts us to a person -- particularly in a new love partner -- that can spell doom to the relationship sometime further down the line.' There is also a psychological truism that states that often our strongest characteristic is also our weakest. How do we integrate these ideas and where do they take us?

Well, the people who live and work closest to us generally know us best. In similar and/or different ways, this could include our family, our lover, our closest friends, and/or the people we work with every day. They come to assess our strengths -- and our weaknesses. Often, they are one and the same thing. We like something in our new lover -- a characteristic that consciously or subconsciously we may view as reflecting a 'gap' or 'void' within ourselves -- something that may be keeping us from being 'complete' or 'whole'. Spending extended time with our new lover may move us in one or the opposite direction -- or both at the same or different times. Over time, we may start to 'integrate' the characteristic that we so value in our lover -- and in the process, start to become more integrated, more complete, more whole. This is how a relationship can contribute to the evolution of personal growth.

However, people also tend to be inherently stubborn and resistant to change. If we are the way we are, we are generally that way for a reason. Often a strong reason that may go back to childhood upbringing and/or trauma. Strong emotions 'lock in' strong behaviors and prevent them from changing without great time, energy, and/or difficulty. To be sure opposites can and do attract -- especially at the beginning of a relationship -- but give it time, and watch the sparks start to fly -- sparks of aggression, resentment, conflict, war, even hatred, that may start to mix in with the sparks of passion, and then eventually take over the passion completely. Gone is the passion. Gone is the chemistry. And gone is the relationship.

In more successful relationships, couples find a way of 'weathering' through this phase of their relationship -- they listen to each other, empathize with each other, negotiate, compromise, and either integrate their differences and/or come to accept and tolerate them without the type of internal resentment that can drag a relationship to its tombstone.

In the case of too much 'similarity' in a relationship often couples -- especially over signficant time -- can grow to a point where they are almost living clones of each other. This can rob excitement, passion, and chemistry from a relationship just as easily as too much conflict, friction, and internal resentment can. Or perhaps not enough conflict, friction -- and difference -- in a relationship can cause internal resentment -- usually in the form of boredom -- just as easily as the opposite of too much conflict, friction, and difference can. It all seems to be about 'balance' or 'homeostasis' to use the technical, scientific term.

G.W. Hegel (1770-1831), the central philosopher of influence in my work here, once said something that hit home for me -- one of the most profound statements committed to philosophy. I will include the actual quote here when I find it again but in the meantime I will offer you my extended, paraphrased version of it:

Every idea, every theory, every paradigm, every 'school' of philosophy, psychology, politics...every characteristic -- carries with it the seeds of its own self-destruction.

Wow! What does this mean? What does this mean for all of us who tend to wittingly or unwittingly move towards righteous one-sidedness, extremism, indignation, intolerance
-- and hate? It means that there is usually another point of view out there, another opposing perspective, that may have just as much righteous validity as the one that we are so righteously -- and one-sidedly -- defending.

So what does all this mean relative to the philosophical work that I am starting here and why did I call it 'Hegel's Hotel'?

For the laypersons amongst you, I would love to teach you philosophy -- at least what I have learned about philosophy so far, including the history of philosophy, the different sub-topics of philosophy, the strengths and weaknesses of different 'schools' or perspectives of philosophy...and more than anything the negotiation and integration of different schools and perspectives of philosophy into a larger, more balanced, whole. Call this 'DGB' Philosophy if you will (it used to be called 'Gap' Philosophy which you will see in some of my older papers). 'DGB' reflects both the initials of my name -- David Gordon Bain -- and the initials of my mission -- Dialectical Gap Bridging (Negotiations and Integrations).

Technically or academically speaking, I view DGB Philosophy as a '21st century, existentialized, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-a-lot-of-other-philosophers-and-psychologists...school of philosophy'.

For the more technically, academically minded philosophy students, professionals, professors, specialists...amongst you, I hope to challenge you in different parts of my work as well -- perhaps taking philosophy in new directions and/or 'bridging gaps in old perspectives, old viewpoints, old schools of philosophical thought'.

For those of you academically minded philosophy specialists out there who might call yourself 'deconstructists' and/or 'post-modernists' who shudder with disdain and/or salivate with excitement at the prospect of critiqing my alleged new 'school' of integrative philosophy, I rise to the challenge. It is my contention that we need both 'builders' and 'deconstructionists' in philosophy just as much as we need builders and deconstructionists in every other part of life and culture: architecture, politics, psychology, economics, science and medicine, art, religion...Life is about building and then deconstructing when strong criticisms and/or better ideas come along...and then building again....as well as 'integrating' or 'synthesizing' differences in philosophy and/or anything else... There is a time for 'either/or' philosophy (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche...) and there is a time for 'integrative' philosophy (the Han Synthesis, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel...). There is a time for deconstructionist philosophy (Socrates, Nietzshe, Derrida...and there is a time for idealist philosophy (Plato, Hegel...) There is a time and a place and a degree for capitalist narcissism just as there is a time and a place and a degree for altruistic socialism. Every philosophy self-destructs when taken too far -- beyond. its range of 'health' and into its range of 'pathology'. And in this regard, every philsophy needs its opposite philosophy -- its 'alter-ego' -- to keep it in line and bring it back into the integrative, balanced range of 'health' again...Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis...Hegel revisited, existentialized, modernized, revitalized... in the sense of being allowed to 'dialectically interact with, and meet the challenge of all of Hegel's many detractors with their many different brands of criticisms. He was 'too abstract, too idealistic, had his head in the clouds, wasn't materialistic enough, didn't see the effect of the money, didn't see the effect of human narcissism, nastiness, and power...' All of those criticisms can be met and minimized if you simply look at Hegel's classic, idealistic, dialectical philosophy as being just another -- albeit extremely important -- step in the evolution of both Western and Eastern philosphy, in human culture in general, in fact, in life in general.

Stay tuned as we connect classic Hegelian dialectical philosophy -- as well as its modernized DGB post-Hegelian version -- with both ancient Western and Eastern dialectical philosophy (Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Fu Xi, Laozi, Confucious, the Han Philosophers, Taoism, I Ching, Yin/Yan...) as well as contemporary philosophy with all of its potential implications and applications...

I believe in the astrological characteristics of my sign. I am a pisces...creative, fantasy-dwelling, a thinker, have many perculating ideas, never at a loss for ideas, often not sufficiently complemented by action, living in the world of my creative mind and often losing track of the simplest -- and sometimes just as, or more, important -- day to day realities of life. I am like two fishes swimming towards each other, then away from each other, towards commitment, away from commitment, essentially bi-polar, or even multi-bi-polar and needing all of these 'multi-bi-polarities' to come together in a more harmonious, wholisitic integration...

One of my main strengths -- 'thinking' -- is often my main weakness -- 'thinking too much' (and not acting on my thoughts enough). Alternatively, and paradoxically, I have no problem being spontaneous and living day by day as I feel. The problem here again is this trait taken too far in the absence of its opposite: not being goal-directed enough, and/or having sufficient self-discipline, regimentation, and persistence enough to carry a goal through to its completion. I can also be too narcissitic in my thoughts and actions, often avoiding people in order to 'do my own thing', often stuck inside myself, almost hermit-like, at the cost of letting important friendships and other relationships 'slip away from neglect'...To a large extent we live in a 'me first' narcissistic world -- speaking as a baby boomer, perhaps the main 'overcompensation' of the baby boommers as a whole, as they invested much time and energy into rebelling against the more conservative, 'anal-retentive' values and morals of their parents, their righteous authority, by extension the righteous authority of anyone, and often tied into this, the righteous values and morals of the religous institutions that used to play a major role in generations before us. Nietzsche wrote: 'God is dead!' as he did much to 'deconstruct' and kill Christianity -- in both its good and bad elements. Well, today we might write the opposite: 'Altruism is dead!' -- it died in Western culture with that part of Christianity that shouldn't have been killed, and 'obsessive, unadulterated, often pathological narcissism' has for better or worse grown up and flourished in its absence. Today we are looking at the fallout of too much narcissism in the world and not enough altruism. In philosophy, in psychology, in politics, in business and economics, in law, in science and medicine, in family life (or its absence), we need to 'deconstruct the pathological extremes of individual and cultural narcissism'.

It is within this combination of 'obsessions' and 'gaps' or 'voids' that Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy and Forum takes off as a projection of both my internal and external strengths and my weaknesses, and the wish for a more 'wholistic integration in the form of evolving personal and cultural growth'.

If you are with me still, understand where I am coming from, and get the gist of where I am going in my philosophical work, then 'Welcome to Hegel's Hotel'.

db, July 8th, 2007.

The World's Oldest Philosophies

2007-07-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

The issue of 'oldest philosophies' comes down to three epistemological questions and how broadly or specifically we want to define 'philosophy'.

1. What do we credibly and reliably know?
2. What are we unreliably speculating about or guessing at?
3. What do we not know?

Thales (624-546BC) is generally considered to be the 'oldest' Western (Greek) philosopher. Anaxamander (611BC-547BC), generally considered the second oldest Western (Greek) philosopher is a much more important figure to the evolution of both Western and Eastern philosophy than Thales for a reason I shall cite at the end of this essay.

Confucius (551-479BC) is one of the oldest and recognizable -- credibly reliable -- of Chinese philosophers. To be sure, there were 'hazy' philosophical figures before or contemporary with Confucious -- Laozi or Lao tzu (perhaps the earliest creator of Taoism) being one of these hazy figures who could have lived anywhere between the 6th and 4th century BC. Way before these, there is the hugely mythical figure of Fu Xi (alleged author of the I Ching) who may have lived as far back as 2852-2738BC!! Or not. All is very hazy here. And did he write I Ching? Maybe or maybe not. What is the difference between 'Tao Te Ching' credited to Laozi vs. 'I Ching' credited to either Fu Xi, Confucius, the Han philosophers (207BC-9AD) and/or any of a host of other early Chinese philosophers. All is very hazy but this important point remains the same: The principles seem almost identical.

What is even more remarkable is that the main core of ideas coming out of both the West and the East -- with or without Eastern to Western or Western to Eastern or mutual influence -- were very, very similar.

(Forgive me if I am presently ignorant on the evolution of Middle Eastern philosophy.)

The key principle uniting all these hugely significant Eastern and Western philosophers together (except Thales) is the principle of the inter-relationship and/or the necessity of a balanced, dynamic, wholistic, unity of polar opposite qualities. This basic principle -- which might be viewed as 'the ancient roots of Hegelian Dialectical Philosophy (thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis)' -- in Taoist terms is 'the way of nature'. It governs both the Eastern and Western principle of 'homeostasis' (the scientific term for 'balance') -- the centrepiece concept of the over 20 network of blogs and 200 essays to follow. The principle of homeostasis is used in science and medicine (east and west), psychology, can be used in philosophy, politics, economics, religion, and every other aspect of human culture. This network of blogs -- Hegel's Hotel: The DGB Philsophy-Psychology-Politics...Forum is designed to connect the ancient wisdom of philosophers east and west with the modernized (existentialized) dialectical thinking of one of the greatest philosophers in Western history, G.W.Hegel (1770-1831), and also the health and pathology of contemporary North America society -- particularly Canadian.

db, July 6th, 2007

Life Is About Priorities and Choices

2007-05-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

Some days -- many days -- I can feel the lethargy and entropy dominating my body and stopping me from going to my computer. Health is obviously critical. It can be the difference between wanting to do something productive and idealistic -- vs. not. My dad has always said that idealism generally requires the full-blooded energy of youth. Obviously I cannot speak for everyone -- maybe I am mainly speaking about myself -- but by the time you hit 50, hopefully you are reasonably financially secure, or at least stable, idealism may have lost some or a lot of its edge, disappearing in life trauma, negative experiences, skepticism, cynicism, and/or just fitting into a comfortable groove, doing your thing, and hanging on. Energy for 'idealistic projects' comes and goes. As the cliche goes, wouldn't it be nice to combine the energy of youth with the wisdom of later life.

In my 20s, I hated and avoided politics. Looking back at that time now, I would say that I was an 'Epicurean' -- in that I avoided politics while otherwise pursuing what I thought would give me a happy life. Mistakes were made to be sure. First, you go too far this way; then too far that way -- struggling towards that 'ideal' balance in the middle. Indeed, I would say that I am still an Epicurean today, except that at different times I try to face up to politics and get my idealistic two cents in.

What is Epicurean philosophy? I like using Wikipedia as my first introduction to a philosopher and/or philosophy so let us see what Wikipedia has to say about Epicurus and Epicureanism. (I became more interested in it the other day when I was reading through some Thomas Jefferson quotes and found that he threw his full validation and support behind it.) That made it worth reading up again for me.

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Epicurus (Greek Ἐπίκουρος) (341 BC, Samos – 270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of thought in Hellenistic Philosophy. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of existence and not to be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

This sounds at least partly like a very secular, humanistic philosophy to me. Unfortunately, over the years its has often been confused with, and/or distorted into extremist 'hedonism' which it is not. Epicureanism is not a philosophy that believes in the 'wallowing in pleasure' but rather is a philosophy that believes in pursuing the achievement of 'equilibrium' (or 'balance'). (reference: Richard Osborne, Philosophy for Beginners, 1992, Writers and Readers Publishing, Incorporated, New York, New York). Now achieving equilibrium or balance can be like walking a (Nietzschean) tightrope wire -- the minute you think you are in control of things you may be one minute or one second away from toppling over the edge of the 'abyss' (or 'gap'). Balance does not come easy and at best it is generally a very tenuous and fleeting state of being. Invariably, there will be some 'punch' thrown at us by life that will throw us into imbalance again -- as we precariously fight for balance on life's highwire act. But that is life -- and not to bravely step back on the tightrope wire again is not to live with passion and intensity. (We have here a little mixture of Epicureanism with Nietzscheism.)

So life is also partly -- or mainly -- about choices and priorities. 'To be or not to be.' (Now we introduce a little Shakespeare through Hamlet.)
Where am I today and where are my priorities? How important a project is finishing this philosophical work? Some days the energy is here; some days it's not. Everything is relative. I'm sure my dad would love to be 52 years old again. I look through the history of philosophy and see that Kierkegaard was dead before my age (42), and Nietzsche had gone insane, for the last 11 years of his life (that would be around 45 years old), dying at 56. These are two magnificent philosophers in the history of Western philosophy and evolution with all of their brilliant works behind them before the age of 50.

Life is about choice and priorities. Where is the drive, the motivation, the discipline (or non-discipline)? As Alfred Adler would say, where is the 'direction of movement'?

Some of the great philosophers philosophized in wealth and luxury, or comfortably through an inheritence, a university teaching position, and/or through wealthy benefactors. Hegel and Schopenhauer come to mind. I'm sure with a minimum of easy checking -- if you are a researcher you have to love the instant convenience and previously undreamed of wealth of information on the internet! -- I could list you off many more 'wealthy' philosophers, men who had lots of free time on their hands. Conversely, you had Karl Marx who wrote thousands of pages of astounding philosophy from a state of poverty. Where there is a will, there is a way!

I don't know of many philosophers who were happily married men! A few perhaps. Most seemed to be either 'anal retentive hermits' (Kant and Kierkegaard come to mind) or 'had multiple lovers' (Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Carl Jung...) which is not to say that you can't be an anal retentive hermit and still be happy and healthy, or have multiple lovers and still be happy. But generally, I think, many philosophers were philosophizing from 'pain' -- they were perhaps attempting to compensate for a life of pain, torment, and/or internal 'demons'. (Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche come most prominantly to mind -- largely unsuccessful in love, promiscuous in the cases of Schopenhauer and perhaps Nietzsche, weighed down by heavy 'religious and/or internal father issues' in many cases, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche coming to mind here again, with Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's dads both dying at an early age, Schopenhauer's from suicide.) These men were all carrying heavy issues and heavy pain inside their heads -- that they needed to 'self-therapeutically compensate' for. These are generalizations to be sure, and for every generalization there is always an exception -- Kant was perhaps the most anal-retentive of all philosophers, so predictable in the time of his walks, that people could know what time it was -- and yet Kant did not really seem 'demonized' by his seemingly totally 'Apollonian' existence, indeed, he seemed very ethical, organized, caring, deeply religious...you just have to wonder how much fun he had in his life...Did he every have sex with a woman? Did he every fall in love with a woman? Or was that blasphemy -- and/or out of reach -- in his life?

So here I sit, perhaps partly at a crossroads in my life at 52. For the most part, I have eked* out a reasonably comfortable middle class existence for myself although even a reasonably good income seems barely enough these days. (Again the internet is amazing. I looked up the word 'eked' to make sure it was a proper word and that I was using it correctly. Again, the internet did not fail me.

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*eke 1(k)
tr.v. eked, ek·ing, ekes
1. To supplement with great effort. Used with out: eked out an income by working two jobs.
2. To get with great effort or strain. Used with out: eke a bare existence from farming in an arid area.

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I have a pretty amazing girlfriend who I have been going out with for about 8 or 9 years now, although to be sure, we have had our moments of intense conflict, differences of opinion on issues of priority and choice of lifestyle...

My father and I have for the most part made our peace although, to be sure, there may still be things we disagree on. In some ways he reminds me of Kant -- some of his 'anal retentiveness' and orthodox ways -- but my dad at 78 has the most amazing woman to spend his time with each and every day and night, i.e, my mother, which unless I am sadly and totally wrong, Kant could never say...You look up 'Kant' on the internet and it is hard to find more than a few words on his personal life, presumably because, aside from the conversations he had with his friends, he essentially had no personal life, it was all about his scholarship...there were no soap operas, no huge drama, in this man's life...

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The critical turn

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher. Much was expected of him. In response to a letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He also credited David Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa 1770). Kant would not publish another work in philosophy for the next eleven years.

Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to the problems posed. Though fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, despite friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. In 1778, in response to one of these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote "Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance." [3]

When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a dry, scholastic style. It received few reviews, and these failed to recognize the Critique's revolutionary nature. Its density made it, as Johann Gottfried Herder put it in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "...all this heavy gossamer."[4] This is in stark contrast, however, with the praise Kant received for earlier works such as the aforementioned "Prize Essay" and other shorter works that precede the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon which was so popular that it was sold by the page.[5]

My most appreciative thanks to Wikipedia for this and many other internet outtakes and references...

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I will probably never read The Critique of Pure Reason although I have several times held it in my hand at Chapters, and one day I may buyd it for my personal library so that I at least have access to it. That being said, I find it tough enough to read through an 'Introduction to Kant', and all else being equal, I would sooner read Nietzsche or just about any other philosopher I come upon. I recognize Kant's greatness, admire his extreme dedication and self-discipline, would like much more of it oftentimes for myself, but in the end, I would sooner be working on my fantasy basketball or baseball team, or spending time with my girlfriend, or just doing what spontaneously seems most appealing to me than spending any significant length of time reading Kant...or for that matter doing anything out of 'self-discipline and obligation' rather than heart felt interest. Obviously, that may have something to do with where I am today and where I am not. A huge amount of self-discipline and sacrifice is probably a very good reason why Kant has his very esteemed place in philosophical history, and unless I come on with a strong late flourish and rush of brilliance -- not to mention again the dreaded word 'self-discipline' -- will retain my rank as an 'amateur philosopher'. But then again, I think I like my own lifestyle better than I like Kant's. The point here is: life is all about choices and priorities -- and degree of focus and self-discipline relative to seriously going after and achieving one's most important life desires and goals. And somehow I think this essay which came partly out of nowhere after about a month or two of non-writing, was and is about psyching myself up, i.e., motivating myself, towards writing a series of essays on epistemology which takes us at least partly into Kant's territory or what I will call 'Kant's Room'. Meet me there if you are interested in reading, writing, and debating, on the subject of epistemology. I will try my best to make a usually 'dry' subject area as interesting and entertaining as possible.

db, originally written April 7, 2007, modified and updated May 24th, 2007.

http://hegelshotel-dgbn-epistemology.blogspot.com/

On The Issue of Conceptual Property, Conceptual Narcissism, Conceptual Respect, and Conceptual Integrating

2007-05-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

I offer an updated version of this 2007 essay. I am looking at this essay now in January, 2011, almost 4 years later, and wish to go back and make some editiorial adjustments and clarifications...dgb, Jan. 29th, 2011.

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Good day! My name is David Bain. I am 52 years old (55 years old now -- ouch!). I have an Honours B.A. in Psychology with an academic and experiential background in both Gestalt Therapy and Adlerian Psychology, as well as being self-taught in Psychoanalysis and the history of Western Philosophy and Clinical Psychology. (added, Jan. 2011).

I am in the process of writing a network of 26 blogsites (that has extended to 50 blogsites now, added Jan. 2011) with a varying number of essays in each blogsite.

My goals are at least twofold:

1. To teach the history and evolution of Western Dialectic Philosophy-Psychology with my own editorial comments along the way.

2. To integrate ALL major schools of philosophy and psychology in such a way that they all have a role to play, and a 'room' and/or 'floor' to call their own -- in 'Hegel's Hotel'. (added Jan. 2011.)

The work as a whole is called: 'Hegel's Hotel: Where Philosophers and Psychologists Meet' (added Jan. 2011) and each blogsite is referred to as a 'floor' in Hegel's Hotel.

Within the confines of these 26 (50, Jan. 2011) different blogsites or floors of Hegel's Hotel, I will be writing on a wide assortment of different topics pertaining to philosophy, psychology, politics, religion, and more...

Obviously, I don't have enough time in my life to go hugely in depth into each and everyone of these areas. However, within each realm, I will bring my unique, post-Hegelian, integrative approach to what I want to say -- and, in the process, connect each essay, each blogsite, to my overall thesis which is that 'integrative dialectical evolution' is a process that can be taught and applied to all areas of human culture, living, and activity in a way that is often if not usually superior to an 'adversarial form of righteous-either/or philosophy and lifestyle'.

'Either/or' and 'right and wrong' belong to 'Aristolean Logic' which is what we are indoctrinated with in our schools, parliamentary debates, courts, newspapers, and places of business. (added Jan. 2011).

A is A, and B is B, and never the two should meet. They are mutually exclusive -- separated by their mutually exclusive, distinctive properties. (added Jan. 2011).

In contrast, 'Hegelian Dialectic Logic' tends to be more dialectically engaging, dynamic, process oriented, looking at how A and B interact with each other, and how A influences B while, at the same time, B influences A. They both mutually influence each other and affect each other's history and evolution. This is the logic that G.W. Hegel laid down in his revolutionary philosophical treatise, 'The Phenomemonology of Spirit', 1807, at least partly as a replacement for Aristotlean Logic (although Aristotlean Logic still has its place in certain contexts where there is no evidence of mutual dialectic influence and/or accountability). (added Jan. 2011)

I am looking to reach both introductory and advanced academic and/or professional audiences that are interested in the study of philosophy and/or psychology. (added Jan. 2011)

There is a sense in which I could very easily be called a 'Gestalt philosopher' in that what I am trying to do is to introduce a type of 'dialectic hot seat' to most of the essays I write here -- with an 'integration' or 'synthesis' between 2 or more competing perspectives, theories, concepts, paradigms, etc.

For a period of 12 years -- from 1979 to 1991 with 'gaps of non-involvement', I was, at different times during this overall period, very intensely and intimately tied up to what I was learning at the Gestalt Institute in Toronto.

I had good contacts with a lot of friends I met there, and had/have a lot of respect for the teachings of Gestalt therapists Jorge Rosner (deceased), Joanne Greenham (the present leader of The Gestalt Institute of Toronto), and other leaders and workshop participants.

Now here I am writing a 'philosophical treatise and forum'
that both draws upon the essence of Gestalt Theory, Therapy, and Philosophy as well as extending Gestalt Therapy's conceptual, theoretical, and therapeutic boundaries both back into history as well as into a 'more conceptually integrative future'. (added Jan, 2011)

This is my broader philosophical and psychological project which I am not sure that The Gestalt Institute shares with me. In a sense, there is a paradox or dichotomy between the 'structure of Gestalt Therapy' that maintains and holds onto dearly certain philosophical and theoretical boundaries, vs. the 'dialectic, dynamic process' of Gestalt Therapy that aims to 'break through many existing Aristotlean either/or boundaries' in order to reach a more 'harmonious, unified, homeostatically balanced integrative existential state'. In this sense, there is an inherent contradiction between the 'structure' and the 'process' of Gestalt Therapy. Because the dialectic dynamics of Gestalt Therapy -- if applied to Gestalt Therapy itself -- would inevitably 'change' the theoretical, therapeutic, and/or philosophical boundaries of Gestalt Therapy. And that, to my knowledge, hasn't happened in all the years that I was there -- and since I left in 1991. (added Jan. 2011)

So, yes there is indeed a heavy Gestalt influence in most of the essays that I have written in Hegel's Hotel.

However, there are many other influences as well: Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Adler, Korzybski, Hawakawa, Erich Fromm, Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand, Schopenhauer, Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Jefferson, Diderot, Montasquieu, Kant, Fichte, Locke, Spinoza, the Han Philosophers, Heraclitus, Anaxamander...

So this is not all about Gestalt Therapy being applied to the broader domain of Hegel's Hotel philosophy-psychology.

And yet in a partial sense -- a good size partial sense -- it is. It is not entirely by accident that many of my philosophical influences are the same ones who influenced Perls and the evolution of Gestalt Therapy -- for example, Freud, Jung, Korzybski, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heraclitus...

It was through studying Gestalt Therapy that I first became seriously connected to Hegel's philosophical work -- and it was this connection, this bridge if you will, that led me backwards from the study of psychology into the study of philosophy. I largely left behind my study of psychology in 1991, and have been studying philosophy -- through books and the internet -- from 1991 to 2007, still continuing. (That is not exactly true in that I did become involved in the Freud-Masson Seduction Theory Controversy, and lately, (2010-11), I have started to write a whole host of new psychology essays that are designed to lay out the boundaries of what I am currently calling, 'Gap-DGB Quantum-Integrative Psychoanalysis'.

There is a sense in which almost everything I have developed in this network of blogsites, in each essay, I learned either from watching or experiencing the 'hotseat' in Gestalt Therapy.

But the hotseat was a therapeutic invention by Perls that combined the Hegelian dialectic (thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis) with Nietzschean existential urgency and Kierkgaardian immediacy.

The purpose of the hotseat and empty chair technique -- one chair with the therapeutic client sitting in it, the other seat facing him or her, empty -- was to help a person 'to gain better contact with a person who wasn't present, or to gain better contact with a part of the client's own personality (i.e., usually between a more dominant side of the personality -- what Jung called the 'personna') -- and an opposing, more suppressed and neglected side (what Jung called 'The Shadow'. (added Jan, 2011).

Through this process, a person, 'dialectically alienated' from a particular part of his or herself, could work hard in the hotseat with openess, honesty, and immediacy to become more 'dialectically integrated' through the therapeutic synthesis of opposing parts in his or her personality. This is the therapeutic purpose of The Gestalt Hotseat.

Hegel's Hotel (Gap-DGB) philosophy-psychology may not generally include the raw immediacy of hot seat work but it does contain the process of 'dialectical opposition', 'dialectical contact', 'dialectical negotiation', and 'dialectical integration'.

In Gap-DGB philosophy-psychology, I may at this point be stepping away from the most dramatic existential dynamics of the human psche in its rawest immediacy, as seen through hot seat and empty chair work.

However, I am expanding this process to each and every part of human culture and activity -- and then we will come back and connect what we have learned from this philosophical adventure into such areas as narcissism, epistemology, ethics, business and economics, politics, law, science and medicine, spirituality and religion -- to psychology again.

What goes around comes around. What is projected (viewed as if it is a 'movie' out there) into any and/or every aspect of our social lives, comes from within our own personality, our own psyche, as an 'internal movies' before it becomes an 'external movie'.

The world -- and particularly man's culture both collectively and privately -- is very much a reflection of a man's character, and in both a good and a bad sense, at the same time, his or her personal narcissism.

Personal and collective narcissism very much dominates the human psyche. Which is not to say that there isn't an important place and a need for the balance and equillibrium of the opposite of human narcissism which includes such things as: altruism, generosity, caring, love, social sensitivity, empathy, helping one's friends and neighbours, caring about the state of the environment, and the like.

There is an important place for a good balance of both narcissism and altruism in man's psyche, in the projections of his or her psyche into culture, and in the structure and process of any human philosophy, psychology, politics, and the rest.

I watch politicians fight with each other in parliament, treat each other disrespectfully, as each and everyone of them chases after a narcissistic, either/or, right or wrong, ideology -- as if theirs was the only 'right' ideology on the face of the earth.

Sometimes the 'game' they seem to be playing, the 'show' they seem to be putting on, reminds me of something I might see on television wrestling. But if it is not all 'game' and 'show' and politicians actually believe that they are being 'righteously real', then someone needs to show these politicians how to better work with each other, not against each other.

The dialectic can be used righteously, manipulatively and maliciously -- 'narcissisticly' is the word I will generally use (see my essays on narcissism) -- or it can be used judiciously and integratively, utilizing a combination of reason, compassion, common sense, empathy, humanism, ethics, a balance of personal assertiveness (and in this regard narcissism in a good sense to the extent that it is kept in line by giving room for the rights and wishes of others) with social altruism.

The same goes for corporations vs. unions or non-union employees, natural health medicine vs. standard, orthodox Western medicine, sports owners vs. athletes taking into account the fans, indeed, any type of human conflict where people have a choice between acting reasonably with each other vs. going off ballistically with each other because they can't see past their own personal narcissism.

As for the issue of my 'classification' as a philosopher, and whether I can or should be called a 'Gestalt philosopher' -- someone who has learned from Gestalt Therapy and extrapolated on these lessons into the realm of philosophy, politics, medicine, religion, art, and the like -- well that is a dialect in its own right between me and members of The Gestalt Institute who I haven't really talked to since 1991. The prodigal son may one day return back to some of his main roots and foundations. Or not.

In the meantime, a lot of this 'labelling' and 'conceptualization' and 'classification' and 'boundary' business depends on where you want to draw the line, and based on what reason. Property, money, narcissism, a personal belief in right and wrong -- or perhaps alternatively, an integrative, always expanding, vision of the enlightenment and evolution of mankind.

Gestalt Therapy has its own ideational space and boundaries which can be differentiated from Psychoanalysis or Jungian Psychology or Adlerian Therapy or Rational-Emotive Therapy or Behaviorism or any of a hundred different schools of psychology and psychotherapy.

Again, I make the distinction between 'either/or' evolution vs. 'integrative evolution'. When a man and woman create a baby, there is a mixture of 'either/or' evolution and 'integrative evolution' going on here.

The child may have the ears of the father, the nose of the mother. The child may look exactly like the mother or the father. This is 'either/or' evolution. Perhaps the father's genes dominate, or the mother's genes dominate and the child almost looks like a clone of the parent with the dominant genes.

Or the child can be seen to have a mixture of both parents genes and here we can see the process of 'integrative evolution'. The concept of 'biological diversity' is very much tied up to what I am calling here integrative evolution.

Now let us leave the world of biology and enter the world of philosophy, psychology, conceptuology, and/or ideology. The same two evolutionary processes exist with sometimes either/or evolution dominating, other times integrative evolution dominating.

Indeed, the whole ideational evolution process becomes more complicated -- and unfortunately often stagnated into non-evolution -- when you introduce such factors as: capitalism, money, property, corporations, patencies, people's livlihoods, etc...

With the additions of such factors, people not only get narcissistic about their money and their property and their choices of what they want to do -- they also get narcissistic about their ideas. Somewhere back in the 1980s or 90s, I called this phenomenon 'conceptual narcissism'.

Now here is the point: often conceptual evolution and conceptual narcissism collide and conflict with each other, do battle with each other, and become a dialectic in its own particular right, either good or bad, or both. Metaphorically speaking, one might ask the question: 'Which ideational gene is going to dominate? -- the 'narcissitic-either/or gene' or the 'integrative-evolution' gene?

Example. In the 1970s Jeffrey Masson was a fast-rising psychoanalyst and writer. He worked his way up the steep ranks of the many different Psychoanalytic Institutes in both North America and Europe. He got right up to the top -- to Anna Freud -- and was given free access to the Freud Archives. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Masson got into the Freud Archives and he didn't like what he was reading. The issue was Freud's abandonment of his 'traumacy and seduction theory' around 1896-1897. In its place, Freud developed his (in)famous inter-related theories of distorted childhood memories, childhood sexuality and the Oedipal Complex.

Masson basically came to the conclusion that these latter three theories were garbage -- and that worse than that -- they tended to perpetuate female childhood sexual assault and traumacy by 'non-legitimizing' them. That is, according to post-1900 Classical Psychoanalytic and Oedipal Theory, a woman's 'memory' of a childhood sexual assault and/or seduction would be taught to psychoanalysts to be generally and stereotpically 're-interpreted' as a 'childhood fantasy', not a real memory, due to the young girl's and/or later teenage girl's standard romantic and sexual infatuation with her father. Thus, very few female childhood sexual assaults were being interpreted as such. In Masson's words, they were basically being 'clinically suppressed'. No more childhood sexual assaults in Psychoanalysis because most, if not all, of them were being re-interpreted by psychoanalysts everywhere as 'distorted memories based on underlying female childhood sexuality fantasies'.

Masson broke this scandal open, first in the New York Times in the late 1970s, then in his hugely controversial book, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory'. (1984, 1985, 1992 by Jeffrey Masson)

Not unexpectedly, Masson's book didn't go over very well at all with the many different Psychoanalytic Institutes. He was evicted from some and resigned from others. And now he is living in New Zealand and writing books about emotions in animals. No real resolution to the controversy. Psychoanalysts defended themselves saying that they had the freedom to interpret 'childhood assaults' if they believed one happened. Aside from that, the conflict seems to have bascially gone underground again -- I cannot say for sure because I have not followed the various evolutions and/or non-evolutions of various Psychoanalytic schools of thought. I think many of them have discarded classical Oedipal theory and moved on to different schools of Object Relations and Self Theory. Some -- I do not know what percentage -- have remained loyal to Freud's original Classical/Oedipal theory. If you are a woman who knows that you were sexually assaulted as a child or young teenager, then I would probalby be thinking twice about engaging in Classical Psychoanalysis. There is definitely, in my mind, some element of truth in Masson's book -- if not a lot of truth. The many Psychoanalytic Institutes should not have pushed Masson's book and thoughts aside so quickly and rudely. As embarrasing as it might have been, they should have probably ideally used it as a starting point for the beginning of their own 'private organizational Psychonalysis'. Maybe this has already partly happened. Or maybe Classical Psychoanalysis is going the way of the dinosaur as newer and more flexible brands of Object Relations and Self Theories of Psychoanalysis slowly phase it out. Once again I believe in the value of the dialectic and in smart theorists and therapists using the dialectic to full functional advantage. From my perspective -- and I am far from the first person to say this -- it seems that Classical Psychoanalysis if it wants to stay alive and to have any kind of credibility and trust with the general public, especially women, needs to 'feminize' itself and to discard all ideas and practices that discriminate against women in order to bring it into the 21st century. Classical Psychoanalysis cannot be teaching its student psychoanalysts that memories are to be viewed as 'distortions' and as 'symbolic fantasies', particularly relevent to women who come into clinical therapy with memories of childhood sexual assaults. Therapy cannot be dictated by theoretical biases because life can never be comparmentalized, and life will never always follow one set of theoretical biases. But all else being equal, a therapist has got to at least tentatively accept a client's memories as being real until there is strong and overuling evidence to suggest otherwise. A therapist may never know the 'objective truth' -- to be sure a client's thoughts, feelings, and memories are filled with their own subjective biases -- which is why it may be very dangerous on a client's memories alone to all of a sudden start accusing a particular parent, sibling, relative, or family friend, and dragging him into a court of law. There has got to be strong supporting evidence and for the most part I believe that that is outside the therapist's realm of responsibility. The therapist's responsibility is to help the client work through his or her personal issues and get better. Therapeutic epistemology is not necessarily legal truth. Indeed, the distortion of the client's private epistemology may be one of the main reasons why the client is in therapy (although, to be sure, the client is not likely to agree). This does not mean that you automatically assume that the client is wrong or that you automatically substitute a 'pre-canned theory' into the place of the client's verbalizations. I don't mean to come across as a seasoned therapist here but to me it means that you 'go with the flow', at least until you realize that your client's flow is going to take you over Niagara Falls. I think Freud might have had this experience once or twice, if not more often. There was a reason Freud mainly abandoned his traumacy-seduction theory and I think that his later perception of the 'truth-value' of some or all of his clients confessions probably had a lot to do with it. I do not necessarily buy into any or all of Masson's proposed 'cover-up' and 'Freud's lack of integrity' theories. However, you can never count out the influence of human narcissism -- not with Freud or anybody. Freud's scientific and medical stability and his ability to make an income for his family might have both been seriously negatively affected by his bringing the problem of 'childhood incest' into the open. If I see my boss fire a driver, two drivers, ten drivers, and I don't like the reasons that he is firing them, I have a choice -- and so do the other employees I work with who are seeing the same thing. I can tell him that I don't like what he did, or I can listen to him rant, nod my head, and keep my mouth shut. In other words, my dominant reaction was not to 'rock the boat' in order to not put my own job into jeopardy. Has my integrity been compromised? Probably. However, without trying to justify or rationalize this, I imagine that there are probably thousands of people who go to work each day, see what they don't like, see what they believe is ethically wrong -- and do or say nothing. The 'silent majority'. This is how 'corporate narcissism' grows, corrupts, and poisons people's outlook in the work field. To be sure, it is very possible that Freud was not immune to 'folding his cards' under this type of professional and economic pressure. After Freud folded his traumacy-seduction cards -- if that is what he did, or alternatively believed that he was scientifically and clinically right in doing so -- then it would, to my limited knowledge, be more than 60 years before the issue of 'childhood incest' would rise again to public awareness as feminism began to rise in the 1960s. From a woman's standpoint, it is too bad that Freud did not stick to his pre-1897 observations, generalizations, and conclusions. But sometimes human evolution takes a step -- or more -- backwards.

Another example. What would happen if a psychoanalyst ever decided to abandon his or her use of the 'therapeutic couch' and borrow instead the 'hotseat' from Gestalt Therapy? Would this psychoanalyst still be called a psychoanalyst? Probably not by his psychoanalytic peers and superiors. Would he or she more appropriately be called a 'Gestalt Psychoanalyst'? Perls went this direction -- trained originally I believe in Kleinian Psychoanalysis or Object Relations (I will have to check this.) -- until he decided at some point to 'dump' the couch and develop the hotseat. Soon he was called just a Gestalt Therapist.

Integrative evolutions have happed often enough in the psychotherapy business, as much as they are often discouraged, even blacklisted and scandalized. Some theorists and therapists have integrated Adlerian Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Some theorists and therapists have integrated various forms of Cognitive Therapy with Gestalt Therapy. Perls partly did this himself. He liked Korysbski and General Semantics.

Back in the 1980s, I was integrating Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis -- which is how I got 'GAP Psychology. Cognitive Therapy, humanistic-existentialism, and Jungian psychology also eventually had an impact on my thinking.

Conceptualizations, classifications, and labels can be stretched or re-tightened according to our wishes and agenda. It could be argued that Freud was a Gestalt Therapist before he was a Psychoanalyst -- much of Freud's early work in the 1990s on traumacy theory could easily be viewed as the real foundation of Gestalt Therapy (before Freud decided to go a different theoretical direction).

Anaxamander and Heraclitus can be viewed as the first two 'dialectical theorists' in Western philosophy and the precursors of everyone from Kant to Fichte to Hegel to Marx to Nietzsche to Freud to Jung to Perls. Anaxamander can also be called the first 'evolutionist' -- some 2000 years plus before Hegel or Darwin.

What is the moral of everything that is being said in this essay. How about this? When you are all ready to get your shorts tied tightly in a knot and turn purple with rage over protecting an idea, a concept, a theory, a philosophy, a paradigm, an ideology, a religous belief, ask yourself this: Can integrative evolution take me to a better place that is better for me and better for the people around me? And if so, then why am I holding on so tightly, so emotionaly, to an idea that may be a better idea once it is blended with other different and maybe even opposing ideas. Every seen a parent and a child fighting over 'curfew'? I have seen or heard indirectly of some of the worst fights you could possibly imagine. 15 year old girls evicted from their homes. Come on, what's with this? Rage is probably the best personal indicator -- to be sure often but not always -- that it may be time to think 'negotiate, compromise, integrate'; not 'I am right, you are wrong'.

Cheers.

db, May 20th, 2007, partly upgrade Jan. 29th, 2011.

On The Philosophical Connection Between Hegel and DGB Philosophy

2007-05-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

People like the familiar and the secure. People like to try new things.

Here we have two antagonistic statements -- they are saying basically opposite things. What can we say about this? One is true and the other is false? Or -- alternatively, they both have their own respective realm of truth and reality?

The first is an 'either/or' perspective -- often the curse of mankind -- as people battle, often violently over their respective beliefs of 'right' and 'wrong'.

It might not always be so bad if people could always respect each other's differences in opinions and leave their debates on the democratic, debating floor but too often people's personal biases, personal blinders, personal narcissism, and personal righteousness takes them to a place that keeps escalating to the point of tempers flaring, fists flying, even weapons becoming involved. Thus, an 'either/or' perspective too often leads to over-righteousness, close-mindedness, personal narcissism and bad will between people with different opinions.

My name is David Bain. I have an honours degree in psychology, a background in Gestalt Therapy (founded mainly by Fritz Perls), and a decent understanding of Freud, Psychoanalysis, Jung and Jungian Psychology.

There are at least two or three important philosophers from the 19th century who had a strong impact on each of these three psychologists. Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. You could add Kierkegaard and Korzybski in there as far as also having an important influence on the development of Gestalt Therapy.

Most important arguably of all of them is G.W. Hegel (1770-1831). He was the starting point -- or at least the first philosopher to put together in a coherent, understandable form (not that Hegel couldn't be far from easily understandable oftentimes) -- a new form of logic, a new form of reasoning, a new form of 'evolution theory' before Darwin.

Up until Hegel, much of Western Philosophy was 'righteous, either/or' philosophy -- every philosopher with a different perspective that took off from the philosopher before him or her which he or she at least partly disagreed with. Protagonist and antagonist. Thesis and anti-thesis. Where was the truth?

What Hegel said in the clearest fashion up to his point in philosophical history -- and to be sure his ideas didn't come our of nowhere; credit must be given partly to Fichte and Kant before him, as well as much further back in the deepest roots of ancient Greek philosophy in the work of Anaxamander and Heraclitus, and later in China in work leading up to the synthesis of the Han Philosophers in the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the eastern concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'.

What came together in very coherent fashion for the first time in Hegel was the beginning of 'dialectical thinking', 'dialectical logic', 'dialectical reasoning', and the principle of 'dialectical evolution'.

Opposite ideas are not right or wrong but part of a 'greater dialectical whole' -- a 'greater, wholistic truth and unity that comes together when both opposing parts of the dialectic are creatively integrated together in a fashion that maximimizes their respective strengths and 'truth-value' while ideally minimimizing their respective weaknesses'.

Thus, 'truth', according to Hegel, is often not in a 'righteous, either/or' philosophical position but rather in the creative negotiation and integration of the opposite philosophical perspectives. This is the essence of dialectical logic, reasoning, wholism, unity, and evolution.

And it is the starting point of Hegel's Hotel: GAP-DGBN Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...

Now I know that most of my potential readers out there probably don't like fancy, technical acronyms that mean little or nothing to you. What the heck is 'GAP-DGBN' Philosophy?

Well, to begin with, you will see that I tend to use a lot of different hyphenated words -- and for a very good reason. It is the essence of 'dialectical logic and reasoning' -- integrating different things, processes, and concepts together in a way that was quite different than the way these different things, processes, and concepts were dialectically separated and alienated from each other before the 'dialectical contact, creative negotiation, and integration' came about.

Have I lost you, or are you still with me? If you have a background in Hegelian philosophy and logic, then you are probably still with me. If you are a beginning philosophy student, trying out philosophy for perhaps the first time, then maybe I am intimidating you by throwing out fancy, technical combinations like 'dialectical this' and 'dialectical that'... Don't be intimidated. Like anything in life, it is all about repetition, getting used to the language, the technical words that are a part of any serious philosophy, art, and/or science of investigation. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- new words can take you new places in your thinking and in your perspective on life -- think of this as a 'first dialectical philosophy date' -- unless of course I am writing to a more experienced 'dialectical reader'. I want you both.

Regarding the first acronym -- 'GAP'. Firstly, I philosophize in the 'gaps' between other philosophical perspectives and paradigms. Secondly, I have been heavily influenced by Gestalt Therapy, significantly influenced by Adlerian Psychology, and significantly influenced by Psychoanalysis -- which combine to form the letter 'G-A-P'. There you have two different reasons for the first acronym -- 'GAP' -- a name I have been using since at least 1991.

Now regarding the second acronym - 'DGBN'. My philosophy is not only about 'gaps' but it is about 'bridging gaps' -- it is about 'dialectically bridging gaps' -- it is about 'Dialectical-GAP-Bridging-Negotiations'. Practically every essay I write is about Dialectical-GAP-Bridging-Negotiations. My essays are about the 'creative void or gap' that demands a 'creative leap into the void or gap' hoping, trusting, expecting, that in the process of leaping into the creative void, my creative problem-solving and conflict-resolving abilities will help me to 'dialectically bridge the gap' between the 'two opposing cliffs and the abyss between them'. The 'two cliffs' could be anything or anyone -- Marx and Adam Smith (or Ayn Rand), socialism and capitalism, liberalism and conservatism, black and white, religious and atheist, scientific and artistic, Freud and Adler, Freud and Jung, Freud and Perls, Hegel and Nietzsche...

Let's talk quickly about Nietzsche before we finish up this essay. (We will talk about him much more later.) Nietzsche didn't want anything to do with Hegel and yet Nietzsche's first book -- 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- was a brilliant post-Hegelian work that in my opinion was the bridge between Hegel and Psychoanalysis (as well as such mofifications of Psychoanalysis as Jungian Psychology and Gestalt Therapy).

My favorite Nietzschean metaphor is the metaphor of the 'tightrope and the abyss'.
Call it the 'Nietzschean Tightrope of Life'. We all need courage to live, to live passionately and creatively, and to take risks -- to take 'leaps of faith and trust' into 'creative voids', into abysses, where only a faith in our own problem-solving abilities will help us to build the 'tightrope', the 'bridge' across the abyss. It is only on the Nietzschean tightrope of life -- often in the midst of great anxiety relative to the looming abyss below us -- the 'pit of life' if you will -- that we can find both ourselves and find others in creativity, intimacy, love, and vulnerability -- a little less scary perhaps than Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum, but scary none-the-less -- Nietzsche's 'Tightrope and the Abyss'. In Gestalt Therapy this is called 'the hot seat'.

There is one, actually two, other meanings of the acronym -- 'DGBN'.

'Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism'. You will have to read my papers on narcissism and politics if you want a better understanding of this philosophical assertion.

And, oh yes. 'DGBN' just happens to also represent four of the letters in my name. Everyone is entitled to a little egotism and narcissism relative to the things that we create -- just as long as we don't turn into 'egotistical, narcissistic monsters'.

I will do my best not to go there.

db, May 14th, 2007.

A Paper On the Chronological Development of Gap-DGBN Philosophy-Psychology-Politics

2007-05-18T07:47:00.001-07:00

It is 6:00 am on this fine morning of May 7th, 2007, and the first time that I have gotten up this early to write in years. I woke up about 3:00am and watched a piece on 'The Greatest Canadian' -- which in this case was on Terry Fox. What can be more inspiring than watching a piece on Terry Fox? It is enough to make anybody want to get off the bed immediately and try to accomplish great things. Or even simply personally meaningful things, done with great conviction. NOW!

And so it is that I -- for the 100th or possibly the 1000th time -- will try to put together a meaningful introduction that will lay before you the type of philosophy that I am promoting to be in the best interests of man, both in particular and in general. How can any one philosophy -- and the philosopher behind it -- be so bold as to ascertain the possibility that any one philosophy can be good for all of mankind, both individually and collectively?

Well, the answer is this: the philosophy or model that I am presenting is big and flexible enough that it has room to incorporate the existence and partial meaningfulness of almost all other philosophies. I would say that there is no room in my particular philosophy for any extremist philosophy that advocates the onslaught of violence and death. But aside from that there is room for almost anything that may give added meaning to someone who wants to take this philosophy down a particular corridor to see where it takes them.

I have been doing that for quite some time. I started out by studying psychology between about 1972 and 1991. First, I was smitten by Psycho-Cybernetics (the psychology of perception and belief). Then I was smitten by General Semantics -- the language-meaning-philosophy of Alfred Korzybski, followed by the work of his student S.I. Hayakawa and others. I wrote my Honours Thesis in psychology on the potential connections between General Semantics and Cognitive Therapy. But the paper was a little more than this. Without really knowing it, it was my first attempt at writing a paper on 'epistemology' -- the study of knowledge -- under the influence not only of Korzybski and Hayakawa but also Nathaniel Branden and indirectly Ayn Rand -- the ultimate 'objectivist' epistemologist.

At the same time, I was also being influenced by the work of Erich Fromm -- a 'neo-Freudian', humanist, and Marxist-socialist. So I was getting a 'double polarity of influence' from Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand, both avid Capitalist idealists on the one hand, and Erich Fromm, the Marxist-Socialist idealist on the other hand. Here we were looking not at 'man the perceiver, the interpreter, and the epistemologist' but rather 'man the evaluator and valuist'. And here were two sets of eqally smart political-economic philosophers coming down on opposite sides of the political-economic fence. Where was truth -- or does the issue of 'truth' have any relevance to the study of 'values'? Does the study of truth pertain only to the study of epistemology and not to the study of values? Yes, I answered to myself -- the study of truth pertains only to the study of epistemology and thus and no relevance to the study of values. But then, how do we assess the inherent 'goodness' or 'badness' of a value? How do we establish an ethical basis or some other standard of evaluation for choosing say Capitalism over Socialism or Socialism over Capitalism or Liberalism over Conservatism or Conservatism over Liberalism? These are head-scratching questions and a lot of it -- as Nietzsche was quick to point out -- comes down to the 'subjective perception of personal benefit' which could be one way for you and another totally different way for me. If I am making money near the top end of society's payscale, then I am much more likely to be a Conservative and a Capitalist whereas if I am new to this country, and/or near the bottom of society's payscale, then I am much more like to be an NDP or a Liberal which tends to favor more socialist policies than the Conservative Party. This rule of thumb may not be totally carved in stone -- there are always exceptions -- but one can see how 'values' are tied to 'the perception of personal benefit'.

When I left university after graduating with an Honours degree in psychology, I started studying different 'schools' of psychology with more focus -- particularly Adlerian psychology as I became involved with the Adlerian Institute in Ontario, and Gestalt Therapy as I also became involved with The Gestalt Institute of Toronto. Again, I was struck by the 'polarity and the paradox of difference' between different schools of thought. One school -- The Gestalt Institute -- believed in the principle of polarity and conflict in the personality, and the essence of psychotherapy being the 'dialectical negotiation and integration of opposing polarities in the personality'. Wheras the other school -- the Adlerian Institute -- believed that conflict was essentially a 'side show or smoke and mirrors show' in the personality and once you looked past this conflict, you could usually see that the person's core personality or 'lifestyle' with its encompassing pattern of behavior was always aimed in one and only one particular direction.

Once again, I was faced with the 'philosophy of difference' and the question of how to resolve those philosophical differences. But this became my personal philosophical challenge, and in the process, like a snowball that started rolling down the hill and getting bigger, I was starting to develop a particular 'style and process for negotiating and integrating different philosophies and psychologies that was making the net result of my work a little different than the individual pieces that were influencing the evolution of my work from often opposite sides of the philosophical and psychological fence. In essence, I was 'philosophizing in the gaps' between others' philosophical work. This idea, combined with three of the main forces that were influenicing the content and the direction of my work at this time -- Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis -- led to my first name for my work -- GAP Psychology. This was at at a time -- in the 1980s -- when my main focus of study was still psychology. But that all started to change as I worked my way backwards through Perls, Freud, and Jung -- to the main philosophical influencer behind all of them: G.W. Hegel (1770-1831).

Hegel was my window and my bridge between the study of psychology and the study of philosophy.

Here was a man who had influenced most of the great psychologists, most notably, Freud, Jung, Perls, as well as a host of other 'dialectical unity' psychologists. What Hegel put together as a general historical theory of evolution in philosophy and mankind, psychologists like Freud, Jung, and Perls internalized into the human psyche as a general working style and process of the human psyche. Thus, man's psyche, man's philosophy, man's politics, man's law, man's science, man's religion, man's culture in general -- all showed signs of the same general philosophical and psychological process which might be called 'dialectical evolution' -- which Hegel described as a cyclical process of 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis', then start the process all over again at a different level of cultural evolution and development.

If psychologists and psychotherapists could harness and utilize the process of dialectical evolution in a way that helped their clients to 'negotiate and integrate their dialectical splits and conflicts' in a way that brought fresh 'dialectical unity and harmony' to their personalities and lifestyles, then why couldn't the same process be harnessed and utilized between businessmen, politicians, lawyers, philosophers, scientists, artists, and so on. This was the essence of my movement from GAP Psychology to GAP Philosophy -- a full-scale expansion and implementation of the principle of 'GAP-DGB Multi-Dialectical Wholism, Unity, Homeostasis, and Evolution.

I will close this work with two Hegelian quotations, one that I don't like and one that I do like. The one that I don't like I have modified and mutated in a direction that I do like.

Hegel wrote: 'The real is the rational and the rational is the real.' I don't buy this because often in my opinion, the real is not rational and the rational is not real. Human narcissism and hedonism often subvert the rational unless you want to talk about 'narcissistic and/or hedonistic rationality', in which case, a case could be made to support the claim that the real is the rational and the rational is the real -- i.e., someone's narcissistic and/or hedonistic rationality who has the power to implement his or her own 'brand of rationality'.

However, from this quote from Hegel, I developed one of my own: 'The truth is the whole and the whole is the truth, and any small part of the whole is a part of the truth -- not cut off and divorced from the whole but only in the full integrative context of the whole. It is in the full integrative context of the whole that we find truth.'

Here is the other quote by Hegel that I like. 'Every theory (my extension: every characteristic, every paradigm, every philosophy, every school of psychology, every brand of politics) carries within it, the seeds of its own self-destruction.'

This to me, is a good, viable warning against the dangers of self-righteousness and the one-sided focuses of thought or philosophy that are invariably leaving out the potential value of the opposing line of thought or philosophy. An integrative balance of both is generally where GAP-DGB Philosophy will attempt to go.

db, May 7th, 2007.

If you would like to read more on the philosophy of the dialectic, then please turn to this link: http://hegelshotel-dgbn-introductions.blogspot.com/

The Legacy of Hegel's Evolutionary Dialectic Philosophy on The Evolution of Western and Eastern Philosophy and Culture

2007-05-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

G.W. Hegel (1770-1831) was either loved or hated for his revolutionary philosophical work in 'The Phenomemnology of Mind(Spirit)', published in 1807. Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all were heavily influenced by Hegel -- even in largely rejecting his most prized work -- and each went on to write his own passionate 'anti-thesis' against Hegel's philosophy. (How many 'anti-theses' can one philosophical theory have? In Hegel's case, the answer seems to be 'many'! Ironically, as each of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche were writing their own respective 'theoretical compensations and retaliations' to Hegel's work, one could/can easily argue that they were just adding more 'fuel to the fire of Hegel's theory' because they were each showing the creativity of the human dialectic at work just as Hegel had argued that it was in every aspect of human thinking and cultural activity. 'Thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis' -- These three terms were not actually Hegel's, and from what I understand, he only used them once in his work -- but he made them famous and they have been associated with his work every since. See below.*

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*Although he never used the terms himself, the triad thesis, antithesis, synthesis is often used to describe the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic.

It is usually described in the following way:

The thesis is an intellectual proposition.
The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis.
The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition.

Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Immanuel Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Fichte the neo-Kantian. The idea was subsequently extended and adopted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

* Reference: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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Now a philosophical theory, treatise, system -- or 'Grand Narrative' as the 'anti-system' philosophers or 'deconstructionists' like to call the 'system-philosophies' -- is likely to have numerous 'smaller theses' in it, all part of the workings and construction of the 'whole philosophical system' if you will. Now this would seem to explain the fact that various philosophers can put together various 'negations' of the same philosophical system. For example, Kierkegaard rebelled agaist Hegel's abstractionism (as opposed to Kierkegaard emphasis on concrete existence), Schopenhauer against Hegel's reason and rationalism (as opposed to Schopenhauer's irrationalism and pessimism), and Nietzsche against Hegel's long-winded, systemic Grand Narrative (as opposed to Nietzsche's supposed anti-systemic philosophy althogh Nietzsche did seem to be promoting his Superman, tightrope, abyss, and Dionysian philosophy which would seem to be at least partly systemic as well, if not quite as long-winded as Hegel's more Apollonian Grand Narrative.

So the deconstructionists -- primarily Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche -- picked apart Hegel's philosophy to the point that it came crashing off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Humpty Dumpty did not die. In fact, Humpty Dumpty was put back together again by a legion of 'post-Hegelians'. Marx (turned Hegel upside down but kept the dialectic and the conflict between 'class thesis and anti-thesis' alive (the bourgeous vs. the proletariat). Nietzsche (in 'The Birth of Tragedy' before Nietzsche himself rejected his own work as being 'too Hegelian'). Freud (The Id (thesis), The Superego (anti-thesis), and the Ego (synthesis). Jung (the personna (thesis) and the shadow (anti-thesis). Perls (topdog (thesis), and underdog (anti-thesis).

Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Foucault, Derrida, Perls...all made important evolutionary additions to Hegel's dialectic theory. But through it all, Hegel's dialectic evolutionary theory has climbed back on the wall -- as Humpty Dumpty, back together again, all in one piece, and stronger than the classic rendition. Hegel has been 'existentialized' -- and it incorporates Nietzsche's precursor to, and Derrida's later, 'Deconstruction Theory' just as easily as it can be called a 'structural Grand Narrative'. Indeed, it is the paradoxical and multi-bi-polar evolutionary element in Hegel's dialectic theory -- especially after the Hegelian snowball incorporates elements of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, Derrida...and also appreciates the full legacy and ancient sophistication of the first Hegelian philosopher -- Anaxamander, 1350 years before Hegel -- that make's Hegel's dialectic theory, in this theorist's opinion, the greatest of all theories, the greatest of all Grand Narratives. Gap-DGBN Philosophy is one version, one post-Hegelian rendition, of Hegelian Classic Dialectic Theory, modernized, and very much alive and kicking as it rolls into the 21st century.

db, Feb. 12th, 2007.

A DGB Rendition of Nietzsche's 'Tightrope, Abyss, and Superman' Philosophy

2007-05-18T07:42:00.001-07:00

We all need to climb onto the Nietzschean tightrope overlooking the abyss of our existence - not all the time, but on a decently regular basis - so that we can reflect on, feel on, and act on, the dialectical contrasts between our 'non-being' vs. our 'being and becoming' selves. Some people - let us call this first group of people the 'risk takers' - may need to visit their existential tightrope more often than others, while other people - let us call this latter group of people the 'security seekers' - may not want to visit their existential tightrope at all, or at least, as seldom as possible.

Having reflected on this situation for a while, I have come to the conclusion that it might be useful to differentiate between different types of 'existential tightropes'. Specifically, I have distinguished between ten different types of existential tightropes that offer ten different types of challenges to our existence.

Common to all these different Nietzschean tightropes is the Nietzschean idea of the 'Superman philosophy', the 'will to power', or better translated in most cases perhaps - 'the will to excel'.

In this regard, we can talk about 1. the 'Apollonian-Socratean-Platonic tightrope' of law, ethical idealism, and civil order; 2. the 'Dionysian tightrope' of pleasure, sensuality, sexuality, hedonism; 3. the 'Rousseauian tightrope' of love and romance; 4. the 'Marxian tightrope' of social and political activism, 'self-fulfilling' vs. 'self-alienating' work, issues pertaining to economic stability and status, and our propensity for 'acting on our goals' as opposed to just sitting around and 'thinking about them'; 5. the 'Hegelian tightrope' of negotiating conflicting differences of opinion and want; 6. the 'Spinozian-Scholastic spiritual tightrope' of wholism, unity, family, community, and altruism. 7. is the 'Heraclitean-Aristolean-Baconian-Lockean' tightrope of science, process-thinking, and empiricism; 8. is the 'Jamesian tightrope' of common sense, simplicity, and pragmatism; 9. is the 'Derridian rebellious-deconstructionist tightrope' of anti-status-quo, process and structure. In a more negative vein, unless we are talking about the area of 'sports and games', we might talk about man's obsession with 10. the 'Anaxamanderian-Foucauldian tightrope' of power, control, revenge, and war.

The essence of all these Nietzshean tightropes, metaphorically speaking, is that every time we step onto, or climb onto, one of these tightropes, we are going to feel an adrelanine rush - a mixture of anxiety and excitement - to the extent that we are actually going to tightrope walk to the other side, over the abyss opposite our 'home base-cliff' that we just left the sweet security of.

In each case, we might reflect, feel, and act on the actual essence of the tightrope walk of our life and existence. The adrenaline rush and the contrast to what we just left then is this: that we are actually walking on the tightrope, using our mental faculties, and our passion, our adrenaline rush, and our arms and legs to actually get us to the other side, and in so doing, stretching the limits of our capabilities and potentialities to their maximum -- as opposed to just 'hanging out there', hanging onto the rope for dear life, waiting for someone to come and rescue us from the rope overlooking the abyss - the danger and anxiety - of our existence...This is the difference between 'existential self-suffiency' and 'existential dependency'. We can also contrast the combined adrenaline rush of anxiety and excitement of being on one of our existential tightropes with the safety of the home-base cliff which can become our prison rather than our home if we are unwilling to leave its safety for the danger of the tightrope walk across the abyss.

This is my interpretation of Nietzsche's 'Superman philosophy', and it is the starting-point of my own personally modified post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-a-lot-of-philosphers-and-ideas...'Gap Multi-Dialectical, Humanistic-Existential Philosophy'...

The 'tightrope' formula is generally fairly simple: the more responsibilities we take on - up to a certain threshold of tolerance at least - the more we challenge our own capabilities and potentialities; in contrast, the more we seek to avoid responsibilities - at least of the kind that would legitimately challenge our abilities and potentialies - the more we are going to wrestle with the problem of 'existential insufficiency and alienation' - and extended further if it is happening more or less all the time - of a 'beingless existence' - or worded otherwise - an existence without the challenge and meaning of 'self-striving' and 'self-fulfillment'...We all have to 'go to trial' at various points in our lives -- the Franz Kafka/Joseph K. type of trial...(Franz Kafka, The Trial, 1925, "SOMEONE must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning..." ). The type of trial I am talking about is an 'existential trial' - a trial about the accountability and responsibility we all must take for leading and/or having led, either a meaningful, substantiated life with many 'tightrope climbings and extensions of our existence' - or the opposite - the type of life where we are always watching someone else take on the responsibilites and challenges while we watch from the sidelines, we watch from the home base cliff while someone else is climbing one of the existential tightropes. At the end of the day we are left feeling unfulfilled and unsubstantiated by our lack of courage and/or effort. In this case, we see and feel the abyss with the greatest of clarity, first with anxiety, by looking down rather than ahead to the other side of the cliff, to our goal, But even worse is when we feel the abyss in the pit of our stomach and in the core of our heart because we have led a life that has not sufficiently contacted ourselves and the limits of our capabilities, and/or not contacted anyone else in a sufficiently meaningful way. (See Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1948.) The good news is that we can change the direction - and the substance - in our life, at any moment in time, with any change in behavior, small and/or large. But to do this, we cannot avoid the Nietzschean existential tightrope(s).

dgbn,
david gordon bain,
dialectical-gap-bridging-negotiations
democracy goes beyond narcissism

On Bridging Some of The Gaps Between Hegel, Feuerbach, God, Religion, Marx, Capitalism and More...

2007-05-13T06:29:00.004-07:00

The philosophical jump from Hegel to Marx was, and still is, colossal in its practical significance and impact. It is often stated that Marx stood 'Hegel's philosophy on its head' -- or from a Marxian perspective 'planted Hegelian philosophy properly on its feet after it was Hegel himself who had put his own philosophy improperly standing on its head'. Alas, everything is perspective.

Let us be clear on my perspective. I view myself as a capitalist idealist and Reformist with perhaps some socialist ideas thrown in there to the sum of about 25%. Thus, as a starting point let us say that I am about 75% capitalist idealist and reformist, 25% socialist idealist and reformist. I do not view myself as a Marxist except in parts of his early humanistic work-alienation theory, not in his later economic socialist and/or communist theory. You look at Canada today and you see that we have a network of 'social assistance' programs and 'unemployment' programs designed to help those who are perceived by government officals as being in the most legitimate and dire need. Whether you like it or not -- and I think most 'Liberal and NDP-minded people (even some Conservatives) appreciate the necessity and importance of some form of 'social saftey nets' to help avoid the possibility of people actually dying of poverty in their homes and/or on the street) -- Canada has been very much influenced by the development of socialist ideas.

You don't have to go all the way with Marx to still appreciate the fact that he was undoubtedly the most impressive critic of Capitalism in the history of Western philosophy. Any legitimate capitalist idealist and/or reformist needs to read Marx to get a strong understanding of some of the problems of capitalism, both in Marx's time, and as capitalism has evolved into what it is today. That does not mean that you have to follow Marx's thought process to either socialism and/or communism. It just means that a good capitalist idealist and reformist should and will take a hard look at Marx's criticisms of Capitalism -- and even some of Hegel's preceding ideas on 'alienation' and the 'master/slave' relationship.

The philosophical bridge between Hegel and Marx is an outstanding paper written by Ludwig Feuerbach called 'The Essence of Christianity' in 1841.

Through Feuerbach's monumental paper, Hegel's philosophy from 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) underwent 'transformational criticism' of a provocative kind -- a 'Copernican switch' if you will. And this dealt with the issue of God and religion.

Writes Robert C. Tucker, editor of 'The Marx-Engels Reader' (1978, pg. xxii, Introduction):

'For Hegel man is spirit (God) in the process of self-alienation and self-realization, i.e., man presents himself in history as self-alienated God.'

Through the process of history, and more appropriately through 'historical-cultural-philosophical evolution', man gradually overcomes his self-alienation and moves closer and closer towards a position of 'Absolute Knowledge', 'The Spirit of God' and Perfection. Thus, through the evolution of man's history, according to Hegel, man is moving closer and closer to a full self-awareness and an awareness of God, the two being intimately connected. (my addition).

Back to Tucker (1978, pg, xxii, Introduction):

'The truth, says Feuerbach, is just the reverse. Instead of seeing man as self-alienated God, we must see God as self-alienated man. That is, when man, the human species, projects an idealized image of itself into heaven as 'God' and worships this imaginary heavenly being, it becomes estranged from itself; its own ungodly earthly reality becomes alien and hateful. To overcome this alienation man must repossess his alienated being, take 'God' back into himself, recognize in man -- and specifically in other human individuals -- the proper object of care, love, and worship. Such is the basic argument of Feuerbach's 'Essence of Christianity'.'

Now one of my favorite philosopher-politicians is Thomas Jefferson. As I try to sort out my own ideas on God and religion, I just read to quotes by Jefferson that I like and will repeat here:

'Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The essence of what he is saying here that I like: 'Question with boldness even the existence of God.'

And the second quote:

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I like this quote because of its 'functional' approach to God and religion. In other words, the value of God and religion cannot always appropriately be measured in terms of their very arguable 'epistemological realness'. Maybe God and religion should be more appropriately evaluated in terms of the significance, the meaning, and the functional value that they have on the way that we live our lives. Is anybody going to argue with the meaning, the significance, and the functional value that God and religion played in Mother Teresa's life? Certainly not me. What a courageous, wonderful, loving, giving person. Now you contrast the significance of how God and religion played such an integral part of Mother Teresa's life with the way that someone like Osama bin Laden has used and abused the name of God to play out his own power, hatred and revenge fantasies -- and you get the essence of the meaning of what Jefferson was saying when he said: 'Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.'

Character -- and the way that God and religion are used functionally and/or pathologically, sadistically, masochistically, and/or otherwise maliciously in a person's life -- these things make all the difference in the world when we are talking about the importance and/or the pathology of God and religion. It is all in how they are used in a person's life.

Now let us switch over to Marx. Marx was heavily influenced by Feuerbach's 'transformational criticism' and 'inversion' of Hegelian philosophy. Except Marx was more interested in the influence of economics on mankind than he was interested in the influence of God and religion. So Marx simply 'transformed' Feuerbach's 'transformation' -- from God and religion to economics, work production, the 'bourgeoisie' vs. the 'proletariat', and 'dialectical materialism'.

In my opinion -- and this is one place where I differ from Marx -- there is nothing black and white about capitalism. No all-encompassing generalizations can be made. Every private corporation and every public corporation is an individual entity in itself and needs to be judged as such. Indeed, if proper evaluations are going to be made about a corporation or institution -- especially the larger it is -- then sub-evaluations are going to be needed to be made concerning each individual department of the corporation or institution -- regardless of whether this is a private or public corporation or institution.

Everything depends on the style of leadership and the ethics and the level of 'humanistic-existentialism' (meaning the level of human compassion, fairness, worker freedom, creativity, and autonomy, etc.) that is allowed to exist within the confines of the individual company.

To be sure, every company has its bottom line, has certain functions that it has to perform well in order to keep contracts, continue to have customers, and stay in business. Some companies have more room for margin of error than other companeis do. Some companies may be functioning on a very thin line between success and failure, between profit and loss.

However within this parameter of the success or failure of a company -- indeed, oftentimes very much tied up with it -- are such factors as 'style of leadership', 'degree of ethics', 'freedom and autonomy of the worker', 'degree of creativity for the worker', 'amount remuneration (pay level), 'degree of feedback and creative negotiation between the employer (or manager or supervisor) and the worker...and so on. Again, no massive generalizations and conclusions can be made relative to how a hundred thousand totally different companies are run -- and even the different departments within each company -- and thus, for Marx to make any massive generalizations and conclusions about the 'nature of capitalism and employer/employee relations and employee/work relations' in every different work setting, in every different corporation -- is fundamentally faulty.

This may even be more so today than it was in Marx's time. In Marx's time the style of leadership may have been generally more 'Draconian' and 'anti-humanistic'. There may have been more 'sweat shops' and 'child labor' and inhumane work practices. Coal workers going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, and perhaps dying prematurely because of the type of dust that they were breathing all day in their lungs. If you go back a few centuries earlier than Marx, Spinoza (1632-1677) died prematurely (at 45) from 'grinding lenses (glass)' for a living. His work may or may not have been 'creative' -- but if you die 20 or 30 or 40 years prematurely because of the nature of your work, then we can probably say that it was not a very good line of work. (However, people do what they believe they have to do in order to economically survive.) As a taxi driver, I used to drive a middle-age man (50-55) back and forth to the hospital who was dying of emphysema. He had worked in a printing shop much of his life and probably also was not breathing good things into his lungs. There are more laws that exist today that are designed to make the work place a safer place to work -- but these laws may not always be properly monitored and enforced in individual company situations. In some cases, there are existing health hazards that may be as dangerous today as 400 years ago without the laws. Safety laws are only as good as the people -- employers and employees -- who do or don't respect them, and short cuts are often made -- dangerous short cuts -- to save money.

It's all in the style of the leadership. You can have a Draconian capitalist boss. You can have a Draconian socialist boss. Lenin and Stalin will never go down in the books of history as 'humanitarians'.

The argument has been made that we strive idealistically for 'democracy' in our style of government. Why do we not strive for the same in our corporate-work environment. A very good question.

Well, one of the counter-arguments that is likely to be made is this: the employees haven't invested their life savings into the business; the employees don't own the business -- and if it goes 'under', then they just go out and get another job. The owner(s) of the business might be financially ruined for years to come, even perhaps for the rest of their life/lives. They aren't likely to walk away 'scott-free' -- they may be saddled with a level of debt-load that the average employee would not want to have any part of, or take any responsibility for. Thus, the final decisions should go to the person(s) who have the most shares and/or money and/or the courage and ingenuity to start up the company. Delegations of 'lesser authorities' can be passed on down the line according to the decisions of the principle owners/shareholders of the company. Yes, this is more of a 'military' style of management as opposed to a democracy but there is a reason why a military style of management is used in the military and not a democracy style of management. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- a democracy style of management is much slower and less efficient in its speed and efficiency of decision-making.

I am a dispatcher by trade -- part way between the manager and owners of the company on the one side, and the drivers who I dispatch to on the other side. I've been hired presumably because of the competence of my dispatching skills relative to overseeing the work and efficiency of the drivers. I am not paid to make regular mistakes and misjudgments -- sometimes they happen -- but if they happen too often, or management doesn't like my style of dispatching, or they think that a computer can do it better, then I am likely out of a job, or may have diminished responsibilities.

For the most part, I try to treat my drivers humanely, make decisions that are good for both the company and my drivers but sometimes what a driver thinks is best for him will conflict with what I think is best for the company. And sometimes in these cases, I have to 'draw rank' on the driver. I tell him he does the call or 'he's off the air'. No more calls for him. He works by himself or he packs up and goes home -- or he changes his mind and decides to do the call. This is not a democracy. I am being paid, firstly, to make sure that the business is properly covered. I try to the best of my ability to mix 'fairness' and 'humaneness' into my decision-making process but sometimes I have to tell a driver to 'suck it up' and do the call that he or she doesn't want to do.

Sometimes decisions are made above me regarding money and how the drivers are paid -- that I don't like, that I don't think are fair to the driver. I had a driver that came in the other day and quit on me, on the spot, because he looked at this paycheque and saw that the company had changed the way they paid the driver without notifying him. They changed from paying him by the hour to paying him by the kilometre. It probably cost him about $200-300 on his paycheque. I told him I basically agreed with him, I didn't think that it was fair for them to change pay systems without notifying him -- but there was a gray area here -- all the full-time day drivers were in the process of switching over, and had signed contracts to the new deal -- it's just he wasn't a full time day driver who had signed a new contract; he was a part-time night driver who was caught in the middle of a switch that he did not like, and as he said, he did not sign up or agree to. So out the door he went. I probably wouldn't have made the decision management made regarding the part-time night drivers who some nights might have trouble getting enough kilometers to make them want to come in and work at night. However, regarding the day drivers, one could easily detect a difference in their level of motivation. Now they were much more willing to stay out and do extra calls -- especially if they had good kilometers attached to them -- whereas before when they were being paid on an hourly rate, to the maximum of 12 hours a day, they would have been quick to ask me to cover them after their 12 hours was over. Trying to get a driver to stay out past his 12 hours when he was not getting paid for it was obviously like pulling teeth and I would cringe when directives would come from above me to keep a driver out 'against his will'. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

At the end of the day, each and every driver will undoubtedly evaluate the difference between what he or she 'used to get paid' and what he or she is getting paid now. And if there is a significant drop in the net paycheque, then I expect that there will be more drivers who quit on me, contract or no contract. The company may or may not expect this. If it happens, then they will undoubtedly simply hire new drivers who are not familiar with the 'old system of pay'. It obviously hurts the company every time we lose a good driver but the company will adjust, take a hit for a week or two while the new drivers are learning, and carry on. It pains me partly to say this but the bottom line is the profit line, much more so in some companies than in others -- some are looking for 'fair' profits, others are looking for 'gouging, narcissistic' profits; of much less importance in some companies more than others is the general health, happiness, and well-being of the employees that are working for them. Again, the level of 'humanness' and 'fairness' in style of management can differ greatly from one company to another. This raises the important distinction that I make between 'narcissistic capitalism' and 'ethical, humanistic-existential capitalism'.

We will leave it here for today.

db, May 13th, 2007.

On the Meaning and Origin of the Term/Concept of 'Narcissism'

2007-05-09T21:12:00.004-07:00

In this essay, I will explore some of the roots and history of the concept of narcissism -- and my own theory of narcissism as it applies to GAP-DGB Philosophy.

Narcissism is both a good and bad thing -- and we cannot escape it because narcissism is 'hard-wired' into human nature. By 'narcissism', I am referring to a combination of 'selfishness', 'hedonism', 'egotism', and 'self-centredness'. We will call these the four 'cornerstones' of narcissism.

Kids don't need to 'learn' to be selfish. They just are -- until they are taught to keep their narcissism (selfishness and self-centredness)in check. They need to be taught 'manners', 'ethics', 'morals', 'sharing', 'giving', 'fairness', 'loving' and the like...because if they aren't then they never will. Both 'pampering' and 'neglect' can promote narcissism. A 'healthy' child is a child that learns a good balance between 'soft' and 'tough' love....'soft love' comes from 'compassion' and 'encouragement', 'tough love' comes form 'accountability'. There's no such thing as a 'perfect parent' any more than there is a 'perfect child'. We all try to teach 'balance' -- as well as achieve it ourselves -- but the pendulum is always swinging back and forth without really coming to a rest in the middle (at least until we are dead).

Similarily, in history you can find a 'prevalence of narcissism' in every generation in one form or another -- and/or 'overcompensation' against narcissism which can be just as bad. When there is too much 'suppression', 'denial' and/or 'repression' of narcissism -- narcissism always finds a way to 'leak out' in the form of 'acting out' and 'symptoms'. On the other side of the coin, too much open, unbridled narcissism in a society can lead to a breakdown or self-destruction of a society (the fall of the Roman Empire).

Two of the philosophers who wrote the most on the prevalence and dangers of narcissism -- even though they didn't call it that -- were Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who wrote that 'civil' life in a society would be 'savagery' (Lord of the Flies) without a strong government, strong police force, and strong army that is able to 'keep in check' and 'under control' all uncivil acts (of narcissism) -- Hobbes's account of human nature as self-interested (narcissistic) cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology; and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -- the ultimate philosopher of pessimism who wrote essentially that life was essentially evil, futile, and full of suffering. (He also had the arrogance and gall to schedule his lectures at the same time as Hegel. Scopenhauer despised Hegel -- who presumably, he thought was 'too idealistic', 'too 'wishful thinking' and had to much of his 'head in the clouds' to see what was happening in the 'real world' (of suffering and savagery).

It is easy to try to equate 'narcissism' with Capitalism but that is not an equal equation because some of the most 'savage narcissists' have been 'socialists and/or communists' (Lenin, Stalin). Similarily, it is easy to say that the main fight of 'religion' is against 'human greed and narcissism' but that equation doesn't completely fit either because some of the 'greediest and most narcissistic acts' were committed by the Roman Catholic Church at the height of its power -- and of course other religions too that get caught up in their own 'power and greed'.

The origin of the term 'narcissism' came from Havelock Ellis...

Henry Havelock Ellis (February 2, 1859 - July 8, 1939), known as Havelock Ellis, was a British doctor, sexual psychologist and social reformer.

He described 'narcissism' as a type of 'sexual disorder' where a person is more or less 'in love with themselves' -- the name 'Narcissius' coming from ancient Greek mythology...

Found on the internet...

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Re: Echo and Narcissius
posted by WolfKing on 3/18/03 11:17 PM

Narcissius was a handsome young man that every woman fawned over. Narcissius was so handsome that he felt there was no comparison for his beauty and he often ignored his would be lovers or told them to leave him alone. Well Echo was a Nymph who fell in love with Narcissius, who had gotten into trouble with Hera a while back. On an expidition to find out which of the nymphs was Zeus' latest love, Hera found herself diverted by Echo's chatter until all the nymphs had fled. As a result, Hera was annoyed with Echo and herself and doomed Echo by decreeing that she [Echo] would not be able to say one word on her own. She would have to repeat the last few words of what another person had said.

Of course this wouldn't help Echo one bit in her pursuit of Narcissius. Now she could only repeat the words that he spoke to her, which were basically, "Go away" or "Leave me alone". Eventually Echo became saddened and embarassed by her situation that she hid herself in a mountain and to this day repeats the last words of travelers who speak into caves.

Narciuss, meanwhile, had found somebody that he could love. While peering into a pool of clear water he spotted his own reflection, and not realizing that it was only his reflection, reached down into the water to try to touch the beautiful face and he drowned. (In another version of the story Narcissius looked into a pool of clear water, and seeing his own reflection realized that the only person he could ever love was himself. And he died of a broken heart.)

I remember reading this from a book called "Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters" by Ellen Switzer and Costas. I hope that helped you out.

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Second Paper On Narcissism

There is no corner of human thought, feeling, and behavior that the phenomenon and concept of 'narcissism' does not touch. For those of my less experienced philosophy and psychology readers, if you are having trouble getting your brain and your lips around the word 'narcissism', then let me associate it with a word that I am sure you are much more familiar with -- selfishness.

So that is your starting point -- your basepoint of recognition and meaning, relative to the term narcissism. However, that is only the starting point. For those of you who may be reasonably familiar with Psychoanalysis, you might know that Sigmund Freud came to use the term 'narcissism' as one of the centrepieces of his philosophical and psychological investigation. And so it is with me. I will acknowledge my debt to Freud and indirectly, to Havelock Ellis,, who influenced Freud who in turn influenced me -- a chain reaction from Ellis to Freud through various other psychoanalytic theorists but basically arriving to me through Freud.

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From Wikepedia, the free encyclopedia....

Narcissism describes the character trait of self love.

The word is derived from a Greek myth. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus.

Freud believed that some narcissism is an essential part of all of us from birth and was the first to use the term in the reference to psychology.[1].

Andrew Morrison claims that, in adults, a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allows the individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others[2].

In psychology and psychiatry, excessive narcissism is recognized as a severe personality dysfunction or personality disorder, most characteristically Narcissistic Personality Disorder, also referred to as NPD.

The terms "narcissism", "narcissistic" and "narcissist" are often used as pejoratives, denoting vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.

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There are many questions to be asked about narcissism. Some have been asked by theorists before me. To what extent is narcissism 'natural' and 'normal'? From my perspective, it seems to be a healhty component of natural and normal self-assertion. Before you can be assertive about what you want, you need to know what you want, and to the extent that what you want is based on your own self-perceived needs and/or wishes, this is healthy narcissism.

Narcissism starts to become pathological when it 'blocks out' the needs and/or wishes of others. When we are like a horse with blinders on, and can only see what is directly in front of us, projected there like a movie screen from our own self-perceived needs and/or wishes while we are trying to live or work in a relationship where an other person may have perceived needs and/or wishes that are quite different than our own, it is here that the narcissistic person gets 'stuck'. The narcissistic person becomes like a 'pitbull' trying to force his or her jaws into other people in order to get his or her way. Get his or her way and the narcissistic person is happy; stymied, and he or she gets angry and/or moody, and will usually stay that way til the other side gives in. Intimidation and/or manipulation are usually the marks of the narcissistic person. So too is a marked lack of social empathy, social sensitivity, and/or social respect for the rights and/or opinions of and/or feelings of others.

It is important to note both the family and the cultural base of narcissism. Pathological narcissim can be 'nurtured' in a family either by neglect (a narcissistic parent or parents that ignore the child in which case the child copies the ignoring behavior of the parent(s)); or by spoiling or pampering the child in which case the child grows up thinking he or she is king or queen but without a proper social empathy and/or respect for the rights, opinions, and/or feelings of others.

From an economic and cultural perspective narcissism can be tied to both socialism and capitalism. The socialist narcissist is the person who feels entitled to whatever 'handouts' the government is willing to give him or her. This is different from the person who actually legitimately needs help from the government system; rather it is the type of person who will spend much time and energy doing what is necessary to 'manipulate the system' in his or her favor, perhaps because this is the way he or she has been taught to survive.

The influence of capitalism on narcissism and narcissism on capitalism is massive -- hugely disturbing when you think out the full ramifications of this two-sided (or dialectical) influence. So much so that I have come to differentiate between narcisistic capitalism and ethical humanisitic-existential capitalism; between narcissistic politics and ethical humanistic-existential politics; between narcissistic medicine and ethical humanistic-existential medicine; between narcissistic law and ethical humanistic-existential law; between narcissistic business and ethical humanistic-existential business; between narcissistic sports and entertainment and ethical humanistic-existential sports and entertainment; between narcissistic masculinism and/or feminism and ethical humanistic-existential masculinism and/or feminism...

What is the relationship between narcissism and capitalism in this regard? Simply this. It creates conflict of interest between ethical capitalism and unethical capitalism. Unethical capitalism becomes a short cut to the fulfillment of human greed -- invariably at someone else's expense which is why narcissistic capitalism and unethical capitalism are essential one and the same thing. The game often becomes 'two in, one out' -- 'let's you and me get rich at someone else's (for example, the public's) expense'. This is what you call a 'kickback' or 'feeding' scheme. Two people or sets of people are feeding each other at the expense of a third party that is left outside in the dark not knowing what is happening -- unless or until the third party finds out. Then we may have a 'scandal' that blows up and hits the fan -- for example, the media if it is big enough -- and then the two people or two sets of people who have been playing 'two in, one out' may have egg on their respective faces and may either get fired or have a lot of explaining to do or even end up in a court of law with their freedom at stake. Too often government officials get off with slaps on the wrist where a private, corporate person might go down a lot heavier. (Witness the trial of Conrad Black.) The punishment for a government official should at least be that of what would be relevant for a private, corporate person; if someone in government is responsible for 'losing' or 'misappropriating' millions of dollars of public pension fund money, for example, then this is a huge violation of public trust money and not something that should roll off our backs like water off a duck's back. But unfortunately, we have become way too 'immunized' to the expectancy and continuity of 'government narcissism' --its taking what it wants and not having to account for what it is doing -- to the point that government officials keep doing it because they feel confident they are not going to get caught, and that even if they are, the consequences will not likely fit the crime, and in the mean time they may have set themselves up to be very rich for after they retire as politicians. The government -- and this does not seem to be tied to any one party -- narcissism (greed, power, egotism...) corrupts most if not all parties, Liberal and Conservative alike, from Trudeau to Mulroney to Cretien --all have all been guilty of anything from very bad budgets to at the very least having members of their party guilty of personal violations of public funds.

When politicians continue to dig deeper and deeper into our pockets for more and more tax money, as much of the middle class continues to drop in their collective standard of living because their paycheques are not keeping up with their expenses, not keeping up with inflation, not keeping up with higher rent and mortgages, and higher food bills, and higher energy bills, and higher utility bills, and the aforementioned higher tax bills, when our senior citizens are getting hit even harder because they are now operating on small pensions that are a pittance of what they used to earn and what they paid to the government in pension money -- all this while government officials can write off huge personal expenses on gold-plated expense accounts, probably have tax-free exemptions that the rest of us could only dream about (politicians should be paying the same taxes that the rest of us do -- how else could they even begin to feel our pain?), even while they are earning 100,000 dollar salaries and packing away pensions that would leave the rest of Canada nauseous if they fully knew the details of them; at the very least, these same politicians should be held accountable for proper ethical standards and they should be held accountable when they do not spend our tax and pension money in the way that they say they are going to spend it.

I remember a high end hockey agent -- Alan Eaglson, to be specific -- who I believe got jail time and heavy fines for his fraudulant behavior relative to the hockey players whose pension funds he controlled and violated. Something tells me that his crime would pale compared to what has happened to much of Canada's billions of dollars of pension money, parts of which has been steered in other directions.

Now this is important. When I was working for the TTC, I used to get a printout periodically of how much pension money I had in my account. The total of my account was a combination of my own contributions plus those of the TTC which I believe equalled mine. But the point is that there was transparency here. Everything was above board. Everything was visible. When I left the TTC after 12 years, I walked away with about $50-60,000 in pension money that I put into RRSPs. What I put into my pension money, I took out of it, in combination with what the TTC added to it. This is basically how an ethical pension plan should be run.

But what about the way the government runs our pensions plans? Do we see the same method of operation? No. The way that the government handles our pension money would be illegal if it was being handled that way by a private corporation or a pension agent. No visibility. No transparency. All is secret. Do I know how much money I have contributed to my pension plan in the government? No. Do they tell me? No. Do I get printouts each year showing me how my pension plan is growing each year? No. Does money in equal money out, or will it ever? No, of course not. This is why we have a government pension fund that is continuing to grow at an astronomical rate -- a hugely greater rate than what is being used from it. So the question becomes, what are they doing with all the billons of extra dollars in the pension fund? Where are parts of it -- significant parts of it -- going? Who is being held accountable for telling us what is happening to all of the people of Canada's pension money that is not going back to the people of Canada? No one. This is the mark of a narcissistic, unethical government -- if not a downright illegal one (except they make their own laws for themselves). This is not the mark of a democratic, ethical government. And Harper's government -- as much as he said that he would walk in and clean up the ethical side of government -- continues to run the Canadian Pension Plan as per usual. In the dark. Do I trust Harper's ethics? No. I trust Gomery's ethics. But how much of Gomery's report on the Liberal Ad Scandal was actually implemented by the Conservative Government? Precious little, probably. Most of it pushed away into some back library. The Conservative Government had its own 'ethics' agenda, and for the most part it didn't include Gomery. Gomery was a man, an honourable judge, who for about 2 years captured the respect and the awe of the people of Canada. Here was a man who took no garbage, took no bullshit. Like a farmer, he ploughed through the bullshit, cleared out everything in his way that was hampering him from getting to the truth -- making politicians everywhere around him in his path uneasy, if not shaking in their boots -- who had a right to feel exactly this way because Gomery was exposing them, showing the Canadian people, what these politicians were doing in the dark from where they were accustomed to freely working from. They weren't used to someone checking on their business, checking on their ethics. Really checking on their ethics. Who is accountable for telling us what is happening with all our pension money?

My parents could be living without worrying if they had access to all the pension money that they put into the Canadian system. As much as they love Prince Edward Island, they probably wouldn't have been forced to move out there if they had access to the full extent of the money that they put into the Canadian Pension Fund. Or at the very least, they might actually be able to take one worry-free vacation every year. But alas, what goes in does not always equal what comes back out when dark forces are at work. A 'siphoning' process seems to be happening in between 'in' and 'out' that the Canadian people know far too little about -- just enough to know that something is happening that is probably dirty but without the full insight, and what's worse, without the full committment to demanding that a man like Gomery be put in charge of a full-scale investigation aimed at fully finding out what has been happening to our pension money for the last 20 or so years. He is the only man who I would trust to properly do the job. Anyone else -- especially one with parisan ties -- and I would expect a 'whitewash', not the truth. Let's say go back to about 1990. Off the top of my head, I think we could possibly be looking at the biggest scandel, the biggest misappropriation of Canadian money, in the history of Canada. But maybe I'm just blowing hot wind without substance. I don't think so. What is the old saying? Where there is smoke, there is usually fire.

A democratic government should be a transparent government, and it is only narcissistic govemerments that need to hide their financial activities, it is only narcissistic goverments that have trouble with transparency. Because they do not want the public to see what they are up to with our money. They like to operate behind closed doors. They like to operate in the dark. This is the modus operandi of a narcissistic, unethical goverment -- or any private corporation, or person, as well.

That is a good start for what we mean relative to the concept of narcissism -- individual, corporate, political, cultural...

db, May 9th, 2007. Link: http://hegelshotel-dgb-ethics.blogspot.com/

God Is The Bridge (From 'The DGB Religion/Spirituality' Section)

2007-05-07T05:43:00.001-07:00

1.1. God Is The Bridge (A Tribute to Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche, Jung, Perls, Suzuki...)

I wrote this ‘pseudo-poem’ quickly back on September 29th, 2004 and it perhaps captures the spirit of what this philosophical adventure, this philosophical paradigm, treatise, and forum is all about. I offer you an updated 2006 version of this 2004 poem. (Actually there are two or three different versions of it kicking around.) It is called, God Is The Bridge.

.....................................................................................

God Is The Bridge

God Is The Bridge

Between reason and passion.

Between thought and action.

Between impulse and restraint.

God is the bridge

Between spirituality and sensuality.

Between love and lust.

Between alienation and communion.

God is the bridge

Between being creative and being created.

Between being and becoming.

Between being human and being God-like.

God is the bridge

Between narcissism and altruism.

Between self-assertiveness and social sensitivity.

Between giving and getting.

God is the bridge

Between positive and negative.

Between hot and cold,

Between light and dark,

God is the bridge,

Between masculine and feminine,

Between ‘yin’ and yang’.

Between wife and husband.

God is the bridge

Between religion and science.

Between religion and atheism.

Between science and art.

God is the bridge

Between wholism and reductionism

Between abstractionism and concrete particularity.

Between dialectical opposition and dialectical unity.

God is the bridge

Between Israel and Palestine.

Between Christians and Muslims

Between Protestants and Catholics.

Between black and white.

God is the bridge

Between English and French.

Between Ontario and Quebec.

Between Ontario and Alberta.

Between Quebec and Alberta

God is the bridge

Between parent and child.

Between righteousness and rebelliousness.

Between parental restraint and teenage impulse.

God is the bridge

Between technology and humanism.

Between industrialism and ecological balance.

Between working to feed your family and working to feed your soul.

God is the bridge

Between Conservatism and Liberalism.

Between Capitalism and Socialism.

God is the bridge

Between nature and man.

Between God and man.

Between man and man.

God can be found

In the gap, the abyss, the chasm,

That separates you from me.

God is the bridge,

The tightrope,

That we both need the courage

To climb onto,

To put aside our fear

And self righteousness

And blaming,

To rediscover our humanity...

To rediscover...

The creative, democratic,

Contactful, assertive,

Respectful, empathic,

Dialogue or Dialectic,

That ideally brings people back together again

In harmonious unity,

The 'I and Thou, here and now',

That we both need to engage in,

To bridge the gap,

Between you and me...

And rediscover...

The 'God' between us.

God is the bridge between you and me.

DGB, originally written Sept. 29th, 2004; modified June 17th, June 25th, Nov. 23rd, Nov. 27th, Nov. 30th, December 5th, 2006, January 20th, 24th, 2007.

If you would like to read more on the subject of spirituality and religion, please turn to this link: http://hegelshotel-dgbn-pantheism.blogspot.com/