Anthropological Rationality
The rationality/irrationality model, though not absolutely perfect a model of human reality, may nonetheless be the most probable, relatively possible, approximate, generally realistic, empirical valid, model available. Because it is founded on truth criterion of relativism, it is the most applicable trans-culturally to include all human beings.
It has been effectively demonstrated that there are certain empirical-theoretical limitations which cannot be adequately surmounted. These are the biological horizon, the personality horizon and the cultural horizon. These horizons present formidable boundaries to the theoretical construction of the "universal human nature" model.
It has been assumed safe to base empirical validity of the concept of universal human nature upon the structural, bio-chemical, bio-medical, level of "natural order". Very few "scientists" have seriously questioned this presumption, and indeed it would seem to be necessary in order to retain a sense of scientific order in understanding human nature. In the area of mental illness the emphasis is on the brain disease and generally upon the physical side of the mind/brain dichotomy. Even Freud and Hull held firmly to this belief in spite of their considerable methodological and theoretical divergence? Social Darwinism, physical anthropology, medical anthropology, psycho biology, socio biology, behaviorism, psycho analysis, the sociologists and functionalists , all have held firmly to this most basic tenet. It is rather paradoxical that the refutation of this presumption should come from the bio-chemists themselves. The ethnologists studies man the animal. The physical anthropologist studies man the primate. The social scientist studies man the insect and man the ant. The psychologist studies man the rat. As scientists all study man the statistical average and man the number, and as biologists they all study man the genome--the gamete. The crucial question to answer becomes how much of human behavior patterning, if any can be reduced down to a problem of genealogy, heredity, genotype, instinct, innate anatomical structure and physiological function, to sensory perception and sensori motor coordination and behavioral modification. How much of human nature is natural?
The stereotypical biological human being can at least be said to have deep structural-physiological and anatomical similarities. This deep universal structure can indeed be safely presumed to exist, but perhaps not quite deep enough--in itself biological structural universality is only a very superficial concept. While it can be said that biological structure imposes upon human behavior certain horizons as to possible potentialities--that there is a biological and genetic component of all behavior, this component is not exclusive to other considerable factors but rather is all inclusive. Structural similarities end at surface appearance. Upon closer scrutiny only differentiation and variation emerges. Individuals have brains enormously different in number, size and arrangement of neurons as well as in gross features. Structure is not static, but dynamic--incorporating changes in evolutionary modification. It is indeed difficult not to attribute some form of rationality to the wondrous intricacy and amazing diversity manifest in all life forms--to say that the evolution of the human mind was not a goal directed event but arose spontaneously only by the principle of chance and random selection. Indeed, from a biological standpoint a human is a human is a human, but that is about all it can say in regard to universal human nature. Individuals can be said to vary enormously even at the level of bio-chemical composition. What is biologically normal and adaptive for one individual is not necessarily biologically suitable for another. The total gene pool of humanity can be said to be absolutely finite, but beyond this statement there exists only virtual infinity of possible genetic recombinations, of chance mutations and transformations. Beyond the very fundamental level of biological structural similarity, the similarities cease and the variations multiply.
The population of the human species can be said to be finite at any one moment, and yet there are only guesstimates at actual population size. To consider the implications of the sheer magnitude of this inexact and growing number is mind boggling. About the only stereotypical thing we can say about human nature is that there is a potentially infinite possibility of diversity and variation within broadest biological parameters and that continual adaptive change happens mostly unpredictably--that human beings are born and die and in the interim propagate their own kind.
We can subdivide the total human race by whichever system we choose as suitable to our needs--by race, by nation-state, as first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, by ethnic group or culture area, by tribe, by clan, by family lineage or individuality--and yet when any of these static divisions are considered in the dynamic process of change they soon become quite inaccurate--even at the impossibly complex yet empirically most valid individual level. There is no such thing as an absolute human universal which applies absolutely without exception or variation to all human beings--which when taken beyond superficial analysis there doesn't emerge anomalous exceptions--"in-betweens" which fit no category perfectly.
It can be said that at the biological level--the functional-structural level--there exists a biological horizon within which all of humanity can be outlined and defined and beyond which it is not possible to stray. Even this horizon is the broadest extent possible, incorporating within it all possible diversity and variation, and itself is continuously evolving. Individuality begins at the bio-chemical level, and multiplies exponentially in complexity the higher up the scale we go. If we add to this already complex inventory of bio-chemical-physiological variation, all of the vast myriad of chance environmental influences which might either directly or indirectly affect the phenotypical expression and modification of the genotypical nature of humanity, and then add on top of this the vast array of cultural influences and interrelationships possible, in lieu of all this complexity of the problem of universal human nature it is amazing that there are as many similarities between humans as are manifest. Variation and differentiation at the pan human biological level increases exponentially as we ascend the ladder of complexity to the pan human supra cultural level of consideration. This simple argument of the biological, personality and cultural complexity of humanity is enough to demolish any hope of discovering a stereotypical universal human nature. Even the concept of consistent individual identity becomes quite questionable in light of consideration of random day to day, year to year, influences as each and every one of us continually changes mostly in unpredictable directions and in time become virtually altogether different from what we once were.
Besides the biological horizon is the problem of determining and defining those presumably few personally attributes which are ultimately necessary and sufficient to describe the personality of any given individual. In essence the personality horizon presents a level of empirical complexity which cannot be theoretically transcended without sacrificing empirical validity. Individual personality is complex--the influences and interactions--that personality tends to defy adequate theoretical generalization. The comparison of individuals out of context to these individual differences and complexities tends to present a superficial and distorted view of reality. Essentially we cannot generalize across individuals with the theoretical certitude we need in order to construct a model of universal personality. The same thing applies at the cultural horizon. Cultures are like personalities to the extent that one cannot theoretically generalize beyond culture bounds--cross culturally--without losing empirical consistency in explanation. Each cultural configuration presents a unique set of behavioral patternings which are a virtual infinitude of explainable influences. These patterns are unique to any given culture and the essential differences between cultural patternings cannot be consistently compared cross culturally without destroying the prerequisite cultural context. Personality differences do not cross cultural boundaries. We must define norms in any behavioral situation--these norms are similar only within the same cultural context. Cultural norms do not generalize cross culturally.
Shweder's main conclusions are that different situational factors affect different people differently--individual variations in one context do not necessarily predict individual variations in another context. Individual differences in behavior are dependent upon context and are not generalizable across comparable contexts. Evidence for cultural integration in inconclusive and inadequate. Early childhood training does not have predictable consequences on adult behavior. Contextual comparability is inversely related to cultural variation--individual differences are inapplicable for understanding cultural differences. External "objectively" defined contexts do not determine absolutely the adaptive accommodation of a human being to the environment. Unless a lot is known about an individual's objective, choices, beliefs, values and culture, most universal generalizations have little predictive power. "Motivational integration of culture" is probably wrong as an empirical generalization. Common motivations are not required to account for cultural integration. Individuals within cultures vary much more between themselves than between cultures. Cultural integration can be adequately reinterpreted as personality and cultural congruence. "Personification" of culture is not empirically necessary but only coincidental. Human behavior is not easily describable within the context of "universal human nature"--in terms of a universal scheme of forces or entities of a limited number of kinds and governed by a limited number of forces. A good scientific theory is supposedly both parsimonious and empirically valid (i.e. predictive power). The paradox of social science theory is that empirical validity (predictive success) tends to be inversely related to parsimony and vice versa. The choice is either predictability or explainability, and from a scientific standpoint neither is adequate without the other. My question is how much must psychiatric theory be scientific?
When we ask of how much of human nature is biological, we can answer all and none. When we ask how much of human nature is individually determined and unique to the personality we can answer all and none. When we ask how much of human nature is culturally determined and characteristic of the culture we can answer all and none. When we ask whether biology, personality and culture are in the integrity of the human being one and the same, we can answer yes and no. The paradox of universal human nature is that all humans are similar and dissimilar biologically, in personality, and in culture. This is the universal human dilemma.
I believe it is important to compare different individuals to identity differences and similarities (hopefully to be able to compare comprehensively all individuals), likewise I believe it is equally important to compare cultures (hopefully all cultures), for it is only by these comparisons that similarities and differences can be identified. Such comparisons are necessary for the establishment of individual and cultural identity, providing contextual frames of reference by which we can seek to explain individual and cultural behavior patterns. But we must recognize the intrinsic limitations of such comparisons--the biological, personal and cultural horizons, and the extrinsic limitations of application--the explanation of appropriate behavior within and without appropriate context.
We can compare individuals. Indeed we must differentiate between individuals to gain some sense of social identity, but we cannot use our comparisons to explain, evaluate or judge an individual's behavior. An individual's behavior patterns are in context primarily to his own individual relativity--preferences and rationality. Any cross person comparison (IQ test) can tell us differences about individual's contexts, and these comparisons are necessary to help understand social congruence but they do not provide an adequate model for explaining or understanding an individual's behavior patterns. We can compare these individual contexts within a wider cultural context, but we cannot compare individual's contexts cross culturally. We can compare cultural contexts one with another, but we cannot use the context of one to understand the context of another. Our comparisons are not adequate in explaining the cultural configuration of any one culture. Biologically we can compare between individuals or groups of individuals , but we cannot use the biological mode derived from one individual or group to adequately explain the biological behaviors of another individual or group. The explanations would not be adequate because they would oversimplify the empirical reality. Explanations of behavior are context dependent. Such explanations would be out of context for valid understanding.
Given these three horizons to the understanding of universal human nature, what can we construct with what few remnants by which to understand human behavior? Any theoretical construct of human "nature" cannot be adequately removed from relative contextuality without damaging its empirical validity--i.e. absolute universals of human nature, though theoretically possible, are empirically highly improbable. We have left over only imperfect generalizations--models of probabilities which ever more closely approximate understanding of human behavior patternings. I propose an alternative to the replication of uniformity ideal which has been implied by the quest for absolute understanding of universal human nature, and this alternative is the organization of diversity of the human behavioral continuum.
There exists in reality a continuum of all possible variations of human behavioral stylizations, configurations and patternings. This continuum is bounded by the biological, personality and cultural horizons, but is theoretically open ended in the sense that within its bounds there are possible an infinite variety of potential behavioral combinations at the biological, personal and cultural levels. If given access, any person or culture can carve up this continuum in their own unique style or pattern. People and cultures all tend to prescribe to a limited portion of the continuum which might be regarded as the normal range. All people and cultures carve up and utilize different portions of this continuum differently. Some utilize more extensively and some more restrictively portions of the continuum. The continuum is virtually one and the same for all people and cultures. Now in context to this continuum we can compare individuals and cultures at the appropriate biological, personal or cultural levels, as to which similar and different portions of the continuum are utilized, but this is the closest we can come too the formulation of an ideal of universal human nature. This continuum is in a sense a universal continuum--pan human and pan cultural. No single functionally or structurally integrated, organismic culture (world culture) has yet arisen which utilizes all portions of the continuum.
I conceive of a human behavioral continuum, as a replacement for the concept of universal human nature, incorporating the widest possible biological horizon, the intermediate probable cultural horizon and the definitively peculiar and singular personal horizon. All cultures and all individuals divide up and utilize this continuum in distinctive and unique ways and even though the potential for any person or culture to utilize any portion of this spectrum (any human being can behave any way that is biologically possible) is theoretically unbounded, it is nonetheless determined primarily by the biological horizon, secondly by the cultural horizon and thirdly, but not least, the personality horizon. Furthermore I conceive of this continuum as being dynamic, changing in time--and mostly increasing in the direction of complexity. The reality of this continuum is that it is growing upon the biologically extensive horizon and upon the personally and culturally intensive horizon--in complexity and sophistication. This continuum is the contextual frame of reference, as opposed to the absolute reference to universal human nature, by which we seek to understand and explain all human behavior patterning.
The problem of the universal human dilemma is light of the universal human behavioral continuum is whether there might be some "natural" rational order if human behavior patterning which might serve as a pan human basis of understanding rationality/irrationality. There are two sides to this singular problem. The first is the problem of determining how much human behavior might be reducible to a biological, structural-functional physical-physiological explanation--how much does bio chemistry, genetic heredity, genotype, instinct, and innate physical structures of body and brain determine human behavior as opposed to phenotypical (cultural heritage and context) explanations, and whether this "natural" rationality is in some sense qualitatively different and distinct from "unnatural" irrationality or whether irrational behavior might be understood simply as being some manner of exaggeration or extreme manifestation of rational behavior. Both sides present dichotomies (nature/nurture, natural/unnatural) which I believe can be realistically transcended in anthropological explanation.
I am not so much interested in scientific understanding (causes and effects) of psycho pathology, though these explanations are not unimportant, rather I am searching for rationally explainable factors of irrational (disordered) behavior (causes and effects of a failure of rationality [irrationality]). Can failure of rationality cause mental illness or does irrationality result from mental illness, or is this another hen or egg problem. I believe the real problem is one of processual understanding rather than causal explanation.
I am not discounting altogether any sort of biological (bio-chemistry imbalance, physical brain damage or genetic predisposition) or cultural (press and stress of social sets and setting) explanations for behavioral disorder of an individual. It is my contention that from a relativistic standpoint neither explanation is wholly adequate, though analytically partially necessary, but there is a third transcendent point of consideration. My main consideration is rather the perceived irrationality of that disordered behavioral process and this is beside the point of biological or cultural factors or genesis or causality. To understand irrationality we must reference this understanding against an understanding of rationality. And to define or explain rationality we need to reference this against some kind of ideology by which any model of rationality/irrationality can be understood as a movement away from rational ideology. Rationality is relative, and the standards by which we are to evaluate rationality/irrationality are also relative to the arbitrary willpower to believe. From a humanistic standpoint, rather than from a scientific one, it is necessary to understand rationality/irrationality as a function of individual willpower. Human behavior patternings are directional and relational and are explainable in terms of normal tendencies, generalities, and approximate probabilities, and rationality/irrationality is understandable in terms of approximation or deviation from these normal "gestalts." This is not to say that a schizophrenic wants to be "mentally ill," indeed his willpower is most probably irrelevant to his condition--but I do contend that somewhere within the root of the disordered behavioral process is an implied failure of rationality.
Furthermore I conceive of rationality as being contextually dependent upon change. I believe many theoretical conceptions of mental disorder and behavioral pathology are inadequate because they are relatively static models, failing to adequately incorporate the reality of change within the fundamental theoretical framework. Accounting for continual and constant change must be integral to any understanding of rationality/irrationality. He problem for change is the key reason for the empirical and theoretical inadequacy of any explanation of human behavior patterning. Rational behavior is behavior which is ordered along some explicable means in relation to change--in other words, entailing behavioral adaptation to change to maintain some sense of at least minimal order. Irrationality is the failure to maintain sensible explicable and understandable order in relation to change--or maladaptive response to changes resulting in nonsensical disorder. The failure of an individual to comprehend the irrationality of his own disorder--the relativity of rationality--does not preclude the labeling of maladaptive behavior as irrational in relation to change. The key understanding of irrational behavior is that, aside from biological and cultural components such behavior is disordered (unexplainable) because it is essentially out of context to change (lacking any rationally identifiable frame of reference, whether biological, cultural or personal).
While I believe irrationality to be the negative expression or rationality, it is not just simply this negativity, but also more important there is an essential qualitative difference between negative irrationality and rationality construed as positively beneficial-healthy. While it is enough to interpret irrationality in negative terms referenced against rationality, the positive process is essentially different from this negative process and must likewise be referenced against rationality in the opposite, essentially distinct direction. Rationality is the anthropologically transcendent concept from which to understand behavioral irrationality and rational creativity, but simply in relation to rationality it is to be viewed as continuous and merely as an extreme or exaggerated condition of rational behavior. From the anthropological standpoint rationality might be viewed as neutral (objective) contexts against which to reference both "good", healthy "positive" behavior and "bad" unhealthy negative behavior.
Understood as a negative organismic conditionality, I wish to interpret the meaning of irrationality/rationality in terms of the anthropological definition of human understanding which I have previously proffered, by first analyzing this definition into the exclusive, independent thetic terms of psychological understanding of psycho pathology and then in inclusive, dependent, antithetical terms of sociological understanding of socio pathology, and secondly I wish to synthesize these opposed understandings into an anthropological understanding of behavioral irrationality. I also wish to emphasize that the problem of rationality/irrationality is essentially different but not unrelated to the problem of rationality/rational creativity which I will deal with in the next and last part of this work. While I dislike the use of the term pathology as it connotes to me a biological disease/illness relationship which this work is seeking basically to dispute, I find the term most descriptive in terms of socio pathology as connoting a contagion--a social disease and psycho pathology as connoting primarily a biological process.
Anthropological understanding of behavioral rationality/irrationality must be interpreted in symbolic terms of ego reality (rationality) as incorporating the dipolar behavioral continuum between thetic psychological understanding of psycho pathology of the self, and in sociological understanding of socio pathology of the other. Essentially ego reality (rationality) is the mediating reality between the two extremes of the behavioral continuum. The anthropological model of ego reality is fundamentally a tripartite one, as was the Freudian model of personality, incorporating biological foundations of the self (id), socio cultural structure and context of the other (superego) and personality of the ego reality (rationality). Ego reality is defined both in exclusive terms of the self and inclusive terms of the other and describe the interaction and interrelationship between the two within the personality. Behavioral irrationality is best understood anthropologically in the interpretation of rational/irrational behavioral symbolism--as primarily being the expression and communication of emotionality--as being essentially affective in nature, integrating the mind/body dichotomy.
Behavioral rationality is essentially ordered emotionality and irrationality is essentially disordered behavioral emotionality. While psycho pathology might be understood as lying closer to the extreme of biological--body brain dysfunction expressed in emotional modes of action, feelings and cognitions--in terms of pain, sufferings, anxiety and fear, at the opposite analytical extreme socio pathology may be understood in communicable terms of emotionality-cultural forms-conceptuality-mind expressed as the emotion of pure reason--of "unemotion." All behavioral modes ranging from personal to cultural, from pure mechanical material action to pure spiritual ontological mentation, have an essential emotional, affective content by which it is rendered personally and culturally meaningful (rational) or else ameaningful (irrational).
First I will elaborate the psychological problem of psycho pathology, then I will elaborate the sociological problem of sociological problem of socio pathology, and I will finally elaborate upon the anthropological problem of behavioral irrationality as being the synthetical integration of the psychological and sociological problems. I believe there is a natural (psychological) and a logical (sociological) ordering of rational human behavior. I will state unequivocally that it is best summarized by the expression "Vachasa, Manasa, Kayena" in thought, word and deed. This order is unidirectional as a temporal process of change from thought (mind) to action (body) mediated through emotion. Emotionality has a rational ordering or directionality of expression. Irrationality is the reversal of this rational of this rational ordering--hence its disordering.
The psycho pathological process is to be viewed as a developmental disorganization of the individual, manifest in disordered behavioral stylizations and resulting in disintegration of the personality and potential self destruction. This psychological process is spontaneous and essentially exclusive and independent of the socio pathological process--it can occur out of context of any socio pathology, but the socio pathological process depends upon and includes psycho pathological development. There is in life two tendencies--one toward increased order and the other towards increased disorder. The first is birth oriented and entails courage-motivation and the second is death oriented and entails fear motivation. The first is to be viewed as healthy, positive developmental process while the second is unhealthy and a negative developmental process. Both processes are respectively positive and negative feedback cycles--virtuous and vicious spirals of growth and decay. He ultimate rationale, natural and logical motivational source of both processes is willpower (volition)--the fundamental organismic life energy of the human being. At the heart of all irrational psycho pathological processes I believe there is a fundamentally negative commitment or just a failure of commitment of willpower--eventuating in premature death. The same behavioral pattern might be either psychologically birth oriented and courage motivated or death oriented and fear motivated, depending upon appropriate or inappropriate contextuality, and hence the difficulty in neatly sorting out and distinguishing psychologically healthy processes from the pathological. It is not necessarily to imply that an individual becomes pathological just because he/she has "coped out" motivationally on himself/herself, but it is to imply that somewhere and somehow an important link in the developmental life process was consistently "coped out on" by someone. As I will try to demonstrate, I believe the biological organismic concept and the developmental life process is much more inclusive and broader than the narrow concept of the self--entailing a whole range of biologically imperative if not absolutely necessary human interrelationships. In a sense, certain biologically ordained human interrelationships can be viewed as transcendent psychological organisms in themselves and in these psychological relationships psycho pathological processes are often times "shared" by the component members of these transcendent biological entities--thus the "inheritance" infectiousness and transmission of psycho pathological disorders from person to person and from generation to generation. This can mean that psychological processes are due as much to failure to acquire appropriate repertories from appropriate role models as well as willfully coping out, as well as cultural or biological inheritance of predispositions to psycho pathological processes. The simple psycho pathological process extends beyond the self boundaries and incorporates a part of others.
The psycho pathological process being essentially an idiographic developmental disorder, I need to proffer a definition of what I view to be a "natural" or rational order of growth, maturation and transition in the developmental life process. I see the development of the human organism as being concurrently manifested all along the behavioral continuum. For my own convenience I will divide this continuum along three parallel planes--the mental, the emotional, and the actional. The mental plane of developmental disorder involves perceptual-cognitive functioning, from conceptually objective to subjective; the emotional plane of developmental disorder involves affective experience from low to high, and the actional plane of developmental disorder involves organismic somatic condition, from tensed to relaxed. Expression of psycho pathological processes occurs concurrently along three planes. It is important to note that the overall contextuality is the determining factor of appropriate or inappropriate behavior, and in the case of psycho pathology it is the total biological organismic context which is important.
I believe the developmental process to be a "growth" process which does not cease until senility and death. I wish to emphasize the continuity of this developmental process. Though this life death continuum can theoretically be analytically divided into any number of stages, I wish to emphasize that such stages are not biologically absolute or necessary but are rather arbitrarily determined by the human observer. Overemphasis upon stages distorts the nature of the developmental life process by creating the illusion of essential organismic structural-functional differences and discontinuity between stages. Instead of a developmental model dividing the life process into a series of steps or stages, I wish to proffer a developmental model of gradual continuous transition, growth and maturation , instead of a stepwise discontinuity rather overall continuity and interrelatedness. While there without doubt occurs biologically critical periods of inauguration and crucial passage periods of structural-functional transition, I believe that these changes occur relatively idiosyncratically and are a minor consideration when set against a developmental background of multidimensional holothetic organismic continuity and contextuality.
The developmental life process is idiosyncratically relative--and is dependent to some extent upon the perception of change. There is some truth that the older we become the faster time seems to pass--a sign of biologically slowing down. In relation to a fifty year old, one year is only one fiftieth part of a lifetime, whereas for a four year old the same year is one fourth of a lifetime. In relation to at least potential biological progression, failure to progress can be considered regressive, while individuals can be seen to arbitrarily regress to earlier repertories of earlier periods of existence, such regression is also just implied by the perspective of potential progression. In general the process entails a broader and more sophisticated incorporation and acquisition of functional repertories of motivational expression.
In general the past cannot be definitively said to have a conclusively decisive effect upon the present in personality development. I believe that as a biological contextual 'background" the deep structure of the past, memories, old habits, acquired and deeply ingrained repertories genetic predispositions and structure does have a tremendous cumulative but not a decisive influence upon the present. The possibility of crucial stages as being permanently consequential to personality development has not been, nor I believe can ever be, adequately empirically validated. To say that a compulsive personality disorder is the result of overly restrictive potty training, or that missing out on a single day of appropriate adjustment will eventuate in a whole life time of misery, is in part merely to make an empirically untenable generalization. To believe in such a statement is to take a leap of faith and to close one's mind to the reality of alternative explanations. To lay cause or blame upon the past is to divest the importance of decisive influence of willpower of ego rationality--in determining the present. It is to commit essentially the same error as led the disordered individual down the dark corridor of psycho pathology in the first place. There is a need for harmonization in the life process--maintenance of a continual balance between the three planes of motivational expression--the mental, the emotional and the actional and the three functional forms of motivational expression--power, affiliation and achievement.
The balance must be continually maintained with an ever present need to reharmonize within newly emerging contexts of life changes. The gross dysfunctional imbalancing of these motivations--to much of one at the sake of the others, is the primary expression of the psycho pathological process. It is impossible to say exactly where a psycho pathological process begins--it could begin with unresolved physical, emotional, mental problems--but the effects are always consistently similar--the irrational disordering of rational behavior. I wish to remonstrate the fundamental irreducible complexity of the theoretical problem that is entailed by the holothetic multidimensional organismic comprehension of behavioral irrationality. The key turning point is motivational loss of functional identity--a falling out of appropriate biological developmental context to the point of organismic disorganization. I will order the psycho pathological process along a developmental continuum of increasing disorder ranging the normal extreme of all pervasive anxiety of rational anxiety to the extreme of psychotic irrationality. I will arbitrarily divide this continuum for the sake of clarification into three phases--the initial beginning phase, the intermediate transitional stage and the culminating phase. Many individuals are able to achieve a minimal--perhaps optimal adjustment somewhere along this continuum upon the three planes of motivational expression, achieving a relatively changeless static condition--perceived permanence--by the maintenance and incorporation of certain "coping" mechanisms as long as possible--remaining in that condition indefinitely until irreconcilable mitigating circumstances force changes--either for the worse or better. Such changelessness is relative not absolute, and provides only an illusory modicum of security against inevitable demise. Eternal life is a nice wish. I will describe the three phases of the psycho pathological continuum of disorder as I believe they are manifested along the three planes of motivational expression.
The initial phase of behavioral disorganization of the life process along the mental plane of motivational expression is characterized by anxiety--defined by a fundamental mistrust of perceptions, cognitions and decisions, general indecisiveness and mental confusion and nervousness, causing and caused by the functional failure to satiate perceptual, cognitive and normative needs, by feelings of lowered self esteem and by insufficient power motivation and leading to an intermediate phase of transitional or chronic perpetuative mentations characterized by recurrent flights of fantasy, day dreaming, persistent obsessive mentation, anti-intraception, self deception, closed mindedness and entailing systems of ruminant reality testing (rationalization) of unresolved problems, of hypocritical pride and prejudice, and eventuating in a culminating phase of psychotic irrationality characterized by schizophrenic symptoms, paranoia, and general psychic disintegration and disorganization.
The initial phase of behavioral disorganization of the life process along the emotional plane of motivational expression is characterized by emotional conflict and feelings of desperation, loneliness, emotional discontentedness and unhappiness, causing and caused by a failure to make adequate emotional adjustments to life changes characterized by a failure to satiate social/sexual needs, by feelings of social/sexual inadequacy, and by insufficient affiliation motivation and leading to an intermediate phase of transitional or chronic perpetuative systems of projection and transference of emotionality, by systems of emotional-verbal persecution, feelings of guilt, vicariousness of emotions, social withdrawal, chronic masturbation, sexual repression, emotional repression, self abnegation, separation of sex and sentiment, a general desensitization of personality expression, a "coldness" or shallowness of emotional expression, expressed antipathy, jealousy or apathy of others, and eventuating in a culminating phase of extreme psychotic episodes of mania and depression, in psycho sexual and psycho social personality disorders and in complete emotional dissociation, decathexsis and affective "flatness".
The initial phase of behavioral disorganization of the life process along the actional plane of motivational expression is characterized by physical feelings of bodily weakness, unhealthiness, uncleaniness, by feelings of impending physical threat or harm, or by fears of loss of bodily control or of impending doom or death or disaster, causing and caused by failure to make adequate physical adjustments to life changes characterized by failure to satiate biological needs, by feelings of material, financial or physical adequacy, and by insufficient achievement motivation and leading to an intermediate phase characterized by transitional or chronic perpetuative systems of perseveration of activity, of frustration and suffering, of compulsiveness, of acting out of wish fulfillment, of stinginess, of excessive orderliness, control, cleanliness, routinization, of miserliness, hoarding or excessive displays of conspicuous consumption, spending, ostentation beyond one's means by active efforts to enforce conformity, by excessive voluntary commitments, by fanatical belief and behavior, and eventuating in a culminating phase of extreme psychotic episodes of self destructiveness, excessive aggressiveness and destructiveness, psycho somatic disorders, sudden unpredictable outbursts of aggression or fugues or flignts, in excessive substance abuse and compulsive gambling and risk taking--"thrill seeking", by pyromania, kleptomania, by impulse control disorders, by phobias, and by the dissociative disorders, chronic hyperactivity and hypoactivity.
I am not proffering an explanatory model or classificatory system of psycho pathology. I am only attempting to formulate a rough organizational model of behavioral disorder by which we can "rationalize" upon irrationality. Before complicating this already over inclusive model, I must reiterate about the enormous difficulty adequately explaining such a complex problem as psycho pathology. There simply are not final explanations nor conclusively absolute categories or labels by which to address and comprehend the problem of behavioral irrationality. I must also reemphasize the intended interactional nature and interrelatedness of the three behavioral planes of the developmental continuum of disorder. I have sought to explain psycho pathology as being processural rather than causal; as occurring within bounds of a dynamic contextual continuum rather than as being simply a static part of states or a series of steps.
Now I wish to elaborate upon a problem I previously alluded to--that of the need for determining psycho pathological disorder against an appropriate (or inappropriate) biological organismic context--one that extends beyond the bounds of the self. This is the fourth axes of evaluation of disorder--appropriate or inappropriate "social" behavior. From a psychological point of view "socio biological" behavior, I will define this context as being the minimal/maximal (optimal) biological family structure consisting of four potential role models--a mother, a father, a daughter and a son. This is the minimum biologically necessary to extend and sustain the biological line through time--biological reproduction and regeneration. Now I am not arguing that this biological family structure is a unexceptional and unalterable biological human universal--it is simply a man and a woman reproducing and replicating their genetic potential in the form of a son or a daughter. For any person, male or female, biological rationality entails at least reproduction and replication of oneself in terms of genetic potential.
I will divide the ego as self into the classical biological "Adam and Eve" dichotomy--into two biologically determined possibilities--the male self and the female self. Each of these two possible self entities has four possible "homosexual" role models which are heterosexually complementary. For the male self these are the alternative roles of son, brother, husband (male spouse) and father. For the female self the four complementary role models are daughter, sister, wife (female spouse) and mother respectively. At one time or another in the course of life it is potentially possible for either male or female self to assume each of these four role models. Note also that these four alternative biological role models have been purposely presented in order. A male is usually a son and a brother before he can be a husband and then a father while conversely a female is always a daughter and usually a sister before she is a wife and then a mother. This order has important consequences in consideration of psychological personality development. These four role modalities constitute what I term the four alternative probable facets of personality development--defining the four theoretically probable modalities of psychological identity of the self in a biological context. These modalities together form the potential personality matrix within which to express one's acquired repertories of motivationally functional behavioral stylizations. This minimal/maximal biological family unit describes the vertically ordered lineage structure of biological genetic transmission. Homosexual relationships are ordered lineally--diachronically in time, and heterosexual relationships are ordered spatially, horizontally and synchronically in space. This contextual unit defines the primary human interrelationships by which an individual personality, whether male or female, gains a biologically founded, psychological contextuality and rationality (rational identity).
I am not stating that these are automatically necessary from a biological standpoint. Indeed a child can be adopted and orphaned, a man can have no sister nor wife, nor daughter or son and vice versa the same is true for a woman. Nor does a mother necessarily always naturally love her child, or a husband his wife. An uncle or aunt or grandparent or a friend or a foe can intervene practically anywhere within this lineage schema. These are only from a theoretical standpoint the biological preferred and important relationships, and they are the most naturally, logically and rationally probable though not the only possible relationships. I am only asserting that this minimal biological lineage structure is the most theoretically practicable for explaining and understanding the rational biological context for irrational psychological behavioral processes. These four alternative role modalities fit the four stages of personality and civilization development I previously cited; the oral, anal, phallic and genital--when considered in the biological developmental order of child, sibling, spouse or parent. They can be schematized as being the four vertices of a tetrahedron, as earlier alluded to.
The six interrelationships defined by these four role modalities are husband/wife, mother/daughter, mother/son, father/daughter, father/son, and brother/sister. Within the framework of these six familial interrelationships certain psychological inter-dynamics, psychodynamics arise which have meaningful consequences for psycho pathological development. The psychodynamics of these primary human interrelationships are such that where biological considerations fails to provide natural (rational)reinforcement in interhuman bonding, the deficit is felt in psychological terms of the self compared to potential personality as an internal, biologically based deficit of personality in terms of unresolvable role model ambivalence and irreconcilable motivational repertory conflict, within any of the four role modalities and six interrelationships, in either the male self or female self and is such as to tend to predispose the self psychologically to motivationally reinforce this internally felt deficit through external compensatory behavior patterns--through projection of personality. The problem is that where such compensatory behaviors do not occur because of mitigating environmental conditions, the bonds tend to become easily broken, causing a loss of biological identity and personality fulfillment, but when they are manifest, such behaviors often times become over compensatory to the point of disharmonization and imbalance such that the original nature (rationality) of the bond becomes irrational--psycho pathological, and such effects eventually become reflected in an over restrictive personality matrix of the self--with pattern of negative reinforcement (discipline, taboo, and punishment) predominating over patterns of positive reinforcement (privilege, reward, and liberty)
The biological nuclear family is not the father/mother/child--it is simply the mother/child bond. The mother child bond is the only biological universal, and this even is not automatically, unexceptionably so. It is biologically the strongest and predominating bond of the personality matrix of the self--involving the acquisition of such fundamental behavioral repertories in early, even prenatal childhood development of trust, love, security, projection. In general, from a biological standpoint the female is the preferred sexual state--it is perhaps the most crucial to reproduction, the most vulnerable, the least expendable (one man can inseminate many women, but one woman can be inseminated by relatively few men). Even among the best primates the male tends to take a backseat and a peripheral role to the biological reproductive process. In relation to these considerations the male self can generally be said to stand in somewhat second place to the female self. The bonds between husband/wife and father/child are not as biologically stable as the mother/child bond, and this might very well be a deeply felt source of male ego ambivalence and masculine personality deficit, and even perhaps a "uteral" envy in having almost exclusive monopoly over the biological reproduction process. But the male as the phallic inseminator does have a trump card in the game of life--and he uses this card sometimes quite flagrantly to reassure himself and reinforce and compensate for his biologically sensed deficit. I will leave it to others to debate, test and disprove this assertion. I believe this fundamental biological contextual framework can be used to demonstrate more theoretically parsimonious and empirically commensurable alternative explanations for such notions as the now classical Freudian oedipal complex, and symbolic primal patricide, for the almost universal incest taboo, for nearly universal, pan cultural patriarchal domination and matriarchal subordination, and possibly for the deep seatedness of human competitive behavior and intra-species aggression, as well as many other problems.
I propose to be a very simple but very parsimonious explanation of the almost universal predominance of the male self and masculine personality over the female counterparts. The problem seems to be primarily one of masculine identity crisis, and usually females do not seem to have their lives afflicted by such an identity problem except where they have arbitrarily shirked their own role modalities. While a daughter might be construed as reinforcing the father's masculine identity by the implicit promise of increased fertility and is not necessarily threatening to the identity of the mother, the son might simultaneously be the source of such ambivalence for the father. The father/son bond is perhaps the weakest and most strained and most in need of behavioral reinforcement. All males have had fathers and were once sons themselves and potentially fathers too. The son reminds the father of his fundamentally felt masculine inferiority in his relationship to the mother and daughter and he thus overcompensates by reinforcing his authoritarian father role over the son. He feels jealous perhaps of the son's almost exclusive postpartum access to the mother, of the possibility of the son's rebellion and usurpation of his own authority, the son's dependence upon the mother's nurturance is a reflection of the father's own masculine frailty and a reminder that he once was some father's son also. The problem of male passage rites and totem taboos are not due so much to oedipal conflicts on the part of the son--of the son's ambivalence and jealousy towards his father--even though this is possible, it is more likely the case that the source of conflict is in the father's ambivalence and jealousy towards his son--the fear of usurpation of his authority and the resultant need to behaviorally reinforce his own role modality. Fathers are usually more powerful than their sons, and almost always in the father/son struggle come out on top. Anyways, while all fathers were once sons, a possible source of identity problems, not all sons are necessarily fathers, though they may be incipient--potential fathers. The heterosexual brother/sister, mother/son, father/daughter relationships are biologically weakened and strained by the possibilities of latent feelings if heterosexual incestuous involvement mitigated by the problem of potentially unconditional love primary bonding occasions, hence the need to behaviorally obstruct and make the interhuman bonds even more conditional then they already are--daughter can sit upon father's lap only until tumescence. If incest were naturally repressed, as Freud believed, then there would be no need for strict incest taboos, they would not be so frequently violated as they are. Because of the latent possibility of incest, especially for the insecure male, taboos must be behaviorally reinforced and the natural bonds separated and distanced. Because parent/child and brother/sister incest is biologically deleterious and detrimental and is potentially socially disintegrative as are homosexuality and masturbation, these taboos must be reinforced within the biological family structure. Where the need is inadequately compensated for by other extraneous circumstances, the taboo is minimal and negligent anyways, but where there is manifest over compensation of extreme taboos, the problem of incest is taken very seriously, if only unconsciously in contextuality.
What are the consequences of this biological context for the understanding of psycho pathology. In the first place it defines the four fundamental role modalities--child, sibling, spouse and parent, as developmental stages of personality growth. Regressive psycho pathology can be construed within this context as failure to progress to the higher level modalities--as fixation and imbalanced predominance in a lower level of being. These modalities are manifested mostly as emotional expressions of the self and emotionally is the primary manner of experiencing the problem of these modalities. In human bonding, between father and son and mother and child, husband and wife, the relationship often times take an affective life of its own--in love and hate, in passion--in its own right becoming a biological organimic reality in which the psychological dynamics and motivation of either member is inextricably involved and is transcended. To understand psycho pathology at this transcendent emotional plane--it must be interpreted within this biological context as involving psychologically more than a single personality--but the transcendent organismic integrity of more than one personality. When an individual disorder is treated out of context of these primary emotional relationships the problem often times goes unresolved--by analytically separating and destroying the transcendent existence from which the original problem arose. Parents and children, husband and wife often need to be treated psychologically as a single emotionally irreducible biological entity rather than as separate and isolatable individual conditions. The emotional plane of these primary interhuman relationships and the four role modalities of the psychological context are the rudimentary anthropological threads tying the problems of psycho pathology to the problem of socio pathology.
Socio pathology must be understood as irrational disordering of the ego in terms of the other in relation to sociological behavior systems and cultural identity--in terms of the cultural matrix. Understanding of socio pathology must be understood in terms of failure of ideological ordering of the social systems (as social rationality) and from the anthropological point of view--this is the implied ideology of humanism; in terms of failure of humanistic rationality, maturity and morality. This is not to say that the socio pathological process always begins with a failure at the formal ideological level of a culture, as opposed to the socio structural and the functional material levels. Indeed all cultures consist of concurrent processural interfunctioning at all three levels and socio pathology becomes manifest at all three levels. It is rather to assert that socio pathology always become expressed as the illogical (irrational) disordering of sociological systems in which the ideological level is no longer the primary level of rational organization of cultural functioning. Understanding of irrational sociological disorder must be referenced against a rationality ordered cultural context--and these are the sociological role modalities of the cultural matrix, by which the sociological concept of the other gains cultural identity.
Nomothetic sociological understanding of the socio pathology of the other is antithetical to, dependent upon and inclusive of understanding of psycho pathology. While the psycho pathological process is to be seen primarily as a developmental disorder of the personality which is directional and motivational, on the other hand, the socio pathological pro--is to be seen primarily as a developmental disorder of the culture which is relational and contextual. While psycho pathology can be seen as the failure of the individual to adequately adapt to changes in the life process, socio pathology can be seen as stress causing contexts which hinders and precludes individual adaptability to change, with the next overall result of rendering whole cultures of people virtually maladaptive. It can be viewed as the failure to provide adequate sociological role models to enable the ego as other to be functionally culturally adaptive. While incorporating psychology by projection and congruence socio pathology extends further by rendering a whole culture of intrinsically rational people extrinsically, relationally, and contextually in functional political, social and economic structures--maladaptive and disorganized. The "mainstream" of "rational" normally adaptive individuals who are not intrinsically psycho pathological becomes socio pathological within the cultural context of socio pathology. Their social behavior patterning which is misconstrued as normal and rationally ordered can be reinterpreted within the socio cultural context as being relationally and contextually inappropriate--as irrationality disordered.
Socio pathology is a relative problem. The normal sociopaths of any culture would be the last people to admit the fundamental irrationality of their "systems", except in as much as these systems appear stressful and incongruent with their own natural and rational personal aspirations. Socio pathology derives its motivational energy from psycho pathological process by the mechanisms of collective projection of psycho pathological problems of the self onto the social systems of the other, and contextual congruence and collective conformity to these socio pathological systems. Within a sociological context of organization of diversity as little as 15% social congruence--say five people out of thirty--is more than enough to set the socio pathological process in motion. Psycho pathological individuals whose personality matrix resembles the cultural matrix of socio pathological groups, whose personal stylizations fit the system, can become socially reinforced and considered as being "socially" successful in cultural adaptability.
The essential problem of socio pathological development seems to be the rule of the other over the self, the imbalanced predominance of the "superego" over the "id", fostering social dependency of the individual in relational terms (emotional congruence) and the pervasive diffusion of responsibility (emotional projection) from the self onto the "system" of the other which can in fact be considered to be a group myth realized through collective conformity of behavior. The social "system" of the other takes a life process of its own which transcends the "self control" of any constituent of the system and thus the socio pathological process is set in motion. The functioning of the system is no longer necessarily commensurate to the adaptive needs of the individuals within its relational context--and in as much as it hinders individual adaptive functioning can be considered socio pathological. While psycho pathology might be considered as being the problem of selfishness or of ego confusion about the self, socio pathology can be considered as being the problem of selflessness or of ego confusion about the other.
Like psycho pathology, the socio pathological process occurs concurrently on three parallel levels of cultural functioning--the formal ideological, the socio structural and the functional material levels, and it occurs in three general stages of development--the initial, the intermediate, and the culminating stages.
The initial stage of the socio pathological process at the formal ideological level results in inappropriate relational context for adaptive human functioning, causally related to a failure to maintain sociological rationality and resultant social irrationality characterized by dishonesty and deceit of the other, the reification and deification of the system of the other, and the ignorance and apathy of the self, becoming manifest in the intermediate stage in transitional or chronic perpetuative maladpative cultural forms of malfunctional political structures characterized by political pride, authoritarianism and political extremism and eventuating in the culminating stage in prevailing political prejudice.
The initial stage of the socio pathological process at the socio structural level results in inappropriate relational contexts for adaptive human functioning, causally related to a failure to achieve social maturity in the form of social independence and responsibility and resultant social immaturity characterized by social dependency and irresponsibility and becoming manifest in the intermediate stage in transitional or chronic perpetuative maladaptive cultural forms of malfunctional structures characterized by institutionalism, social stratification and solidification of class boundaries, relative social immobility, social resistance to change, and social fanaticism and eventuating in the culminating stage of rampant crime, drug abuse and legal persecution.
What is the key element of understanding and distinguishing culturally rational behavior from cultural irrationality--ordered culture from disordered culture? Cultural heritage can be seen as a complementary learning process, phenotypically modifying genotypical expression, as an extension of the biologically based adaptive mechanisms to provide an artificial context for more suitable adaptability. When any cultural matrix no longer provides such a context directly related to adaptability, then it can be construed as being irrational. The cultural matrix I believe can be defined as being four social role modalities with six possible interrelationships between these four modalities comprising the socio dynamics of social interrelationships. These role modalities tend to "spread out" horizontally or spatially across lineage structures incorporating age groups. The spatial element of human interrelationships becomes emphasized over the generational-temporal element-providing cultural identity of the sociological life process. These social role modalities represent the socialization or enculturation process of the individual over the span of a single life time. Social role deprivation and stress can occur in any one of these four stages, corresponding to the previous four developmental stages of oral, anal, phallic and genital, and influencing later development in the consequential higher stages, with the cultural development of the ego as other becoming dependent upon the four possible modalities for sociological and cultural identity. These four stages are the pre-educational (infancy), educational (childhood), functional (adulthood) and post functional (retirement and old age). This is, I believe, the socio cultural matrix by which sociological rationality and irrationality must be referenced.
I do not feel I have done the problem of socio pathology justice. It is a problem very difficult to discuss openly and publicly. Very few people are even willing to admit the possibility of the existence of socio pathology. It has been relatively ignored as a problem in and of itself. It is less well defined and poorly understood even compared to the problem of psycho pathology. To say that capitalism is essentially socio pathological, that its practicability doesn't preclude its inherent injustice, because it is founded upon the irrational principle of competition and is unjust because of the deprivation of human rights it entails and the resultant economic material inequity, and it is to be cited as a leading malefactor of the highest evolved forms of militarism in the world today, would surely be to invite criticism and trouble upon myself by others. Nonetheless I believe that socio pathology is a crucial problem; one does not have to look very long or search very far and wide to find its blatant manifestations. More people are victims of socio pathology than they are of psycho pathology, and from a humanistic perspective neither form of victimization is justifiable nor acceptable to any degree. The bottom line of any form of behavioral irrationality is that it results in harm to oneself or another human being. The key element to socio pathology, in whatever form it is manifest, is contagion.
The final outcome of any socio pathological process is social disorganization, cultural disintegration, and other destructiveness. Socio pathology means essentially that rational people can still behave in irrational ways in a sociological context. I believe that we must be able to separate psycho pathological disorder from socio pathological disorder, as being interrelated processural problems and still distinct developmental processes, before we can have any accurate anthropological understanding of behavioral irrationality.
Now what kind of consummate explanation can I proffer for the anthropological meaning of general behavioral irrationality. First I will summarize certain key anthropological points. All human behavior is ordered within a dynamic behavioral continuum of developmental and relational contextuality expressed in patterns at three parallel levels--the cognitive, emotive and connative. Anthropological understanding of rationality/irrationality is processural rather than causal. Important anthropological considerations are the physiological behavioral harmonization and integration between the three planes of motivational stylizations--the mental, emotional and actional, and the sociological behavioral harmonization and integration between the three levels of relational signification--the formal ideological, the socio structural and the functional material. The anthropological irrationality process can be divided into three conditions; the initial condition, the intermediate-chronic-perpetuative or transitional condition and the culminating condition. The anthropologically important psychological plane and sociological level are the emotional and socio structural, respectively, while the anthropologically important psycho pathological phase and socio pathological stage are the intermediate-chronic-perpetuative or transitional. The anthropologically important psychological disorder characterizations are rationalization, repression and regression and the anthropological important sociological disorder characterizations are delusion, projection and dependency. Dependency, diffusion of responsibility, projection and congruence seem to be the principally important anthropological emotive mechanisms. The anthropological problem of rationality/irrationality is principally a problem of emotional symbolization-emotionality.
I believe the fundamental anthropological dichotomy underlying the problem of rationality/irrationality is the self (id)/other (superego) dichotomy. The fundamental behavioral continuum occurs between the two extremes of psychological and sociological. The anthropological problem is one of ego rationality as mediator between these two extremes of ego balance and ego integrity between these two opposites and to avoid ego confusion, resulting in disorder and ego irrationality. There seem in life to be a fundamental, irreconcilable problem of having to choose between the two extremes--to opt for personal development, "self actualization", "self becoming", self expression or opt for social fulfillment, development, growth-"other communication". Usually we have to opt for one at the cost of the other. We are continually confronted with many minor day to day decisions and encounters, and the net cumulative effect seems to opt for the predominance of one way of being over the other. Usually the component of the ego becomes sacrificed or subordinated to the other component.
Within context of this fundamental anthropological dichotomy I will risk a hypothetical anthropological generalization. Usually, but not always, most of the people most of the time choose if not decisively and explicitly then at least cumulatively and tacitly--to opt for predominance of the "other" over the "self" in development of ego rationality--for cultural becoming rather than personal becoming, for social fulfillment rather than personal fulfillment. Actually I believe many if not most people rarely if ever actually perceive such a choice, but it is made "unconsciously" for them--in their failure to acquire appropriate repertories for recognizing and making such choices in their personality development. Most people are so caught up in their relational contextuality and were so thoroughly enculturated and socialized at a sufficiently early age and their personality development has been so restricted by context that they are never really bothered by such choices--the decision was made for them in some other place and in some other time. This means that in ego rationality the other usually predominates over the self most of the time. I believe I can make an important anthropological generalization about the human nature of behavioral rationality/irrationality. Rational behavior is to be construed in holothetic anthropological terms as being "normal"--the normal identity (or normality) of the ego--ego imbalanced behavior in favor of the other is conceived and perceived as ego rational and normally appropriate by the mainstream of "normal" humanity and this essentially other directed ego "normal" behavior is manifested at the psychologically emotional plane and the sociologically socio structural level and at the intermediate chronic perpetuative and transitional phase or stage of psycho pathological and socio pathological development.
This means that most generally normal personality stylizations and most generally normal cultural configurations underlying most personality and most cultural matrices can be construed as being both intermediately psycho pathological and socio pathological respectively with the general ego irrationality being disharmonized and most strongly manifested at the emotional plane and the socio structural level. To find the most important causally related factors of general ego irrationality, we must look in this central direction. In this intermediate-emotive core area of the behavioral continuum most normal behavior is to be construed as being both moderately psycho pathological and socio pathological--that these states are generally construed as being ego normal and ego rational and both intermediate emotive conditions of psycho pathology and socio pathology are mutually reinforcing in most normal contexts. We must pay a cost of personal integrity for social integrity and instead of victimization by socio pathology we generally run the risk of victimization by socio pathology. To pay the admission into cultural identity most of us must be content with being both moderately normal psychopaths and sociopaths. The sociological mechanisms of cultural integration are essentially antithetical and irreconcilable to the mechanisms of personal integration, and between the pushing and the pulling between the two extremes of self and other ego normality falls squarely in the middle as being neither overly sociologically healthy nor extremely socio pathological. Using this generalization we can construct a reasonable picture of what the normality of ego irrationality looks like. In adjustment to life changes most people in most cultures most often and indeed must opt for an intermediate chronic perpetuative psycho pathological-socio pathological position manifested mostly on the emotive-socio-structural level of ego imbalance in favor of socio pathology and extreme conditions of relative health are the exception to the rule and usually these extreme cases in either negative or positive directions happen as a reactionary efforts either consciously or unconsciously to achieve a longed for but missed natural and rational and logical ego balance and behavioral harmonization or to escape the chronic normal condition of ego imbalance and disharmonization. The problem with being squarely in the middle is that we can go in either direction, and we are never really sure which direction we are headed in--for most it is better to stay in the middle.
The problem is that socio pathology predominates over psycho pathology and mitigates against the improvement of personal growth. Most cultures are socio pathological in the sense that they are ego imbalanced and tend to exact from the individual social congruence and collective conformity at the cost of psychological rationality. The anthropological problem of general behavioral rationality/irrationality is how to restore ego balance in favor the self by psychological restitution of the personality without causing imbalance in the opposite direction and this problem is essentially trying to motivate psychological willpower among people who just don't perceive the need.
In the anthropological understanding of the behavioral continuum of rationality/irrationality there are three behavioral levels of expression--the cognitive meaning level, the emotive symbolic level, and the connative signification level; and there are three conditions of processural development of ego irrationality--the initial condition, the intermediate chronic perpetuative or transitional condition and the culminating condition.
The initial condition of ego irrationality at the cognitive meaning level of behavioral expression is due to cognitively adapt to life changes characterized by loss of cognitive paradoxicality and analytically irreconcilable antinomality causally related to failure to achieve normal identity of the self in functional symbolization system of status characterized by ego confusion about the self and loss of personal identity leading to an intermediate condition of chronic perpetuative or transitional disorder characterized by psychological rationalization in the form of analytic dichotomization and sociological delusions in the form of beliefs in group myths and eventuating in a culminating condition of personality desensitization, derealization, dissociation, and depersonalization of the self.
The initial condition of ego irrationality at the emotive symbolic level of behavioral expression is due to the failure to emotively adapt to life changes characterized by loss of emotive integrity and subliminality and unsupressible feelings of limenality causally related to a failure to achieve normal identity if the ego in functional symbolization systems of sociability characterized by ego imbalance and failure to affiliate self and other within the ego and leading to an intermediate chronic perpetuative or transitional condition characterized by psychological repression of emotions and sociological projection of feelings and eventuating in a culminating condition of extreme deindividuation, deharmonization, dehumanization and disintegration of ego reality
The initial condition of ego irrationality at the connative signification level of behavioral expression is due to failure to connatively adapt to life changes characterized by loss of connative creativity and unrelieved anxiety causally related to a failure to achieve normal ego identity of the other in functional symbolization systems of security characterized by ego confusion about the other and loss of cultural identity leading to an intermediate condition of chronic perpetuative or transitional disorder characterized by psychological regression of the self and sociological dependency of the other and eventuating in a culminating condition of cultural disorganization, devitalization and destruction of the other.
I believe there are four possible alternative "being modalities" of ego reality, against which ego rationality/irrationality must be referenced to be understood and in context to which all our affective experiences become expressed in symbolic patterns. These four alternative ego modalities are the "unconscious awareness" modality--consisting of dreams, hallucinations, "other world" experiences; the "pre-conscious intuitive" modality--consisting of disparate subjectivity, sensuality, feelings, perceptuality without causal or rational organization; the "conscious-analytic" modality--consisting of normative decisiveness, a sense of heightened awareness, an in-tuneness with reality, a sense of looking into the future with certainty, of oneness wholeness, of interrelatedness of being with the world, of omniscience and omnipresence and universality. These four modalities represent respectively ordered stages of being of ego reality corresponding with the other groups of four stages elsewhere mentioned. Between these four being modalities there are six possible transformational interrelationships of becoming. These four modalities and six interrelationships of becoming. These four modalities and six interrelationships represent the normality matrix of ego rationality providing the appropriate rational context by which ego gains normal identity.
What more can I say about the anthropological understanding of ego irrationality. I believe that there is a single anthropological "mechanism" for explaining ego adaptability to life changes having both psychological and sociological components of expression and explanation. This simple mechanism, depending upon appropriate or inappropriate contexts, is useful for explaining both negative pathological development of personality, culture and ego normality and positive healthy development. The key difference is in the way this mechanism is used psychologically and sociologically in adapting to change--a right "forward" way and a wrong "backward" or reserved way. I will elaborate upon this anthropological mechanism in the next part of this work. Suffice it here to say that it is related to utilization of alternative states of consciousness and to revitalization movements and to anthropologically fundamental modalities of creativity and destructiveness, implying active participation in the process rather than passive unresponsiveness.
What is the underlying nature of this universal human dilemma? Fundamentally it entails what it means to be human--the central characteristics of human nature from which no human can fully escape except through death, no matter how hard many may try. Much more of it is what it means to be alive, and not just like a carrot or an ameba but to exist in reality in the most human of meanings. The dilemma is that our human reality is full of illusion--illusion in thoughts, beliefs, in ideas, in our concepts and conclusions, in our rationality and our logic which makes for a false double standard of apparent genuine authenticity and makes of absolute truth only relativistic nonsense.
The search for truth is more a matter of dispelling illusions than of any direct form of definition. Once we separate in our minds our reality into a world of make believe and our existence into a world of reality, we commit ourselves to a blind world in which illusion and delusion become indistinguishable from truth. Truth--in the form of conceptual reason and intuitive faith,, must have an objective criteria in the world of reality in order to have any chance of meaningfully affecting our lives.
The source of the human dilemma resides within the unique nature of human being. Because of human intellectual and conceptual capacity--the individual must live torn between two worlds--the metaphysical reality and the physical reality to which the first is rooted. The former is a dependent and special case of the latter. The human capacity to serve as a bridge between these two realities predisposes human intelligence to confusions arising from conflicts between these two realties--a failure of adequate human integration of these two realities. When an individual's thoughts are inconsistent with reality, or when reality is not contiguous with the human mind--or the conceptual model of that reality--then the individual must choose arbitrarily between one or the other to resolve the confusion. On the one hand becoming blind to alternative answers or on the other hand becoming incapacitated to achieve realistic goals.
Traditional western philosophy has done very little to help to bridge this central fissure in the universal human dilemma, but rather has done more to widen the gap between the two realities and to reinforce preferentially either one or the other to the disadvantageous exclusion and sacrifice of the other. This essential dichotomy of the universal human dilemma can be found to undercut and provide the impetus behind almost every field of philosophically based inquiry.
Why has this been so? Over the ages philosophy has become a valuable tool in the hands of a few in order to retain power over the vast majority of humanity. Instead of deservedly serving as a guide to rational behavior, philosophy has become the guise and the means of justification for irrational behavior. When in conflict to this general situation a few revolutionaries have, through a leap of faith, essentially divorced their philosophical systems from any dependent relationships with human behavior or physical reality, and have themselves become doomed to impotency as a guide to rational behavior.
It is long overdue to dispel the unquestioned illusions of our traditional philosophical past and to clear the debilitating confusion which prevents affirmative problem solving. The clearing process starts in the realm of philosophy and comprehensive theoretical re-constructions of the conceptual egg of reality. The aim of philosophy is to provide self answering questions which make sense to those who seek to use philosophy as a guideline, yet all that philosophy has accomplished has been to further shatter the conceptual egg and to augment the confusion by turning illusion upon itself and separating the realm of philosophy almost completely from the realistic day to day relevancy.
The essential underlying dichotomy of the universal human dilemma takes the form of a dialectical conflict between these two opposing extremities of human thought. The conflict between these two extreme poses the confusion and gives rise to the dilemma which seems so complex and yet so obscure and vague. The problems arising from the universal human dilemma are not so simple. They are extremely complex. The general solutions to these problems are therefore also complex, yet it is the point of this work to convey the message both implicitly and explicitly that although complex, the problems are easier to resolve than many presume and that solutions are not as impossibly difficult as many believe.
I am not convinced of the reality of the many platitudinous truths to be encountered within our inequitable system, but neither am I unconvinced of the need for a single well integrated and comprehensive "understanding" about the reality of the "system". Just defining what I intend to convey is difficult. Previously there has been to my knowledge no similar attempt or achievement which wholly satiates my own extreme need of such comprehensivity of understanding. Of course there have been many candidates proffered as the final definition of reality in this field of science or in that area of human study. There have been many philosophies which purport to be the final statement about reality. But always I have come away disappointed.
I have evidence of universal themes, especially of a comprehensive central duality of reality and the subsequent behavioral dichotomization if reality which intuitively leads me to suspect that there is yet some unrealized potentiality--a new found unity or integrity of truth which might serve as a mainspring not only for human knowledge but for all human behavior and for all that part of reality which supposedly lies outside of ourselves. At the same time I have discovered prejudice and ignorance and a widespread divisiveness fragmenting reality into many separately bounded and isolated segments--each incomplete and a poor substitute for the whole. The "system" reflects this general fragmentation of reality by the arbitrary compartmentalization of conceptual systems into differing fields. But there is one universe and there is only one human "system".
I believe strongly that there is only one single unity to our conceptual "world view" of "reality"--not as resting apart from that which is outside of ourselves. I believe that such a possibility of unity is not dependent upon any new discovery or upon any new invention or creation, but that all of its basic ingredients are already available and that it is more a matter of proper combination or organizational integration of knowledge already easily accessible. I doubt such comprehensivity of understanding would automatically solve all of the problems and dilemmas of "reality", but I believe that alternative solutions to many of these difficulties can be easily generated from such a wholistic perspective. It might be the only value of such comprehensivity is to provide some vaguely sensed private need for unity or integrity. It might well be that it would solve no problems. But even if it leads only to a feeling of accomplished integrity, then it is enough in itself. The main object of this work is to provide just such a sense of unity and comprehensivity.
The central focus is not upon the sciences, but it is rather upon the "human" side of reality; for although science has blessed humanity with unparalleled prospects for advanced evolution of technological civilization, it has also done a depressingly poor job of not solving some of the most crucial problems facing the future prospects for the survival of the human species. I do not even think that the main thrust of such an attempt as this can be based upon "scientific premises". The "weltaangschauung" has proven itself to be too much of a narrow and single minded system of rationalization and compartmentalization. Too much of its strict methodological criterion have been over generalized and over applied to areas of "reality" inherently unamenable to scientific methodology and technology. The overall result of such over extension if the scientific paradigm is a roundly dissatisfying image of reality and many mismanaged and poorly handled human problems. While extremely useful within context of its strict methodological premises--scientism neglects and fails to inherently "value ridden" areas of human behavior and reality.
It is not so much reality which is the most pressingly urgent problem facing contemporary humanity; it is rather the false illusion of reality as it is reflected in our over generalized scientistic conceptual models and in our badly neglected humanistic systems of rationality. This distortion of reality eventuates in inappropriate and maladaptive human behavior patterns preventing and perniciously mitigating against the human species primary necessity of survival through adaptation on earth. This distortion is not so much inherent within the many fields and disciplines of knowledge and understanding but is rather the general effect of the overall divisiveness and disunity affecting comprehensive human understanding of reality. If such comprehensivity existed in the minds of humans, then the distortion of reality as a result if such disorganization would cease. Such comprehensivity is not as difficult to attain as it might at first seem, and it is readily accessible to any self enlightened individual--not just to an esoteric minority of privileged intellectuals. It is simply a matter of being honest enough about reality.
It is an easy thing to say that such lack of comprehensivity and general divisiveness exists because ultimately this prevailing condition enables a handful of human beings in positions of privilege and power to control and lord it over the rest of humanity who persist in reinforced poverty. In a limited sense this is true, but to lay blame exclusively upon the decisively direct influence of stare political organization is also to ignore an even more important source of such disunity--the vast cumulative influence of the multitude of humanity who submit willingly or unwittingly to their own deprivation; the fault and power to change lies equally and ultimately within each and every single one of us, rich or poor, regardless of social status, prestige, position, function or class.
While it is the rich who has the most decisive power to affect the necessary changes, they are also the very ones who are least likely, most unwilling and most effectively resisting such changes, as they would be the very ones who would have most to lose by such changes. They cannot be entrusted with such leadership, power or responsibility. It is only among the majority of the have nots and impoverished and exploited who have the most need and motivation for change and cumulatively, they have also the most weight to effect it. So it is with the many that I must lay the focus of this attempt at conceptual comprehensivity of reality. The fault of the cumulative effect and the responsibility for the crucial changes therefore fall squarely on the shoulders of the already overburdened--upon each and every one of us--rich and poor alike. Ultimately change begins within each and every single human being alive, in the innermost depths of our individuality. This is the premises of a fundamental reductionist approach. In essence it means that the fundamental building blocks of human reality, of all forms of human behavior and the evolution of human civilization, is the single individual--the primary relationship between the self and the other.
All conceptuality is illusion except as it can be systematically and logically reduced down to behavioral interaction between individuals and as it willingly initiates from inside the self. All of our manifest behavior falls along a continuum between passive thoughts and feelings and active words and deeds. This is not to deny determinism, responsive reaction, or transcendental concepts such as the arising synergistic qualities of human groupings, but merely to point out that both spontaneity and responsiveness, free will and determinism, reductionist relativity and absolute ideality all play equal parts in balance and harmony. Sociological entities--nation states, religions, cultures, are really only alive or existent in so much as they are conceptual translations in the minds of the individual constituents and in as much as this conceptuality directs their behavior--only in so much as they are the appearance and effect of a cumulative sum of individual behavior patterns and therefore "reasonably" if not "rationally" or "logically" reducible to the primary level of manifest interhuman interactional behavior patterns. Just as with laying blame and responsibility exclusively upon the rich, it also proves more appealing to focus attention primarily and most importantly onto the cumulative patterning of human behavior. Neither is such a fundamental reductionist approach a simple "replication of uniformity" or organization of diversity" underlying many cultural studies and giving rise to stereotypical superficiality or deviational superfluousness. Ultimately each individual's view of reality and behavior may be said to be at the same time distinctively unique and similarly related to all other humans' reality and behavior--simultaneously.
It is to maintain a certain degree of similarity as well as individuality undercuts all human diversity, and that without such similarity and diversity human interaction--in the form of cooperative or competitive behavior--and human interrelation--would be impossible. Even more it is to maintain that if any human behavioral reality is not reasonably reducible down to the primary though relative level of interaction and interrelation, then it is not centrally useful to this attempt at comprehensivity. It is more peripheral inclusions of illusion generated from imperfect conceptual distortion--a-posteriori--after the fact--than preexisting--a-priori--in reality outside of our conceptual system.
There is a fundamental dichotomization of the metaphysical world of ego reality between the individual or unique self and the collective other or common self. It must be realized that this dichotomization is a fundamental conflict in human nature and can only be resolved through attempts at actually integrating this duality of the soul. Both sides are interdependent and complementary. Without the common self the unique self would be a mere beast. But without individuality the self would be dull--lifeless. Only the individual self is sentient and creative. Neither one can be justly put above the other. Ego balance is the preferred human condition.
The potentially for all possible human behavior patterns, whether they are actually realized or just imagined, resides within each of us. All of us have the potential for being the worst or the best possible of human kind imaginable. I will begin with a simple hypothetical generalization. In so much as certain behaviors are naturally good for ourselves--i.e. healthy--they must inevitably and naturally become translated into cultural behavior patterns that are healthy for all. The conflicts and problems existing on the large scale of the world wide social reality must all be ultimately reducible to forms of inner conflict and private individual terms of conceptual closed mindedness, ignorance, and prejudice that reside and recur within each of us. In as much as each one of us is capable of such resolution of inner strife and dissonance, so will we eventually, in a cumulative way, help to resolve world strife.
This generalization is necessarily broad and oversimplified, based more upon a religious leap of faith in fundamental humanitarian values of innate human goodness--rather than upon empirically validated scientistic corroboration or accumulation of supportive evidence. Ultimately such a comprehensive perspective as this work attempts to achieve can only be founded upon "blind faith", intuitive speculation and daringly broad generalizations. There are no absolute embodiments of personality types, no absolute patterns of behavior. There are only tendencies and relative degrees of behavior. There are only many trends and rates and frequencies. There are ranges of deviation and continuums of possibilities, probabilities and newly unpredictably emergent potentialities. There are many shades of color, but there can be no absolutely black and white image of reality. There is no such thing as an absolute good or bad, healthy or pathological, normal or abnormal, modal or average or deviant type of human being. There is good or bad, natural and artificial within each and every one of us. Some may be deemed better than others. This acceptance of the openness of relativity of human value orientations is the beginning of a "value free"--value conscious and value conscientious "science" of human behavior. No human is absolutely anything. The extreme relativity of human reality cannot be overemphasized or reiterated enough--it must not ever be forgotten from our conceptual formulations or plans. Humans are behavior potentials of an infinite range of possibilities expressible in terms of behavioral interaction and interrelation--dynamic and static. Separation of the name and label from its contextual relativity is precisely the source of the cumulative disunification of our realistic understanding. Our names become the substitutes for reality and then become the illusion of reality. The paradox is only through self fulfillment and self realization can we best serve the whole of humanity. True self realization ties the individual self and the collective self into an inseparable unity--ego reality. There is no nobler goal than in serving the whole of humanity, and this is only achievable by turning inwardly to find in the inner most depths of our souls our self identity and truth of reality.
There exists within the field of theoretical psychology the rudimentary structure of a comprehensive theory of reality involving as its keystones the empirically corroborated concepts of authoritarianism and it antithesis--the so called egalitarian or revolutionary personality with the ideas of the lateralization of brain function between left and right hemispheres and the general dichotomic "either on" dualisms which undercuts and undermines philosophy, psychology and all other fields of "human" understanding. There is also the theory of the closed versus open mind which is of extreme relevance to the comprehensivity of this theoretical structure.
It is the nature of modern social organization that the one extreme--the authoritarian, the left hemisphere brain function, the closed mind, the absolutist and the rationalists, have been predominant in stress over the other antithetical extreme in the manifestation of human behavior patterns. The left brain functions, authoritarianism, closed mindedness, analytic thought have been culturally preselected to the continual exclusion and subordination of the complementary right brain functioning, egalitarianism, open mindedness and synthetical forms of thought--the "and" mode of computer logic.
Both extremes--both sides of the brain are in each of us--all of us have some degree of authoritarianism and egalitarianism, closed mindedness and open mindedness. Yet for most of us, when we were young, we were enculturated with the implicit and unquestioned presumption that is better primarily the first "social" way than to be the other "selfish" way; it is more "normal" and "healthier". We learn at a very innocent and ignorant age that it is more important to be successful in a social context and that in order to be thus we must play down and turn off the latter modes of behavior such that our energies will be concentrated toward successful "social achievement".
Just as it is in each and every one of us, within context of our primary interactions and interrelationships, so also does this predominance of emphasis upon the former modality of behavior to the deprivation of the latter modality leads right up the social ladder to the highest "most conceptually abstract' level of organizational complexity. Our modern state organized cultures are preeminently authoritarian to the neglect of egalitarianism, left brain functions take preeminence over right brain function. Even in school we are taught only one mode of behavior which is unquestionably the "right" way to the exclusion of alternative possibilities. The single most important influence in our most pressing problems is just this imbalance of left over right brain function, authoritarianism over egalitarianism, close mindedness over open mindedness. We pay homage to our way of life, give it lip service, live it without question, and it becomes by our willpower or lack of it our own "after the fact" reality.
Ultimately it is our own choice which modality of human behavior, which part of our inner psyche, conceptually, perceptually and emotionally, we allow to become top dog and which we submit as the underdog. It is ultimately a function of active willpower which makes for the imbalance in our reality, and it is within each of our wills the power to change this situation. We can give expression to that hidden side of ourselves, attempt to realize or actualize or factualize that possible suppressed deprivation of conscious and conscientious attention. It is in our willpower to change this imbalance, in our private as well as in our public lives. It is utmost and will always be foremost a function of individual willpower.
I believe this imbalance is an unhealthy and unnatural one. The human is at its best--is most functionally adaptive and happiest, healthiest and wealthiest when there is balanced harmony and integration between the two modalities of psyche and personality. Neither modality should be allowed to be topdog or underdog. Furthermore, I believe that balance between the two modalities is the only other alternative to the present and the past topdog-underdog authoritarian relationship. It is inherently not in the nature of that hidden side of ourselves not to seek dominance over the psyche and personality, but rather only to affect equal and harmonically balanced integration of form and function. Pathology is the result of its restriction. It is primarily because we have ignored its proper place in our lives that the dominance-submissive character of our internal physical and external social organization has arisen. The stress of the authoritarian power structure in society leads to a stress of competition, sexual and aggressive, over cooperation, of socialization of character over self realization of individual expression.
Finally I believe that it is simply by a matter of paying more attention to that misbegotten modality of human nature, by consciously seeking to integrate and express it in our lives, that there is any real hope of solving our most difficult dilemmas. We can without worry let the left side of our brain take care of itself for awhile, it has a way of making itself noticed and felt within our lives regardless of our inattention to it. We need to just let go of it. Because of the analytic side is predominant that our conceptual reality is divided pervasively down the middle. If the synthetic side were allowed its proper share of human behavior and ego normality, then the dichotomization undermining our conceptuality would become an integrity--a unitarian conceptuality of reality.
3.
There seems to be a recurrent theme of transcendental unity of understanding of human reality. This unity can and must become reflected in our many diverse systems of conceptioning. The philosophical underpinnings which serve to separate and make conceptually inimical the many competing systems of belief and behavior need to be ferreted out, reevaluated and tied together into a rationally coherent and empirically consistent integral whole.
There is an integrity of personality--reflected in the harmonization between the three planes of motivational expression--the mental, emotional, and the actional. Likewise there is a corresponding integrity of culture manifest along the three levels of sociological systems--the formal ideological, the socio structural and the functional-material. Similarly there is a parallel integrity if ego normality--a balance between the self concept and the other concept. There is an overall behavioral integrity of the universal dynamic behavioral continuum.
This transcendent integrity belies an a-priori, preexistent ontological integrity of human reality. This integrity is holothetic in meaning, such that each individual part is distinct and different and yet at the same time preserves characteristic likeness of the overall unity of the whole. This is fundamentally different from a mere mechanistic model of synergy, in which each part serves a distinct functional/structural purpose in relation to the whole. The ontological wholistic integrity is transcendent of the mere interrelationships and interfunctioning between diverse and disparate parts. Even at the individual cellular level of biological life--whether it be a muscle cell or a brain cell--every cell exhibits the genetic potential of the whole totipotency--the potential replication of the unity of the whole distributed equally among each of the fundamental parts.
There is also a recurrent theme of duality pervading our understanding of human reality. Whether it stems from the laterization of brain function or not, whether represented as being the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, the rational/empirical dichotomy, the mind/body dichotomy, the life/death dichotomy, or the metaphor/metonym dichotomy or whether this is a conscious analytical process of the mind or a reflection of a deep unconscious biological structure of the brain, it is, regardless of its depiction or explanation, a redundant and all pervasive quality of our comprehension of reality. Like the unity reflected in a holothetic manner throughout every little separable entity of the whole--so also is the duality of understanding of the whole reflected throughout the understanding of the many parts of the whole.
And then there is also a recurrent theme of trinity about the behavioral reality of humanity--reflected throughout the many parts of the whole. Whether a dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, or the three planes of human behavior or three levels of social systems or the three phases or stages of socio pathological or psycho pathological development--a beginning, a middle and an end--the theme of trinity seems to be persistent and important.
And finally, one step further in this numerical process, there has been a recurrent theme of four foldness of stages and types and a corresponding set of six possible interrelationships between these four fundamental constituents. Perhaps, considered as a model of a tetrahedron, this structure might be considered to be the rational matrix of reality. Division into four parts is a recurrent theme in many creation myths. Carl Jung has spoken of "the nucleus of the psyche normally expresses itself in some kind of fourfold structure". The number four is also connected to his concepts of the female principle and male principle (the anima and animus, respectively) because there are four stages of development. For Jung four was a recurrent archetype symbolizing the unity or totality of the human world. I will summarize the possible correlations of four as I have used them so far in this work.
Oral stage/type: Stage 1 power, achievement and affiliation motivation. Other source, self object, power deriving from support, causal meta type, "non-reciprocal causal models", probabilistic or deterministic causal relations with no causal loops and transitive, epistemological mindscape type H--parts subordinated to whole universal principles apply to all, society consists of a hierarchical organization of categories and structures. Hierarchical relations between homogenistic components representing a classificational process. Philosophical cornerstone and stage 1 of civilization, philosophical metaphysical modality, Anima symbol of Eve representing instinctual biological relations, intuitive thought process, Animus symbol of Tarzan representing personification of physical power--Hercules the muscle man. Personality modality of the child--son or daughter. Cultural modality of the pre-educational infant. Ego "being modality" of "unconsciousness awareness".
Anal stage/type: Stage 2 power, achievement and affiliation motivation. Self source, self object, autonomy, will, self control. Causal meta type "independent event models"--states of random distribution of independent events are more probable and nonrandom nonindependent relations and structures are less probable and tend towards randomness. Epistemological mindscape type 1--empirical and relative--society is composed of different and independent individuals: individualistic relations between heterogenistic components representing a random process. Artistic cornerstone and stage 2 of civilization, artistic metaphysical modality, Anima symbol of Faust's Helen--a romantic and aesthetic level characterized by sexuality, sensitivity, Animus symbol of the Earnest Hemingway representing the man of initiative and with a capacity for planned action. Personality modality of the sibling--brother or sister. Cultural modality of the educational childhood. Ego "being modality" of "preconscious intuitive".
Phallic type/stage: Stage 3 power, achievement and affiliation motivation. Self source, other object, assertive, competitive. Causal meta type "homeostatic causal loop models"--probabilistic or deterministic causal relations forming loops maintaining patterns or structures of heterogeneity. Epistemological landscape type S--nonhierarchical interactions between heterogenistic components representing homeostatic processes. Scientific cornerstone and stage 3 of civilization, scientific metaphysical modality. Anima symbol of the Virgin Mary--"love raised to the heights of spiritual devotion", feeling, Animus symbol of "Lloyd George"--the great political orator, "the animus becomes the word"-- professor or a clergyman. Personality modality of the spouse--husband or wife. Cultural modality of the functional adulthood. Ego "being modality" of "conscious analytic".
Genital stage/type; stage 4 power, achievement and affiliation motivation, other source, other object, genital mutuality, it moves me to serve others, generativity, compassion, togetherness. Causal meta type "morphogenetic causal loop models"--probabilistic or deterministic causal loops increasing heterogeneity, generating patterns of mutually beneficial relations among heterogeneous system of increasing the sophistication of the system. Epistemological mindscape type G--nonhierarchical interactions between heterogeneous individuals generating new patterns for mutual benefit. Interactive relations between heterogenistic components in morphogenetic processes. Humanistic cornerstone and stage 4 of civilization, humanistic metaphysical modality, Anima symbol of Sapienta--ultimate transcendental wisdom, thinking, Animus symbol of Mahatma Gandhi--"the incarnation of meaning"--a mediator of religious experience whereby life acquires new meaning. Personality modality of the parent--father or mother. Cultural modality of post functional retirement--seniority. Ego "being modality" of "transcendental synthetic".
The six possible interrelationships which exist between each of the corresponding sets of four form possible dimensions along which these different modalities are interrelated. I am not saying that all of these categories, stages, types and definitions assigned to them are necessarily automatic or valid. I am only suggesting the possibility of some underlying theoretical unity.
Is this numerical correspondence significant of something important or is it merely a contrived patterning where none actually exists by natural necessity? I believe this numerology is at once both of these things. I do not believe we will ever definitively answer these questions--these patterns are derived more from intuitive empirical insight than from any form of rational logic. Perhaps they are just patterns which are very deeply ingrained in our tradition of cultural rationality. Even between the unity, duality, trinity and fourfoldness there is a curious pattern of similarity of unity, differences of duality and dichotomy, relationships of trinity and integrity of a synthetic wholeness. I will not venture far to preach the meaning of all this numerical symbolism--except to say that it is possibly related to R. Buckminster Fuller's conceptioning of the tetrahedron as being the basic structural entity of nature. If these numerical patterns are significant of anything meaningful then perhaps it is wise not to delve to deeply into why. Might there not be some quintessential modality or stage or type? It is demonstrative of a fundamental complexity of rational functioning. Perhaps they represent the parsimonious guidelines by which our rational metaphysical reality and our empirical physical reality are both interrelated and made humanly meaningful. The human being in a sense can be said to be the mediator or the interface by which these two realities are brought together and brought into "life" as the meaningful aspects of human existence. It is possibly indicative of perhaps some a-priori structure of rationality by which we are able to understand reality. I am not proffering the foundations by which to construct a new mathematical structure of the logic of rationality. This a-priori "rationality matrix" is pre-logical. I feel compelled to draw some conclusions as to the nature of the a-priori fundamentals of metaphysical truth and epistemological self which I cited in the first part.
A description of the underlying deep structure of this a-priori "rationality matrix" against which we might reference our relative understanding of rationality, involves the elaboration of the a-priori conceptions of epistemological self, metaphysical truth, metaphysical self, and epistemological truth. These four represent what I believe to be the four fundamental modalities of reality, by which we gain human identity (rationality) of existence. Our a-posteriori knowing of the appriori absolute of metaphysical truth is our relative experience of change. Our a-posteriori knowing of the a-priori absolute of metaphysical self is our relative experience of motion. Epistemological self, metaphysical truth, metaphysical self and epistemological truth, in that order, constitute the four modalities or stages of human rationality. The six possible interrelationships between these four modalities compose the "reality dynamics". This is the rationality matrix in context to which we gain human identity (rationality) of our existence.
Thus it can be demonstrated that the dichotomic concepts of a a-priori/a-posteriori, epistemological/metaphysical, self/truth, time/space, motion/change, interrelationship, have important implications for the understanding of rationality--considerations involving left/right, brain functioning, temporal and spatial modes of expression and communication to which I shall return after I elaborate further upon the anthropological problem of rationality.
Now that I have defined what I consider to be rationally from the negativistic anthropological standpoint of irrationality, I believe it to be appropriate to consider the meaning if rationality from the positive anthropological perspective of rational creativity as being somewhat the converse condition though also somewhat essentially and qualitatively different from rationality/irrationality.
I believe the rationality/irrationality behavioral continuum to be the universal behavioral continuum along which all possible forms of human behavior can be referenced. The paradox of the universal human dilemma is that rationality creative behavior occupies this exact same behavioral continuum and even though being essentially distinct the only real difference in relation to this continuum is in the directionality of ordering of human behavior--that instead of movement from order to increasing disorder, the reverse process happens, movement from disorder to order. In a sense all human behavior can be construed as being to some degree irrational and at the same time to be rational. There is no such thing as perfectly rational behavior and in fact I believe the majority of humanity tends to fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum--as being both somewhat moderately psycho pathological and socio pathological. In fact relatively healthy and rationally ordered behavior is probably about as infrequent as relatively extremely irrational disordered behavior. In consideration of rational creativity the directionality of the continuum is simply reversed from that of irrationality. There is a positivistic tendency to comparatively more rational behavior. All behavior, even superlatively rationally creative behavior can be construed as being to some minimal degree irrational and in an opposite sense even extremely irrational behavior might still have some possible touch of rational creativity.
Then, irrationality can be construed as a nonreal (i.e. ideal) fiction toward the absolution of all irrationality--towards a state of absolute order (integrity of self/truth or epistemological/metaphysical unity) towards which rationally creative behavior strives, and away from which irrational behavior tends to lead. Rationality is a group myth--an ideal incorporating the elements of truth, love, God, and self. It is the only ideal by which all human beings share in at least tacitly by their alleged membership to the human race. The difficulty of defining rationality is that is knowable only indirectly by its attainment of lessened irrationality--it is relative to irrationality, and as such in and of itself, as an absolute form, it is inherently impossible for human beings to conceive it directly. It is noumenal and a-priori to the consideration of human behavior and as such it harkens me back to the a-priori concepts of metaphysical truth and epistemological self.
These concepts are related to rationality only through the most relative of human conditions. The human problem is to push backward time and uncover space to reveal the true meaning of rationality. I believe I have adequately demonstrated that traditional rationalism and traditional empiricism, as the best representatives of the most fundamental philosophical schism which divides all of philosophy down the middle into two opposed and seemingly incompatible schools of thought, that all pervasive mind/body dichotomy, are not necessarily naturally, logically or rationally inimical to one another in my philosophy of absolute relativity. Indeed bringing together these two traditionally opposed schools of philosophy is the philosophical prerequisite to the achieving of comprehensive unity of understanding of reality by which we are then able to bring together in a rationally coherent and empirically consistent fashion all of the other diverse fields of human understanding. The contribution of Kant was to reveal to us the a-priori noumenal nature of the rational reality of human existence.
Underlying the mind/body dichotomy and inextricably related to it is the deep rooted life/death dichotomy. The essentially paradox of human existence is that no matter how deeply we reach into ourselves to grasp the truth, no matter how perfectly we strive to order our behavior, no matter how Godlike we would like to believe ourselves to be, nonetheless we are still tied to our imperfect constituents, to our base needs, to our animal like instincts and body and that one day we all must cease to function permanently. The life/death dichotomy is a fundamental paradox from which we shall never escape no matter how much we may wish or endeavor to. This fundamental irreducible paradoxicality of human existence is one essentially irreducible quality of human existence--the other qualities of human existence are antinomality, limenality and anxiety, and they are related to the four a-priori modalities of rationality.
Antinomality is the essentially irreducible quality of our knowledge of the a-priori absolutes of metaphysical truth and epistemological self, of our experience of the relativity of space and time. Antinomality is a background of our common human experience of these a-priori absolutes--it creates in our absolutely relative knowledge an irreducible uncertainty of our situation. Antinomality is in a sense a background texture of all our knowledge of reality. What is meant by antinomality is an unresolvable sort of internal psychic conflict "generated by a proposition that suggests its contradictory (or the domain of its contraries) as strongly as its own affirmation, at the moment of its affirmation". Antinomality creates a shadow of uncertainty enveloping all of our consciousness.
The third irreducible quality of human existence is "limenality". This is a concept borrowed from the idea of the limenal stage of being "betwixt and between" usually occurring during rites of passage. It connotes a sort of being simultaneously nothing and something, of being "nowhere" and "somewhere" or an identity of "nothingness" and "somethingness" which is the result of our knowledge of metaphysical self by the experience of motion which pervades our life as a single long (or short) passage from birth to death. Like paradoxically and antinomality limenality creates an unresolvable conflict of uncertainty pervading all of our understanding of human existence.
Our essentially irrational response to the unresolvable qualities of paradoxicality, antinomality and limenality, constitutes the fourth essentially irreducible and unresolvable quality of human existence, infecting the meaning of human reality with all pervasive uncertainty, is the quality of anxiety. Anxiety is a pan human nervous condition from which we all seek escape but from which there is no escape. We all suffer from unrelieved anxiety, though some suffer more from it than others, and it is essentially an irrational and negative human condition.
Paradoxicality, antinomality, limenality and anxiety are the four essentially irreducible human qualities comprising the most essential substancing of the human meaning of existence and reality. They arise from the four modalities of rationality--epistemological self, metaphysical truth, metaphysical self and epistemological truth--respectively in that order. These four qualities of human reality infect all of our attempts at achieving rationality with irreducible irrationality. Irrationality is inextricably rooted in human existence. Together they comprise he essential "rational" substance of human reality which I previously called relative contextuality or contextual relativity of the human understanding of reality. The six interrelationships formed by these four qualities exhibit six fundamental subjective "absolutes" of the "reality dynamics" of human behavior. These are the subjective "absolutes" of loneliness, selfishness, alienation, meaninglessness, desperation, as the expression of the finality of death and dependency.
I have made unequivocally the statement that the only thing truly absolute in reality is relativity. Now I must substantiate my claim. In the extremes of my own utter subjectivity I must muster enough strength with which to decisively overpower scientific objectivity. With as much honesty and clarity of insight into my own reality as possible I divine several ideas which I believe to form the theoretical basis of the universal human behavioral continuum. These pure absolutes, distilled by honest intuition from the broth of subjective feeling, form the essentially relative absolutes of human behavioral dynamics. These consist of the absolute loneliness of relative human existence--that no matter how many people or how intimately we attempt to relate to some other person outside of ourselves, we can never completely, in the absolute sense, escape our own aloneness occasioned by our subjective relativity; the absolute selfishness of human existence--no matter how generously or altruistically we behave or how gratuitous we believe our hearts to be, we will always be selfish creatures; the absolute alienation of human existence, which is a uniquely human trait--consisting of psychic estrangement from or own physical foundations in nature; the absolute meaninglessness of existence--that no matter how complex or how much we try to communicate our meaning to others, we can never absolutely attain the full depth of mutual understanding we sometimes long for; the desperation of the absolute nature of human dependency--freedom and independence are an illusion--false ego gratification is its perverse obsession. These absolutes may appear very pessimistic, but in the darkness of the absoluteness of nothingness are the very seed kernels of optimistic salvation and resurrection of a sick and suffering human civilization.
It is in our dishonesty of failure to acknowledge and acceptance of these absolutes and the desire to escape from the human conditions they entail that the real problems of humanity begin. We surround ourselves with the superficiality of others and submerse ourselves in the shallowness of social life to escape from our desperation of loneliness. We hide behind the delusion of the group myth and the drama of group ritual. In the "narcissism of the no difference" we manage to escape temporarily (not permanently) our own utter subjectivity. We decide ourselves by our self righteous altruism in all of our behavior--as to our essential selfishness. Even in instances of socially reinforced patriotism or religiously inspired self sacrifice we commit a crime of fraud and self deceit, leading to the perverse compulsion of sacrificial behavior. In our touted "super egoism" we suffer an obsession with differences and a compulsion toward conformity.
We hide ourselves as from the absolute meaninglessness of the language by the Great Lie of our Word and by the contrived hypocrisy of our culture and by blind belief in the great "truths" of God and the hope for salvation and eternal life in a life after death. In the fear of death and the perverse fascination with death we run from the fact of final death. We feel sorry for the fate of ourselves and for each other and live the illusion of life as if death played no part at all.
These are the beginning perversities of life which eventually become the pathos of civilization. By denying and failing to confront these absolutes, humanity defeats itself and does not allow itself the chance to make good this relative existence. The role of reason, of a conscious and conscientious good or universal normative system based upon the ideal of universal human nature, the just world hypothesis--that all is fair and equal when there is actually very much unfair and unequal, the belief that we are necessarily beautiful or must be so or that humanity is "naturally" or innately good without needing to aspire to goodness--without the ugliness or evil only by which we might have some kind of meaningful contrast, that we must of necessity be happy without suffering or malcontentment in the satiation of all human desires, that we must be fortunate and rich in a world of limited resources and human limitations. That we must be godlike and perfect. Even our notion of freedom is an illusion. We lead a life of slavehood and drudgery at work by willful conformity to the absolute sovereignty of the state, even such a free "democratic" state such as our own. In childhood we are unwittingly and ignorantly and innocently victimized by these grand illusions and great lies to gain admission into adulthood.
Honest admission of one's ignorance of these problems is better than the deceitful pronouncement of false wisdom. The primary of psychological privacy and psychological autonomy is the beginning of the emancipation of an enslaved humanity. Human existence is being in the process of becoming. We are what we have become. Our pasts cannot be changed, rich or poor, good or bad, negative or positive. Our past can only serve as a guide for defining our present being and our future becoming. The destiny of our wills, the fate of our collective conscientiousness and consciousness, hand in hand, these will determine the outcome of human civilization.
It is unacceptable for me to live in a world such as I have found myself cast into--with the whole of humanity living from day to day under the threat of extinction and cataclysmic devastation by nuclear holocaust--the worst symptom of a curable and preventable socio pathology--militarism. It is unacceptable to see such unnatural "rational" behaviors dictated by custom, convention, belief; for humans to be forced by social circumstances and natural necessities to behave against their own better judgment. Neither can I cast off my own responsibility by a simple shrug of the shoulders and an exclamation such as "what can I do to change anything?" This work is part of my answer as part of an inseparable part of my life.
The unjust and unequal distribution of material amenities and an unfair differential access to humanity's resources--a few who have acquired unjustly more than they or any human being knows what to do with in a lifetime, and a vast multitude born into poverty and probably to die in misery, from this empirical basis of absolute relativism only can be deduced or derived any hopeful spiritual validation of human existence. Humanity has an almost overwhelming predisposition to irrational disorder and evil misanthropy--from which no human being has ever been immune, and also a very diminished potentiality for philanthropist creativity and ordered rationality--to which all human beings can willfully aspire.
Now I wish to elaborate upon what I consider to be the heart and soul of this work--and that is what I call my "general theory of creativity". My fundamental presumption is that creativity is the key to unlocking the problem of irrationality--both psycho pathological and socio pathological--the human root of all evil and the source of anthropological rationality and health. Rational creativity can be singled out as the driving principle behind all forms of what we can construe to be civilization--whether technological or theoretical and is also the single most important factor in behavioral adaptability and health. All "naturally normal" human beings are born with a capacity for creativity--and this creative capacity is the single most consummate factor which sets the human being apart as being sentient--meaningfully different from any other life form. Creativity is the healthy identity of the human species. Rational creativity can be singled out as being the consummate meaning if human intelligence--whether the ontological intelligence of the personality or of the culture. The cultivation of creativity is the single most important objective to the further progress of civilization worldwide. Inspite of the vast importance of creativity why is it such a neglected subject and why is its cultivation more often than not resisted and stifled and prevented from blossoming? Creativity pervades every facet of human behavior. Why has this uniquely human characteristic been so ignored as a central problem of humanity? Even many people who are proclaimed to be highly creative often accomplish very little that is truly original or valuable from a creative standpoint.
In the experience of the four irreducible qualities of human existence--these qualities of paradoxicality, antinomality, limenality, and anxiety--as we are thrown back upon ourselves in confrontation with these realities we have two fundamental alternatives. We can accept these qualities for what they really are and strive to incorporate them into our lives in a meaningful manner-creatively--allowing them to serve as "negative" motivation, or else we can continue to function in denial and inspite of these qualities trying to reduce their effect by escaping from them or trying to eliminate them by cognitive closure--eventuating in ameaningful behavior and destructiveness. Creativity is the constructive active utilization of these irreducible qualities of existence.
Creativity can be defined anthropologically as a normative growth process of the ego in an effort to make reality humanly meaningful. It is primarily a decision making process in the fulfillment of basic human normative needs. People have an innate, uniquely human predisposition, proclivity and normative need to be rationally creative. The frustration of this need leads to ameaningful--"a-ontological" human existence--resulting eventually in irrational behavior.
The four irreducible qualities of paradoxicality, antinomality, limenality and anxiety are the driving force behind willpower to both courage motivated rationally creative birth oriented behavior and fear motivated, irrational death oriented behavior. Creative behavior entails a direct confrontation of these four qualities in a process of striving to minimize their negative irrational "skewing" effect upon human existence with the honesty of knowing that these qualities will never be eliminated completely. Not enough has been said about the importance and supreme value of being honest. Honesty implies openness and receptivity. It is only by being honest that we may attain meaning. The deadliness of closed minded belief is that it entails a dishonest denial of possibility in the dichotomization of reality. Deceit is the denial of reality causing confusion and loss of ego integrity and aggravating the conditions of uncertainty rather than alleviating them. Think back upon how many times we have told lies or in belief been dishonest. When we are dishonest we fool first and foremost only ourselves. Reality becomes confused, ameaningful and disordered. We can have faith in what is most probable or likely, but we cannot believe with the illusion of absolute certainty on the basis of faith alone.
Creativity entails never giving up on oneself in the face of opposition inspite of stress and many adverse pressures. A person who has a firm hold of oneself can survive with intact rationality virtually anything in an essentially healthy fashion. Creativity can be seen as a form of healthy "coping mechanism" (a nonstatic defense mechanism). I believe creativity entails essentially a consistent and continuous attempt at rationally ordering existence according to one's own innermost dictates and choices.
Creativity is essentially a decision making process. It is primarily an individual learning process of developing personal integrity if the self. It is the self directed ego entailing meaningful personal behavioral integration of all of reality in human existence, involving actively making decisions, making mistakes, participating in the learning process, learning to make readjustments and increasing adaptability to changes. It can be assessed by the organismic adaptability in an original and spontaneous fashion to life changes. It is also a process of learning how to retain personality integrity inspite of environmental changes. What is of paramount importance is that creativity is a decision making process in which the creator chooses spontaneously his own ends and his own means by which t achieve those ends. At first the ends will be unrealizable and the means will be inadequate. The first product of creativity will be childlike, immature and bastardized--looking as if they were forced into reality, but in time after time--with active involvement and improvement, with patience and persistence, the creator is able to gradually and eventually bring the ends and means closer together to the point of harmonious compromise such that the ends and means merge and become one another inseparable and indistinct of one another. An important trait of creativity is honesty--by learning to become more honest about oneself and reality through creative integration the creator gains more self control over deceit--able to manipulate and live unaffected by the vast world of phony illusion. The creative process eventually develops to a point of maturity where the creative person learns to be the ultimate master of his own self--over his life and his behavior.
The creative process involves a marriage of two types of decision making processes--"rational" set piece decision making, beginning with a formal formulation or plan upon which to build one's conception like the directions to the construction of a model, the problem with this form of decision making--which is almost exclusively stressed in our "rational" culture--is its inflexibility to unpredictable, uncontrollable, irrational changes. It must be strictly adhered to and dictates rigid behavior which is malapative. The epitomy of this form of decision making is the nuclear grand strategy--a completely rational plan which is so precariously balanced that practically any minor unpredictable, uncontrollable and irrational change can automatically precipitate nuclear holocaust. It is a possibilistic strategy which is essentially paranoid--requiring virtual absolute control over the environment while any compromise adaptation to unforeseen changes tends to have an overall deleterious effect upon the final decisive outcome--it entails a process of complicating the picture into too many possibilities. The other, opposite process is encounter decision making based on a probabilistic strategy of simplifying the picture into an few as possible probabilities. It is ad-hoc and ad-lib relying upon performance of previously learned repertories in a non-directed responsive fashion. It is the inch by inch, day by day cumulative approach to living. The drawbacks to exclusive reliance upon this form of decision making process is that it entails a going nowhere--virtual indirection--indecisive in terms of eventual outcomes or achievement if a long range goal--it is too responsive and inhibits the spontaneous acquisition of new more adaptive repertories to deal with change--it also becomes eventually maladaptive. The point is that the creative process reaches a point of maturation at which these modes of decision making become so inextricably interrelated that they are virtually indistinguishable--ends are integrated with means--plans become one with the repertories--such that the creative decision making process becomes a single function in the creators existence.
The creative process requires a limited environmental context--one which is totally in control of by the individual and out of control of any other person or uncontrollable external influence. Whether this limited context is imply a piece of paper, a canvas or an inner space of the psyche, there is a need of some kind of space and medium contained by that context onto which the self can "objectively" project oneself in an arbitrary and willful fashion, by which the creator can subsequently manipulate and modify the objective contextual medium in an "objective" fashion. It is a means of objectively and rationally realizing one's innermost subjective self in order to organize and reintegrate it back into oneself in a refined and more rational way. It is projection of self primarily through feelings--upon canvas in line and color and repeated reorganization of these lines and colors of the self into a coherent, meaningful consistent and rational fashion. It is self realization or self actualization through self expression. Creativity entails active participation of the self with the environment in an effort of rationally ordering and organization the environment to objectify the subjectivity of the self. A person lacking psychic integrity and creativity will structure his immediately controllable environment--his room, his furniture, his personality items and the whole of his "external" existence in a manner which will reflect this psychic disorganization. Much can be learned about the psychic integrity of a person by the way he organizes his environment, and expresses himself as in his writing, discourse, etc.
Creativity is a growth process requiring foremost some measure of personal and environmental continuity. The key element to this growth process is continuity--the longer and more pervasive the overall continuity the greater the degree of growth. It takes time to develop creativity--it doesn't happen overnight. It is a positive feedback cycle. Being a growth process it entails active incorporation of increasing complexity of environmental elements commensurate with the degree of inner psychic integrity. The problem is that it soon reaches a point of environmental frustration and resource deprivation--extending itself beyond normal bounds--there simply being not enough "to go around" to spare to be handed over from the day to day struggle of existence to be given to the creative process. The creative process requires to some degree insulation from the mainstream environmental influences--a quiet pooling and concatenation of elements to stimulate and sustain creative continuity--without which creative development is frustrated and eventually stemmed.
Creativity is a dynamic process--by bringing meaning to reality it makes reality and existence come alive. From the beginning original preconception to the final realization there is a continuous interaction between self and object which in relationship takes a life of its own. The created object evolves as the vessel of the artist's self expression and self meaning. The creator becomes a mere means--a medium--the vessel or instrument through which this vital process is brought to life and "happens". The creator serves merely as a bridge between the inner physical world of subjectivity and the external physical world of objectivity. In a sense it is a marriage between these two worlds which produces new offspring. Human beings literally create reality through their being. The emotional element is the human bridge between the conceptually passive inner world and the concretely active outer world of reality. Creativity is realization of meaning through the objectivization of emotionality. The human being is indeed a symbolizing creature. Emotionality is the important anthropological element of the creative processes--as it is objectively expressed through symbolization. Creativity is the meaningful human interrelationship with reality--given existence an ontological meaningfulness.
Creativity is the bringing to birth--the active realization of preconceptions arising from the interaction and interrelations between the four "being modalities" of ego reality--between the four states of "consciousness"--unconscious awareness, preconscious intuition, conscious analytic and transcendental synthetic. It involves wholistic experiencing of reality at all levels of being--modalities of ego identity. These alternative states of consciousness are all integrated into an interfunctioning whole in the creative process. This entails neither exclusive emphasis upon nor exclusion of any single state, but rather all states must be inclusive--harmonized as much as possible. Perhaps the normal process of consciousness is cyclical in movement between the states. Perhaps jumping across and between states and skipping intermediate states might both be detrimental and stimulating to the creative process. The emphasis is upon transition and movement between the alternative states in primarily a self controlled and willful fashion, rather than fixation upon any sets of states. Psychic integrity entails the achievement of this psychic freedom to move between all of the states. The problem seems to arise by exclusive emphasis or denial of any of the states of consciousness to the neglect of any other. Commonly, indeed normally, the third being modality--the "phallic personality type" is emphasized as being the "rational" and exclusive emphasis of consciousness. The more consciously analytical we can be the more intelligent we are construed to be.
People normally proffer the attempt of active intrusion of the third being modality of analytical consciousness upon the other modalities of being. This analytical intrusion upon alternative states of consciousness can be lethal to the creative process resulting in the destruction of psychic integrity--psychological disintegration. Exclusive obsession with any one level leads to tuning out or turning off the other alternative levels of being--a stifling and blocking of movement between being modalities. Exclusive dependence upon any one modality might be culturally advantageous in a restricted context--but it renders the personality virtually maladaptive to any other alternative context. Creativity allows and develops behavioral integration at all levels of behavioral expression.
The valuable point of behavioral integration through the creative process is that the behavioral integrity achieved in one area or facet of life spills over and flows into all other areas of existence--if it is allowed to do so--and the integrity of behavioral rationality eventually will become manifested throughout all of existence as a harmonic, well integrated, ontological whole, eventually allowing the individual self control--to behave rationally--in virtually any and every context.
The negativistic process begins with failure to act decisively--a normative retardation and disintegration process--allowing instead of normative self control, to be responsively controlled from without predominantly by the decision making of other people. Integrity becomes diffused outwards by projection and repression upon a myriad host of haphazard and chance influences. It becomes a vicious feedback cycle which once set in motion spirals towards the consumption of personal integrity in a sea of irrationality. The psychic disintegration becomes reflected in the disorganization of a person's controllable environment. Indecisiveness, inner denial, deception, confusion, increasing anxiety and uncertainty; passivity, willess acquiescence to the dictates of change and chance--leads to a going "nowhere" feeling--a state of virtual regression.
Paradoxicality, antinomality, limenality and anxiety--if not consciously and conscientiously and consistently and coherently confronted--will all lead to what has been called cognitive pathology and epistemopatology and to a meaningful behavior and eventually to behavioral irrationality. Ameaning is a fear motivated behavioral self restriction and constriction--a reduction of the inherent uncertainty of reality "by denial, by a form of phony certainty achieved by covert annihilation of the problematic, the complex and the subtle. Behavioral preservation, systematic routinazation, obsessive compulsiveness, group myths and group rituals--these are anathema to the creative process.
These irreconcilable qualities are at the heart of both rational creativity and behavioral irrationality--an endemic human weakness to affect behavioral closure (whether cognitive, emotive or active) within the restricted confines of a limited and closed system of behavior "so long as it gives the promise of relieving the pains of cognitive uncertainty. We are all vulnerable to the claims of simplistic, reductive, hypergeneral or in other ways ontology distorted frames, so long as they have the appearance of 'systematicity' ".
The creative process entails foremost psychic and behavioral "independence"--relative freedom of control by the willpower of the other. If an individual cannot free himself/herself from those little foreign voices in the back of his/her head, then creative development will be severely restricted. The degree of freedom attained will become evinced in the quality of self expression. The creative process is fundamentally a self directed ego process. The other concept plays a rather contradictory and difficult part in the creative process. In a world in which the majority of humanity is ego imbalanced in favor of the other--the anthropological educational cultivation of creativity in favor of the self is of primary importance to the improvement of the pan human condition. The other concept is not unimportant or superfluous to the creative process--but it can become anathema to its development--undermining creative growth.
In conclusion I will hypothesize the continual transition between alternative being modalities--in short, human reality dynamics tends to break up and disrupt ameaningful behavioral systematization arising from fixation at any one modality by introducing new alternative possibilities of meaning from the alternative being modalities (from "outside" the usual or habitual behavioral patterns--the "normal") and the active willful effort to objectively (rationally) realize these new subjectivity experienced forms of meaning into new behavioral systems of order and organization is the heart and soul of rational creativity. Full utilization of alternative states of consciousness is prerequisite to the cultivation of creativity and to the restoration of ego balance worldwide. It is essential to maintaining healthy adaptability (rationality) of the human race and for assuring our survival.
In relation to creativity the other concept poses somewhat of a problem. The key essential element for the cultivation of creativity is the relative behavioral independence of an individual from the willpower of the other or from any "system" of the other--as a collective representation of the other concept. The problem of over dependence in human relationships, especially of emotional dependency, is the single most critical factor hindering the creative development of humanity and leading to the development of general behavioral irrationality. Dependency/independence is a relative condition. Total freedom is an illusion. The question is how much dependence? Every human being has only a limited fund of resources--time, energy and money--with which to cultivate rational creativity. If the lion's share of this inventory is spent upon sustaining and maintaining social interrelationships, then the cultivation of creativity must necessarily suffer. Many people live creatively (if somewhat vicariously) in their relationships with other people. But how much can other human beings be treated as "objects" of one's creativity without imposing upon those same peoples' creativity. I do not mean to demean the importance of interhuman relatedness, or to devalue the creativity of the psychotherapist or of the shaman or to spoil the meaning of love. It is only rather the net measure to which social relationships impose upon the total fund of life resources of any given individual and in my prejudiced opinion this general degree of relative dependence/independence is usually great enough such that the creative process is almost completely inhibited. Creativity depends upon relative human independence 9especially emotional independence) in order to develop.
But also the other concept provides an important reinforcing function for the creative process of the self. The life resources for sustaining the creative growth process must to some extent come from others. The rationality of the creative process, the identity of the creator, is only in relation to the objective context of the other--its value as it is communicated to the other--and objective context applying virtually to the whole of humanity. The problem of creative self expression becomes then a problem of rationally objective communication to the other. If the creator fails to communicate effectively his self expression, then the creativity will be out of context to ego balanced rationality and will be objectively valueless.
As an artist I am keenly interested in non-verbal and especially visual forms of communication. I am also well aware of the central problem confronting an artist every time he approaches a canvas--the need to communicate self expression effectively. It is a problem that in our modern times of great transience, of great alienation and great loneliness , frequently becomes ignored and neglected. The importance of the necessity of effective communication is often denied or lost sight of by the irresponsible artists, who being so narcissistically enraptured in the subjective reflection of their own expression, are misguided or abandoned by aesthetic philosophy, which in its turn reneges responsibility in failing to provide a sane and stable platform upon which to base human thoughts, words and actions in life.
To all of the literary fields of artistic expression--prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, dramas, novels and short stories, the crucial necessity of communicating to a very wide and diverse audience is never, nor can ever be lost sight of. It has to do with the nature of the very atom of literary expression--the word which automatically conveys some meaning from the private subjective realm to the objective public domain. In literature the very clay of expression is communication in the form of words, whereas in the visual arts the irreducible primary of communication is not so apparent or pressing. Any artist can paint purely for his own egotistical pleasure in self expression without ever caring about the communication of his meaning to others. In literature self expression is closely synonymous to communication, but in the visual arts stylistic self expression easily gains preeminence over communication.
This general situation is somewhat analogous to the "private language argument". In art personal styles may easily developed utterly disregarding the necessity of conveying meaning to others. In language, including writing, the conveyance of meaning to other people is inherent in the very nature of its meaning. Though idiolects are individually stylistic, they are not allowed to evolve into mutually unintelligible languages like dialects can, without losing in the transformation the very essence of meaning.
Now I wish to draw the connection between the verbal world of communication, eminently language, as a tool of human application and conceptually extended manipulation and the visual symbolization system conjuring to life in our imaginations normally only verbally accessible concepts and ideas. It is as if there were an artistic spectrum ranging between right and left hemispheres of the brain, between what is heard and what is seen, between music and visual forms of art--integrated by the verbalization of language, between which falls many blended variations, poetry just this side of art, song just this side of musical instrumentation.
Art and music are the spontaneous languages of imagination, springing to life from the soul of potentiality. Words and symbolization systems are the responsive languages of the other, the reactive imposition of willpower upon the soulful force of life energies--channelizing, canalizing, conforming. Creation of communication is the final end product of this interrelationship. Communication and self expression are virtually synonymous. Communication is the scientific aspect of human behavior. Expression is communication of self. Communication is the expression of the other. Art and music is closer to the self, languages are closer to the other. Expression and communication implies relationship and relativity. Might it not be possible that the ultimate goal of visual expression is to create or bring to life from the spatial dimension of reality the temporal dimension, and vice versa, that the ultimate goal of auditory expression is to bring to life from the pure temporal dimension of reality the spatial dimension? No matter how farfetched the idea, might it be possible that the objective of art is to create space from spatial nothingness--the illusion of infinity. Is it not the goal of language to integrate the two possibilities to create reality?
The problem of language deals with a vague notion I prefer to call the human reality of "verbality"--deeply related to the expression and communication of human becoming or realization of potentiality. It implies motion, movement, change--dynamic as opposed to static. Language lies squarely and centrally between the realms of auditory and visual perception. Pure auditory perception deals with the sequential lineality of the temporal dimension of reality as it is sensed and transformed. Pure visual perception deals with the relational dimensions of space. Integrating the essences of space and time is the verbality of language. Communication of expression creates not only the subjective identity of the person and the external reality outside of that person, but ultimately it is the very fabric of that reality. It is the act of relationship between that mind body dichotomy undermining all philosophy--integrating and synthesizing a unity of identity that is reality. Art and music lies at the extreme edges of this "verbality" and in their remoteness they are least restricted by conventions or social standardizations of communication and they are the most expressive of imaginative possibility.
It is precisely for this that both are so valuable to both the individual and humanity--it names a part of reality which science cannot touch. And yet both art and music must remain connected, relative to the central body of language, based upon verbalizable forms and concepts, to be of value to the human community.
Our rational reality is encompassed by the metaphorical meaning of the word. The word as metaphor is our emotional access to rational creativity. We must open up the boundaries of our definition of rationality to include more than just restricted analytical consciousness--virtually all of the alternative levels of consciousness. Language is the primary symbolization system of humanity for the expression and communication of the emotional meaning of rationality. Language is the beginning of our historical civilization. The word as metaphor is the beginning and end of both rationality and irrationality. When words become systematic substitutes for meaning then the word is no longer metaphorical and the systems of conceptualization in which they are employed become ameaningful and irrational.
We are in the scientific epoch of the maturational development of civilization. In our historical heritage we can trace the beginning philosophical epoch of the ancient classical world and the artistic epoch of the renaissance. We are on the verge of entering a new epoch of civilization--the epoch of humanistic man. This is the final culminating maturational stage of human civilization.
While our science has effectively undermined any rational basis for our belief in the supernatural, we have quite unwittingly found a rational substitute for our lost supernatural reality--and this substitute is the vast mountain of accumulated words and books. Our accumulated literature has become the modern day equivalent of the supernatural realm of bygone eras. Our rationality as summarized by our great metaphor of the "word" has become the predominating implied religion of the world. The "word" has become the voice of our rational "God", the symbolic replacement by which we can give our existence a rational meaning. All of our touted rationality is not intrinsically an evil thing. Quite the contrary it has been a necessary alternative in the historical epochal evolution of human civilization. The primitive prehistoric human did not dichotomize the natural from the supernatural realms of human existence--for him all things natural had supernatural significance. Supernatural reality was as rational as natural reality: they were one and the same rational reality. In our scientific world we have effectively distanced and separated the supernatural from the natural realm, and we have filled the growing void of the in-between with an ever increasing complexity and sophistication of the "word". We have become inundated by a flood of names and meanings. In order to make sense of our confused and confusing rationality we read and write more books, magazines, stories, newspapers, etc. Communication of the "word" has become our world wide mass media, linking all the corners of the globe within our television room. The rationality of the word has become our secular religion.
Widespread literacy is a good thing. There are more books in our world than there is time in a person's entire lifetime to read them. Most people will read only a few books in their lifetime. A few books can have a profound influence upon the way a person views the world and influences reality. It is extremely important that the books an individual reads are the right ones. But whose to choose. A good many books are very valuable but many more are practically useless to the rational enlightenment of humanity. The impact any one book or any one author can have upon the world is limited and questionable. No two people will read the same books in the same sequence in their lifetimes.
Our secular ideology of rationality--epitomized by the word--has been for a long time now the predominating active though unrecognized religion of modern civilization. The essential difference between this and all other religions has been to substitute symbolic rationality for the supernatural. The word as metaphor has acquired in the transformation a supernatural essence in human existence. Whether to be construed as good or bad, as harmful and evil or as beneficial and helpful, rationality is the primary ideology of the world civilization of humanity.
Nowhere is the implicit religion of our modern rationality better embodied than in our educational institutions. Our educational institutions are par excellence for reinforcing this brave new secular religion. The textbook has become a veritable bible over which the devoted noviate to the "system" must pour and ponder. Our schools are like churches to which the many "bright" supplicants periodically return to pay thoughtful homage to the "Great Systems of Rationality" of the secular saints of enlightenment--the Freuds, Einsteins, and Darwins. Our professors have become the high priests of this brand of religion. Theirs is the good shepherd's task of the "system"--tending to the flock to make sure that all of the "systems" children stay well within the fold. Amidst all of our conceptual subsystems of our "Grand System" how much of what we read is truly relevant or meaningful to our common contemporary human existence? Is the morning ritual of staying abreast of the current events world wide by reading the newspaper really necessary or relevant to the rational coping with daily life? How much of our "system" might be more ameaningful routinization and institutionalized systematization preventing creative rationality rather than cultivating it--inducing unwittingly closure of the mind by an inundation of trivia and irrelevancy? How much time are we left to ponder the really meaningful issues of existence? How much of our common rationality is illusion composed of myth and leading to nonfunctional and maladaptive ritualization of behavior. I believe a great deal of evidence can be amassed in a short time to demonstrate that indeed a great deal of what we construe unquestionably to be rationally sacred is essentially ameaningful to contemporary human existence.
"The occurrence, extent, and tendencies towards meaningful or ameaningful thinking will be determined to a large extent by cultural valuations, ideologies, rationales…orientation of knowledge seeking behavior dominant in a group, pervading all institutions and agencies that influence intellectual style, habit and sensibility…
The besetting cognitive problems of a culture, a subculture or an era can thus be very much a reflection of whatever factors lead to the relative valuation of meaningful and ameaningful thinking. One must even face the possibility that cultures can arise which place so limited a value on meaningful thinking that many of its members are deprived absolutely of the possibility of achieving "high" orders of meaningful thought, relative to their capacities, or of discriminating such states, should they occur, as in some sense valuable or even different from ameaningful thinking. I believe that something very much like such a culture in question is the world culture of the 20th century."
The formal educational system has become the primary institution of this implied religion of rationality. The formal educational system if divested of cultural biases and nationalistic prejudices, can become the primary vehicle of social integration, of socialization, of enculturation of humanity and for the civilization of rational creativity in the newly emerging world civilization of humanity. As the embodiment of our "Grand System" of rationality, the education system is the primary mechanism for spreading literacy and for the rational enlightenment" of humanity. If changes for the better movement to world peace and permanent alleviation of human suffering are to happen, then these changes must begin within the framework of the educational system. If the cultivation of rational creativity is the key factor to the promotion of world order then this cultivation must begin in education.
The main change that needs to be affected within the educational structure is a shift of emphasis from social competitive performance to cooperative individual learning. Competition has served no positive end for civilization or for the amelioration of the human condition. There is no reasonable justification for any competitive form of enterprise except in the release of excess energy--tension which might prove otherwise uncontrollable. We can see that competition serves a negativistic purpose, and that it is only useful in this negative sense. If one is searching for positive means for the amelioration of humanity, it cannot be justly found in any competitive form of behavior. Competition leads only to wasted behavior and inevitable frustration. It entails going endlessly in circles until all resources are used up. The fact that the economic doctrine of capitalism is founded chiefly upon competitive enterprise within a market economy means only that many people suffer and lose for the sake of the few successes. The idea that competition is conducive to healthy behavior is a fallacious consequence of too strict adherence to the Darwinian paradigm of survival of the fittest. Stress on competition in schools improves performance of previously acquired repertories of behavior but hinders the actual learning process--the cultivation of rational creativity.
I have previously asserted that the only truly rational ideology of humanity is humanism, and the spirit of this humanistic ideology must pervade our new secular religion of rationality. I believe the field of anthropological understanding has an important, indeed a crucial role to play in the promotion of this new humanistic ideology and secular rational religion. Especially within the framework of the educational system--as being the foremost teachers of the necessary anthropological understanding by which ideological humanism can be realized in a world wide context.
The all pervasive condition of humanity seems to be what I call "anthropological anomie"--a world wide identity crisis of humanity, a spiritual and moral despair as in apathy, ignorance, antipathy and prejudice the majority of innocent humans allow themselves to be manipulated and defeated by a small minority of petty, selfish politicians. Anthropological anomie is a sorry condition affecting the moral consciousness of the majority of humanity. Anthropologists as human beings and all human beings as incipient lay anthropologists need to become more self aware of latent human potentialities. Introjection, insight, self awareness--unlocking the secrets inside of ourselves--swinging the imbalanced normal ego back in favor of the self--this is the primary pathway toward rational self enlightenment and cultivation of rational creativity. The self is the important source of meaning in human reality. The paradox is that only through self fulfillment and self realization can we best serve the whole of humanity. True self realization ties the individual self and the collective self into an inseparable unity of the ego. There is no nobler a goal then in serving the whole of humanity and this is only achievable by turning inwardly to find self and truth. Expanding access to unconscious potentialities of the self leads simultaneously to expanding access to hidden potentialities of reality. Reaching inwardly expands human reality outwardly.
Anthropology does have a purpose beyond mere observation and explanation of human behavior and that purpose is the humanistic enlightenment of humanity. The goals of anthropology is the educational enlightenment of humanity about humanity for the sake of humanity--putting human beings in touch with themselves and each other. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe rational enlightenment does have an effective result in diminishing and reducing the ignorance and prejudice which serves to hinder world wide social reform. Human beings are normally receptive to rational insight. The main obstacle to the realization of these reforms are not social--they are rather political--in nationalistic terms. Anthropological methodology must be tailored to fit this objective, to devise schemes for tapping into these potentially unlimited and priceless human resources of rational creativity. Anthropological methods must become more applicable and amendable to human normative needs.
The anthropologists must consider their roles as intervening in the normal human behavioral processes to restore normal ego balance in favor of the self--as human technologists and behavioral engineers--as applied humanists instead of applied scientists--in lieu of humanistic values and not under the auspicial guise of scientific neutrality in the service of capitalistic or nationalistic unnecessities. Who is best to decide? There might perhaps have been a time when an anthropologist could have legitimately and justifiably observed with an air of neutrality and scientific objectivity a bloody human sacrifice with impunity and immunity from moral implications--as a neutral and value free observer without being implicated in any way as an accomplice. But that time is long past and in context to our newly emerging world culture I do not believe that this degree of scientific claim to neutrality is any longer justifiable or permissible. At what point does the anthropologist cease being a mere observer and begin intervening in the "normal" behavioral process for the sake of behavioral rationality or "normality"? What is the legitimate power of the anthropologist as the modern day equivalent of the shaman? We must all answer these question in our own way to the best of our imperfect human abilities.
No human owes any allegiance to any system before or above the allegiance he/she owes to oneself and to the whole system of humanity. Any human subsystem which exacts such allegiance and servitude against the humanistic prerogative is in this day and age of technological affluence and scientific rationality to be construed as unjust. No system ought to be better or bigger than any of the human constituents who compose that system. Inevitably, when we institutionalize our suprahuman systems, they grow out of control with a life of their own, uncontrollable by any human or group of humans. The "Grand System" and all its many diverse institutionalized subsystems--once begun--have taken on an existence independent of its human constituency--transcending the powers of any one person or group of people to control or change the direction of the system. Once mobilized, the system rapidly gains an overwhelming and unstoppable momentum. Even the key decision making politicians, like the President, cannot work outside of the context of alter the structural context of the system which has installed him and empowered his decisive authority. In a sense the President is even more tied to the context of the system--a mere sycophant of the values of the system, than any one else. This is the grand paradox of our systems--those with most decisive authority to affect changes are precisely the least able to do so--the least willing because they have the most to lose. We need to collectively wrest human control back from the system--to rehumanize human existence within context of the system and this is foremost to be accomplished by the cultivation of rational creativity.
The fundamental basis of moral action is consideration of the whole of humanity. Humanitarian ethics and morality, nonexclusive of any human being, are the only just rules which must guide our behavior. No subgroup or human subsystem can justly be said to exist outside or above humanitarian considerations. All state, military, political, economic, or social doctrines or orders are beneath and subordinate in consideration to humanitarian ethics.
The primary axiom of any just society is that each and every individual must be allowed as free access to any material resource or technical means, including unrestricted freedom of movement, of selection of occupation and relations, as well as the basic freedoms of speech, press, belief, etc. While this ideal is unattainable and impracticable in the most absolute sense, this is a primary objective which underlies all social, economic, political behavior. Ultimately the viability of world culture--its adaptability and flexibility to change and future stability are dependent upon the realization of this axiom of the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number of human beings--ultimately the ideal goal of absolute freedom for everyone.
There is a reflexive corollary to this primary axiom that any restriction to the realization of such freedom, while apparently desirable, will always in the long run prove incapacitating and undesirable in unforeseen ways. This loss of potential freedom can never be shown to be true as this corollary can never be shown to be false. It is an opportunity cost of what might have been but isn't. Any social order, under any nominal disguise, which is founded upon the restriction of individual freedom (i.e. independence) by the cultivation of dependency, is necessarily evil. This includes any form of political, economic or social system.
There is a single stipulative revision of this first axiom. This is that no one's freedom must be upheld at the cost of harming any other single individual in any way--psychologically, ethically, physically. There are no exceptions to this rule. The protection of individuals from the unrestricted freedoms of society is the first and only basis and purpose for law and order within a society. The good for one is ultimately the good for all and this good entails the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people with one vital stipulation--that the consequences of any belief or behavior will not entail the slightest amount of harm or sacrifice by even a single solitary individual.
Do we need religion? Do we need to believe in a God? Do we need to believe? One recognizes eventually in one's lone search for truth that the greatest truths have been identified and spoken about not bye the philosophers, the artists, or scientists, but by great religious leaders of all history. Religion, no matter how basic, superstitious or abstract or secular or atheistic, has a definite place in human existence. It entails in part belief in truth. No amount of science, art or philosophy can ever displace the paramount role of religion in human existence. But here some important qualifications must be made. Just as science, art philosophy can never displace religion--so too can religion never be allowed to displace the equally vital roles of science, art or philosophy. To no longer seek understanding of the relativity of reality or to stop questing after the truth by the consignment to meaning to unquestioning faith and blind belief is as much a crime as to live life completely sacrilegiously
To have a religion does not necessarily mean a theistic believe in s deity. While a belief in God is a frame of mind replete with solace-- no matter what form that belief may take-- whether otiose, anthropomorphic , supernaturalistic, animistic, totemistic, superhumanistic--there is also one critical shortcoming that such belief entails and that is the implicit denial and subverience of the role of the self in human existence to something outside or more than the self. It may be said ultimately that the self is godly and vice versa, but to say such a thing is to selfishly make ourselves godlike when indeed we are very imperfect. God can be a catchall for everything we want it to mean. My only question is why do we need a God?`
Unfortunately with the death of God there is a conversion of the mediocrity of humanity to shallow nihilism, fatalism, pessimism, existentialism and the vilest of evils--fanaticism and fascism. To forsake God is not to forsake sacredness altogether, rather it is to cleanse and purify our nobler conceptions of any aphoristic misnomer--to help bring clearer objectivity to belief in those ideas we do hold as sacred--truth, love, life, self and humanity. It is too bad that denial of God has so often been equated to an existentialist denial of the meaning of life itself. Life does not need a Godlike purpose beyond itself. The only godly purpose of life is found in living itself. Life is an end in itself without need for any further justification. Belief in God can be as debilitating as it is humiliating. While there is an important role for humility in life, there is an equally crucial need for transcendence of self imposed limitations--beginning with the conception of God as a limitation to our cognitive and normative behavior. It is too bad that people don't learn t just live life comfortably without need for godlike justification of existence--just as it is important to learn to complacently accept the inevitability of death, the ultimate reality of human limitations, without the comfort of belief in some kind of afterlife--of the consolation of a bit of eternity to share the godlike immortality.
Rather than try to prove the existence of God in whatever form we wish to conceive--an impossibility without ultimately committing a leap of faith--why not attempt instead to disprove God's existence. There in nothing in reality to be found that God must exist outside of human conceptioning. The reality of God is ultimately a collective illusion--almost universal--a human belief. Finding ultimately that it is also impossible to satisfactorily disprove God's existence, we must look to suitable criterion for such a belief--i.e., its universality and its consequences.
To not believe in God is not to have no beliefs at all, or not to be a non-believer. It is my judgment that no human being can ever achieve happiness or complacency as long as he/she chooses to be a non-believer or not to believe in anything. Whether consciously committed to some system of belief or not, it is a central shortcoming of the human condition that the human being is a rational animal--that in order to behave rationally, either in thought or words or action, is to have some system of rationalization (i.e. belief) that must at least be entertained to some degree at the conscious level. To throw away belief in anything is to throw away the meaning of life itself.
Infinity is a fact. Eternity is a fact. Reality is a fact. Existence is a fact. The self is a fact. Humanity is a fact. Unconsciousness is a non-fact redefined as structural relativity and reinterpreted as alternative symbolic interactionism between the human being and reality. Relativity is a fact. Meaning is a fact. Universe is a fact. Nothingness is a non-fact. Nothingness cannot be known. Perfection is a non-fact. Absolute truth is a non-fact. God is a non-fact. God is the unknown and unknowable. The attempt to know God is a fallacious act of willful self deception. The fact of God's non-existence can only be intuited and indirectly inferred as a conceptual possibility because it can be known only as a possibility it therefore exists as such, but only in as much as nothingness exists, the unknown and the unknowable exists. To look for direct proof of God's existence is at best to search for El Dorado or to make God into a universal collective reality--a group belief shared by all human beings. The fact that one atheist can be said to possibly exist, that the non-existence of God is possible, is proof enough of the non-existence of God. Rather than search for proof of God's existence, search for disproof of God's existence or proof of God's non-existence. To ask anyone to believe in a God of nothingness, non-existence, non-reality and you would be asking them to condemn the meaning of existence to self denial. Humanity is not God. Self is not God. Life is not God. But this is not the same as to say self is without meaning, that life is without purpose, or that humanity is without value. Each has intrinsic meaning or value in reality. Let God be the consummate existence of infinite possibility, eternity, perfection, universality, absolutism, unrealized potentiality, unfulfilled portions of our existence. God cannot be known directly in our existence, but only inferred indirectly from the possibility of his non-existence. God is the great counterpart of meaning in human existence--what could have been, what might be, but what isn't. We all need wishful thinking to cope with reality.
Man will return to nature, but he will not be the same thing he once was. He will be different. He will no longer be innocent, but in his guilt of trespassing and violation he will learn the value of responsibility. He will no longer be virgin--in his ignoble sexual satiation will be born true love for life. He will no longer be unselfconscious--in his narcissism he will come to feel to feel the pride of humility. A new man shall emerge, aware of his strengths and weaknesses, having come to terms with his limitations and unsettled restlessness. In his acquired wisdom he will transcend in complacency the blithe happiness of his inherent ignorance and life shall no longer be confronted in trepidation and he will no longer follow the herd in fear, but a new man shall stand alone in courage and face securely the ultimate resignation of death as the natural end of life.
Many changes in the world today are relatively permanent. Every new concrete foundation, every new highway or concrete edifice, will last more than a lifetime. Are such changes necessarily desirable in consideration of mankind's time tested myopic lack of foresight. Unless completely effaced by overwhelming disintegrative acculturation pressures or forcefully eradicated by cultural genocide, most cultures are in the world to remain for quite awhile to become eventually incorporated into the "Grand System" as a subculture of a far greater world wide culture of humanity. Even in spite of formalization and standardization of the written word, I believe culture change might possibly accelerate rather then decelerate. The many world subcultures are liable to diversify, segregate, and differentiate from the mainstream quite beyond recognized boundaries--instead of the trend toward pan cultural uniformity and homogeneity as some well intentioned people hope for. The diversification of subcultures will not hinder the organization of world culture into a well integrated, ontological organismic whole. A unique phenomenon will prevail. The holothetic multiplicity of the world cultural continuum will become the prevailing normality uniting continually differentiating cultures within bounds of a single heterogeneous world culture. I believe cultural boundaries and cultural relativity to be insuperable boundaries to the achievement of the replication of uniformity ideal within a single homogenous world culture on the basis of universal human nature. It is a similar phenomenon that is observable with the multicultural plurality and ethnicity within a single cultural continuum. A unique form of creolization and bastardization of multicultural elements and characteristics by distinct and separate cultures and personalities who adopt a diverse plethora of appealing and functional poly-cultural characteristics drawn from a complete range of inventory from which to select. As political territoriality and sovereignty can be diminished and eliminated world wide with the institution of world order and peace--transcultural accessibility will increase to become virtually unlimited, allowing potentially all individuals and cultures to freely borrow and share with others. Diversity will multiply and world organization will become extremely complex. This will be the transcultural identity of world wide humanity.
Within this new world wide multicultural continuum the anthropologist might play an important role as a cultural interpreter, as a mediator between cultural boundaries, as a middle man in intercultural transactions and as an interface by which to facilitate intercultural integration--by which transcultural integrity of humanity can be achieved. This is not to be done simply as a kind of esoteric professorship nor by the mere popularization of anthropological understanding. The anthropological methodology must be unified into a coherent world wide program as the basis of organization for a world wide popular recruitment and revitalization movement. Anthropological methodology must be made applicable in a teleological and heuristic sense--at all levels of cultural and personal integration. Does such an anthropologically based religious revitalization movement simply spell the end to the honest integrity of the academic discipline by popular pollution and inevitable corruption by private interests? What is to keep this humanistic revitalization movement from being any different from any other popular movement--from eventually stagnating in the same morass from which it originally sought freedom.
The difference is that unlike any previous revolution or revitalization movement, this movement incorporates the spirit of revolution, of revitalization, of change and adaptability as a permanent part of the structure of the movement--making world culture relatively permanently dynamic. A final movement to world order entailing not a static and changeless human condition but rather a steady state of continuous evolution of world civilization. This anthropological revitalization movement is yet part of a much vaster revitalization movement which is becoming more and more necessary at all levels of world culture. The day may yet be long time in coming when the spirit of humanistic enlightenment will spark spontaneously within the sleeping souls of most of humanity. But while waiting for the majority of humanity to awaken and arise from their ideological slumber, must the few of us who remain awake be kept from doing what is rationally within our powers to prepare for this new edge.
A new world order is entailed. The only other alternative is degradation and devolution of human civilization and eventual extinction of homo sapiens sapiens. Must we await another dark ages before the final humanistic revival of humanity is to occur. We are transforming in earth upsetting ways delicately balanced natural ecological systems which it has taken Mother Nature millions of years to establish. But how deeply felt are our disrespectful worldwide transformations and in truth how resilient might Mother Nature prove to be against our insolent but superficial scratch marks on the face of the earth, that in the long run--in geological if not archaeological time--will not rapidly be effaced from the surface to become merely a single geological substratum in the stratigraphy of the earth. Our biosphere is an extremely delicate single layer of biological tissue enshrouding the earth's surface.
We are on the verge of an epoch of the a-historical human. We are witnessing the superimposition of a rational empirical super culture upon the many world wide subcultures. We are on the verge of a post historic era. I believe we human beings have unique option to the final fate of all biological organisms--death--the "sociobiological" organism of "human culture" included--and this is the option of transcendence to an idealistic ontological plain of existence--of relatively permanent and long lasting relatively immortal civilization of humanity. The teleological and heuristic implications of this option involve enormous and revolutionary changes other than what is currently played out on the contemporary world stage. We have, by virtue of our unique human characteristic of rational creativity, the "godlike" destiny of aspiring to a supranatural plane of "spiritual being" not in an idealistic and unrealistic fashion but in a realizable and "ordinary" normal rational manner.
The change may be a long time in coming. It may not happen for many lifetimes, most subtly and gradually. It is definitely not going to happen overnight. I believe it will come most eventually in its own time--when the change is ready to "happen". Or it may never happen at all or it may never be allowed the chance to happen. But I believe a permanent change (changing permanently) must come if we are careful not to deprive ourselves or our posterity of this golden opportunity. If we are at the dawning of a new "golden age" of human civilization of being "born again" of permanent revitalization and resurrection of humanism, a humanistic epoch of completed maturity of civilization, no longer beset by very many earth shaking structural changes of maturational development of civilization, then our pilgrimage to paradise is not to be the idealization of some hermetic utopia, but it is to be the utilitarian realization of a "mature society.
Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.
Last Updated: 09/03/09