What's Left?

[Chris]

Having got to know a bit about left and right wing politics
I thought I'd drop in this handy guide:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

In politics, the social left-right spectrum, from liberal to
authoritarian, is generally confounded with the economic
left-right spectrum, of control or no-control. Having now
seen the economy go rather out of control we're probably
in for some leftism, economically speaking.

Seems to me though, the majority of right-wing voters,
actually vote according to the social aspect of the political
spectrum. I.e. they are comfortable with the authoritarian
group dynamic. For example, this is very much in evidence
with the christian right. When they vote right they also get
laissez-faire economics.

The social left is, ideally, free-thinking and liberal: the
massed ranks of the authoritarians a puzzling anacronism.
I wonder if this could be the main difference that affects
politics.

[bluepilgrim]

Bluepilgrim says:
The two-dimensional scale of political compass is better the just
right and left, but it's still quite short of the entire
multi-dimensional range of positions, and is even ambiguous within
itself. Is state unemployment insurance a social or economic issue?
Is it even a liberal or conservative thing to do, considering that
it's good for some nominally 'conservative values' such as holding
the family together, or can encourage a laid off worker trying to
start his own business instead of finding another job working for
someone else? What about public education, which tends to increase
conformity to whatever attitudes the state wants to teach? Laissez
faire is now usually considered conservative -- but it's also
anti-authoritarian. Is a heavily planned society with many
restrictions authoritarian right, or authoritarian left? It seems
that the extremes of either right or left meets the other, as if a
circle closing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum outlines various
other models reflecting some of the complexity, and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism talks about varying meanings
for "liberal" (which can also be rather authoritarian and imperialistic).

[Chris]

> Chris:

>> Seems to me though, the majority of right-wing voters,
>> actually vote according to the social aspect of the political
>> spectrum. I.e. they are comfortable with the authoritarian
>> group dynamic. For example, this is very much in evidence
>> with the christian right. When they vote right they also get
>> laissez-faire economics.

BluePilgrim:

> Laissez faire is now usually considered conservative -- but
> it's also anti-authoritarian. Is a heavily planned society with
> many restrictions authoritarian right, or authoritarian left?

I consider authoritarianism as being what the people are doing
who are in thrall to the power centre. The economic policy of
the power centre has little bearing on the authoritarianism of
the followers. The leaders may prefer deregulation; sometimes
not. On the other hand, a socially restrictive culture with
little scope for individual autonomy is authoritarian, and by
definition, right wing. I guess it could be economically
neo-liberal authoritarian (i.e. deregulated), or socialist
authoritarian, e.g. communist. Whatever the economic flavour,
liberal free-thinking is preferable.

[bluepilgrim]

Blue:
I consider myself 'progressive', mostly to distinguish myself from
the classic liberalism which favored individual freedom but
imperialism and economic power over of other countries -- which is
also found in neo-liberalism. The terms used can be problematic. The
current crop of 'conservatives' favor deregulation for business
interests but not for the people. Most any government strives for
authority and the people have to have effective mechanisms of controlling it.

But this -- government and politics -- doesn't mesh quite neatly with
the authoritarian personality on the individual level, and it's easy
to get lost in side issues and trying to translate shifting language.
There is also a middle position between APs and social dominators in
that some people dominate those beneath them but submit to those
above them -- believing in hierarchy in both directions, and also
interested in people being controlled -- even themselves under some
circumstances. Maybe the opposite of that is the idea of 'live and
let live' as much as possible within a functioning social structure.

I'm cautious about characterizing a culture as authoritarian,
although undoubted a case can be made for it, simply because a
culture is so much much more complex and diverse than a person, and
one tends to get lost in abstractions and over-generalization -- as
with any social theory. An authoritarian or libertarian government or
culture can shift to the other fairly rapidly at times as the 'alter
ego' of the people is augmented or minimized --- something like how a
venetian blind can be flipped as the individual slats flip. It isn't
clear to me how stable those two threads of thinking are, with some
people I know being very authoritarian in many ways but also being
very insistent on their own liberty in others. Even the Christian
right argue strongly for religious freedom as long as it's for THEM
-- two competing world views within them -- although there is also an
element of hypocrisy and propagandist manipulation. I've seen the
same from some people on the internet lists and message boards
regarding 'freedom of speech' for themselves while trying to repress
those who argue against them.

I often find myself in difficulty trying to use the words available
and running into ambiguity and contradictions because of multiple
meanings. The word 'authority' is an example, meaning both a person
with expertise but also can mean some idiot with power. An AP can
seek the direction of the expert and end up with deferring to the
social dominator (and not realize the difference).

[Chris]

Blue:

> But this -- government and politics -- doesn't mesh quite
> neatly with the authoritarian personality on the individual
> level, and it's easy to get lost in side issues and trying to
> translate shifting language. There is also a middle position
> between APs and social dominators in that some people
> dominate those beneath them but submit to those above
> them -- believing in hierarchy in both directions, and also
> interested in people being controlled -- even themselves
> under some circumstances. Maybe the opposite of that
> is the idea of 'live and let live' as much as possible within
> a functioning social structure.

Yes, there’s an additional factor for those in the middle
position. While the leaders may be of several types, being
a follower taps the basic herding instinct. The followers find
security (and power) in the flock. In considering the middle
position I envisage a military recruit who has bought into the
externally imposed value system of an army group. This is
an imposition whether he is conscious of it or not: jumping
and running to order, and each order leaves its mark. In
Crowds & Power Elias Canetti called this mark ‘the sting’.
When the recruit gets promoted he gets the chance to pass
on the stings he has received by ordering others about. It’s
a precise accounting that only came about because he
submitted to an external value system in the first place.

Teaching people to cultivate their own internal value systems
is a step in the direction of individualism. Incidentally, the
parallel in existential philosophy is very clear. Collectively,
people try to agree on the existence of various things – This
is consensus reality. However, to get down to fundamentals,
(objective) existence is defined in relation to the observer.
The perspective shifts in the same way as from collectivism
to individualism. In other words, in both psychology and
philosophy, to resolve complex situations you have to start
thinking independently.

[Chris]

> Teaching people to cultivate their own internal value systems
> is a step in the direction of individualism.  Incidentally, the
> parallel in existential philosophy is very clear.  Collectively,
> people try to agree on the existence of various things – This
> is consensus reality.  However, to get down to fundamentals,
> (objective) existence is defined in relation to the observer.
> The perspective shifts in the same way as from collectivism
> to individualism.  In other words, in both psychology and
> philosophy, to resolve complex situations you have to start
> thinking independently.

Notes on individuation:-

The terrible dragon lives high on a mountain in a cave, sitting on and
delighting in his treasure hoard. All the people in the village have
long since given up hope on killing the dragon, since all the bravest
fighters have perished in their attempts to do so. However, the boy
who is to be the hero announces that he is going to go off and slay
the dragon, which results in great laughter and also dismay to those
in the village who realize they will never see him again. So the boy
leaves with a few meager provisions-a sack with some stale food and
water. In Jungian theory, leaving the village is the first and crucial
step of individuation. The hero is the commoner who simply refuses to
conform to the patterns of his/her society, and sets out to find
oneself. ( http://ldolphin.org/individ.html )


For Jung, the first stage of the individuation process is the
conscious ego's heroic struggle {the hero/heroine journey of
mythology} to lift itself out of the orginal all-encompassing
unconsciousness and to establish control of unconscious forces. This
finds symbolic representation in the legendary dragon-slayer, St
George (St George = the ego; the dragon = the unconscious). (
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dsmonster.html )


The hero has now left everything behind, and as he journeys he goes
into the forest. Now as he was growing up, the hero heard many tales
of the awful enemies of the forest. However, once in the forest he
discovers many friends, animals who begin to help him. According to
Jung's way of individuation, this going into the forest is the actual
delving into the unconscious. The individual is receptive to the
unconscious so the unconscious begins to equip the individual.

[bluepilgrim]

Just a note -- I haven't forgotten to get back to your previous
response -- just been too tied up.

[Chris]

On Nov 9, 10:44 pm, bluepilgrim <bluepilg...@grics.net> wrote:
> Just a note -- I haven't forgotten to get back to your previous
> response -- just been too tied up.

No prob. Am just collecting thoughts on individuation at the mo.

[Bob Thompson]

The dragon thing is an interesting metaphor, I like how it emphasizes the exploration and integration of the "unconscious" into individuation. Considering how rare this is, a preliminary question might be what kind of motivation is required for such a process to begin in the first place. Given the relative strength of normal social impulses which tend to produce conformity, the degree to which conventional, collective, "normal" behavior is all messed up, and the difficulty and loneliness of trying to sort out life by yourself on your own terms, individuation seems like it may always be an anomaly. It seems that any attempt to sort out one's life for oneself is likely to run into the fact that the world, and possibly human nature itself, isn't exactly set up to make this easy. Are individuals predisposed to undertake individuation by some fundamental difference in the relative strengths of their motivations, or by some other preexisting condition, what? Dabrowski was talking about the same thing as Jung and Maslow; he posited the existence of the "developmental instinct," a drive toward more or less conscious development of one's uniqueness and personality, taking charge of who you fundamentally are, and changing it. If I understand him correctly, he conceptualized human impulses as a fluid interplay of sometimes conflicting drives naturally ebbing and flowing, various forces waxing and waning in their strength and degree of influence throughout life. What can overcome one's social impulses to the degree that one might be inclined to challenge, even separate oneself from conventional wisdom and behavior? The consequences of nonconformity can be severe, the drive toward unquestioning acceptance of the social environment as one finds it are strong. I don't have any general answer for this question, it may have as many different answers as there are people. But I'm guessing that it's not a casual commitment. I recorded my thoughts the day I made such a leap, more than two decades ago, and that's all I know:

Today I’m riding on the crest of a huge wave of discontent towards the whole of society, this brain killing, horrible force of compulsion (Do this, be that, or you’ll never be one of us.). Well folks, I hereby secede. I am my own man, I make my own decisions, even if it costs me my life (It probably will cost me my job, shelter, wife, everything.). That’s fine, because this burning passion tells me I am right, and its force has been growing for a long time now. It will explode the shackles of this prison of thought sooner or later and I feel it necessary to document this, in the unlikely event that someone reads it and finds something. I am alone.

(Turns out it didn't cost me any of those things. But the point is that there probably has to be a pretty strong impetus to take that step away from social convention, toward independent thought.)

The author of the dragon analogy brings an element of religion into this: "Jung seems to see religion necessary in the process of individuation; not in the confessional or creedal sense such as being a Baptist or a Buddhist, but rather in the experiential sense." He quotes Jung:

"I want to make clear that by the term 'religion' I do not mean a creed. It is, however, true that on the one hand every confession is originally based upon the experience of the numinous and on the other hand upon the loyalty, trust, and confidence toward a definitely experienced numinous effect and the subsequent alteration of consciousness: the conversion of Paul is a striking example of this. 'Religion,' it might be said, is the term that designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been altered by the experience of the numinous" (Psychology & Religion; C. G. Jung, pg. 6).

This is a very critical distinction, separating the doctrinal aspects of religion from the experiential. This reminded me of a book my son gave me recently, by University of Iowa professor of philosophy Laird Addis, "Philosophy and Human Nature." It is basically a reprint of some long-forgotten works of Freud; Addis proclaimed that Freud's most lasting contribution may be in the realm of philosophy, an aspect of his thinking that is hardly noticed. My impression of Freud as hostile to religion dissipated as I read it; one of the pieces, "Mysticism and Logic," which appeared in the Hibbert Journal July 1914, showed that Freud spent a lot of time thinking about this. Freud also pointed out the important distinction between the dogmatic and experiential aspects of religion. He identifies four basic features universal to all mystical experience:

"Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of the world, is characterized by certain beliefs which are illustrated by the doctrines we have been considering.

"There is, first, the belief in insight as against discursive analytic knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible study of outward appearance by a science relying wholly on the senses. All who are capable of absorption in an inward passion must have experienced at times the strange feeling of unreality in common objects, the loss of contact with daily things, in which the solidity of the outer world is lost, and the soul seems, in utter loneliness, to bring forth, out of its own depths, the mad dance of fantastic phantoms which have hitherto appeared as independently real and living. This is the negative side of the mystic's initiation: the doubt concerning common knowledge, preparing the way for the reception of what seems a higher wisdom. Many men to whom this negative experience is familiar do not pass beyond it, but for the mystic it is merely the gateway to an ampler world.

"The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the moment of insight. Often, beliefs which have no real connection with this moment become subsequently attracted into the central nucleus; thus in addition to the convictions of a more local and temporary character, which no doubt become amalgamated with what was essentially mystical in virtue of their subjective certainty. We may ignore such inessential accretions, and confine ourselves to the beliefs which all mystics share.

"The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of a Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to worship; it is felt to be always and everywhere close at hand, thinly veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive mind, to shine in its glory even through the apparent folly and wickedness of Man. The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory: the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision: what others dimly seek he knows, with a knowledge besided which all other knowledge is ignorance."

This is also the most dangerous aspect of mystical experience. One can see, in some "inspired" religious people, a tendency to believe the first thing that pops into their heads as proceeding from the mouth of God; and since it seems that mystics are responsible for most of the religious writings in this world, this characteristic is quite important, and well worth further scrutiny. I'm gonna go out on a limb here with a few observations: It seems to me that that burst of inspirational insight is an outcome of a moment of unification with the unconscious, which has an entirely different language of thought, and greater capacity to spontaneously integrate disparate thoughts, than conscious thought; and sometimes another factor may be a more direct connection to sensory stimuli, which unveils a sense of the majesty of the world as it is, a profound, deeply moving sense of eternal newness, rather than how we normally filter it through the lens of previous experience. This also implies that there is a huge difference in the way the mystic sees the world, which invites a huge potential for the rest of us to misinterpret the thoughts of the mystic, instead seeing them through the lens of our experience, the mystic's perspective being out of reach.

A friend of mine provided an excellent illustration of this, in some observations about an ecumenical religious convention of some sort. The mystics (monks) and the clerics were two entirely different groups of people, congregating separately; the mystics seemed to find lots of common ground and got along quite well in spite of their radically different sects, while the clerics' gathering devolved into a contentious dispute over doctrine. "Normal" people interpret religious texts quite differently than mystics, often reducing religion to a mandate to codify and enforce external, visible aspects of behavior, while mystics seem to realize that a change of heart is what it's really all about. There's obviously a radical difference in the way these two types of people see and respond to the world, that has little or nothing to do with the details of their particular creed.

Freud continues:

"The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief in unity, and its refusal to adimt opposition or division anywhere.We found Heraclitus saying 'good and ill are one'; and again he says, 'the way up and the way down is one and the same'. The same attitude appears in the simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as: 'We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.' The assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes from the same impulse towards unity. In Plato, this impulse is less prominent, being held in check by his theory of ideas; but it reappears, so far as his logic permits, in the doctrine of the primacy of the Good.

"A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the denial of the reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of division; if all is one, the distinction of past and future must be illusory...

"The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect. Mysticism does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good, but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower world of phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight of the vision. Sometimes -- for example in Hegel, and at least verbally in Spinoza -- not only evil, but good also, is regarded as illusory, though nevertheless the emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality is good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism is absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief in the ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good and the bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the mystical experience:  with its sense of unity is associated a feeling of infinite peace. Indeed it may be suspected that the feeling of peace produces, as feelings do in dreams, the whole system of associated beliefs which make up the body of mystic doctrine. But this is a difficult question, and one on which it cannot be hoped that mankind will reach agreement."

For someone characterized as a great enemy of religion, Freud possessed a well developed understanding of its psychological basis, and regarded what he identified as its fundamental emotional basis as essentially a good thing, or at least potentially so. He obviously viewed mysticism, religious ecstasy, as a fundamental emotional state, independent of and preceding doctrinal preferences. He also prescribed a possible antidote to mysticism's most negative side effect.

"Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which reveals it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain -- and it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative -- is that insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is first suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition between instinct and reason; in the eighteenth centruy, the opposition was drawn in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and the romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by those who rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought, and then, as the purely rationalistic defense of traditional theology became increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the world. Bergson, under the name of 'intuition', has raised instinct to the position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

"Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment. Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards themselves, though all admit it in regard to others. Where instinct is least liable to error is in practical matters as to which right judgment is a help to survival: friendship and hostility in others, for instance, are often felt with extraordinary discrimination through very careful disguises. But even in such matters a wrong impression may be given by reserve or flattery; and in matters less directly practical, such as philosophy deals with, very strong instinctive beliefs are sometimes wholly mistaken, as we may come to know through their perceived inconsistency with other equally strong beliefs. It is such considerations that necessitate the harmonizing mediation of reason, which tests our beliefs by their mutual compatibility, and examines, in doubtful cases, the possible sources of error on the one side and on the other. In this there is no opposition to instinct as a whole, but only to blind reliance upon some on interesting aspect of instinct to the exclusion of other more commonplace but not less trustworthy aspects. It is such one-sidedness, not instinct itself, that reason aims at correcting.

.........

"In advocating scientific restraint and balance, as against the self-assertion of a confident reliance upon intuition, we are only urging, in the sphere of knowledge, that largeness of contemplation, that impersonal disinterestedness, and that freedom from practical preoccupations which have been inculcated by all the great religions of the world. Thus our conclusion, however it may conflict with the explicit beliefs of many mystics, is, in essence, not contrary to the spirit which inspires those beliefs, but rather the outcome of this very spirit as applied in the realm of thought."

So Freud clearly was not advocating one faculty over the other, but saw a potential for reason to act as a mediator for the mystical tendency to fabricate beliefs, hopefully balancing inspiration with logic. This seems pretty smart. It reminded me of a time when I was trying to understand the Bible, and bought a bunch of reference materials. One of the books I got was "Exegetical Fallacies" by D. A. Carson. Carson attempted to identify the most common logical fallacies perpetrated by students of the Bible. Oh yeah, logic and reason, I'd nearly forgotten about that stuff. Didn't hear about it much in church. I thought this was pretty useful, sought to apply it, and was eventually so successful that I realized I probably wasn't going to unlock any great, earth-shattering mysteries from studying the thing at all. The best thing it could do for me was to unlock the mysteries of my own thinking, in attempting to understand it. It wasn't gonna tell me what the meaning of life is, or what the universe is made of, or how or why it formed; it was only a mirror, a reflection of myself I could study in relationship to it, if so inclined. In studying my reactions and thoughts in relation to it, I learned about myself. It's obviously not the only vehicle with which to accomplish this.

Freud again:

"The possibility of this universal love and joy in all that exists is of supreme importance for the conduct and happiness of life, and gives inestimable value to the mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which may be built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false beliefs, it is necessary to realize exactly what the mystic emotion reveals. It reveals a possibility of human nature -- a possibility of a nobler, happier, freer life than any that can be otherwise achieved. But it does not reveal anything about the non-human, or about the nature of the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves. And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all preoccupation with Self, will not judge things good or bad, although it is very easily combined with that feeling of universal love which leads the mystic to say that the whole world is good.

"The philosophy of evolution, through the notion of progress, is bound up with the ethical dualism of the worse and the better, and is thus shut out, not only from the kind of survey which discards good and evil altogether from its view, but also from the mystical belief in the goodness of everything. In this way the distinction of good and evil, like time, becomes a tyrant in this philosophy, and introduces into thought the restless selectiveness of action. Good and evil, like time, are, it would seem, not general or fundamental to the world of thought, but late and highly specialized members of the intellectual hierarchy.

"Although, as we saw, mysticism can be interpreted so as to agree with the view that good and evil are not intellectually fundamental, it must be admitted that here we are no longer in verbal agreement with most of the great philosophers and religious teachers of the past. I believe, however, that  the elimination of ethical considerations from philosophy is both scientifically necessary and --though this may seem a paradox -- an ethical advance. Both these contentions must be briefly defended.

"The hope of satisfaction to our more human desires --the hope of demonstrating that the world has this or that desirable ethical characteristic -- is not one which, so far as I can see, a scientific philosophy can do anything whatever to satisfy. The difference between a good world and a bad one is a difference in the particular characteristics of the particular things that exist in these worlds: it is not a sufficiently abstract difference to come within the province of philosophy. Love and hate, for example, are ethical opposites, but to philosophy they are closely analogous attitudes toward objects. The general form and structure of those attitudes towards objects which constitute mental phenomena is a problem for philosophy, but the difference between love and hate is not a difference of form or structure, and therefore belongs rather to the special science of psychology than to philosophy. Thus the ethical interests which have often inpired philosophers must remain in the background: some kind of ethical interest may inspire the while study, but none must obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special results which are sought.

"If this view seems at first sight disappointing, we may remind ourselves that a similar change has been found necessary in all the other sciences. The physicist or chemist is not now required to prove the ethical importance of his ions or atoms; the biologist is not expected to prove the utility of the plants or animals which he dissects. In pre-scientific ages this was not the case. Astronomy, for example, was studied because men believed in astrology: it was thought that the movements of the planets had the most direct and important bearing upon the lives of human beings. Presumably, when this belief decayed and the disinterested study of astronomy began, many who had found astrology absorbingly interesting decided that astronomy had too little human interest to be worthy of study. Physics, as it appears in Plato's Timaeus for example, is full of ethical notions: it is an essential part of its purpose to show that the earth is worthy of admiration. The modern physicist, on the contrary, though he has no wish to deny that the earth is admirable, is not concerned, as physicist, with its ethical attributes: he is merely concerned to find out facts, not to consider whether they are good or bad. In psychology, the scientific attitude is even more recent and more difficult than in the physical sciences: it is natural to consider that human nature is either good or bad, and to suppose that the diffeence between good and bad, so all-important in practice, must be important in theory also. It is only during the last century that an ethically neutral psychology has grown up; and here too, ethical neutrality has been essential to scientific success.

"In philosophy, hitherto, ethical neutrality has been seldom sought and hardly ever achieved. Men have remembered their wishes, and have judged philosophies in relation to their wishes. Driven from the particular sciences, the belief that the notions of good and evil must afford a key to the understanding of the world has sought a refuge in philosophy. But even from this last refuge, if philosophy is not to remain a set of pleasing dreams, this belief must be driven forth. It is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good. In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

"We are thus brought back to our seeming paradox, that a philosophy which does not seek to impose upon the world its own conceptions of good and evil is not only more likely to achieve truth, but is also the outcome of a higher ethical standpoint than one which, like evolutionism and most traditional systems, is perpetually appraising the universe and seeking to find in it an embodiment of present ideals. In religion, and in every deeply serious view of the world and of human destiny, there is an element of submission, a realization of the limits of human power, which is somewhat lacking in the modern world, with its quick material successes and its insolent bleief in the boundless possiblities of progress. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it;' and there is danger lest, through a too confident love of life, life itself should lose much of what gives it is highest worth. The submission which religion inculcates in action is essentially the same in spirit as that which science teaches in thought; and the ethical neutrality by which its victories have been achieved is the outcome of that submission."

So to summarize my take on this, religion seems equally abused by both those who advocate and condemn it. Advocates turn off their brains, and believe all kinds of crazy stuff they're told; and they inevitably distort the meanings of religious texts, because they are viewing them in a completely different state of mind than that of the authors. Religion's detractors throw the baby out with the bathwater, in discarding the religious state of mind's powerful emotional potential for meaningful change, along with its absurdities. The resolution seems to be a balance of the two forces of mysticism and logic. But logic seems out of style these days, much more its application to internally held beliefs and attitudes. The inspirational power of the mystic's state of mind seems to have been regarded as enhancing quality of life by Freud, and by Jung as indispensable to development of individual potential. At any rate, it seems important to distinguish this profound state of consciousness itself from the dogmatic chaos it has produced; and mysticism, viewed primarily as a fundamental emotional state, probably can't be easily dismissed from any conversation about personal development and positive change.

This probably wandered off in an entirely different direction than the conversation was going, but I'd been thinking about the Freud thing awhile back, and it seemed like a relevant contribution to the subject of individuation.

[Bob Thompson]

Wow, major screwup in the book I was quoting from. "Mysticism and Logic" was actually written by Bertrand Russell, who isn't even mentioned anywhere in the book. There's an introduction that only talks about Freud, and no authors listed for the various lectures and essays. This book must have been something hacked together by Addis for a class, and later pawned at a used bookstore by one of his students. Good compilation, though, too bad he didn't mention who actually wrote the stuff. So Freud had nothing to do with this. Sorry. I found the entire essay by Russell in a compilation online by Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm

So, forget I said that.

--BT

[Chris]

On Nov 12, 4:12 pm, Bob Thompson <thompbob...@mchsi.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, major screwup in the book I was quoting from. "Mysticism
> and Logic" was actually written by Bertrand Russell, who isn't even
> mentioned anywhere in the book. There's an introduction that only
> talks about Freud, and no authors listed for the various lectures
> and essays.

Nevertheless, Freud did have an open mind about the numinous.
Stanley Schneider mentions a quote in his essay 'The Mystical
and Spiritual in the Large Group', which can be read online here:-

http://books.google.com/books?id=Wa3IX8s-XakC&pg=PA73#PPA78,M1

Mystical influences were 'in the air.'
In 1933, Freud stated an opinion that brought his public
coolness towards the occult closer to his private interest and
desire for further understanding:

"No doubt you would like me to hold fast to a moderate
theism and show myself relentless in my rejection of
everything occult. But I am incapable of currying favour
and I must urge you to have kindlier thoughts on the
objective possibility of thought-transference and at the
same time of telepathy as well." (Freud 1933,
New Introductory Lectures, p. 85)

[Chris]

On Nov 11, 9:19 pm, Bob Thompson <thompbob...@mchsi.com> wrote:
>
> Are individuals predisposed to undertake individuation by
> some fundamental difference in the relative strengths of
> their motivations, or by some other preexisting condition,
> what? Dabrowski was talking about the same thing as Jung
> and Maslow; he posited the existence of the "developmental
> instinct," a drive toward more or less conscious development
> of one's uniqueness and personality, taking charge of who

> you fundamentally are, and changing it. ... I don't have any

> general answer for this question, it may have as many
> different answers as there are people. But I'm guessing that
> it's not a casual commitment.

It puts me in mind that Plato was talking about this in his
simile of the cave. Also the confusing circumstances
accompanying the transition may be a common experience.

The Republic, Chapter 7, Stephanus 518:

"Anyone with any sense," [Socrates] said, "will remember
that the eyes may be unsighted in two ways, by a transition
either from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and
will recognize that the same thing applies to the mind. So
when he sees a mind confused and unable to see clearly he
will not laugh without thinking, but will ask himself whether
it has come from a clearer world and is confused by the
unaccustomed darkness, or whether it is dazzled by the
stronger light of the clearer world to which it has escaped
from its previous ignorance. The first condition of life is a
reason for congratulation, the second for sympathy, though
if one wants to laugh at it one can do so with less absurdity
than at the mind that has descended from the daylight of
the upper world."

[Bob Thompson]

Chris wrote:

It puts me in mind that Plato was talking about this in his
simile of the cave.  Also the confusing circumstances
accompanying the transition may be a common experience.
  

I suppose any real growth and development will inevitably involve some kind of anguish. It used to be a common saying that suffering builds character -- but I haven't heard that theme in quite awhile. I suppose that's something even Nietzsche and St. Paul could agree on. How you go about marketing suffering, I have no idea. Krishnamurti talked about a "burning discontent" that's a precursor to the emptying of consciousness, as I recall he seemed to describe it as something like sorting out the contents of your head, and tossing out all the garbage, a process he described as "extremely arduous." So apparently he viewed an intense dissatisfaction with oneself as a prerequisite to change. Dabrowski thought that disintegration of the existing personality was essential to personality development, even sometimes to the extent that it might involve symptoms of psychosis:

...personality develops through the loosening of its cohesiveness -- an indispensable condition of human existence. The developmental instinct, therefore, by destroying the existing structure of personality allows the possibility of reconstruction at a higher level.

In this procedure we find three phenomena which are to some extent compulsory:

1. The endeavor to break off the existing, more or less uniform structure which the individual sees as tiring, stereotyped, and repetitious, and which he begins to feel is restricting the possibility of his full growth and development.

2. The disruption of the existing structure of personality, a disintegration of the previous internal unity. This is a preparatory period for a new, perhaps as yet fairly strange and poorly grounded value.

3. Clear grounding of the new value, with an appropriate change in the structure of personality and a recovery of lost unity -- that is, the unification of the personality on a new and different level than the previously existing one.

.....

The term disintegration is used to refer to a broad range of processes, from emotional disharmony to the complete fragmentation of the personality structure, all of which are usually regarded as negative.

The author, however, has a different point of view: he feels that disintegration is a generally positive developmental process. Its only negative aspect is marginal, a small part of the total phenomenon and hence relatively unimportant in the evolutionary development of personality. The disintegration process, through loosening and even fragmenting the internal psychic environment, through conflicts within the internal environment and with the external environment, is the ground for the birth and development of a higher psychic structure.

[Chris]

On Nov 13, 4:32 am, Bob Thompson wrote:
>
> Krishnamurti talked about a "burning discontent"
> that's a precursor to the emptying of consciousness,
> as I recall he seemed to describe it as something
> like sorting out the contents of your head, and
> tossing out all the garbage, a process he described
> as "extremely arduous." So apparently he viewed an
> intense dissatisfaction with oneself as a prerequisite
> to change.

Dissatisfaction with oneself or with one's understanding.
People messing up your melon with a lot of nonsense
it a prime motivator to rejecting it all and starting from
scratch, thinking for yourself.

So, I reckon one useful tool to have been provided with
beforehand is a good understanding of Descartes' Cogito
ergo sum. I have seen people really misunderstand this
fundamental concept, saying 'so because I think about
a tree it exists?'

Aside from that kind of confusing aspect -- which is
quite explainable -- Descartes' brainwave is a exemplar
of the beginning of independent thought.

He rejects everything : starts from a position of radical
doubt. It's a method repeated in the classic sci-fi movie
Dark Star :-

Doolittle: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?

Bomb #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.

Doolittle: Fine. Think about this then. How do you know
you exist?

Bomb #20: Well, of course I exist.

Doolittle: But how do you know you exist?

Bomb #20: It is intuitively obvious.

Doolittle: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence
do you have that you exist?

Bomb #20: Hmmmm.....well..... I think therefore I am.

Doolittle: That's good. That's very good. But how do
you know that anything else exists?

Bomb #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me.
This is fun!

Doolittle: Now, listen, listen. Here's the big question.
How do you know that the evidence your sensory
apparatus reveals to you is correct?