First Paper on Gap Humanistic-Existential Pantheism

This is new territory for me -- an idea that has been perculating in the back of mind for a while and slowly gathering steam in a particular direction. An integration of sorts between Hegel's dialectical theory, Spinoza's wholism, romanticism, spiritualism, and pantheism, and my humanistic-existential values and beliefs. Thus, I am going to call this evolving idea -- 'Dialectical Humanistic-Existential Pantheism.

This is not the first time that I have integrated Spinoza and Hegel. The idea of dialectical wholism comes partly from Anaxamander and Heraclitus, it comes partly and very romantically from Plato in The Symposium (the only part of Plato that I really like), but mainly it come from an integration of Spinoza and Hegel -- two opposite perspectives, polarities, lifestyles, impulses, people... coming together to integrate into a more 'complete whole'. This is what I am calling dialectical wholism. You see the development of the idea of dialectical wholism (without it being called that) in Freud and Psychoanalysis (our 'id' and our 'superego' needing to integrate together into a more 'harmonious dialectical whole'), in Jung and Jungian Therapy (our 'personna' and our 'shadow' needing to get it together into a more harmonious dialectical whole), in Perls and Gestalt Therapy (our 'topdog' and 'underdog' needing to integrate into a more harmonious dialectical whole) -- in each case here, the goal of psychotherapy is basically to 'heal alienated dialectical splits in the personality by bringing them together into a more harmonious, integrative dialectical whole'. I would argue that all forms of social or cultural psychotherapy should be aiming to do the same -- political psychotherapy, business psychotherapy, medical psychotherapy, legal psychotherapy, philosophical psychotherapy -- in every case, the social goal should be to harmoniously integrate opposing social perspectives. Every area of human culture should be continually looking to evolve into a better dialectical whole within the particular domain of its existence and functioning. Partly, for example, you see this happening in the field of medicine as Western and Eastern medicine, orthodox Western medicine and natural health medicine more and more start to blend into one -- ideally a better dialectical whole than what we had before when orthodox Western pharmaceutial medicine (and all its 'unmentioned' side effects) ruled the roost without any impediment from rebellious, outside paradigms of medicine (i.e., Eastern, nutritional, natural health medicine, and other alternative therapies...). Thus, in very much the way that Hegel theorized, the dialectic has been very active between orthodox and alternative medicine over the last 10 years or so, acting as 'self-correcting' mechanism that is helping in the ongoing evolution of medicine -- helping it to evolve into something better than it was ten years ago due to the outside critiques of an opposing medical paradigm that is now in the process of becoming integrated with the medical paradigm that it was critiquing. This is what I am calling 'dialectical evolution' and opposing paradigms coming together -- integrating -- into a better 'dialectical whole'. It is only one step -- or maybe one leap -- further from dialectical psychotherapy, dialectical social therapy, and dialectical humanistic-existentialism -- to dialectical humanistic-existential pantheism.

Here we introduce the concept of God in a Spinozian, pantheistic fashion. You can also see where I am going with this idea if you read my poem, God Is The Bridge. I had an email friend of mine say that I have a 'pretty expansive' view of God. Yes, I do. I believe that Spinoza was a more religious, spiritual, humanistic person, than the orthodox religious people who 'ex-communicated' him (beheadings were not uncommon back in his time and he was tredding close to this territory as well).

Pantheism is sometimes viewed as being a 'sneaky form of atheism' -- there is still talk of 'God' but God is no longer our Creator -- rather He (or She) is all of Creation. God is in you, God is in me, God is in Nature, God is in everything in the Universe...So how do we get from Pantheism to Dialectical Humanistic-Existential Pantheism? Allow me to introduce my own brand of metaphysics -- 'epistemologically unprovable' but still potentially meaningful and valuable. It is, my opinion, way better than Hegel's metaphysics. I don't buy into his metaphysics built around his concept of 'The Absolute'. Better knowledge -- and especially anything that might come anywhere close to being construed as 'Absolute Knowledge' or 'Absolute Consciousness' (how would we know when this is? -- the answer is, we wouldn't) is only as good and only as valuable as the extent to which it leads us to better living, better contact, better communion with ourselves, who we are, and who we are capable of becoming -- and more importantly getting there; better communion with other people, especially with the one's who are, or who are supposed to be, closest to us, most important to us, better communion with Nature, and in all of these similar but different ways -- better communion with God.

This is where dialectical humanistic-existentialism meets dialectical pantheism. We can all think back to our 'greatest moments in life', our 'greatest moments of contact' -- it could have been a most intimate moment with another person or even a group of people, with nature, or with our self, relative to one of our greatest achievements. Think back to maybe a special speech at a wedding (or a funeral) that made you cry. I call these greatest moments of contact -- these extra special moments in our life -- not only communions with the special person or people we are having the special contact with -- but also communions with God.

I am calling dialectical, humanistic-existential pantheism. God is the bridge between you and me -- in that special moment of contact, when the dialectic is working to bring people together and unite them harmoniously -- black and white, Muslim and Christian, Lebanese and Israeli, U.S. and Iraq -- not working narcissistically, righteously, in 'either/or' fashion to alienate, enrage, and tear people apart. This is my humanistic-existiential ideal -- democratic-dialectical evolution, democratic-dialectical wholism, democratic-dialectical humanistic-existentialism, and democratic-dialectical pantheism. The essays I will write in this philosophical journal will be aimed at striving for and meeting these dialectical ideals.

I guess maybe I have destroyed the mystery of the story here, because I have given you the end of the story -- at the beginning. Everything else is, and/or will be -- meat and fat filling up these bones.

dgb

The Influence and Potential Inrfluences of Philosophy and Psychology on Religion

There is a point where philosophy, psychology, politics, law, economics, art, and religion all meet -- or at least they should -- and that is around humanistic-existential values and principles. (There is also a point where some realms of human culture -- such as politics and religion -- should never meet which is a major part of the subject of the essay that appears below this one.)


For our purposes here, we will look at the ethical connecting point of philosphy, psychology, and religion aruond humanistic-exsitetntial values and princioples within and outside of the human psyche. This builds on numerous DGB principles established in earlier essays and emails (see links).


A person's IP (individual philosophy) is only one thing, albeit an important one
thing, going on in a person's personality or psyche.
There are other important factors, important parts of
the personality that influence its structural and
dynamic makeup and process.

There are a host of different psychological models out
there that you can choose to buy into, modify, or
reject, and I will use ('choose') a combination of
about five different models to lay out the combined
philosophical-psychological scenario that I present to
you below.

Firstly, there is the Self -- a modified Jungian
concept (filled with humanistic-existential principles
that I have added along the way) that I use to
describe that part of our personality that used to be
called our Soul. The Self-Soul is our Internal God, a
critical part of our entire psyche or personality that
we need to deeply heed. It contains a mixture of
physio-genetic and psycho-genetic traits and
blueprints that are capable of giving our life deep
meaning -- if we heed them, and live our life in
congruence with them. Congruence is an important word
here and the polar or dialectical opposite concept and
phenomenon to congruence is alienation. When we live
our life in 'good faith' (Sartre), we live our life in
congruence with the genetic blueprints in our
Self-Soul, in a way that also ideally fosters external
social harmony, respect, and integrity. Here we run
into a problem because we are talking about both a
self and social ideal that is based on
humanistic-existential values that many if not most
individuals and societies do not come close to
achieving. I will list 15 such humanistic-existential
values; 1. freedom to allow self-determination; 2.
narcissistic-hedonism (in balance with the other
values trumpeted here, and not to the point of
trodding on the other values listed here); 3.
acceptance (as long as the values being accepted are
in 'good faith'); 4. assertiveness; 5. respect; 6.
responsibility/accountabliity; 7. honesty; 8.
sensititivity, caring, empathy and compassion; 9.
fairness; 10. initiative/pro-activeness; 11. courage;
12. integrity; 13. persistence/perseverence; 14.
optimism; 15. romance; 16. spirituality and/or
religion based on humanistic-existential principles;
16. generositiy and altruism (giving and giving back
to family, friends, loved ones, community,
strangers...); 17. Multi-dialectical,
humanistic-existential evolutionary wholism; 18.
Multi-dialectical, humanistic-existential,
evolutionary democracy; 19. Multi-dialectical,
humanistic-existential business and economics (a
dialectical integration of guiding Capitalist and
Socialist principles)law, politics, medicine, art,
entertainment...
20. lest we forget -- fun, leisure, humor, play...

So Paul, for me, it is important that our guiding IP
be congruent with humanistic-existential principles
that stem from our unpoisoned Self-Soul, which in
turn, if you wish to take it this far, stem from our
Creator, our Intelligent Designer, and/or God.

When we act in congruence with the type of
humanistic-existential principles that I have listed
above, and am attributing to my mythological,
humanistic-existential God, then we can say that our
actions are based on a God-influenced, and God-like
self and social integrity (which we don't see a lot of
in our overly narcissistic-hedonistic driven world).

There are other factors that enter into this picture
such as 'introjected' and 'fake' ideologies (IPs) that
are meant to hide and/or distort what is really going
on underneath the glossy, proclaimed ideology. These
introgected and fake ideologies or IPs are obviously
carried on in 'bad faith'.

I will leave my ideas here for the time being.


DGB, Sept. 5th, 2006

God Should Be Viewed as an Idealistic-Mythological Concept; not as an Epistemologically Real Ruler of Man

This may be hard for many, many people to accept but taking the relgious viewpoint that God is an epistemoligical reality, our Creator, that rules over man is a generally patholigical viewpoint. It is pathological for two main reasons: 1. it hides or obscures the fact that all religions are man-made projections and ethical systems based on a combination of healthy and pathological real, professed, and/or hidden human values; and 2. allowing people to think that religious messages are messages 'delivered by God' allows the men and/or women who created these messages the opportunity and 'allleged God-given right' to avoid all responsibility and accountablity as far as the relative 'health' and/or 'pathology' of the 'ethical or unethical' message that is delivered. Millions of people have died from the swords and bullets behind 'professsed messages from God' while both the leaders and the followers behind these messages, swords, and bullets attempt to escape -- often successfully -- all responsibility, accountablity, and culpibility for their actions.


I have no problems with any of the great religions of the world -- other than the fact that they all need to represent themselves as man-made, idealistic-spiritual-religious mythologies answering to humanistic-existential values and principles (see my next essay); not as 'systems of indesputable, God-given messages, truths, and values'. This latter belief in itself is pathological, and as stated above, accountable for countless human wars, deaths, and misery.


If or when the leaders of the Taliban, Iraq 'insurgents', Iran, North Korea...etc. come out and epistemologically and ethically state that they are fighting a war against 'American Imperialism and domination', then they have a leg to stand upon and the American people need to take a long, hard, objective look at what they are doing over there in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how they are, in large part, alientating the rest of the world with their currently very debatable 'democratic' vs. 'imperialist' foreign policy. However, as long as the Taliban and other political and war leaders over there continue to mix in their professed 'God-given rights to holy missions, holy wars, and armed combat (jihad) to eliminate all Jews and/or whoever else is not living up to their Islamic extremes, then they will continue to be painted -- rightfully so -- as 'terrorists' and as 'evil'. Religion needs sto be taken out of politics and 'God-given messages' need to be taken out of religion. The U.S. needs to learn that it does not have the 'unadulterated and unilateral right' to determine world ethics and policy -- particularily when it is becoming more and more clear to the rest of the world that American ethics and policy has become more and more poisoned and corrupted by American Narcissistic Capitalism (particularly what Eisenhour called the 'Military-Industrial-Complex', with the isse of oil probably not far behind) that is making a mockery of the so-called American ideal of the term 'democracy'. This is not a strictly American phenomenon as Narcisssitic Capitalism as well as Narcissistic Religion (especially of the jihad type) is poisoning, corrrupting, and destroying the world. All human establishments, organizations, structures, nations, and policies including the United Nations need to be re-built on the basis of humanistic-existential values -- that means a healthy balance of 'human compassion' and 'human accountability'; not people passing off, avoiding, and/or justifying their crimes against humanity on the basis of either 'messages from God' and 'holy wars' or alternatively imperialist wars that are justified in the name of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Religions need to be based on humanistic-existential values and principles; Capitalism needs to be based on humaistic-existential principles; politics needs to be based on humanistic-existential principles. Philosophy needs to be based on humanistic-existential values and principles. Medicine needs to be based on humanistic-existential values and principles. And all of these different areas and systems of human culture need to evolve dialectically and democractically as well as humanistically and existentially. Indeed, I would list multi-integrative-evolutionary-dialectical-democracy as a core set of humanistic-existential values and principles. This is not 'fake-narcissitic-dialectical-democracy' that we are talking about here but rather 'real-gut-wrenching-dielactical-democractic'. One of the leaders of Iran came out not too long ago and 'challenged' the U.S. to a debate. It blew my mind. An offer like that -- regardless of the credibility of the person or persons that it came from, particularly if it came from a leader of highly volatile nation, a nation that could be involved in the next World War -- should not be quickly or lightly dismissed. The U.S. should have quickly supported, approved, and encouraged that line of action -- even if only to find out how serious Iran was about such a possibility.

Alas, I have moved too far out of the realm of religion and intio the realm of policitics, even if they are intimately entwined.


Enough said for today.

dgb, September 5th, 2006.

Referencer: The movie 'Why We Fight'


* DGBN
* David Gordon Bain
* (Humanistic-Existetnial)Dialectical-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations
* Democracy Goes Beyond Narcisism