Wednesday, August 15, 2012
What God Means To Me...
Just a couple of quick thoughts here...
Or maybe more than a few quick thoughts...as I get going...
I went to a church tonight....a seemingly unorthodox one that I have been looking at for a while...
It used to be a movie theatre...
And it just happened to be beside my favorite bar...
I walked inside and it was empty....
Or so it seemed...
I was partly in when a young, middle aged man...I'm guessing about 35...
Came out of an office....
To see what I was up to....
What I was up to was a place to teach...
Hegel's Hotel....
But I didn't tell him that...
He showed me the place...
A smaller forum that used to be a movie theatre...
And then a larger forum where the main services were/are held...
On Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights
(During the summer when people go away for the weekend)
I said I had a background in philosophy...
And was interested in the history of his particular denomination...
We got into some discussion about the religious history...
Of his particular denomination....
A name I can't remember because it was three large words...
That I was not familiar with...
Sounded like it was a deviation from the Catholic Church...
Then the Protestant (United) Church (that was my denomination as a child growing up)...
Maybe a couple more deviations off of that...
Kinda like deviations from Freudian Psychoanalysis...
He called it a conservative church, casual and contemporary...
I said that sounded more like a 'liberal' church -- flexible....
Which sounded good to me...
We found out we had different definitions of 'conservative' and 'liberal'...
Relative to religion...
We got into a rhetorical argument around the parable of Abraham...
And both agreed that we didn't want to get into a righteous argument...
I asked him who the priest or minister of the Church was...
And he said he was....He was the Pastor....
We both agreed to disagree on our Biblical differences of opinion...
The only one I get passionate about -- like Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) --
Is the God, Abraham, and Issac Parable....
I get very passionate on that one...
I have no place for a betraying father...
I have to look partly into my own conscience on that one...
And the ambivalent love-hate relationship I had with my father...
Growing up...
Nor, do I have any place for....
An arguably 'anal-sadistic' God...
Who values 'submission to authority'...
Over independent, critical thought...
And a father's supposed love for his son...
We left that argument...
He introduced himself as Fred...
And I may take in one of his Wednesday night...
Or Sunday morning sessions...
I will simply punctuate this brief little essay...
By saying...
That for me...
Religion should be...first and foremost...
About caring for people....
Engaging people....
Helping them to find...
A more involved...
And meaningful, spiritual place in the world...
All the arguments in the world...
About how to interpret the Bible...
The Scripture...
Or any other sacred manuscript...
From any other religious denomination...
Is worth nothing....
If we don't care about...
And engage with people...
This fits with my 'Attachment-Detachment Theory'...
The first and foremost goal of any psychotherapy...
And/or any religion...
Should be to 're-attach' people...
Who have become 'detached'...
Who have lost their place in the world...
Their relationships in the world...
Their meaning in the world...
And that comes, first and foremost...
From caring about people...
And re-engaging people...
Into productive, meaningful relationships...
In a world of narcissistic, unethical...
Capitalism Gone Mad...
We need something...
And someone(s) to help restore their trust...
And faith in people...
For me,
Trust and faith in God...
Is a secondary, arguable, issue...
Personally, I don't believe in...
Submission to anyone...
Submission is counter-productive to...
Self-empowerment....
And critical, independent thinking...
Submission to authority invites...
Self-exploitation by the dominant authority figure...
I now prefer to call myself a...
Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential-Pantheist...
Like Spinoza...my main mentor here...
In conjunction to Schelling and Hegel...
I believe that there is a piece of God...
In everything and everyone...
Which of course includes...
The person...
Standing...
Or sitting...
Right beside you...or me...
Seek and ye shall find...
A piece of God in yourself...
And in the person...
Right beside you...
Of particular importance...
Is the person who has lost his or her...
Particular way...
Not in the usual religious sense...
Of losing faith in God...
As in losing faith in any God above us...
For better or worse, a lot of people have done that...
That's why we have heretics, atheists, agnostics, pantheists, deists...
And the list keeps going
In the realm of 'meta-physics'....
Everything is speculative...
And beyond any normal sense of the word 'provable'...
No, when I am talking about 'lost faith'...
I am talking about having lost faith...
In one's self...
And in one's relationships...
And in one's life....
And in one's meaning and passion...
For life....
Here, from my perspective...
We all need to re-connect...
At least to the extent that...
We have lost this connection...
With our Spiritual-Congruent Self...
Our Phenomenology of Spirit...
The God in each of us...
The God between us...
I and Thou...
Here and now...
-- dgb, Aug. 14, 15, 2012
...................................................................................................
From Wikipedia...
Pantheism....
Pantheism is a word derived from the Greek (pan) meaning "all" and the Greek (theos) meaning "God". It is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing immanent God,[1] or that the Universe (or Nature) and God (or divinity) are identical.[2] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, or anthropomorphic god. As such, pantheism denotes the idea that every single thing is a part of one Being ("God") and that all forms of reality are either modes of that Being or identical with it.[3] The central ideas found in almost all pantheistic beliefs are the view of the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity, reverence for the Cosmos, and recognition of the sacredness of the Universe.
.........................................................................................................................
Sunday, April 22, 2012
On Kierkegaard, Faith, and Religon -- I'm Not On Board
Prof Rev Fr. Philip Ogbonna • Presumably a Kierkaadian quote to follow...
It's only the aesthetic mind that will doubt it but are the majority not aesthetic in their outlook? It is not the paradox that constitutes the downfall but understanding by not understanding itself.
It's only the aesthetic mind that will doubt it but are the majority not aesthetic in their outlook? It is not the paradox that constitutes the downfall but understanding by not understanding itself.
-
David Bain • Not one of my favorite Kierkegaard quotes...I stay away from the religous side of Kierkegaard...My spirituality is more of a pantheistic-deistic spirituality and has been influenced more by the likes of Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Einstien....I have a much different take on 'Fear and Trembling' and the Abraham-Isaac parable. I do not hold any faith in a God who would tell me to murder my own son...Instead, i would tell God that 'He is dead' -- because it is only a sadistic, murdering God who would tell me to kill my own son. I would kill God instead -- at least this type of God. Kierkegaard betrayed his fiancee at the alter for this type of God? In this regard, yes indeed, Kierkegaard was left with an 'either/or' choice -- marriage or the worship of God -- and it is obvious to me that Kierkegaard made the wrong choice. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been such a miserable, sarcastic, arrogant, condescending person his whole life. Kierkegaard never found God or Salvation. He spent much of his life simply trying to justifiy and rationalize his own stupid choices....
David - the genetic fallacy has been rehashed ad nauseum in SK scholarship; surely the meaning of anyone's life could be reduced by this sort of deterministic logic. But is that the best or most charitable way to read the situation? The same for your read of the Abraham-Isaac story and SK's interpretation of it: you could make a case out of it, as many already have, but because your case lacks charity, it is neither the most cogent nor the most compelling case. If your own religious views allow you to trash somebody whom you've never met and likely not tried very hard to understand, how can you consider yourself any different than your own reading of SK? More to the point, maybe your reading of SK says more about the reader than the subject? Perhaps you should read Works of Love - or at least the Golden Rule.
David Bain • I don't know what you mean, Kerby, by 'the genetic fallacy', ...All of my arguments are my own arguments -- even if they have been argued before me by someone who I haven't read....
To be perfectly clear on the matter above, I am certainly not trashing the altruistic side of religion and its sincere attempts to counter the 'narcissistic callousness and apathy' that makes up much of our society today....But you don't have to be religious to be altruistic and humanistic, and both religion and God can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people -- some good, some bad, some healthy, some pathological, some severely pathological...In the end, both God and religion are no better or no worse than what we project onto these terms and concepts ourselves....I believe that God lives in all of us and that we can 'become more Godly' to the extent that we all live more balanced, meaningful, passionate, assertive and socially sensitive lives....
I will stick with Kierkegaard's more existentially enlightening quotes (at least from my own perspective) like....
'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.' -- Soren Kierkegaard
I will stick with Kierkegaard's more existentially enlightening quotes (at least from my own perspective) like....
'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.' -- Soren Kierkegaard
And again, I believe that we all have to look inside to find God. Godliness is the ideal 'dialectic-humanistic-existential balancing act of all our internal and external interests, needs, impulses, desires, drives, paradoxes, contradictions, impasses, conflicts...actualizing our own potential to our fullest capability without trashing other people in the process.' -- dgb.
Monday, April 25, 2011
If There is One Thing Good To Be Said About Global Capitalism...
If there is one thing good to say about Free Trade and Global Capitalism...it is perhaps this:
We in North America -- or at least the middle and lower classes -- are suffering such that millions of people in some of the poorest countries in the world (or what used to be -- China, Mexico, India, The Philippines) --- who are, generally speaking much more impoverished than us, or at least were before Free Trade and Global Capitalism affected them and us -- can work -- and at least take something home to feed their families...Indeed, China and India are probably two of the most economically solid and self-sufficient countries in the world right now, China, in effect, now owns much of North America so the negative here is that Free Trade and Global Capitalism was, and still is, a 'win-lose' conflict solution -- other countries and people in these countries gaining at our expense....One can say that 'Ultra-Powerful-North American-Unions' has lead to the death or self-destruction of the North American Manufacturing Industry and/or that Corporate Leaders at the time that Reagan and Mulroney were in power, got in their respective ears to influence their change in political policy -- out with the tariffs and National Protectionism like Japan has -- and in with Free Trade and Global Capitalism which sent North American Manufacturing Industries to all corners of the world....
Whoever, and wherever the responsibility lies, both historically and still today -- Big Unions, Big Corporations, and/or Big Government being affected more by Big Corporations than by Big Unions obviously -- the result of Free Trade and Global Capitalism has been the destruction of most of the major manufacturing jobs in North America. Some of them -- like the car manufacturing jobs -- are coming back, but many never will....Consequently, so many North Americans -- both Americans and Canadians -- losing their jobs in shut down manufacturing plants (I can still see some of these shuts down automobile parts plants where I live)...and with these lost manufacturing jobs, so too have many Unions lost power, and their constituencies, leaving individual workers to fight among themselves for left-over jobs, paying less money, with less benefits, sometimes not even overtime or holiday pay for part-timers and contract workers, and no collective bargaining power to take on much more powerful corporations with a large, unemployed work force to continue to pick from...
In effect, first and second world countries are slithering down the economic totem pole while third world countries are climbing up it...
Great for the previously impoverished countries like China and India that are now more economically more stable than America and Canada -- indeed, we have even become dependent on their financial loans....
However, Free Trade and Global Capitalism sure has not helped North America except for Global Corporate Leaders...
Japan, to my knowledge, has stayed true to their principle of National Protectionism...
And they haven't sank economically like North America and Europe did...
At least that is how I see the whole Free Trade and Global Capitalism business...since Reagan and Mulroney signed the agreement....
I'm not talking from an expert's eyes...
But from a citizen's eyes, a lay person's eyes...
And I don't think I am very wrong....
-- dgb, April 25th, 2011, updated Dec. 18, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
We in North America -- or at least the middle and lower classes -- are suffering such that millions of people in some of the poorest countries in the world (or what used to be -- China, Mexico, India, The Philippines) --- who are, generally speaking much more impoverished than us, or at least were before Free Trade and Global Capitalism affected them and us -- can work -- and at least take something home to feed their families...Indeed, China and India are probably two of the most economically solid and self-sufficient countries in the world right now, China, in effect, now owns much of North America so the negative here is that Free Trade and Global Capitalism was, and still is, a 'win-lose' conflict solution -- other countries and people in these countries gaining at our expense....One can say that 'Ultra-Powerful-North American-Unions' has lead to the death or self-destruction of the North American Manufacturing Industry and/or that Corporate Leaders at the time that Reagan and Mulroney were in power, got in their respective ears to influence their change in political policy -- out with the tariffs and National Protectionism like Japan has -- and in with Free Trade and Global Capitalism which sent North American Manufacturing Industries to all corners of the world....
Whoever, and wherever the responsibility lies, both historically and still today -- Big Unions, Big Corporations, and/or Big Government being affected more by Big Corporations than by Big Unions obviously -- the result of Free Trade and Global Capitalism has been the destruction of most of the major manufacturing jobs in North America. Some of them -- like the car manufacturing jobs -- are coming back, but many never will....Consequently, so many North Americans -- both Americans and Canadians -- losing their jobs in shut down manufacturing plants (I can still see some of these shuts down automobile parts plants where I live)...and with these lost manufacturing jobs, so too have many Unions lost power, and their constituencies, leaving individual workers to fight among themselves for left-over jobs, paying less money, with less benefits, sometimes not even overtime or holiday pay for part-timers and contract workers, and no collective bargaining power to take on much more powerful corporations with a large, unemployed work force to continue to pick from...
In effect, first and second world countries are slithering down the economic totem pole while third world countries are climbing up it...
Great for the previously impoverished countries like China and India that are now more economically more stable than America and Canada -- indeed, we have even become dependent on their financial loans....
However, Free Trade and Global Capitalism sure has not helped North America except for Global Corporate Leaders...
Japan, to my knowledge, has stayed true to their principle of National Protectionism...
And they haven't sank economically like North America and Europe did...
At least that is how I see the whole Free Trade and Global Capitalism business...since Reagan and Mulroney signed the agreement....
I'm not talking from an expert's eyes...
But from a citizen's eyes, a lay person's eyes...
And I don't think I am very wrong....
-- dgb, April 25th, 2011, updated Dec. 18, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Who Were Some of The Greatest 'Healers' -- in The Spirit of Jesus Christ -- In The 19th and 20th Centuries?
I would like to take this essay to honour some of the greatest female healers in the history of civilization...Included in my list today are: Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell...and Princess Diana...
................................................
I think Mother Teresa had a deeper insight -- and a more intense empathy -- into the 'reality', not the 'fantasy', of 'human neurosis' than Freud did...And with all due respect to Freud, I think she was by far the greater healer...
Not surprisingly in my opinion, Mother Teresa's insight into human suffering and 'neurosis' -- a name that she probably would never even use -- came mainly from a similar place -- traumacy theory -- where Freud had started his investigations into psychoanalysis and psychotherapeutic healing in the early 1890s, not after he abandoned this position/perspective/theory after 1896. Mother Teresa, to my knowledge, was never interested in 'human fantasy theory' -- perhaps more of a product of the middle and upper class where people have more time, money, and energy to fantasize...-- no, she was too busy trying to encourage, support, and give people hope and love in the deepest depths of their suffering...
You saw some of this in Freud's work up to 1896 -- his 'empathy' for traumatized and/or victimized 'hysterical' women...But after 1896, something changed -- I think it was a combination of the Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco and near tragedy, as well as the scientific meeting of April, 1896, where Freud learned directly and indirectly in no uncertain terms that 'patriarchal power ruled', that he was 'overpowered and outmatched', and if 'you can't beat them, you join them'.
Women like Mother Teresa -- and Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, even Princess Diana -- were too busy 'working the trenches' trying to help and heal people in their highest states of misery, to think about 'political correctness'...and/or their own 'self-preservation'..
Mother Teresa burned a type, an intensity, a depth and a breadth of love that none of us are likely to come close to duplicating... If there is a connection here to the 'altruistic idealism' of Christianity -- or any other religion -- then I have the deepest of respect for any man or woman who can burn the fire and spiritual-religious idealism of their particular religion to the applied depth and breadth of these women...
.................................................................
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa
(If you can't help a hundred people, then help just one. -- dgb)
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa
......................................................
Florence Nightingale Quotes
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/florence_nightingale.html
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
Florence Nightingale
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
Florence Nightingale
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale
So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
Florence Nightingale
The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
Florence Nightingale
The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.
Florence Nightingale
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale
...........................................................
Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC (pronounced /ˈflÉ’rÉ™ns ˈnaɪtɨŋɡeɪl/, historically [ˈflɒɾəns]; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. A Christian universalist, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
...................................................
I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”
Edith Cavell
....................................................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell
Edith Louisa Cavell ( /ˈkævÉ™l/; 4 December 1865 – 12 October 1915) was a British nurse and humanitarian. She is celebrated for saving the lives of casualties from all sides without distinction and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I, for which she was arrested. She was court-martialled and found guilty of treason. She was sentenced to death and shot by firing squad. She received worldwide sympathetic press coverage.
She is well-known for her statement that "patriotism is not enough." Her strong Anglican beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed it, both German and Allied soldiers. She was quoted as saying, "I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved".[1] Cavell was also an influential pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium.
........................................
Mother Teresa From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa
Mother Teresa in Calcutta
Religion Catholic
Order Missionaries of Charity
Personal
Nationality Albanian, Indian
Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu
August 26, 1910(1910-08-26)
Üsküb, Vilayet of Kosovo, Ottoman Empire (today's Skopje)
Died September 5, 1997(1997-09-05) (aged 87)
Calcutta, India
Signature of Mother Teresa
Senior posting
Title Superior General
Period in office 1950–1997
Successor Nirmala Joshi
Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu[1] (pronounced [aɡˈnÉ›s ˈɡɔndÊ’a bÉ”jaˈdÊ’iu]), was a Catholic nun of Albanian[2][3] ethnicity and Indian citizenship,[4] who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries. Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.[5][6]
By the 1970s, she was internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary and book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counselling programs, orphanages, and schools.
....................................................
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/princess_diana.html
Quotes from Princess Diana...
Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.
Princess Diana
Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Princess Diana
Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.
Princess Diana
Everyone of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves.
Princess Diana
Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana
HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it.
Princess Diana
Hugs can do great amounts of good - especially for children.
Princess Diana
I don't even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.
Princess Diana
I don't go by the rule book... I lead from the heart, not the head.
Princess Diana
I don't want expensive gifts; I don't want to be bought. I have everything I want. I just want someone to be there for me, to make me feel safe and secure.
Princess Diana
I knew what my job was; it was to go out and meet the people and love them.
Princess Diana
I like to be a free spirit. Some don't like that, but that's the way I am.
Princess Diana
I live for my sons. I would be lost without them.
Princess Diana
I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself; you want to try even harder to make it work.
Princess Diana
I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that.
Princess Diana
I want my boys to have an understanding of people's emotions, their insecurities, people's distress, and their hopes and dreams.
Princess Diana
I want to walk into a room, be it a hospital for the dying or a hospital for the sick children, and feel that I am needed. I want to do, not just to be.
Princess Diana
I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Princess Diana
I will fight for my children on any level so they can reach their potential as human beings and in their public duties.
Princess Diana
....................................................
-- dgb, Easter Sunday, April 24th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
................................................
I think Mother Teresa had a deeper insight -- and a more intense empathy -- into the 'reality', not the 'fantasy', of 'human neurosis' than Freud did...And with all due respect to Freud, I think she was by far the greater healer...
Not surprisingly in my opinion, Mother Teresa's insight into human suffering and 'neurosis' -- a name that she probably would never even use -- came mainly from a similar place -- traumacy theory -- where Freud had started his investigations into psychoanalysis and psychotherapeutic healing in the early 1890s, not after he abandoned this position/perspective/theory after 1896. Mother Teresa, to my knowledge, was never interested in 'human fantasy theory' -- perhaps more of a product of the middle and upper class where people have more time, money, and energy to fantasize...-- no, she was too busy trying to encourage, support, and give people hope and love in the deepest depths of their suffering...
You saw some of this in Freud's work up to 1896 -- his 'empathy' for traumatized and/or victimized 'hysterical' women...But after 1896, something changed -- I think it was a combination of the Emma Ekstein nasal surgery fiasco and near tragedy, as well as the scientific meeting of April, 1896, where Freud learned directly and indirectly in no uncertain terms that 'patriarchal power ruled', that he was 'overpowered and outmatched', and if 'you can't beat them, you join them'.
Women like Mother Teresa -- and Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, even Princess Diana -- were too busy 'working the trenches' trying to help and heal people in their highest states of misery, to think about 'political correctness'...and/or their own 'self-preservation'..
Mother Teresa burned a type, an intensity, a depth and a breadth of love that none of us are likely to come close to duplicating... If there is a connection here to the 'altruistic idealism' of Christianity -- or any other religion -- then I have the deepest of respect for any man or woman who can burn the fire and spiritual-religious idealism of their particular religion to the applied depth and breadth of these women...
.................................................................
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa
(If you can't help a hundred people, then help just one. -- dgb)
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa
......................................................
Florence Nightingale Quotes
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/florence_nightingale.html
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
Florence Nightingale
I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.
Florence Nightingale
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale
So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
Florence Nightingale
The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
Florence Nightingale
The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.
Florence Nightingale
Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale
...........................................................
Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC (pronounced /ˈflÉ’rÉ™ns ˈnaɪtɨŋɡeɪl/, historically [ˈflɒɾəns]; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. A Christian universalist, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
...................................................
I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”
Edith Cavell
....................................................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell
Edith Louisa Cavell ( /ˈkævÉ™l/; 4 December 1865 – 12 October 1915) was a British nurse and humanitarian. She is celebrated for saving the lives of casualties from all sides without distinction and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I, for which she was arrested. She was court-martialled and found guilty of treason. She was sentenced to death and shot by firing squad. She received worldwide sympathetic press coverage.
She is well-known for her statement that "patriotism is not enough." Her strong Anglican beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed it, both German and Allied soldiers. She was quoted as saying, "I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved".[1] Cavell was also an influential pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium.
........................................
Mother Teresa From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa
Mother Teresa in Calcutta
Religion Catholic
Order Missionaries of Charity
Personal
Nationality Albanian, Indian
Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu
August 26, 1910(1910-08-26)
Üsküb, Vilayet of Kosovo, Ottoman Empire (today's Skopje)
Died September 5, 1997(1997-09-05) (aged 87)
Calcutta, India
Signature of Mother Teresa
Senior posting
Title Superior General
Period in office 1950–1997
Successor Nirmala Joshi
Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu[1] (pronounced [aɡˈnÉ›s ˈɡɔndÊ’a bÉ”jaˈdÊ’iu]), was a Catholic nun of Albanian[2][3] ethnicity and Indian citizenship,[4] who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries. Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.[5][6]
By the 1970s, she was internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary and book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counselling programs, orphanages, and schools.
....................................................
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/princess_diana.html
Quotes from Princess Diana...
Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.
Princess Diana
Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Princess Diana
Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.
Princess Diana
Everyone of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves.
Princess Diana
Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana
HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it.
Princess Diana
Hugs can do great amounts of good - especially for children.
Princess Diana
I don't even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.
Princess Diana
I don't go by the rule book... I lead from the heart, not the head.
Princess Diana
I don't want expensive gifts; I don't want to be bought. I have everything I want. I just want someone to be there for me, to make me feel safe and secure.
Princess Diana
I knew what my job was; it was to go out and meet the people and love them.
Princess Diana
I like to be a free spirit. Some don't like that, but that's the way I am.
Princess Diana
I live for my sons. I would be lost without them.
Princess Diana
I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself; you want to try even harder to make it work.
Princess Diana
I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that.
Princess Diana
I want my boys to have an understanding of people's emotions, their insecurities, people's distress, and their hopes and dreams.
Princess Diana
I want to walk into a room, be it a hospital for the dying or a hospital for the sick children, and feel that I am needed. I want to do, not just to be.
Princess Diana
I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Princess Diana
I will fight for my children on any level so they can reach their potential as human beings and in their public duties.
Princess Diana
....................................................
-- dgb, Easter Sunday, April 24th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
The Greatest Cure in The World for 'Capitalism'...
Dialectic-(Democratic)-Homeostatic Balance (DHB) will always be disturbed, disrupted, bent out of shape and balance, by individual and group narcissistic bias, manipulation, money and power.
Restoring the DHB group (i.e., self, relationship, family, community, corporate, government, institutional) balance will always demand that 'fair-minded, ethical, DHB thinking and feeling' people will in the end defeat 'narcissistically blinded and/or bent out of shape' people in a rhetorical war of words -- or something unfortunately worse -- a political, economic and/or physical war of 'will to power'. Obviously, sometimes the 'good guys' don't always win -- or win in the first attempt. Some narcissistic dictators and/or manipulators may take years to finally 'defeat'. But in the end, generally, 'what goes around comes around'... The second oldest known philosopher in Greek history -- Anaximander gave us that last 'priceless and timeless gem' of ancient wisdom.
In this regard, we can all choose to be a part of the 'narcissistic individual and/or group problem' or we can step above this -- see other people beyond what we see in the closest mirror -- and be a part of an 'ethical, humanistic-existential conflict-negotiating and resolving team'.
Where do you draw the line between being an ethical, humanistic-existential negotiator vs. being a 'one-sided, narcissitic negotiator' who doesn't care a flying flip about the person you are negotiating with?
Ideally, you are supposed to be able to stand up for your own self, your own rights and wishes, while the other person looks after his or her own self, rights and wishes...And the 'finalized deal' is where each person in the deal meets somewhere in the 'middle' and agrees on this 'middle'.
But what do you do about fraudulent sellers and negotiators, people on the other side of the bargaining negotiation table who have told you something that isn't true, or know something about what he or she is selling that you don't -- and ethically should. Perhaps the salesman/woman knows that the car he/she is about to sell you has an engine that is about to blow up, and by rights, this is where you need to due your 'due dilligence' and have your own mechanic check the car, and/or get a warrenty, take it out for a good test drive, and/or work with a sales person who you feel comfortable that you can trust that he or she actually cares about you as well as, or on top of, or instead of, how much he or she wants to get rid of a 'bad car for the maximum possible price'.
The difference between 'narcissistic capitalism' and 'ethical-dialectic-democratic-humanistic-existential capitalism' basically comes down to the following two questions:
1, Should I, or should I not be -- ethical?
2. How can I make this deal a 'win-win' deal where both of us walk out of the deal happier than when we walked into it, and, thus, both of us wanting to do business with each other again?
Ethics and integrity are never perfect, and narcissistic impulses are often strong -- indeed, a legitimate part of our everyday self-wants, self-needs, and self-expression as long as they don't cross social-ethical boundaries...into the realm of the unethical, the corrupt, the greedy, and/or the criminal...
Greed is almost an inherent vice -- or at least a potential inherent vice -- in human nature. Certainly, it has been around since as far back as recorded human history goes -- back to 'pillaging-plundering' tribes..
The simplest definition of both 'narcissitic capitalism' and 'pathological narcissism' is not caring a 'rat's ....' about the person and/or people around you who you are affecting...
Unfortunately, narcissistic capitalism breeds more and more narcissitic capitalists...in government, on Wall Street and Bay Street, in private corporations, in sellers and buyers, in lawyers who encourage their clients to be fraudulent in order to get a bigger insurance claim of which they get a percentage of, in family lawyers who are paid to get as much as they possibly can for their clients, at the expense of lives that are destroyed on the opposite side of the bargaining table...'Sorry, I had the better lawyer...you should have spent more on a better lawyer...I get the four bedroom house with the children, and you, if you are lucky, can maybe afford to rent a room in a house...and hopefully still have enough money left for at least food'...Or in other case scenarios, both sides are destroyed in a fight where only the lawyers go home with the 'spoils'...
Who doesn't want to be rich? Not too many of us...Being with money is, all else being equal, a much better life than being without money...I've experienced life on 'both sides of the track' -- or at least what I call 'middle class poverty' where you may live in a nice or at least decent place...but you can't afford to do anything else, and even keeping up with your bills becomes a struggle that sometimes -- or every day -- you fear losing... The war of diminishing 'take home income'...and increasing expenses...a combination of inflation and a floundering economy where the people at the top still manage to find a way to pull strings and get a bigger and bigger piece of the pie...Call it a mixture of global capitalism and corporate collusion, even government-corporate collusion...
Beware the biggest political party donators...and lobbyists...they are not 'donating out of the goodness of their hearts'...they are thinking about colluding and cashing in on another deal...
Narcissistic capitalists and narcissistic people in general worship the same Greek God -- 'Narcissus'... even if they don't know it...because the signature characteristic of the narcissistic personality is not to be able to see beyond the closest mirror....and we are all narcissistic to some extent...
I'm sure even Mother Teresa looked in the mirror...but that brings us back to The Spirit of Jesus Christ...and in this case, the woman who so completely lived in the Spirit of Jesus Christ -- Mother Teresa...
We idealize -- and idolize -- Gods, either because we are like them...or we want to be more like them...Often, they respresent our 'missing half'...We live too much of a 'narcissistic life'...and then we go to Church to 'learn' how to be more 'all loving' like Jesus Christ...or Mother Teresa...
I am going to write an essay one day on Mother Teresa... I read some of her quotes a few minutes ago that started to make me cry... Being Easter, I think it is entirely fitting that I share these with you...
.............................................
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor? Mother Teresa
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. Mother Teresa
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. Mother Teresa
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. Mother Teresa
Intense love does not measure, it just gives. Mother Teresa
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. Mother Teresa
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Mother Teresa
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given. Mother Teresa
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. Mother Teresa
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. Mother Teresa
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. Mother Teresa
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home. Mother Teresa
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Mother Teresa
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mother_teresa.html
........................................................
The next time you go into a business deal -- or any other encounter and/or relationship at all, for that matter...
Imagine that you have Narcissus looking over your one shoulder...
And both Jesus Christ and Mother Teresa looking over your other shoulder...
Then go ahead and make your 'deal'...
I fathom a guess...
That that would be the greatest cure in the world...
For 'Capitalism'...
Or for any other ideology in the world...
For that matter...
In Hegel's Hotel...
'God' symbolizes 'self-strength' and 'self-assertion'...
Whereas 'Jesus Christ' more fully symbolizes 'empathy, social sensitivity, and loving/caring about others...'
In Hegel's Hotel, both God and Jesus Christ -- like Narcissus (The Greeek God of Self-Interest) and 'Altruissus' (The DGB God of Social Interest)-- flow together and dialectically unite into a 'Holy Trinity' -- 'The Holy Spirit' being the 'creative, dialectic union between self-and-social interest and love' in a way that helps to build a better world for both ourselves and the people we share this world with...because we all need each other in good times -- and especially in bad times...
Idealistic? Of course...
Realistic?
As Mother Teresa would say,
........................................
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Each one of them/us is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa
.............................
-- dgb, April 23rd-24th, 2011.
-- Where Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- And Amazing, Creative Integrations...
-- Can happen...
Restoring the DHB group (i.e., self, relationship, family, community, corporate, government, institutional) balance will always demand that 'fair-minded, ethical, DHB thinking and feeling' people will in the end defeat 'narcissistically blinded and/or bent out of shape' people in a rhetorical war of words -- or something unfortunately worse -- a political, economic and/or physical war of 'will to power'. Obviously, sometimes the 'good guys' don't always win -- or win in the first attempt. Some narcissistic dictators and/or manipulators may take years to finally 'defeat'. But in the end, generally, 'what goes around comes around'... The second oldest known philosopher in Greek history -- Anaximander gave us that last 'priceless and timeless gem' of ancient wisdom.
In this regard, we can all choose to be a part of the 'narcissistic individual and/or group problem' or we can step above this -- see other people beyond what we see in the closest mirror -- and be a part of an 'ethical, humanistic-existential conflict-negotiating and resolving team'.
Where do you draw the line between being an ethical, humanistic-existential negotiator vs. being a 'one-sided, narcissitic negotiator' who doesn't care a flying flip about the person you are negotiating with?
Ideally, you are supposed to be able to stand up for your own self, your own rights and wishes, while the other person looks after his or her own self, rights and wishes...And the 'finalized deal' is where each person in the deal meets somewhere in the 'middle' and agrees on this 'middle'.
But what do you do about fraudulent sellers and negotiators, people on the other side of the bargaining negotiation table who have told you something that isn't true, or know something about what he or she is selling that you don't -- and ethically should. Perhaps the salesman/woman knows that the car he/she is about to sell you has an engine that is about to blow up, and by rights, this is where you need to due your 'due dilligence' and have your own mechanic check the car, and/or get a warrenty, take it out for a good test drive, and/or work with a sales person who you feel comfortable that you can trust that he or she actually cares about you as well as, or on top of, or instead of, how much he or she wants to get rid of a 'bad car for the maximum possible price'.
The difference between 'narcissistic capitalism' and 'ethical-dialectic-democratic-humanistic-existential capitalism' basically comes down to the following two questions:
1, Should I, or should I not be -- ethical?
2. How can I make this deal a 'win-win' deal where both of us walk out of the deal happier than when we walked into it, and, thus, both of us wanting to do business with each other again?
Ethics and integrity are never perfect, and narcissistic impulses are often strong -- indeed, a legitimate part of our everyday self-wants, self-needs, and self-expression as long as they don't cross social-ethical boundaries...into the realm of the unethical, the corrupt, the greedy, and/or the criminal...
Greed is almost an inherent vice -- or at least a potential inherent vice -- in human nature. Certainly, it has been around since as far back as recorded human history goes -- back to 'pillaging-plundering' tribes..
The simplest definition of both 'narcissitic capitalism' and 'pathological narcissism' is not caring a 'rat's ....' about the person and/or people around you who you are affecting...
Unfortunately, narcissistic capitalism breeds more and more narcissitic capitalists...in government, on Wall Street and Bay Street, in private corporations, in sellers and buyers, in lawyers who encourage their clients to be fraudulent in order to get a bigger insurance claim of which they get a percentage of, in family lawyers who are paid to get as much as they possibly can for their clients, at the expense of lives that are destroyed on the opposite side of the bargaining table...'Sorry, I had the better lawyer...you should have spent more on a better lawyer...I get the four bedroom house with the children, and you, if you are lucky, can maybe afford to rent a room in a house...and hopefully still have enough money left for at least food'...Or in other case scenarios, both sides are destroyed in a fight where only the lawyers go home with the 'spoils'...
Who doesn't want to be rich? Not too many of us...Being with money is, all else being equal, a much better life than being without money...I've experienced life on 'both sides of the track' -- or at least what I call 'middle class poverty' where you may live in a nice or at least decent place...but you can't afford to do anything else, and even keeping up with your bills becomes a struggle that sometimes -- or every day -- you fear losing... The war of diminishing 'take home income'...and increasing expenses...a combination of inflation and a floundering economy where the people at the top still manage to find a way to pull strings and get a bigger and bigger piece of the pie...Call it a mixture of global capitalism and corporate collusion, even government-corporate collusion...
Beware the biggest political party donators...and lobbyists...they are not 'donating out of the goodness of their hearts'...they are thinking about colluding and cashing in on another deal...
Narcissistic capitalists and narcissistic people in general worship the same Greek God -- 'Narcissus'... even if they don't know it...because the signature characteristic of the narcissistic personality is not to be able to see beyond the closest mirror....and we are all narcissistic to some extent...
I'm sure even Mother Teresa looked in the mirror...but that brings us back to The Spirit of Jesus Christ...and in this case, the woman who so completely lived in the Spirit of Jesus Christ -- Mother Teresa...
We idealize -- and idolize -- Gods, either because we are like them...or we want to be more like them...Often, they respresent our 'missing half'...We live too much of a 'narcissistic life'...and then we go to Church to 'learn' how to be more 'all loving' like Jesus Christ...or Mother Teresa...
I am going to write an essay one day on Mother Teresa... I read some of her quotes a few minutes ago that started to make me cry... Being Easter, I think it is entirely fitting that I share these with you...
.............................................
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor? Mother Teresa
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. Mother Teresa
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. Mother Teresa
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. Mother Teresa
Intense love does not measure, it just gives. Mother Teresa
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. Mother Teresa
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Mother Teresa
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given. Mother Teresa
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. Mother Teresa
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. Mother Teresa
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. Mother Teresa
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home. Mother Teresa
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Mother Teresa
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mother_teresa.html
........................................................
The next time you go into a business deal -- or any other encounter and/or relationship at all, for that matter...
Imagine that you have Narcissus looking over your one shoulder...
And both Jesus Christ and Mother Teresa looking over your other shoulder...
Then go ahead and make your 'deal'...
I fathom a guess...
That that would be the greatest cure in the world...
For 'Capitalism'...
Or for any other ideology in the world...
For that matter...
In Hegel's Hotel...
'God' symbolizes 'self-strength' and 'self-assertion'...
Whereas 'Jesus Christ' more fully symbolizes 'empathy, social sensitivity, and loving/caring about others...'
In Hegel's Hotel, both God and Jesus Christ -- like Narcissus (The Greeek God of Self-Interest) and 'Altruissus' (The DGB God of Social Interest)-- flow together and dialectically unite into a 'Holy Trinity' -- 'The Holy Spirit' being the 'creative, dialectic union between self-and-social interest and love' in a way that helps to build a better world for both ourselves and the people we share this world with...because we all need each other in good times -- and especially in bad times...
Idealistic? Of course...
Realistic?
As Mother Teresa would say,
........................................
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Each one of them/us is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa
.............................
-- dgb, April 23rd-24th, 2011.
-- Where Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- And Amazing, Creative Integrations...
-- Can happen...
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Ten Different Commandments
Someone has written these beautiful words. One must read and try to understand the deep meanings in them. They are like the Ten Commandments to follow in life all the time.
1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble; it is a "steering wheel" that directs us in the right path throughout life.
2] Do you know why a car's windshield is so large & the rear view mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. So, look ahead and move on.
3] Friendship is like a book. It takes a few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.
4] All things in life are temporary. If going well, enjoy it; they will not last forever. If going wrong, don?t worry; they can't last long either.
5] Old friends are like Gold! New friends are Diamonds! If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a base of Gold!
6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, God smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!"
7] When God solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when God doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.
8] A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing you eyesight?" He replied: "Yes, losing your vision."
9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them; and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.
10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES; it takes away todays PEACE.
1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble; it is a "steering wheel" that directs us in the right path throughout life.
2] Do you know why a car's windshield is so large & the rear view mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. So, look ahead and move on.
3] Friendship is like a book. It takes a few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.
4] All things in life are temporary. If going well, enjoy it; they will not last forever. If going wrong, don?t worry; they can't last long either.
5] Old friends are like Gold! New friends are Diamonds! If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a base of Gold!
6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, God smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!"
7] When God solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when God doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.
8] A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing you eyesight?" He replied: "Yes, losing your vision."
9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them; and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.
10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES; it takes away todays PEACE.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
On The Good and Bad Side of Religion
You don't need the bible to learn morality or ethics. Having said that, my mom remains a very religious person, and she is one of the kindest, most community-oriented persons I have ever known. I still wouldn't want to get into a religious argument with her -- she believes what she believes -- but she is not a religious hypocrite. She lives her Protestant religion -- and reaches out to practically everyone to make them feel welcome and to make them feel better. The ultimate community person. The closest person I have met to Mother Teresa.
My dad has the same religious spirit as my mother but he needs more personal, individual space than my mom. He was -- and still is a visionary, idealistic person, expressed politically, economically, and business-wise through his political, economic, and business ideals as well as romantically through his much more recent 21st Century Romantic Poetry.
Me, I need my boundaries, need my freedom, need my individual space...I can be sociable enough with people I like and feel comfortable with but, at the same time, can be practically non-existant towards people who I basically don't want to talk with. I have my dad's visionary idealism expressed in my own way through my philosophy-psychology, I have some of my mother's caring, loyalty, and community spirit, but I am much more introverted, self-oriented, and narcissistic than my mother. I play the 'alienated, underground, stranger' role much easier than the 'community or political activist' role.
Religion has its good side. Caring about other people. Helping other people in a world where there is not really enough of this around anymore as people basically isolate themselves behind closed doors, or worse, in desolate mountain caves, planning who they can blow up next. (Or is that because of religion gone bad because of the nature of the perceiver and interpreter?)
To be sure, you don't need religion to care about people...but still...will there ever be another Mother Teresa? One without a driving internal religion to motivate him or her to do the type of work that Mother Teresa did, even if not to that extreme? There are not many people who can live this type of lifestyle -- with seemingly almost unlimited 'giving'. Still, I have the highest regard and respect for those who can. They are our unsung heroes. I work alone on my computer doing my thing. I hope that my work is good for people, has meaning for people. But there is nothing to beat the type of work these community workers do in the 'trenches of humanity'.
But the bad side of religion can be horrific. Righteous intolerance, refusing to see another point of view...Torturing, killing, and/or alienating non-believers or alternative believers...authoritarianism, restrictive lifestyles that are just way too restrictive...
-- dgb, April 2nd, 2009.
My dad has the same religious spirit as my mother but he needs more personal, individual space than my mom. He was -- and still is a visionary, idealistic person, expressed politically, economically, and business-wise through his political, economic, and business ideals as well as romantically through his much more recent 21st Century Romantic Poetry.
Me, I need my boundaries, need my freedom, need my individual space...I can be sociable enough with people I like and feel comfortable with but, at the same time, can be practically non-existant towards people who I basically don't want to talk with. I have my dad's visionary idealism expressed in my own way through my philosophy-psychology, I have some of my mother's caring, loyalty, and community spirit, but I am much more introverted, self-oriented, and narcissistic than my mother. I play the 'alienated, underground, stranger' role much easier than the 'community or political activist' role.
Religion has its good side. Caring about other people. Helping other people in a world where there is not really enough of this around anymore as people basically isolate themselves behind closed doors, or worse, in desolate mountain caves, planning who they can blow up next. (Or is that because of religion gone bad because of the nature of the perceiver and interpreter?)
To be sure, you don't need religion to care about people...but still...will there ever be another Mother Teresa? One without a driving internal religion to motivate him or her to do the type of work that Mother Teresa did, even if not to that extreme? There are not many people who can live this type of lifestyle -- with seemingly almost unlimited 'giving'. Still, I have the highest regard and respect for those who can. They are our unsung heroes. I work alone on my computer doing my thing. I hope that my work is good for people, has meaning for people. But there is nothing to beat the type of work these community workers do in the 'trenches of humanity'.
But the bad side of religion can be horrific. Righteous intolerance, refusing to see another point of view...Torturing, killing, and/or alienating non-believers or alternative believers...authoritarianism, restrictive lifestyles that are just way too restrictive...
-- dgb, April 2nd, 2009.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
The Main Characteristic of Religion -- and All Good Organizations -- Caring About People
The main characteristic of religion should not be how 'righteous' you are but rather how much you care about people -- of every colour, nationality, culture, both sexes, and age. In this regard, religion as I have defined it here is completely compatible with 'humanism' regardless of how you choose to believe in 'God' or even whether you choose to believe in 'God'. Personally, I like my own view of 'DGB Democratic-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential Pantheism' -- the idea that 'God, Creation, and Nature is in everything, and that all living things -- and people should be treated with equality, dignity, integrity, and mutual respect. That does not preclude the fact that we still generally need to 'grow and pick our food' -- and/or 'kill it' in order to eat and continue to survive. For better for worse, life and death, living and dying, will always contain a mixture of 'co-operation and trust' in the one hand vs. 'competition and rivalry' in the other -- thrown into the same 'bag of life'.
This we have to deal with because that is how the world was made and how it continues to evolve, regress, and decay.
However, that does not justify us in terms of living our life like we are in 'Lord of The Flies'. Conquer or be conquered. Kill or be killed. Victimize or be victimized. Only the strong shall survive -- a crass ('neo-Nazi') interpretation of Charles Darwin.
Character matters. Integrity matters. Dignity matters. Equality matters. Helping others matters. Respect matters. Caring matters. Passion matters. Romance matters. Reason matters. Truth matters. Empathy matters. Accountability matters. Responsibility matters. Dialogue -- dialectic exchange between free and equal people -- matters. Freedom of speech matter. Freedom of religion matters. Freedom of the press matters. Family matters. Community matters. Friends matter. Love matters.
And how can I not say that sex matters.
Unfortunately, every day I go to work, I feel like I am walking into a 'Lord of The Flies' existence.
When I go to work, Schopenhauer rules.
And it makes me sick to my stomach.
Two people get fired right beside me.
And I am supposed to carry on like everything is okay.
When computers and corporate profits become more important than people,
More important than people caring about people,
It is time to start looking for a new job.
If I don't get pushed out first.
Obviously, corporations cannot survive without money.
But I find that it is often the corporations who,
Do not treat people with respect,
And caring,
And good dialectic-democratic dialogue,
Who end up crashing and self-destructing,
From the top down,
And the bottom up,
Once people start to lose their caring for their job,
And their caring about other people in their organization,
Who they have to work with,
As a 'team' -- a 'real team'; not a 'fake team',
In order to properly perform all necessary functions,
Of the organization,
It is probably 'lights out' anyway,
The only thing left is the funeral.
Death of the people in the organization,
Death of the organization.
Profits over people.
But without any people,
Motivated people with good skill, good will, and character,
Without any employees, customers, suppliers...
There can be no organization,
No corporation,
No profits,
Death of a corporation,
That doesn't believe in,
People.
-- DGBN, Feb. 3rd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,
-- People Before Profits,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...are still in process
This we have to deal with because that is how the world was made and how it continues to evolve, regress, and decay.
However, that does not justify us in terms of living our life like we are in 'Lord of The Flies'. Conquer or be conquered. Kill or be killed. Victimize or be victimized. Only the strong shall survive -- a crass ('neo-Nazi') interpretation of Charles Darwin.
Character matters. Integrity matters. Dignity matters. Equality matters. Helping others matters. Respect matters. Caring matters. Passion matters. Romance matters. Reason matters. Truth matters. Empathy matters. Accountability matters. Responsibility matters. Dialogue -- dialectic exchange between free and equal people -- matters. Freedom of speech matter. Freedom of religion matters. Freedom of the press matters. Family matters. Community matters. Friends matter. Love matters.
And how can I not say that sex matters.
Unfortunately, every day I go to work, I feel like I am walking into a 'Lord of The Flies' existence.
When I go to work, Schopenhauer rules.
And it makes me sick to my stomach.
Two people get fired right beside me.
And I am supposed to carry on like everything is okay.
When computers and corporate profits become more important than people,
More important than people caring about people,
It is time to start looking for a new job.
If I don't get pushed out first.
Obviously, corporations cannot survive without money.
But I find that it is often the corporations who,
Do not treat people with respect,
And caring,
And good dialectic-democratic dialogue,
Who end up crashing and self-destructing,
From the top down,
And the bottom up,
Once people start to lose their caring for their job,
And their caring about other people in their organization,
Who they have to work with,
As a 'team' -- a 'real team'; not a 'fake team',
In order to properly perform all necessary functions,
Of the organization,
It is probably 'lights out' anyway,
The only thing left is the funeral.
Death of the people in the organization,
Death of the organization.
Profits over people.
But without any people,
Motivated people with good skill, good will, and character,
Without any employees, customers, suppliers...
There can be no organization,
No corporation,
No profits,
Death of a corporation,
That doesn't believe in,
People.
-- DGBN, Feb. 3rd, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism,
-- People Before Profits,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...are still in process
Friday, January 02, 2009
What are Gods?
Gods are metaphysical, mythological ideals, probably projected, or mainly projected, possibly not entirely, that are capable of being used for happy, healthy purposes, and/or abused for extremist, righteous, pathological purposes. Indeed, 'Gods' can be used for as many different abstract and/or concrete purposes as there are people out there who believe in them because every person is different, every person's abstract and concrete interpetation of 'God' is different, and every person's motivation, intent, and purpose is different, and can be woven around his or her ideal of God -- and/or visa versa -- to be used narcissistically and/or altruistically, constructively and/or destructively, healthily and/or pathologically, just as anything and everything else within man's field of awareness, epistemology, and ethics.
-- DGBN, Jan. 2nd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- DGBN, Jan. 2nd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Metaphysical Categories, DGBN (Post-Hegelian) Philosophy, and The Dialectical Force of Man-Nature-God (Updated Dec. 18/19th, 2008)
Sometimes it can be rather amusing to look at the supposed 'differences' between philosophy and psychology.
Philosophy -- at least 'Deconstructive, Post-Modern' Philosophy' -- often seeks to 'deconstruct' what psychology has 'constructed'. I am thinking mainly of the type of Deconstructive Philosophy that David Hume 'created for himself' and other radical philosophical skeptics to follow in his footsteps -- where, for example, he denied the 'existence' of what is usually taken for granted in the realm of psychology -- 'The Self'.
What's with this?
Well, Hume's 'deconstructive logic' -- as much as you or I might feel like strangling him at times -- does carry some epistemological weight.
However, if you follow it where Hume took it, then you will be left with very little 'so-called knowledge' left to carry around in your mind because in Hume's philosophy practically every generalization becomes 'un-generalized'.
Indeed, in Humean philosophy, not even the 'mind' or at least the 'self' is construed to exist.
In effect, all generalizations are to be distrusted and disbanded because 'if you can't see them, then they don't exist'. Essentially, Humean Philosophy -- as well as being the logical extension and application of 'empiricism taken to the limit and beyond...('radical empiricism') -- was basically also the philosophical bridge between Heraclites' brand of pre-Socratic ancient Greek Philosophy ('You can't step into the same river twice') and the radical empirical philosophy-psychology of 'Behaviorism' that was to follow Hume into the 20th century as developed mainly by B.F. Skinner.
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From the internet...(Google: Greek Philosophy, Heraclitus...)
Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change—the Logos—form the essential foundation of the European world view. Everytime you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos.
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From Wikipedia (Google: B.F.Skinner)
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform [1][2]and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology – the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7] [8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.[10] [11]
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Following 'Humean-Skinnerian logic' -- You may be able to see your 'physical, empirical self' if you look at a mirror but if you look at the same mirror you are not going to see your 'Psychological Self' -- therefore -- empirically speaking at least -- your psychological self does not exist.
The same goes for such Freudian concepts as 'Ego' and 'Id' and 'Superego'. If you can't see them, then they don't exist.
Of course back in Hume's day, they couldn't see 'bacteria' and 'viruses' but that was not to say that they didn't exist. Things and living entities that you don't see can still kill you -- indeed, they are probably more dangerous in the fact that they are not seen such as 'the car you don't see'. Or the mugger you don't see...
In philosophy, you learn about 'epistemology' (the study of knowledge) whereas in Freudian -- or Post-Freudian -- Psychology, you learn about 'Central Ego Function' --and then you would probably proceed to start studying 'epistemology' as one of the main 'ego functions or processes' within the confines of 'The Central Ego'.
In other words, in psychology, it is almost like we 'need' to 'invent internal structural systems' -- kind of like 'organs in the mind' -- except that there is no, physical empirical basis on which to believe that these 'ego structures' actually exist except as 'mythological entities' much like 'Gods' -- with the same intended purpose: to explain things which are otherwise difficult if not downright impossible to explain.
It would be easy to argue -- and I will take up this argument again on behalf of David Hume -- that this is one of man's central 'mental features or characteristics': making up 'things' or 'structures' that don't exist -- or worded another way -- 'turning physical or psychological processes (Would Hume even accept the existence of 'psychological and/or epistemological processes? -- you can't see them!) into non-existent, and totally man-made 'conceptual structures or constructions' -- and calling them 'real'!
In fact, this is one of the main problems with 'classification systems' in general: they 'conceptually funnel' knowledge into particular categories that may or may not exist -- 'phenomenomologically', 'biologically', 'physically', 'chemically', and so on...
'Categories' can be mentally dangerous generalizations and ideas because we think they are real -- and give them supposedly real characteristics -- 'conceptual characteristics' which may or may not structurally fit the reality of the 'thing-in-itself'. If we have done a good job conceptually characterizing the 'thing-in-itself', then we can likely make pretty accurate generalizations and predictions about how the thing-in-itself can be expected to behave, what it is likely to do and/or not do, and so on. The tree that I see on my front yard tonight will likely still be there in the morning. Unless something very catastrophic happens, the sun that rose from the horizon this morning -- even if I cannot see it during most winter days -- we can reasonably expect will rise again from the same horizon tomorrow. It's been doing that for thousands of years. Presumably. I'm not quite that old but I'm pretty sure it has risen every day of my life. Even that is a lot of days.
So the point here is that some categories, generalizations, interpretations, and predictions have more 'star power' than others. Others don't have quite that much star power. Weather generalizations and predictions can be right or wrong. Their reliability isn't nearly as high as the 'sun coming up every morning' generalization. Sun rises have much more 'generalizations star power' than 'weather reports'. However, I still trust that we are probably going to get hit with some kind of a snow storm at some point tomorrow. (Hopefully, it is after the rush hour, and even better, after I have finished dispatching for the day.)
'Black and white man-made categories or classification systems' don't allow for the existence of 'hybrids' -- or anything that exists outside of the 'mental box' of the classifyer's 'classification system'.
That is, until someone pipes up and says: 'I don't like this particular classification system; I'm going to make a new one up that is better...(We can read on the internet this morning about the first man to 'have a baby'! (That was back on June 8th, 2008. Now I am updating on Dec. 18th, 2008.)Life doesn't believe in always following nice, neat, clean, man-made classification systems or categories...)
Thus, for anyone who has set about the task of learning a particular branch of knowledge, it is important to know that you are basically at the mercy -- and the power -- of the particular person or organization 'who has structured and classified the knowledge in a particular way' so that you only get to learn about the type of knowledge that is 'inside the classification box'; not outside. This is why you often here the cry -- 'Think outside the box'.
That is, think outside the classification box -- or you might miss some important types of knowledge that otherwise will not be taught to you.
There is value in constantly changing up any 'Classificaiton Box' -- or 'flexibly being able to smoothly move from one Classification Box to another -- such as from Psychoanalysis, to Jungian Psychology, to Adlerian Psychology, to Behavorial Psychology, to Gestalt Therapy, to Transactional Analysis, and so on -- just as there is value in being able to speak and understand different languages -- each language making up another different type of 'Classification Box'.
This is why 'DGB Philosophy' uses a lot of 'hyphenated words' -- like 'DGB Philosophy-Psychology'. 'DGBN' not only narcissistically stands for my name -- David Gordon Bain -- it also, stands for what I philosophically do -- which is 'dialectical gap-bridging negotiations (DGBN)' between different phiilosophical systems, different psychological systems, bringing philosophical and psychological systems together...and every other type of system dialectically together in an effort to create a different type of 'hybrid-classification system' that has its own unique form of 'funtionality and value' like dialectically integrating a 'normal gas car with a propane or natural gas car, or with a hydrogen or electrical car' so that you improve energy efficiency, reduce your dependency on normal gas but still have normal gas if you can't find a propane or natural gas station or can't run your car on hydrogen or electricity until you take it home and 're-charge' it for a night...
'Integrative solutions' to problems are often superior to 'either/or solutions'. 'Either/or' solutions to problems can have strong negative side-effects -- pertaining to the polar-side you are ignoring as opposed to championing. Integrative solutions ideally champion the 'best of both polar worlds' while aiming to minimize the potential conflict and disharmony that comes from 'idolizing' one side of the conflict while neglecting, ignoring, suppressing, and/or 'demonizing' the other side. Integrative solutions search for that 'happy medium' -- Aristotle's 'middle path' -- where both sides get at least part of what they want while allowing the other side to get the most important part of what they want as well. Call it 'compromise' if you wish or even better a 'win-win' integrative solution where 'harmony and homeostatic balance' is achieved -- at least until something or someone comes along to upset the balance and set conflict in motion again...or someone comes along and creates something even better...evolution at its best...
In the case of old fashioned, new fashioned, and hybrid cars, we can say that our classification system is 'physically or empirically grounded' because we can see the 'gas tank' or the 'propane tank' or the 'natural gas tank' or the 'electical outlet' where we might have to plug our car into an electrical cord that goes into an outlet in the wall.
Same with the taxi business where we can actually see the difference between 'voice' and 'computer' dispatching and an 'integrative computer-voice dispatching system'.
However, once we enter the world of 'internal psychology' -- or even 'religion' for that matter, we can't say the same thing about 'The Central Mediating Ego' or 'The Righteous-Ethical Topdog' or 'The Narcissistic Topdog (or Underdog)' or 'The Nurturing-Supportive Topdog' -- or 'The Soul' -- or 'God'.
These last types of 'classification systems' are 'metaphysical systems' and may even deserve to be called 'Mythological Systems' -- meaning not that they may or may not have functional value -- but rather, that their 'physical-empirical' basis cannot be proven or verified without a doubt; and on this basis, is subject to 'legitmate epistemological dispute and controversy' -- if not downright 'skepticism'. Remember: 'Metaphysics' means basically -- 'above and beyond physics' as first categorized by Aristotle.
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From the internet...(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aristotle's Metaphysics
First published Sun Oct 8, 2000; substantive revision Mon Jun 9, 2008
The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title “Metaphysics” was the treatise by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even describe his field of study as ‘metaphysics’; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works. The title ‘metaphysics’ — literally, ‘after the Physics’ — very likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are developed in Aristotle's treatise.
1. The Subject Matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics
2. The Categories
3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being
4. The Fundamental Principles: Axioms
5. What is Substance?
6. Substance, Matter, and Subject
7. Substance and Essence
8. Substances as Hylomorphic Compounds
9. Substance and Definition
10. Substances and Universals
11. Substance as Cause of Being
12. Actuality and Potentiality
13. Unity Reconsidered
14. Glossary of Aristotelian Terminology
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It must be made absolutely clear that unlike Hume and Skinner, I am not saything that metaphysical and mythological systems have no value -- because oftentimes I believe they do -- rather, what I am saying is that there value may not be in their 'epistemological reality' but rather in their 'Projected-Self-Idealism' and their 'Projected Philosophical Idealism'.
As long as we are willing to call a spade a spade -- and not say that it is something else, as long as we are willing to admit and own up to the fact that our 'Metaphysical/Mythological Structure or Construction' is exactly that and not necessarily an 'epistmeological reality', that it is our own form of 'projected self-idealism' -- then we cannot be accused of being 'epistemologically fraudulent', of trying to propogate some sort of Mythologcial Entity onto the world in the name of 'Epistemological Truth'.
Thus, when I use the term 'God' -- I do so 'mythologically' as a 'projected form of self-idealism and philosopohical idealism; nothing more, nothing less. I do not use the term 'God' as an 'epistemological reality' -- although admittedly, often it is tempting to go here. Mainly, I use the term 'God', philosophically, metaphysically, mythologically, and spiritually, as a 'projected form of self and philosophical idealism' -- although, epistemolgicallly, I will jump one step further...
'Nature' is a physical reality; so too, are 'natural processes' which can be either 'physically (empirically) watched and/or 'reasonably/logically inferred' by 'scientific, and/or rationally-empirical minds'...
It does not take too much rational-empirical logic/reason to jump to the theory of 'intelligent design' -- that nature is intelligently designed. Furthermore, it does not take too much more 'rational-empirical logic/reason' to jump to the assumption that if 'nature is intelligently designed', then that possibly/probably? means that somewhere out there, there is -- or at least was at one time --an 'intelligent designer'. Dare we call this inferred 'intelligent designer' -- 'God' -- and if so, does the name 'God' stand on the basis of 'reasonable empirical (natural, physical) evidence -- even if there are at least one or more 'metaphysical jumps in logic' that take us from 'Nature' to 'God'?
Well, there is a problem here. Actually, there is more than one of them.
Firstly, what if 'Nature' -- from 'The Earth' to 'Life on Earth' to possibly even 'Life in the rest of the Universe' was simply created by a 'Very Superior Being' who is now dead -- like all other forms of life eventually die over time -- or a 'Superior Race of Beings' that are/were vastly more intelligent than man, and much further along the 'evolution route'...Are we going to believe in perhaps a different way than Nietzsche meant it, that 'God is dead!', and/or that 'God is/was a Superior Race of Beings'? Secondly, the idea of 'God' is so emotionally laden for most people who believe in 'God' that it is rather obvious that there is much more psychologicallly and philosophically at stake than believing that 'God' is/was simply a 'More Intelligent Being than Man' and/or a 'More Intelligent Race of Beings than God' and/or that if 'God' ever existed at one point in time, it is also quite possible/probable that God is now dead -- having died like all of the rest of us will one day...
No...this is not why 'God' -- and religion -- exists for most people who believe in God. Epistemologically, most people believe in God firstly, out of 'purely assumptive Faith' -- this is the rather shaky assumptive foundation for their belief in 'God'. But more than this, 'God' exists for most people because they cannot see their own 'projected Idol(s), their own projected 'Self-Energy', and their own 'projected form of Self and Philosophical Idealism' hidden, even buried, beneath their religious beliefs...
To properly understand God and Religion, man has to have the courage to look at his own Self-Projected Energy and Philosophical Idealism as a 'compensatory measure' either taken to alleviate underlying psychological-philosophical anxiety such as 'the fear of death and/or the fear of freedom and/or the fear of being essentially alone in a warm or cold universe of his or her own personal, phenomenonological-existential making... Or religion and God is simply what they were taught to believe in, and they really haven't decided to take either the time and/or the energy to challenge all of, or any of, the associated beliefs.
In essence, the belief in God as an 'epistemological reality' -- for the most part (and I can hear millions of angry people wanting to get a piece of me here...) is a 'smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show' for underlying 'existential anxiety'. Still, metaphysically and mythologically, the belief in God can still serve a valuable, functional purpose (like helping us to feel less alone in the world, and helping us to help others in need of help...).
Personally, as a philosophical, metaphysical, mythological, and spiritual entity, I view God as The Master Dialectical Integrating, Unifying -- and Separating --Force behind all of Nature, Evolution, and Creation...
Life for me, and for DGB Philosophy, is primarily the accidental and/or purposeful, pleasant and/or unpleasant, 'collision' of similar and/or opposing forces to 'create new chemical and psychological bonds -- and to destroy (deconstruct) old ones that are no longer functional...
This is starting to sound like 'Star Wars' here (let the 'Force' be with you! -- and we are definitely not talking about Schopenhauer's (or 'Hobbes') philosophical type of 'narcissistic, nasty, brutish killing Life and Death Force here' -- although both the world and man can encompass all of this; nor are we talking about Nietzsche's 'Will to Power' or the more humanistic (feminist?) Nietzschean rendition of the 'The Will to Self-Empowerment' although man can show both of these features as well -- both in their positive and negative aspects; nor are we totally talking about the types of forces entailed in Freud's metaphysical concepts of 'Life and Death Instinct' playing off against each other although I like parts of this classification system as well but again, this is not completely what I am talking about.
Rather, the metaphysical-mythological-spiritual classification system that I use is more of a combination of: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, the Han Philosophers, Spinoza, Hegel, and Perls...with backup support from Schopenhauer (The world can be, and often is. 'brutish and nasty'!), Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy, and the potential for dramatic tragedy in the collision of Apollo and Dionysus), Freud (Ego, Superego, and Id, life and death instinct, traumacy, seduction, assault, and narcissism), Jung (the Persona, The Shadow, and the Archetypes, and Berne (Nurturing Parent, Righteous Parent, Adult, Adaptive Child, Rebellious Child, Natural Child...), and Perls (Topdog and Underdog), hotseat and empty chair work...)
What I am talking about in terms of the number one 'philosophical and spiritual force' in DGB Philosophy-Psychology supersedes everything that we have talked about in the last paragraph. I am talking about a force that unites Western and Eastern Philosophy -- at its best; a force that integrates and unites many of the similar but different philosophical systems that make up the history of Western philosophy -- from Thales, Anixamander, Heraclitus, and the Han Philosophers to present day philosophical processes and/or systems such as DGB Philosophy-Psychology.
I am talking about what I consider to be the 'master key stroke of God' -- and here I am talking about my own projective ideal system -- but also moving beyond this because I am integrating much of Western philosophical and psychological history -- not to mention Chinese 'yin' and 'yang' theory. Perhaps I am moving into 'Intelligent Design' Theory -- into the realm of theology, the realm of metaphysics and mythology, and who knows -- maybe even into the realm of epistemology and 'epistemological truth' on a 'natural basis' at least -- because the 'force' I am talking about is so prevalent, so dominating, so all-encompassing, so potentially tied into evolution and creation theory, that it is hard not to believe that there wasn't at least at some point in time an 'Incredibly Intelligent and Sophisticated Designer or Creator' -- to which I give the name 'God' behind this Creation. The force that I call the 'master key stroke of God' -- is 'The Force of The Dialectic'... This Force is neither good nor bad -- it is 'Beyond Good and Evil' (but not in the Nietzschean sense), indeed, often it brings good and evil into the same physical and psychological space...It is 'beyond life and death' and indeed, often encompasses elements of life and death in the same physical and psychological space.
The Force of the Dialectic is largely unpredictable -- at work in the 'hot seat and empty chair technique' in Gestalt Therapy; at work in a different way between the Analyst and the client on the 'Psychoanalytic Couch', at work in any human encounter, any encounter where two or more objects, two or more processes, two or more living entitities, come together, collide together, make love together, make hate together, randomly or on purpose, chaoticallly or with intended purpose, integratively or with no resulting integration...Postives and negatives coming together, positives and positives coming together, negatives and negatives coming together -- and either 'finding a chemical fit' -- or not. I'm talking about the coming together and breaking apart of 'chemical molecules' on every microscopic and macroscopic level of existence...a dog and a cat coming together and...well...fighting like cats and dogs...or a cat and a dog coming together...and somebody snaps a picture of them 'cuddling together on the same couch'...
This is 'The Dialectical Force' that I am trying to describe here in DGB Philosophy-Psychology...Others have been here before me...many, many others...but I am just trying to put it altogether in one 'muliti-dialectical-integrative package'. Hegel, was the ultimate dialectical mastermind but he basically only touched on epistemology -- he spoke of 'The Absolute' in terms of 'Absolute Knowledge'. Others -- Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, have extrapolated in some 'post-Hegelian' way on what Hegel wrote -- improving on some of his largest weaknesses.
When I speak of The Dialectical Force, I speak not only of the evolution of knowledge but also of the evolution of existence and life -- of being and becoming, of life and death. This to me, is the full extent of The Mystical, Metaphysical, and partly Mythological Dialectical Force.
For me, The Dialectical Force is the key Creative-Destructive-Evolutionary-Working Force of Nature and/or God. We start in the earth and return to the earth, and in between, we differentiate into opposites, unify into 'dialectical wholisms' and then differentiate again into opposites, in effect, a 'splitting apart' and 'uniting' of molecules -- splitting, combining, splitting, combining... (almost sounds like the North American marriage and divorce scene) -- on the macroscopic as well as the microscopic level -- not too much different than what the combination of Anaxamander and Heraclitus (pre-Socratic) Greece and the Han Philosophers (ancient China) were saying back around the 500 BCs...that would be over 2500 years ago...
Add in some 17th century Spinozian pantheistic ideas and some 19th century Schelling and Hegelian ideas to boot...and you are starting to come pretty close to the essence of this 'spiritual-pantheist-deist smorgasboard' that I am writing about here...With some Nietzschean, Freudian, Jungian, and Gestalt 'spices' added for flavor...(You will get their stronger flavors in other essays...)
And that is where I will leave things today on this fine Sunday morning...and a month later on this fine Sunday evening...and now most recently, on this cold Friday, December evening, with a big expected snowstorm coming in tomorrow.
Our weather people could be right, or they could be wrong. Generalizations and predictions are never sure things although some have more 'star power' than others.
I trust that the snowstorm will indeed arrive sometime tomorrow.
And I trust even more that, unless something catastrophic happens tonight -- touch wood that it doesn't -- I will be at work tomorrow for my scheduled afternoon shift.
Goodnight.
-- dgb, June 8th, 2008, modified and updated, July 5th, and July 12th, 2008, December 18th-19th, 2008.
Philosophy -- at least 'Deconstructive, Post-Modern' Philosophy' -- often seeks to 'deconstruct' what psychology has 'constructed'. I am thinking mainly of the type of Deconstructive Philosophy that David Hume 'created for himself' and other radical philosophical skeptics to follow in his footsteps -- where, for example, he denied the 'existence' of what is usually taken for granted in the realm of psychology -- 'The Self'.
What's with this?
Well, Hume's 'deconstructive logic' -- as much as you or I might feel like strangling him at times -- does carry some epistemological weight.
However, if you follow it where Hume took it, then you will be left with very little 'so-called knowledge' left to carry around in your mind because in Hume's philosophy practically every generalization becomes 'un-generalized'.
Indeed, in Humean philosophy, not even the 'mind' or at least the 'self' is construed to exist.
In effect, all generalizations are to be distrusted and disbanded because 'if you can't see them, then they don't exist'. Essentially, Humean Philosophy -- as well as being the logical extension and application of 'empiricism taken to the limit and beyond...('radical empiricism') -- was basically also the philosophical bridge between Heraclites' brand of pre-Socratic ancient Greek Philosophy ('You can't step into the same river twice') and the radical empirical philosophy-psychology of 'Behaviorism' that was to follow Hume into the 20th century as developed mainly by B.F. Skinner.
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From the internet...(Google: Greek Philosophy, Heraclitus...)
Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change—the Logos—form the essential foundation of the European world view. Everytime you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos.
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From Wikipedia (Google: B.F.Skinner)
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform [1][2]and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology – the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7] [8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.[10] [11]
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Following 'Humean-Skinnerian logic' -- You may be able to see your 'physical, empirical self' if you look at a mirror but if you look at the same mirror you are not going to see your 'Psychological Self' -- therefore -- empirically speaking at least -- your psychological self does not exist.
The same goes for such Freudian concepts as 'Ego' and 'Id' and 'Superego'. If you can't see them, then they don't exist.
Of course back in Hume's day, they couldn't see 'bacteria' and 'viruses' but that was not to say that they didn't exist. Things and living entities that you don't see can still kill you -- indeed, they are probably more dangerous in the fact that they are not seen such as 'the car you don't see'. Or the mugger you don't see...
In philosophy, you learn about 'epistemology' (the study of knowledge) whereas in Freudian -- or Post-Freudian -- Psychology, you learn about 'Central Ego Function' --and then you would probably proceed to start studying 'epistemology' as one of the main 'ego functions or processes' within the confines of 'The Central Ego'.
In other words, in psychology, it is almost like we 'need' to 'invent internal structural systems' -- kind of like 'organs in the mind' -- except that there is no, physical empirical basis on which to believe that these 'ego structures' actually exist except as 'mythological entities' much like 'Gods' -- with the same intended purpose: to explain things which are otherwise difficult if not downright impossible to explain.
It would be easy to argue -- and I will take up this argument again on behalf of David Hume -- that this is one of man's central 'mental features or characteristics': making up 'things' or 'structures' that don't exist -- or worded another way -- 'turning physical or psychological processes (Would Hume even accept the existence of 'psychological and/or epistemological processes? -- you can't see them!) into non-existent, and totally man-made 'conceptual structures or constructions' -- and calling them 'real'!
In fact, this is one of the main problems with 'classification systems' in general: they 'conceptually funnel' knowledge into particular categories that may or may not exist -- 'phenomenomologically', 'biologically', 'physically', 'chemically', and so on...
'Categories' can be mentally dangerous generalizations and ideas because we think they are real -- and give them supposedly real characteristics -- 'conceptual characteristics' which may or may not structurally fit the reality of the 'thing-in-itself'. If we have done a good job conceptually characterizing the 'thing-in-itself', then we can likely make pretty accurate generalizations and predictions about how the thing-in-itself can be expected to behave, what it is likely to do and/or not do, and so on. The tree that I see on my front yard tonight will likely still be there in the morning. Unless something very catastrophic happens, the sun that rose from the horizon this morning -- even if I cannot see it during most winter days -- we can reasonably expect will rise again from the same horizon tomorrow. It's been doing that for thousands of years. Presumably. I'm not quite that old but I'm pretty sure it has risen every day of my life. Even that is a lot of days.
So the point here is that some categories, generalizations, interpretations, and predictions have more 'star power' than others. Others don't have quite that much star power. Weather generalizations and predictions can be right or wrong. Their reliability isn't nearly as high as the 'sun coming up every morning' generalization. Sun rises have much more 'generalizations star power' than 'weather reports'. However, I still trust that we are probably going to get hit with some kind of a snow storm at some point tomorrow. (Hopefully, it is after the rush hour, and even better, after I have finished dispatching for the day.)
'Black and white man-made categories or classification systems' don't allow for the existence of 'hybrids' -- or anything that exists outside of the 'mental box' of the classifyer's 'classification system'.
That is, until someone pipes up and says: 'I don't like this particular classification system; I'm going to make a new one up that is better...(We can read on the internet this morning about the first man to 'have a baby'! (That was back on June 8th, 2008. Now I am updating on Dec. 18th, 2008.)Life doesn't believe in always following nice, neat, clean, man-made classification systems or categories...)
Thus, for anyone who has set about the task of learning a particular branch of knowledge, it is important to know that you are basically at the mercy -- and the power -- of the particular person or organization 'who has structured and classified the knowledge in a particular way' so that you only get to learn about the type of knowledge that is 'inside the classification box'; not outside. This is why you often here the cry -- 'Think outside the box'.
That is, think outside the classification box -- or you might miss some important types of knowledge that otherwise will not be taught to you.
There is value in constantly changing up any 'Classificaiton Box' -- or 'flexibly being able to smoothly move from one Classification Box to another -- such as from Psychoanalysis, to Jungian Psychology, to Adlerian Psychology, to Behavorial Psychology, to Gestalt Therapy, to Transactional Analysis, and so on -- just as there is value in being able to speak and understand different languages -- each language making up another different type of 'Classification Box'.
This is why 'DGB Philosophy' uses a lot of 'hyphenated words' -- like 'DGB Philosophy-Psychology'. 'DGBN' not only narcissistically stands for my name -- David Gordon Bain -- it also, stands for what I philosophically do -- which is 'dialectical gap-bridging negotiations (DGBN)' between different phiilosophical systems, different psychological systems, bringing philosophical and psychological systems together...and every other type of system dialectically together in an effort to create a different type of 'hybrid-classification system' that has its own unique form of 'funtionality and value' like dialectically integrating a 'normal gas car with a propane or natural gas car, or with a hydrogen or electrical car' so that you improve energy efficiency, reduce your dependency on normal gas but still have normal gas if you can't find a propane or natural gas station or can't run your car on hydrogen or electricity until you take it home and 're-charge' it for a night...
'Integrative solutions' to problems are often superior to 'either/or solutions'. 'Either/or' solutions to problems can have strong negative side-effects -- pertaining to the polar-side you are ignoring as opposed to championing. Integrative solutions ideally champion the 'best of both polar worlds' while aiming to minimize the potential conflict and disharmony that comes from 'idolizing' one side of the conflict while neglecting, ignoring, suppressing, and/or 'demonizing' the other side. Integrative solutions search for that 'happy medium' -- Aristotle's 'middle path' -- where both sides get at least part of what they want while allowing the other side to get the most important part of what they want as well. Call it 'compromise' if you wish or even better a 'win-win' integrative solution where 'harmony and homeostatic balance' is achieved -- at least until something or someone comes along to upset the balance and set conflict in motion again...or someone comes along and creates something even better...evolution at its best...
In the case of old fashioned, new fashioned, and hybrid cars, we can say that our classification system is 'physically or empirically grounded' because we can see the 'gas tank' or the 'propane tank' or the 'natural gas tank' or the 'electical outlet' where we might have to plug our car into an electrical cord that goes into an outlet in the wall.
Same with the taxi business where we can actually see the difference between 'voice' and 'computer' dispatching and an 'integrative computer-voice dispatching system'.
However, once we enter the world of 'internal psychology' -- or even 'religion' for that matter, we can't say the same thing about 'The Central Mediating Ego' or 'The Righteous-Ethical Topdog' or 'The Narcissistic Topdog (or Underdog)' or 'The Nurturing-Supportive Topdog' -- or 'The Soul' -- or 'God'.
These last types of 'classification systems' are 'metaphysical systems' and may even deserve to be called 'Mythological Systems' -- meaning not that they may or may not have functional value -- but rather, that their 'physical-empirical' basis cannot be proven or verified without a doubt; and on this basis, is subject to 'legitmate epistemological dispute and controversy' -- if not downright 'skepticism'. Remember: 'Metaphysics' means basically -- 'above and beyond physics' as first categorized by Aristotle.
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From the internet...(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aristotle's Metaphysics
First published Sun Oct 8, 2000; substantive revision Mon Jun 9, 2008
The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title “Metaphysics” was the treatise by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even describe his field of study as ‘metaphysics’; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works. The title ‘metaphysics’ — literally, ‘after the Physics’ — very likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are developed in Aristotle's treatise.
1. The Subject Matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics
2. The Categories
3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being
4. The Fundamental Principles: Axioms
5. What is Substance?
6. Substance, Matter, and Subject
7. Substance and Essence
8. Substances as Hylomorphic Compounds
9. Substance and Definition
10. Substances and Universals
11. Substance as Cause of Being
12. Actuality and Potentiality
13. Unity Reconsidered
14. Glossary of Aristotelian Terminology
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It must be made absolutely clear that unlike Hume and Skinner, I am not saything that metaphysical and mythological systems have no value -- because oftentimes I believe they do -- rather, what I am saying is that there value may not be in their 'epistemological reality' but rather in their 'Projected-Self-Idealism' and their 'Projected Philosophical Idealism'.
As long as we are willing to call a spade a spade -- and not say that it is something else, as long as we are willing to admit and own up to the fact that our 'Metaphysical/Mythological Structure or Construction' is exactly that and not necessarily an 'epistmeological reality', that it is our own form of 'projected self-idealism' -- then we cannot be accused of being 'epistemologically fraudulent', of trying to propogate some sort of Mythologcial Entity onto the world in the name of 'Epistemological Truth'.
Thus, when I use the term 'God' -- I do so 'mythologically' as a 'projected form of self-idealism and philosopohical idealism; nothing more, nothing less. I do not use the term 'God' as an 'epistemological reality' -- although admittedly, often it is tempting to go here. Mainly, I use the term 'God', philosophically, metaphysically, mythologically, and spiritually, as a 'projected form of self and philosophical idealism' -- although, epistemolgicallly, I will jump one step further...
'Nature' is a physical reality; so too, are 'natural processes' which can be either 'physically (empirically) watched and/or 'reasonably/logically inferred' by 'scientific, and/or rationally-empirical minds'...
It does not take too much rational-empirical logic/reason to jump to the theory of 'intelligent design' -- that nature is intelligently designed. Furthermore, it does not take too much more 'rational-empirical logic/reason' to jump to the assumption that if 'nature is intelligently designed', then that possibly/probably? means that somewhere out there, there is -- or at least was at one time --an 'intelligent designer'. Dare we call this inferred 'intelligent designer' -- 'God' -- and if so, does the name 'God' stand on the basis of 'reasonable empirical (natural, physical) evidence -- even if there are at least one or more 'metaphysical jumps in logic' that take us from 'Nature' to 'God'?
Well, there is a problem here. Actually, there is more than one of them.
Firstly, what if 'Nature' -- from 'The Earth' to 'Life on Earth' to possibly even 'Life in the rest of the Universe' was simply created by a 'Very Superior Being' who is now dead -- like all other forms of life eventually die over time -- or a 'Superior Race of Beings' that are/were vastly more intelligent than man, and much further along the 'evolution route'...Are we going to believe in perhaps a different way than Nietzsche meant it, that 'God is dead!', and/or that 'God is/was a Superior Race of Beings'? Secondly, the idea of 'God' is so emotionally laden for most people who believe in 'God' that it is rather obvious that there is much more psychologicallly and philosophically at stake than believing that 'God' is/was simply a 'More Intelligent Being than Man' and/or a 'More Intelligent Race of Beings than God' and/or that if 'God' ever existed at one point in time, it is also quite possible/probable that God is now dead -- having died like all of the rest of us will one day...
No...this is not why 'God' -- and religion -- exists for most people who believe in God. Epistemologically, most people believe in God firstly, out of 'purely assumptive Faith' -- this is the rather shaky assumptive foundation for their belief in 'God'. But more than this, 'God' exists for most people because they cannot see their own 'projected Idol(s), their own projected 'Self-Energy', and their own 'projected form of Self and Philosophical Idealism' hidden, even buried, beneath their religious beliefs...
To properly understand God and Religion, man has to have the courage to look at his own Self-Projected Energy and Philosophical Idealism as a 'compensatory measure' either taken to alleviate underlying psychological-philosophical anxiety such as 'the fear of death and/or the fear of freedom and/or the fear of being essentially alone in a warm or cold universe of his or her own personal, phenomenonological-existential making... Or religion and God is simply what they were taught to believe in, and they really haven't decided to take either the time and/or the energy to challenge all of, or any of, the associated beliefs.
In essence, the belief in God as an 'epistemological reality' -- for the most part (and I can hear millions of angry people wanting to get a piece of me here...) is a 'smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show' for underlying 'existential anxiety'. Still, metaphysically and mythologically, the belief in God can still serve a valuable, functional purpose (like helping us to feel less alone in the world, and helping us to help others in need of help...).
Personally, as a philosophical, metaphysical, mythological, and spiritual entity, I view God as The Master Dialectical Integrating, Unifying -- and Separating --Force behind all of Nature, Evolution, and Creation...
Life for me, and for DGB Philosophy, is primarily the accidental and/or purposeful, pleasant and/or unpleasant, 'collision' of similar and/or opposing forces to 'create new chemical and psychological bonds -- and to destroy (deconstruct) old ones that are no longer functional...
This is starting to sound like 'Star Wars' here (let the 'Force' be with you! -- and we are definitely not talking about Schopenhauer's (or 'Hobbes') philosophical type of 'narcissistic, nasty, brutish killing Life and Death Force here' -- although both the world and man can encompass all of this; nor are we talking about Nietzsche's 'Will to Power' or the more humanistic (feminist?) Nietzschean rendition of the 'The Will to Self-Empowerment' although man can show both of these features as well -- both in their positive and negative aspects; nor are we totally talking about the types of forces entailed in Freud's metaphysical concepts of 'Life and Death Instinct' playing off against each other although I like parts of this classification system as well but again, this is not completely what I am talking about.
Rather, the metaphysical-mythological-spiritual classification system that I use is more of a combination of: Anaxamander, Heraclitus, the Han Philosophers, Spinoza, Hegel, and Perls...with backup support from Schopenhauer (The world can be, and often is. 'brutish and nasty'!), Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy, and the potential for dramatic tragedy in the collision of Apollo and Dionysus), Freud (Ego, Superego, and Id, life and death instinct, traumacy, seduction, assault, and narcissism), Jung (the Persona, The Shadow, and the Archetypes, and Berne (Nurturing Parent, Righteous Parent, Adult, Adaptive Child, Rebellious Child, Natural Child...), and Perls (Topdog and Underdog), hotseat and empty chair work...)
What I am talking about in terms of the number one 'philosophical and spiritual force' in DGB Philosophy-Psychology supersedes everything that we have talked about in the last paragraph. I am talking about a force that unites Western and Eastern Philosophy -- at its best; a force that integrates and unites many of the similar but different philosophical systems that make up the history of Western philosophy -- from Thales, Anixamander, Heraclitus, and the Han Philosophers to present day philosophical processes and/or systems such as DGB Philosophy-Psychology.
I am talking about what I consider to be the 'master key stroke of God' -- and here I am talking about my own projective ideal system -- but also moving beyond this because I am integrating much of Western philosophical and psychological history -- not to mention Chinese 'yin' and 'yang' theory. Perhaps I am moving into 'Intelligent Design' Theory -- into the realm of theology, the realm of metaphysics and mythology, and who knows -- maybe even into the realm of epistemology and 'epistemological truth' on a 'natural basis' at least -- because the 'force' I am talking about is so prevalent, so dominating, so all-encompassing, so potentially tied into evolution and creation theory, that it is hard not to believe that there wasn't at least at some point in time an 'Incredibly Intelligent and Sophisticated Designer or Creator' -- to which I give the name 'God' behind this Creation. The force that I call the 'master key stroke of God' -- is 'The Force of The Dialectic'... This Force is neither good nor bad -- it is 'Beyond Good and Evil' (but not in the Nietzschean sense), indeed, often it brings good and evil into the same physical and psychological space...It is 'beyond life and death' and indeed, often encompasses elements of life and death in the same physical and psychological space.
The Force of the Dialectic is largely unpredictable -- at work in the 'hot seat and empty chair technique' in Gestalt Therapy; at work in a different way between the Analyst and the client on the 'Psychoanalytic Couch', at work in any human encounter, any encounter where two or more objects, two or more processes, two or more living entitities, come together, collide together, make love together, make hate together, randomly or on purpose, chaoticallly or with intended purpose, integratively or with no resulting integration...Postives and negatives coming together, positives and positives coming together, negatives and negatives coming together -- and either 'finding a chemical fit' -- or not. I'm talking about the coming together and breaking apart of 'chemical molecules' on every microscopic and macroscopic level of existence...a dog and a cat coming together and...well...fighting like cats and dogs...or a cat and a dog coming together...and somebody snaps a picture of them 'cuddling together on the same couch'...
This is 'The Dialectical Force' that I am trying to describe here in DGB Philosophy-Psychology...Others have been here before me...many, many others...but I am just trying to put it altogether in one 'muliti-dialectical-integrative package'. Hegel, was the ultimate dialectical mastermind but he basically only touched on epistemology -- he spoke of 'The Absolute' in terms of 'Absolute Knowledge'. Others -- Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Perls, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, have extrapolated in some 'post-Hegelian' way on what Hegel wrote -- improving on some of his largest weaknesses.
When I speak of The Dialectical Force, I speak not only of the evolution of knowledge but also of the evolution of existence and life -- of being and becoming, of life and death. This to me, is the full extent of The Mystical, Metaphysical, and partly Mythological Dialectical Force.
For me, The Dialectical Force is the key Creative-Destructive-Evolutionary-Working Force of Nature and/or God. We start in the earth and return to the earth, and in between, we differentiate into opposites, unify into 'dialectical wholisms' and then differentiate again into opposites, in effect, a 'splitting apart' and 'uniting' of molecules -- splitting, combining, splitting, combining... (almost sounds like the North American marriage and divorce scene) -- on the macroscopic as well as the microscopic level -- not too much different than what the combination of Anaxamander and Heraclitus (pre-Socratic) Greece and the Han Philosophers (ancient China) were saying back around the 500 BCs...that would be over 2500 years ago...
Add in some 17th century Spinozian pantheistic ideas and some 19th century Schelling and Hegelian ideas to boot...and you are starting to come pretty close to the essence of this 'spiritual-pantheist-deist smorgasboard' that I am writing about here...With some Nietzschean, Freudian, Jungian, and Gestalt 'spices' added for flavor...(You will get their stronger flavors in other essays...)
And that is where I will leave things today on this fine Sunday morning...and a month later on this fine Sunday evening...and now most recently, on this cold Friday, December evening, with a big expected snowstorm coming in tomorrow.
Our weather people could be right, or they could be wrong. Generalizations and predictions are never sure things although some have more 'star power' than others.
I trust that the snowstorm will indeed arrive sometime tomorrow.
And I trust even more that, unless something catastrophic happens tonight -- touch wood that it doesn't -- I will be at work tomorrow for my scheduled afternoon shift.
Goodnight.
-- dgb, June 8th, 2008, modified and updated, July 5th, and July 12th, 2008, December 18th-19th, 2008.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Why Religions Exist: What Kind of God Do You Want To Worship? What Kind of God Do You Want To Be?
Religions exist for a number of reasons. Such as:
1. To help counter-act man's propensity for unbridled narcissism -- meaning, selfishness, greed, egotism, self-infatuation, etc.
2. To help explain the unexplainable -- such as Creation.
3. To compensate for a fear of death and dying -- and anxiously contemplating the great 'abyss of non-existence'.
4. To help compensate for, and alleviate, man's alienation -- from himself, from his family, from his friends, from his community, from his government, from his fellow man, from his work, from nature and his environment...
Unfortunately, religions often come with 'significant side-effects' -- like bad drugs -- and as such, they should also come with a great big 'Caveat Emptor' sign -- 'Buyer Beware!.
Here are some of the potential negative side-effects of religion, particularly 'pathological religions' -- religions that are bad for individuals and bad for the evolution, wholism, and harmony of mankind.
1. More and more religious, ethical, and moral righteousness at the expense of less and less tolerance and respect for the rights of others to hold different opinions, beliefs, faiths...
2. Loss of reason and rationality, observation and empiricism, common sense...
3. A propensity for not only extreme righteousness and intolerance but also even worse -- divisionism, hatred, and violence -- the very things that most religions say that they are trying to preach against...
4. A tendency towards 'religious dependence', giving up one's own uniqueness and indepedence, one's own critical, reasonable and rational faculties relative to what is right and wrong, good and bad, a tendency towards 'submission to religious authority, and to authority in general, a tendency towards 'dominance and submission' attitudes, and even 'sado-masochistic' attitudes...
5. A tendency towards 'self-denial', and towards an unhealthy attitude regarding 'Gods' and 'Idols'. This unhealthy -- non-humanistic-existential, non -democratic-dialectic -- attitude can be expressed something like this: I am nothing and you are everything. (See my various essays on 'Gods, Myths, Archetypes, and Idols'). The relevant passages in The Bible (The Ten Commandments) are these:
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Do not have any other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
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These three passages are full of hypocrisy and pathology -- they exasperate religious and human intolerance, they demonize competing religions and Gods, and more than that, they in effect 'existentially castrate' and dehumanize man. They seek to turn grown men and women into helpless children, grown men and women facing the wrath of a Domineering, Sado-Masochist God -- throught the mediating over-righteous force of a priest or minister gone too far -- like a child confronting an authoritarian, anal-retentive, overbearing, righteous-angry, jealous, possessive parent.
This is no way to raise a child.
And it is no way to preach to a Congregation.
If we want to believe in God and religion, then we have the choice as individual and collective humans -- providing we don't believe in a God who wants to take away this freedom of choice -- to believe in the type of God and religion we want to.
I have a Protestant background.
My parents are good, religious people.
There are no better role models for the 'potential good in humanely practised orthodox religion' than my parents.
However, 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy' -- the name of my evolving, life-long philosophical treatise -- is aiming to do something different here.
My main 'spiritual-religious' role models are: Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
From Spinoza, I take his very unorthodox Jewish brand of 'Spiritual-Romantic Pantheism and/or Deism'.
From Hegel, I take his theory of 'dialectic-evolution': thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis -- and start all over again, hopefully at a 'higher level of human evolution'.
From Nietzsche, I take his love of man and life, of helping to make men (and women) into 'Supermen' and 'Superwomen'. of looking inside us to 'find the God within each and everyone of us'.
Is the God within us a God of assertiveness, reason and rationality, passion and compassion, love of life, love for man and nature, for embracing love, life, and nature?
Or is the God within us full of rage and hate, divisionism and violence, jealousy and possessiveness, destroying people, destroying mankind?
Most religions and preachers have it completely wrong.
Man is not helpless and dependent in the face of God.
Unless we wish to equate God with Nature, and Nature with God.
Which is not a bad idea at all. Indeed, it is an unorthodox Spinozian Pantheist spiritual-religious position.
God is in Nature and Nature is in God. God is in man, and man is in God. God is everywhere and everything. Spinoza said that. (And he was 'ex-communicated' -- it could have been worse -- by the Holland Jewish religious orthodoxy for saying that. Even though the Holland Jews were fleeing the onslaught of the Spanish Inquisition where I believe it was the Spanish Roman Catholics who were torturing and killing Jews who only wanted the 'freedom to think and practise their own brand of religion'. Hypocrisy -- thy name is 'Narcissistic-Righteous Man'.
Certainly, to some extent, man can be helpless in the face of Nature.
But not entirely. If we kill Nature, then Nature will kill us. Because there will be no 'God-Nature' left to support us.
God is man. And man is God.
The two are inter-connected.
Dialectically and democratically connected.
Nietzsche said that 'God is dead'.
I say that 'God is very much alive -- and living inside of man.'
It is only a question of 'What kind of God we choose to be'.
And 'what kind of God we choose to worship'.
A God of love.
Or a God of war.
A God of 'Narcissisitic, Unethical Capitalism'.
Or a God of 'Ethical, Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Capitalism'.
A God of Authoritarianism, Jealousy, Possessiveness, Hypocrisy, Rage, and Righteousness...
Or a God of Reason and Rationality, Passion and Compassion, Self-Assertiveness and Social Sensitivity, Embracing Enlightenment Principles, Embracing Romantic Principles, Embracing Humanistic-Existential Principles, Embracing Ethical and Moral Principles that are good for us as well as being good for others...
It is your God.
And your Religion. Or non-religion.
It is your life.
You choose.
-- DGBN, Nov. 23rd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations...
Are still in process...
1. To help counter-act man's propensity for unbridled narcissism -- meaning, selfishness, greed, egotism, self-infatuation, etc.
2. To help explain the unexplainable -- such as Creation.
3. To compensate for a fear of death and dying -- and anxiously contemplating the great 'abyss of non-existence'.
4. To help compensate for, and alleviate, man's alienation -- from himself, from his family, from his friends, from his community, from his government, from his fellow man, from his work, from nature and his environment...
Unfortunately, religions often come with 'significant side-effects' -- like bad drugs -- and as such, they should also come with a great big 'Caveat Emptor' sign -- 'Buyer Beware!.
Here are some of the potential negative side-effects of religion, particularly 'pathological religions' -- religions that are bad for individuals and bad for the evolution, wholism, and harmony of mankind.
1. More and more religious, ethical, and moral righteousness at the expense of less and less tolerance and respect for the rights of others to hold different opinions, beliefs, faiths...
2. Loss of reason and rationality, observation and empiricism, common sense...
3. A propensity for not only extreme righteousness and intolerance but also even worse -- divisionism, hatred, and violence -- the very things that most religions say that they are trying to preach against...
4. A tendency towards 'religious dependence', giving up one's own uniqueness and indepedence, one's own critical, reasonable and rational faculties relative to what is right and wrong, good and bad, a tendency towards 'submission to religious authority, and to authority in general, a tendency towards 'dominance and submission' attitudes, and even 'sado-masochistic' attitudes...
5. A tendency towards 'self-denial', and towards an unhealthy attitude regarding 'Gods' and 'Idols'. This unhealthy -- non-humanistic-existential, non -democratic-dialectic -- attitude can be expressed something like this: I am nothing and you are everything. (See my various essays on 'Gods, Myths, Archetypes, and Idols'). The relevant passages in The Bible (The Ten Commandments) are these:
.............................................................................................................
Do not have any other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
..........................................................................................................................................................
These three passages are full of hypocrisy and pathology -- they exasperate religious and human intolerance, they demonize competing religions and Gods, and more than that, they in effect 'existentially castrate' and dehumanize man. They seek to turn grown men and women into helpless children, grown men and women facing the wrath of a Domineering, Sado-Masochist God -- throught the mediating over-righteous force of a priest or minister gone too far -- like a child confronting an authoritarian, anal-retentive, overbearing, righteous-angry, jealous, possessive parent.
This is no way to raise a child.
And it is no way to preach to a Congregation.
If we want to believe in God and religion, then we have the choice as individual and collective humans -- providing we don't believe in a God who wants to take away this freedom of choice -- to believe in the type of God and religion we want to.
I have a Protestant background.
My parents are good, religious people.
There are no better role models for the 'potential good in humanely practised orthodox religion' than my parents.
However, 'Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy' -- the name of my evolving, life-long philosophical treatise -- is aiming to do something different here.
My main 'spiritual-religious' role models are: Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
From Spinoza, I take his very unorthodox Jewish brand of 'Spiritual-Romantic Pantheism and/or Deism'.
From Hegel, I take his theory of 'dialectic-evolution': thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis -- and start all over again, hopefully at a 'higher level of human evolution'.
From Nietzsche, I take his love of man and life, of helping to make men (and women) into 'Supermen' and 'Superwomen'. of looking inside us to 'find the God within each and everyone of us'.
Is the God within us a God of assertiveness, reason and rationality, passion and compassion, love of life, love for man and nature, for embracing love, life, and nature?
Or is the God within us full of rage and hate, divisionism and violence, jealousy and possessiveness, destroying people, destroying mankind?
Most religions and preachers have it completely wrong.
Man is not helpless and dependent in the face of God.
Unless we wish to equate God with Nature, and Nature with God.
Which is not a bad idea at all. Indeed, it is an unorthodox Spinozian Pantheist spiritual-religious position.
God is in Nature and Nature is in God. God is in man, and man is in God. God is everywhere and everything. Spinoza said that. (And he was 'ex-communicated' -- it could have been worse -- by the Holland Jewish religious orthodoxy for saying that. Even though the Holland Jews were fleeing the onslaught of the Spanish Inquisition where I believe it was the Spanish Roman Catholics who were torturing and killing Jews who only wanted the 'freedom to think and practise their own brand of religion'. Hypocrisy -- thy name is 'Narcissistic-Righteous Man'.
Certainly, to some extent, man can be helpless in the face of Nature.
But not entirely. If we kill Nature, then Nature will kill us. Because there will be no 'God-Nature' left to support us.
God is man. And man is God.
The two are inter-connected.
Dialectically and democratically connected.
Nietzsche said that 'God is dead'.
I say that 'God is very much alive -- and living inside of man.'
It is only a question of 'What kind of God we choose to be'.
And 'what kind of God we choose to worship'.
A God of love.
Or a God of war.
A God of 'Narcissisitic, Unethical Capitalism'.
Or a God of 'Ethical, Dialectic-Democratic, Humanistic-Existential Capitalism'.
A God of Authoritarianism, Jealousy, Possessiveness, Hypocrisy, Rage, and Righteousness...
Or a God of Reason and Rationality, Passion and Compassion, Self-Assertiveness and Social Sensitivity, Embracing Enlightenment Principles, Embracing Romantic Principles, Embracing Humanistic-Existential Principles, Embracing Ethical and Moral Principles that are good for us as well as being good for others...
It is your God.
And your Religion. Or non-religion.
It is your life.
You choose.
-- DGBN, Nov. 23rd, 2008.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-Negotiations...
Are still in process...
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of what I do not like about authoritarian religion -- and Kierkegaard's
idea of 'faith'. If i were to go back and redo my response i might modify
one line.
My mom is very religous -- Protestant -- as is my dad. Both are great
family and community people. They would probably not like my idea of God,
spirituality, and religion which borrows, as I said, from the likes of
Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel and Einstein.
Regardless of how diplomatically or undiplomatically i were to write about
what i didn't like about Kierkeggard (his sarcastic arrogance, his
bitterness, and his take on the Abraham-Isaac parable -- it still comes
down to the same thing.
'Blind faith' without critical insight into what or who you are submitting
your faith and judgment to is a very dangerous, naive proposition,
especially in a very narcissistic world where there are some very ethically
bad people who would love to take advantage of this edge of power that they
would love to incorporate over you. Let's calling it taking advantage of
the 'herd mentality' (eg. Nazi Germany, and authoritarian religion).
So basically, the long and the short of what I wrote remains the same. My
point remains the same. And I don't even know who this 'SK' is that you
keep referring to.
Thanks for your feedback....appreciated....even if our points of view, our
paradigm, may differ.
David
Bain