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.
Sunday, April 6, 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')
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Aphorisms
On Differential Unity, Multi-Dialectic-Integrationism, Happiness -- and Evolution
Happiness often lies in integrating differences - in 'negotiating the gaps' between different personal perspectives, philosophies, and lifestyles, between subjective and objective reality, between narcissism and altruism, between assertiveness and social sensitivity, between self and self-possibilities. That is one main reason I call my philosophy-psychology - DGB (Dialectical Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology. (The other is that it just happens to be the initials of my name.)
In my post-Spinozian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian, post-Gestalt brand of philosophy-psychology, I use a lot of hypenated names - names that negotiate and integrate the differences between the unique polar differences of the two hyphenated words that are joined together in 'differential unity'. Call that the most important aim of my particular brand of philosophy-psychology - a search and striving for differential unity and harmony in a way that negotiates and integrates much of the work of many of the famous philosophers and psychologists before me.
Most of my ideas are not brand spanking new but simply reformulated and reintegrated to blend the worlds of different academics together as well as the world of academia and the world of common sense pragmatism -- again in differential unity and harmony. Call this 'Multi-Dialectical-Evolution' -- another re-statement and reformulation of what my philosophy-psychology attempts to do. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Am I being too idealistic? Read my work and make your own judgments and -- if there are ideas and/or practicalities that you like --- make your own 'multi-dialectical integrations'. - dgb, Jan. 12th, 2008
........................................................ ..............................................
Man sometimes finds himself on the plank between the dread of a meaningless existence and the fear of failing and/or looking foolish. These are the twin abysses of man's existence looming precariously below him on both sides of his bold or petrified, progressive or regressive, 'going-across' of the proverbial Nietzschean tightrope - the tightrope from being to becoming. Have courage my friend, have courage. Don't look back and don't look down.
- dgb, September 13th, 2007.
......................................................... .........................................................
Ethical Idealism, Realism, and Multi-Dialectic Evolution
Ethical idealism should be part of a cyclical pattern
of: 1. reason - a combination of sensory experience
and sound interpretive logic; 2. humanism - self and
social compassion; 3. existentialism - self and
social responsibility/accountability; 4. realism - a
combination of what really exists and what is
practical to implement, always with an eye towards self and social evolution in its most positive sense; and 5. action - meaning
action taken aimed at dialectically bridging the gap between
your own brand of personal ethical idealism, the idealism of others, and the world as it stands right now. This is what I call: ''DGB Multi-Dialectic Ethical Idealism -- as modified by such factors as: social sensitivity, common sense, realism and pragmatism'. It involves combining your own 'Will to Power and/or Self-Empowerment' with the needs and democratic assertions of those around you, uncorrupted by personal and/or group pathological narcissism.
Unbrideled human narcissism, righteousness, and alienation - or any combination of the three- are the greatest enemies of multi-dialectic ethical idealism. One can also distinguish the difference - although perhaps not in the results and consequences - between the narcissism of 'pathological deficiency' - such as desperate insecurity, poverty, and/or an attempt to survive; vs. the narcissism of 'the predatory socio-pathic personality'' - arrogance, egotism, greed, power, control, pleasure, sex, and/or revenge. The second may sometimes be a compensation for the first. And nothing in the land of dialectics - or life in general - is strictly black and white. All different types, extremes, and variations on a theme exist to leave both lay person and philosopher alike to scratch their collective heads and look for new forms and perspectives of understanding. Call this 'multi-dialectic evolution'.
dgb, Sept. 24th, 2007, updated Dec. 15th, 2007.
.........................................................
Happiness often lies in integrating differences - in 'negotiating the gaps' between different personal perspectives, philosophies, and lifestyles, between subjective and objective reality, between narcissism and altruism, between assertiveness and social sensitivity, between self and self-possibilities. That is one main reason I call my philosophy-psychology - DGB (Dialectical Gap-Bridging) Philosophy-Psychology. (The other is that it just happens to be the initials of my name.)
In my post-Spinozian, post-Hegelian, post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian, post-Gestalt brand of philosophy-psychology, I use a lot of hypenated names - names that negotiate and integrate the differences between the unique polar differences of the two hyphenated words that are joined together in 'differential unity'. Call that the most important aim of my particular brand of philosophy-psychology - a search and striving for differential unity and harmony in a way that negotiates and integrates much of the work of many of the famous philosophers and psychologists before me.
Most of my ideas are not brand spanking new but simply reformulated and reintegrated to blend the worlds of different academics together as well as the world of academia and the world of common sense pragmatism -- again in differential unity and harmony. Call this 'Multi-Dialectical-Evolution' -- another re-statement and reformulation of what my philosophy-psychology attempts to do. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Am I being too idealistic? Read my work and make your own judgments and -- if there are ideas and/or practicalities that you like --- make your own 'multi-dialectical integrations'. - dgb, Jan. 12th, 2008
........................................................ ..............................................
Man sometimes finds himself on the plank between the dread of a meaningless existence and the fear of failing and/or looking foolish. These are the twin abysses of man's existence looming precariously below him on both sides of his bold or petrified, progressive or regressive, 'going-across' of the proverbial Nietzschean tightrope - the tightrope from being to becoming. Have courage my friend, have courage. Don't look back and don't look down.
- dgb, September 13th, 2007.
......................................................... .........................................................
Ethical Idealism, Realism, and Multi-Dialectic Evolution
Ethical idealism should be part of a cyclical pattern
of: 1. reason - a combination of sensory experience
and sound interpretive logic; 2. humanism - self and
social compassion; 3. existentialism - self and
social responsibility/accountability; 4. realism - a
combination of what really exists and what is
practical to implement, always with an eye towards self and social evolution in its most positive sense; and 5. action - meaning
action taken aimed at dialectically bridging the gap between
your own brand of personal ethical idealism, the idealism of others, and the world as it stands right now. This is what I call: ''DGB Multi-Dialectic Ethical Idealism -- as modified by such factors as: social sensitivity, common sense, realism and pragmatism'. It involves combining your own 'Will to Power and/or Self-Empowerment' with the needs and democratic assertions of those around you, uncorrupted by personal and/or group pathological narcissism.
Unbrideled human narcissism, righteousness, and alienation - or any combination of the three- are the greatest enemies of multi-dialectic ethical idealism. One can also distinguish the difference - although perhaps not in the results and consequences - between the narcissism of 'pathological deficiency' - such as desperate insecurity, poverty, and/or an attempt to survive; vs. the narcissism of 'the predatory socio-pathic personality'' - arrogance, egotism, greed, power, control, pleasure, sex, and/or revenge. The second may sometimes be a compensation for the first. And nothing in the land of dialectics - or life in general - is strictly black and white. All different types, extremes, and variations on a theme exist to leave both lay person and philosopher alike to scratch their collective heads and look for new forms and perspectives of understanding. Call this 'multi-dialectic evolution'.
dgb, Sept. 24th, 2007, updated Dec. 15th, 2007.
.........................................................
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Spirit of The Dialectic in Hegel's Hotel
The Unifying Spirit and Force of The Dialectic Between Opposing Polarities
The main thesis of 'Hegel's Hotel' which is the name for the evolving philosophical treatise that this essay belongs to (in honor of the great dialectic philosopher Georg William Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, and his classic book, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit') is simply a re-working of the following adage: The sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.
Re-stated in 'dialectic' terminology, the main thesis for 'Hegel's Hotel' may be stated as this: The integration of dialectical polarities from opposing perspectives (or 'binary opposites') into a working 'synthesis' is often if not generally superior in the quality of its knowledge and application than either of the opposing perspectives taken strictly by itself.
If you multiply this principle of integrative dialectics a hundred or even a thousand times over, then you have the expanded principle of 'multi-dialectical integrationism'. Thus 'DGB' -- Dialectical Gap-Bridging' Philosophy -- could also be reasonably called 'MDIP' -- Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Philosophy'. The first name represents the 'process' of 'dialectic conflict mediation' and of the overall 'process-teaching goal' in both Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' and in my post-Hegelian 21st century extrapolation of it -- 'Hegel's Hotel'; the second name represents the open-ended, integrative dialectic 'results' of the previously mentioned 'dialectic conflict mediatiation and process theory' -- as originally taught in 'The Phenenomenology' and as modified and extrapolated on within my post-Hegelian 'Hegel's Hotel'.
My purpose in Hegel's Hotel is to write about 500 essays in most different areas of philosophy -- history, epistemology, ethics, politics, economics and business, science and medicine, psychology, enlightenment reasoning, romanticism, structuralism, deconstructionism, humanistic-existentialism, ontology and teleology, metaphysics, and more -- in ways that illustrate the theory and application of multi-dialectic-integrationism in many similar and different ways.
In this way of looking at things then, all else being equal, and without trying to paint myself into a philosophical corner that I cannot get out of, a good working balance between socialist and capitalist ideas and applications has the potential to be superior in quality to either Socialism or Capitalism taken by itself. The ideas I am working on in this regard I have already seen partly developed in 'sets of principles like 'Fair Trade' Capitalism and/or the name that I will probably use more often which is 'Humanistic-Existential' Capitalism.
The whole -- including the whole of all knowledge and editorial opinions democratically screened and integrated together -- is potentially superior to any 'righteous either/or, polar extremist' perspective.
The integration of polar perspectives into a 'middle balance' perspective helps to minimize if not eliminate the glaring weaknesses of any polar extremist perspective taken strictly by itself. This is not rocket science. It is partly what we do in politics and law every day. Still however, we can do better. Man -- for whatever reason -- still has an attraction, even an obsession or addiction for -- the righteously and/or narcissistically extreme. It is this quality, perhaps above all else, that continually and repetitively leads man back to the brink of destruction and self-destruction.
'Zero tolerance' generally means 'zero compassion', and zero compassion can cause as many problems in society with people trying to live and integrate together as 'too much compassion and not enough accountability' can cause chaos to run amok. Here too, we need a 'good working balance' in social and political life between accountability and compassion -- without either side 'dominating the other' ('hard-line politics' vs. 'soft-line politics'). We often call this working social and political and legal balance 'fairness' and/or 'justice'. Fairness and justice splits the difference between 'too hard' and 'too soft'.
Almost every essay in this manuscript offers a working example of this thesis in process and motion as it guides itself -- or is guided by me -- towards the negotiation of a 'hopefully better synthesis of opposing perspectives than either of the righteous, unilateral, either/or perspectives that we started with or from.
Now obviously, the case can be reasonably made that any negotiation and integration of opposing ideas that I come up with myself can be construed as a new form of 'unilateralism' as I am only negotiating with myself and no one else. As 'objective' and 'impartial' as I may or may not try to be, I am still full of only partial, limited knowledge and additionally, my own 'subjective, narcissistic biases'. At different times, I play all of the roles of: 'prosecutor', 'council for the defense', and 'judge and jury'. Doesn't this in the end make me just another 'control freak' -- as 'I play both sides towards the middle' -- or at least profess to.
This point is at least partly, if not totally, relevant and well-made (although, once again, it is me making it as I negotiate and integrate my own 'internal dialectic'). However, although this for the most part is a philosophical manuscript written by me, it is open -- or capable of becoming open -- to the alternative contributions of other writers own 'dialectic-democratic' perspectives. As much as I have my own particular point of view -- or am developing it as I move along -- I realize that 'I am not the only fish in the pond', even in the tightly and/or loosely controlled confines of my own manuscript which I would like to see become the starting-point for a new, open, multi-dialectic-democratic forum.
As Hegel wrote, and I am paraphrasing: Every new synthesis becomes the potential and actual starting-point for a new cycle of 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'. This is the continuous cycle of the always evolving dialectic -- of which there are millions of potential and actual 'dialectics' both on the 'biological-existential-phenomenological side of life' and on the more 'man-made conceptual-philosophical side of evolving knowledge and culture'. The genetic offspring of a male and female animal is no less 'dialectical' than the role of a 'liberal-conservative' or a 'socialist-capitalist' negotiating and integrating the opposing polarities of the unilateral liberal vs. the unilateral conservative, or conversely, the unilateral capitalist vs. the unilateral socialist.
This is where Darwin and Hegel meet in 'Hegel's Hotel'. I give priority to Hegel for two reasons: 1. Hegel's 'dialectical theory of evolution' is superior and more all-encompassing than Darwin's in my opinion; and 2. Hegel's theory came first. Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit (or Mind) was published in (1807) whereas Darwin's more restrictive 'The Origin of the Species' was published in 1859. Now, if you really want to dig deep, and I at least partly have, a serious case could be made for rejecting both Hegel and Darwin as the ultimate founder of the theory of 'dialectical evolution' in favor of the ancient Greek philosopher -- Anaxamander (610BC-546BC).
Even another case could be made for the creator of the Chinese dialectical concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'. If that was the Han Philosophers (roughly 207 BC- 9 AD), then creative precedence would have to be given to Anaximander and his idea of 'opposing polarities seeking to dominate each other with neither side ever totally succeeding for more than a certain period of time'). If the remnants of the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' can be traced back even deeper into Chinese history such as back to the 'I Ching' (Book of Changes) which might even pre-date Confucius (551 BC-479 BC), then creative precedence for the beginning of 'dialectical philosophy' -- the idea of opposing polarities 'doing battle' with each other and/or 'compromising in the middle' -- might have to go to China (the beginning of Eastern Philosophy) rather than Greece (the beginning of Western Philosophy). At this point in time, I have to plead ignorant to any possible history of the dialectic in Middle Eastern Philosophy/Religion such as Hinduism, and Arabic or Persian Philosophy. I'm sure a case could probably be made here to.
What I find truly remarkable is that both ancient Eastern and Western man -- with or without communication between each other -- had arrived philosophically at approximately the same place some 2000 years plus before Hegel's classic philosophical work: 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807).
It is this driving philosophical force -- the force of the dialectic from ancient times to now -- that is also the driving force of my essay here and the network of essays that it belongs to in my evolving 'post-Hegelian' dialectical treatise; 'Hegel's Hotel'. (See my profile for the most recent table of contents.)
Welcome to Hegel's Hotel.
dgb, Nov. 1st, 2007, updated Feb. 1st, 2008, April 4th, 2008.
The main thesis of 'Hegel's Hotel' which is the name for the evolving philosophical treatise that this essay belongs to (in honor of the great dialectic philosopher Georg William Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, and his classic book, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit') is simply a re-working of the following adage: The sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.
Re-stated in 'dialectic' terminology, the main thesis for 'Hegel's Hotel' may be stated as this: The integration of dialectical polarities from opposing perspectives (or 'binary opposites') into a working 'synthesis' is often if not generally superior in the quality of its knowledge and application than either of the opposing perspectives taken strictly by itself.
If you multiply this principle of integrative dialectics a hundred or even a thousand times over, then you have the expanded principle of 'multi-dialectical integrationism'. Thus 'DGB' -- Dialectical Gap-Bridging' Philosophy -- could also be reasonably called 'MDIP' -- Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Philosophy'. The first name represents the 'process' of 'dialectic conflict mediation' and of the overall 'process-teaching goal' in both Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' and in my post-Hegelian 21st century extrapolation of it -- 'Hegel's Hotel'; the second name represents the open-ended, integrative dialectic 'results' of the previously mentioned 'dialectic conflict mediatiation and process theory' -- as originally taught in 'The Phenenomenology' and as modified and extrapolated on within my post-Hegelian 'Hegel's Hotel'.
My purpose in Hegel's Hotel is to write about 500 essays in most different areas of philosophy -- history, epistemology, ethics, politics, economics and business, science and medicine, psychology, enlightenment reasoning, romanticism, structuralism, deconstructionism, humanistic-existentialism, ontology and teleology, metaphysics, and more -- in ways that illustrate the theory and application of multi-dialectic-integrationism in many similar and different ways.
In this way of looking at things then, all else being equal, and without trying to paint myself into a philosophical corner that I cannot get out of, a good working balance between socialist and capitalist ideas and applications has the potential to be superior in quality to either Socialism or Capitalism taken by itself. The ideas I am working on in this regard I have already seen partly developed in 'sets of principles like 'Fair Trade' Capitalism and/or the name that I will probably use more often which is 'Humanistic-Existential' Capitalism.
The whole -- including the whole of all knowledge and editorial opinions democratically screened and integrated together -- is potentially superior to any 'righteous either/or, polar extremist' perspective.
The integration of polar perspectives into a 'middle balance' perspective helps to minimize if not eliminate the glaring weaknesses of any polar extremist perspective taken strictly by itself. This is not rocket science. It is partly what we do in politics and law every day. Still however, we can do better. Man -- for whatever reason -- still has an attraction, even an obsession or addiction for -- the righteously and/or narcissistically extreme. It is this quality, perhaps above all else, that continually and repetitively leads man back to the brink of destruction and self-destruction.
'Zero tolerance' generally means 'zero compassion', and zero compassion can cause as many problems in society with people trying to live and integrate together as 'too much compassion and not enough accountability' can cause chaos to run amok. Here too, we need a 'good working balance' in social and political life between accountability and compassion -- without either side 'dominating the other' ('hard-line politics' vs. 'soft-line politics'). We often call this working social and political and legal balance 'fairness' and/or 'justice'. Fairness and justice splits the difference between 'too hard' and 'too soft'.
Almost every essay in this manuscript offers a working example of this thesis in process and motion as it guides itself -- or is guided by me -- towards the negotiation of a 'hopefully better synthesis of opposing perspectives than either of the righteous, unilateral, either/or perspectives that we started with or from.
Now obviously, the case can be reasonably made that any negotiation and integration of opposing ideas that I come up with myself can be construed as a new form of 'unilateralism' as I am only negotiating with myself and no one else. As 'objective' and 'impartial' as I may or may not try to be, I am still full of only partial, limited knowledge and additionally, my own 'subjective, narcissistic biases'. At different times, I play all of the roles of: 'prosecutor', 'council for the defense', and 'judge and jury'. Doesn't this in the end make me just another 'control freak' -- as 'I play both sides towards the middle' -- or at least profess to.
This point is at least partly, if not totally, relevant and well-made (although, once again, it is me making it as I negotiate and integrate my own 'internal dialectic'). However, although this for the most part is a philosophical manuscript written by me, it is open -- or capable of becoming open -- to the alternative contributions of other writers own 'dialectic-democratic' perspectives. As much as I have my own particular point of view -- or am developing it as I move along -- I realize that 'I am not the only fish in the pond', even in the tightly and/or loosely controlled confines of my own manuscript which I would like to see become the starting-point for a new, open, multi-dialectic-democratic forum.
As Hegel wrote, and I am paraphrasing: Every new synthesis becomes the potential and actual starting-point for a new cycle of 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'. This is the continuous cycle of the always evolving dialectic -- of which there are millions of potential and actual 'dialectics' both on the 'biological-existential-phenomenological side of life' and on the more 'man-made conceptual-philosophical side of evolving knowledge and culture'. The genetic offspring of a male and female animal is no less 'dialectical' than the role of a 'liberal-conservative' or a 'socialist-capitalist' negotiating and integrating the opposing polarities of the unilateral liberal vs. the unilateral conservative, or conversely, the unilateral capitalist vs. the unilateral socialist.
This is where Darwin and Hegel meet in 'Hegel's Hotel'. I give priority to Hegel for two reasons: 1. Hegel's 'dialectical theory of evolution' is superior and more all-encompassing than Darwin's in my opinion; and 2. Hegel's theory came first. Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit (or Mind) was published in (1807) whereas Darwin's more restrictive 'The Origin of the Species' was published in 1859. Now, if you really want to dig deep, and I at least partly have, a serious case could be made for rejecting both Hegel and Darwin as the ultimate founder of the theory of 'dialectical evolution' in favor of the ancient Greek philosopher -- Anaxamander (610BC-546BC).
Even another case could be made for the creator of the Chinese dialectical concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'. If that was the Han Philosophers (roughly 207 BC- 9 AD), then creative precedence would have to be given to Anaximander and his idea of 'opposing polarities seeking to dominate each other with neither side ever totally succeeding for more than a certain period of time'). If the remnants of the concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' can be traced back even deeper into Chinese history such as back to the 'I Ching' (Book of Changes) which might even pre-date Confucius (551 BC-479 BC), then creative precedence for the beginning of 'dialectical philosophy' -- the idea of opposing polarities 'doing battle' with each other and/or 'compromising in the middle' -- might have to go to China (the beginning of Eastern Philosophy) rather than Greece (the beginning of Western Philosophy). At this point in time, I have to plead ignorant to any possible history of the dialectic in Middle Eastern Philosophy/Religion such as Hinduism, and Arabic or Persian Philosophy. I'm sure a case could probably be made here to.
What I find truly remarkable is that both ancient Eastern and Western man -- with or without communication between each other -- had arrived philosophically at approximately the same place some 2000 years plus before Hegel's classic philosophical work: 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807).
It is this driving philosophical force -- the force of the dialectic from ancient times to now -- that is also the driving force of my essay here and the network of essays that it belongs to in my evolving 'post-Hegelian' dialectical treatise; 'Hegel's Hotel'. (See my profile for the most recent table of contents.)
Welcome to Hegel's Hotel.
dgb, Nov. 1st, 2007, updated Feb. 1st, 2008, April 4th, 2008.
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