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.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Conceptual Narcissism vs. Conceptual Integrationism
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.
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.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Two Types of Hegelian 'Scholars'; Two Types of Capitalism
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.
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
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.
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.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Two People -- Working Together -- Can Generally Get To A Better Place Than One Working Apart
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.
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.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Homeostatic Balance - In Philosophy, Science, Psychology, Politics, Economics, Law, Religion - Is The Bridge Between Epistemology, Ethics, and Action
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.
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
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.)
........................................................
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')
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.)
........................................................
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')
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