Tag: Hegel

Genetic Epistemology’s Implications

On By Chris Shuttleworth3 Comments
Originally Written: November 23rd 2020

Jean Piaget’s framework and terminology of understanding infant and childhood development can be extrapolated for usage in cooperation with the discoveries within many other domains. If we integrate his method of educational and cognitive development to the adult mind, we can make general statements about the nature of existence. The movement described in Piaget’s system of infant and childhood development can be paralleled by the conscious development as defined in Hegel’s dialectical method. Philosophical implications of psychological, and psychoanalytic findings can grant us insight into the nature of consciousness and its further development as we find it in our current Being. This knowledge of the process of our past development, if utilized by consciously directing the process to occur in our present lives, given our current value systems, may be a crucial element to our personal development and wellbeing, and the actualization of potentialities we contain within. Pragmatic truth development in accordance with developed existential beliefs can be harnessed in accordance with conscious recognition of the dialectical movement of our psyche, and in so doing so, promote the actualization of our values. This knowledge, and ability, is invaluable as a source of psychological integration and development, and the success we strive for in the domains of significance to us.

Jean Piaget described the development of human’s knowledge systems in small yet distinct successive steps as we move through infancy and into childhood. Schematic underpinnings can be delineated within these periods as the number of schemas is relatively miniscule, their simplicity and lack of integrated experiences makes them articulable, and the number of factors which are large enough to develop us in a definite manner can be observed. As we move into adolescence and adulthood the number of factors and the relevant environmental and interpersonal influences upon our schemata increase exponentially, making change, progress, and the number of concrete adaptations or accommodations to novel knowledge difficult to pin down. 

Piaget observed how in the first months of infancy the child’s schemata is entirely reflexive, inherent, and biologically instantiated. As these manifestations of inherent reflexes express themselves, they can be influenced by the childhoods own recognition of them as occurring, and circular reactions take place. Manners of orienting the head, hand, voice, and eyes develop schematically as the infant imitates his own abilities, creating schemas for sensory-motor abilities. These inherent movements and tendencies can be capitalized and reinforced in different manners based on the child’s perception of phenomena outside himself, which he imitates and thus develops his schematic underpinnings to movement. His parent’s recreations of the infant’s original manifestations serve to demonstrate his imitative competency, which develops in alignment with his intellectual power. Certain imitations that later on become means to an end, that have pragmatic signification, can be trained and developed, modifying the assimilated schema of the individual based on his accommodation to novel experiences.

The child’s reflexive desire to grab anything in the palm of his hand, as our primate ancestors cling to their mothers for years, leads to the ability to open and close his hand, grasp objects, grasp his parents hand, shake a rattle, move objects, and utilize tools. The schema for utilizing objects in the hand therefore develops as new situations arise where the infant can utilize his hands and current schematic structure, and the imitation he has of his parents reinforces his ability. A schema exists for making sounds, which he first expresses reflexively in crying, or screaming, in reference to hunger, or in the presence of other babies crying, which in the first stages the infant is unable to differentiate from his own sound. The imitative capabilities to reproduce sounds, parental reinforcement and directed recreation of the child’s voice, allow the child to imitate the sounds that he is able to make, in a manner that can be pleasing and directed by the parents. In this process the capability for speech, or the production of vocal phenomena, develops until individual words become formed. Only later does the schema used for orienting ourselves audibly develop into attaching a symbolic representational quality to the sounds we can manifest. We can see how these two examples describe the child’s dialectical movement through developing schemas of knowledge based on ability, competency, imitation, and cognitive ability. As the schemas evolve, meaningful significance to actions and schemas used as means to achieve an ends which means something to the individual becomes the primary driving force of our learning process. As they work in developing the infant’s capability and his manipulation of his abilities in accordance with phenomena in the world, so do we develop from the place of our current assimilated schematic structures in adulthood, albeit the number of factors, environmental situations, interpersonal imitations, and in general, the number of contributing factors that lead to our development are exponentially increased as time passes.

As all structures grow and either become reinforced in their stringency, or liberally move in direction that are drastically different from the original schema, the foundation for schematic development is always conservative, i.e. the original stages of development in any schema is still contained within its modification, whether or not any part of it still is expressed or not, the potentiality for its reemergence is carries through time as its integration has solidified in layers below the current manifestations.

Once an acquired ability works for whatever the activity is demanding, the child can be said to be assimilating whatever content arises in reference to that schemata. Once a novel situation arises for which his currently assimilated pattern of behavior is insufficient at manipulating, or using, then he must undergo the process of accommodating his schema to integrate the new knowledge. From that point the novel information is assimilated, and whenever it appears in his experience he has a “plan” for how to deal with it. We act from assimilation of experience to our current schema for as long as it is pragmatically viable, once it no longer is so, the process of accommodation forces us to adapt that schema to accommodate more information. In this manner our knowledge informs our orientation in the world, and we embody the Being from which the process takes place in successive steps as integral pieces of knowledge are discovered.

The manner in which the dialectical movement of consciousness works is through utilizing a current set of schemata to assimilate experience in a manner that is pragmatically sufficient for us. The objective validity of the utility of these schemata is reflected in our subjective experience in relation to the pragmatic assimilability of novel situations. Where novel situations fail to be met by prior assimilated schemata, we experience negative mental states, informing the process of accommodating our schematic foundation to include the novel problem. Whenever new experience isn’t optimally assimilated or can be utilized by the past schema, we undergo a process of accommodating our schema to include the new information into our framework. In this manner, we develop our schemas in regard to perceptive direction, perceptive ability, sensorimotor movement, for manipulating objects, behaving in interactions, situations, mental phenomena management, conceptualizations and articulations of reality, and even our overarching mode of Being from which individual manifestations of conscious content are expressed, through a Hegelian dialectical movement of progressing to higher resolution imaging of the information.

This dialectical movement promotes inclusion of added complexity as we experience novel situations, arising subjective phenomena, and abstract connections through acquired knowledge. As time passes, our perceptive system naturally becomes integrated with novel stimuli, our consciousness integrates novel pragmatic means of orienting ourselves in the world, and our schema used in navigating the world, both in embodied form (how we move, act, and orient ourselves to our environment), as well as the schema used to conceptualize and experience reality subjectively (mental experience, thought, emotion, content of consciousness) becomes modified.

Conceptualizations that represent objects not in the immediate environment, or abstract connections between representations that are merely linguistic, develop to greater degrees of clarity and provide more accurate depictions of reality that we can utilize for a pragmatic edge on the environment. The objectivity of our embodied orientation and our abstract conceptualizations is predicated on the pragmatic relation they have to enhancing our lives. A threshold of adequate framing, or a level of experiential evidence, reasoning, or embodied thought on a subject, can be the necessary instigator to the adoption of beliefs that are objective by nature and progressively pragmatic by such movements. Often times beliefs, concepts, and beneficial schematic rewiring’s can be in the process of developing without manifesting themselves, until they reach that threshold of “perceived” adequate pragmatic benefit which, if occurring in this manner, exists prior to conscious realization of its development.

Scientific truths, in contradiction to supernatural explanations, develop a positive belief in this manner. It isn’t until they are pragmatically framed and beneficial to us as a biological organism that the belief system is modified to accommodate itself to them, and to have the schema to henceforth assimilate incoming datum to that conceptual schematic. For as long as we are ignorant of the benefit of objective facts to us, for as long as the value of scientific discovery remains below the threshold of pragmatic utility, we will not adopt the belief. A progressively secular society that values scientific truth, our social adaptation to that society, and the framing of such truths to be useful individually (inextricably tied to the social), provides further ability to enhance unorthodox beliefs that are able to find that pragmatic utility and become actualized in our Being. When beliefs are harmful to our wellbeing, and in extreme cases, to our lives and our family’s ability to survive, their pragmatic value to us almost never reaches the pragmatic threshold of viability. It is for this reason that the escape from a heliocentric worldview, or metaphysical supernatural claims, took so long to develop, the belief in the contrary, no matter how logically coherent and empirically validated they were, was less viable an option to us biologically.

Truth claims validated by logic in a world characterized by punishment for blasphemy produced a perceived and actual cost to our subjectively intuited wellbeing, our place in the social world, our actual survivability, and our genetic imperatives ability to progress towards its goals. As openness to ideas, ideology, and different beliefs became more accepted in society, and the pragmatic benefits of operating on different belief systems developed, our ability to modify our schemas that result from modified value and belief systems expands in terms of potentially viable modes of being. For most people, across most spans of time, as long as beliefs are unviable options to us pragmatically, their objectivity is rendered negligible, and they are not adopted. It is only those who risked and often lost their lives that were able to adopt contrarian viewpoints, articulations, and the tangential adoption of novel beliefs, that the further progression of knowledge and their acceptability progressed societally.

The ability for more people to cross over the threshold in adoption of unorthodox or novel belief systems, philosophies, or even ideas that contradict the social milieu’s agreeableness, provides the starting point for further imitation in the expanding influence of the rebel’s expression of himself. As the rebel’s views become able to be expressed, so does the ability of others to imitate his belief system, as well as his act of rebellion. As different ideas become viable to be imitated, and exist in the world, our ability to accommodate them to our worldview is enhanced as new information is presented to us. For many people, without the instigation of external conceptualization and beliefs, and our ability to intellectually adapt ourselves to them and perceptively recognize them accommodate our existing schemas to incorporate them, there would be no change in our Being, our current assimilated schema would be sufficient. As evidence grows to support the pragmatic potentiality of differing perspectives and conscious methods of articulating the world, our personal philosophies become primed to modification by the psychological accommodation system. The rational conclusion to take the leap into novel information (i.e. knowledge, worldviews, to improve our lives, to generate improved moral, metaphysical, belief, and value systems) is supported by the imitative ability of perceiving those who have done so before, and our ability to recreate this act of rebellion against the social milieu becomes the instantiator of all the worlds progressive technologies, philosophies, and domains of knowledge.

The concretization of this general principle can be seen in the examples provided by specific details of our historical development, in our current society, in empirical observation, and in subjective experience. We find ourselves in the epoch marked by the transformation of the Enlightenment period, in a society that values logic and reason, and their usage in application to objective claims. The ideas and truth-claims that we can make now go relatively unmitigated by restrictive speech, or punishment based on ideology. On a fundamental level, beneath perceptions and consciously held belief systems, the pragmatic viability supersedes the objectivity of claims and is the mitigating factor in adoption of a consciously held belief. This describes the difficulty in adopting the positive belief in non-self, hard determinism, illusory nature of free will, or a morality of rational self-interest or selfishness not at the expense of others. In actionable manifestations, many patterns of behavior are seen by the majority of people as an unpragmatically feasible pursuit and are therefore socially “selected against”. The pursuits of academic studies in a hedonistic environment are seen as not pragmatically viable, abstract thinking and personal ambition are deemed less valuable than social acceptance, indulgence, and entertainment. Long term character development is not acted out as the primacy of “the present moment”, or “living for today”, are easier psychologically to “live out”. The belief that “were not good enough” or we “ought to strive to do better”, or “progress through pressure, difficulty, and challenges”, are not universally actualized in modern society despite the reluctance we have to admit their virtue. Based upon the perceived negative wellbeing, time allocation, and energy needed to live them out, they fail to become embodied despite verbal and conscious adherence to the belief in their benefit. The absence of actualizing these ideas in our lives show their absence in our belief structure, despite our verbal admonition of their benefit.

The mode of being and the schemas used within it both transcend themselves as significant information is integrated. As we deterministically apply our developed schemata to situations their utility is tested and reflected by our biological and subjective wellbeing. Both our subconscious systems, such as our body’s perception, and our conscious systems, such as thought that uses conceptualizations to “order” the “chaos” of experience into articulated representations, become improved through new information, by every experience, moment to moment, and is modified in a relative manner.

Given our current social milieu and the potentialities open to us, a cursory framing of our own value systems and the pursuit of developing in accordance with them is more possible than ever before. As we develop belief systems, and attach meaning to pursuits, activities, people, and in general, that which promotes our subjective experience, we simultaneously have become better equipped to pragmatically actualize the development in the directions we choose. As our development through assimilation and accommodation continue to reshape the schemas we use to operate in the world, so does our ability to consciously direct our being towards the values we explicitly articulate for ourselves. Our manner of existentially Being-in-the-world, both in its instantiated form, and its conceptualized form, is itself a piece of objective causality that can lead to further dialectical movement and progress in accordance with our views. As we intuit further scenarios and environments that pose a problem to our currently assimilated schemas, that produce an undesirable subjective experience or hinder our growth and our pursuit of what we value, we can intellectually direct our Being to rationally modify ourselves to accommodate our current system to the novel experience. We can choose (deterministically arising after relevant knowledge is revealed) to voluntarily develop ourselves in where we are lacking, in taking on challenges, difficulties, and accommodating ourselves to pragmatically or objectively truly existing information. Disagreeable information, personal inadequacies, and psychological problems can be elucidated and encountered voluntarily, and with the required knowledge, experience, time, and effort, can be overcome.

While this requires abstract intelligent reasoning, time, and knowledge of the relative causal connectivity that would lead to such development, it nonetheless remains a potentiality for us. Psychological development continues through the dialectical movement with or without our mindful awareness of conscious experience, but consciously directed activity in accordance with developing ourselves, by remaining within a mode of being that is characterized by fallibility and openness to experience, given our current situation of pragmatic viability to pursue our values, affords us the appropriate area to consciously develop ourselves and our manner of Being-in-the-world in accordance with what we value. By doing so we utilize for ourselves ourselves the ability to meaningfully progress towards that which we desire, and improve our subjective experience of life. In any domain of inquiry that we wish to improve, if we can consciously utilize our developmental ability to accommodate novel experience to the assimilated schemata, we can transcend our current mode of Being to one which is more optimally suited to navigate the world in the manner we wish to do so.

Mindfulness and Phenomenology

On By Chris Shuttleworth3 Comments
Originally Written: February 12th 2020

Mindfulness and Phenomenology

Here I wish to delineate several related terms to better differentiate their usage and respective attributes. The terms in question are that of mindfulness, philosophical phenomenology, and psychological phenomenology. Edmund Husserl pointed to key differences between psychological phenomenology and philosophical phenomenology, but here, for clarification and ease of understanding, I wish to additionally employ the use of mindfulness or Vipassana in the Buddha’s conception. These terms are used in the study of our own experience, and all are different possible states of Being we may enter into, and can potentially be used towards specific aims once they are unveiled to us within our own experience. They are Hiedeggerian “modes of Being” which can become open options to us (due to deterministic causality) in the exploration and truth seeking in the direction of comprehending and conceptualizing our own experience.

We begin with an analysis of the content of our consciousness, through introspective awareness, this is defined as mindfulness. Through mindfulness we can direct our consciousness to become aware of the contents within its sphere of awareness within the present moment (Basic Vipassana and Samatha Meditation). When we knowingly are aware (meta awareness – aware of our awareness) of what is happening within consciousness within this presentment, we can learn about the nature of consciousness, and gain insights into its fundamental nature (philosophical phenomenology) as well as its development, prior and post causality, what brings certain aspects into awareness and how we act and behave in response to them, and what effect that experience has upon us (psychological phenomenology). Thus we use mindfulness as a groundwork structure to gain insight into the two fields of further application. Mindfulness allows us to be aware of what content enters into our consciousness, and with enough practice in being in this mode of Being, certain insights can become clear to us (recognized as True).

Such insights available to be gleaned and recognized firsthand through the practice and training of mindfulness are broadly grouped into three useful, essential, basic truths about our inner experience. These are delineated by the Buddha, and while they are not comprehensive as to the content which is able to be uncovered, they are immediately intuitable, and beneficial to recognize. Those I speak of are the nature of non-self, impermanence, and the unsatisfactory underpinnings of our existence. The lack of a definite self, or ego, or non-self is to be discovered through the coinciding insight of impermanence, as their being no content or no phenomena to be found as being permanent. We find upon investigation that the content of our consciousness is in constant flux from moment to moment, and is characterized by its transient arising and fading away nature, as objects of consciousness (inner subjective content within the realm of consciousness within each moment) come into view and are replaced by new content. This causally led chain of content is discovered as modal changes to being without an anchor or headmaster, what we find to be its basis is simply Being as Being, rather than as Being as Self. Being becomes conceptualized, or experientially seen as, an active happening, lacking the “self” which we normally attribute as being an agent acting as the contributing subject to the content of our experience. Lack of “free will”, or, lack of control over what is the next content of consciousness, becomes apparent as a negative attribute of our experience. Mindfulness has the ability to allow the mindful practitioner to realize the suffering, or unsatisfactory nature of his being, through the experiencing of a consistently present desire, or craving, or clinging which propels the consciousness to become dissatisfied with its current state, and to be directed towards future states of the present moment. This is what Husserl terms intentionality, or the directedness or pointlessness of consciousness towards something. This intentionality, spurred by desire and dissatisfaction, is acted the content of our perceptual environment, including mental content, under the fundamental concern, importance, value, of what the perceived horizon presents as optimal to the totality of our Being. This directedness towards value is what Heidegger defines as fundamental to our Being, that of “care” (Heideggarian Terminology).

From the findings of mindfulness stems the scientific study of phenomenological psychology, which is a variant upon, and later rediscovery, of the very methodology which Buddha painted the picture of two thousand years prior. In psychological phenomenology, we take the experience of consciousness, and analyze them in a way towards an aim of giving description to the content found within. The describing of such content allows us to classify and arrange experiential content (psychologically phenomenological) in a cohesive and useful manner, in which to recognize and give a conceptual understanding to the causality of such states arising, as well as towards goal-directed states of optimization. This is the role of psychology within the phenomenological subfield, to identify states as falling into discovered groups of classification, and towards the arising of future states with a goal in mind towards the state of Being with which we wish to embody.

As to the nature of the Being which is able to experience mindfulness, we must employ a “science” of objective philosophical phenomenology to analyze and interpret its foundation structures. The role of philosophy is to describe the nature, essence, limit, scope, and characteristics of the Being which is able to experience, the being which we analyze, that which is necessarily most readily available to us, is our own, a “human being”, defined as “Dasien” in Hiedeggerian terms. When we seek to know what is universal about such consciousness, and its ability to experience, its ability to enter into different modes of Being, we seek the use of philosophy in its depiction. We find explanations attempting to attribute essential foundational, objective, universal, consistencies that form the basis of Human Being. Hiedegger finds our being inextricably linked to a tripartite temporality, as existing within a structure of time we didn’t choose to inhabit, the “thrown” of our existence (past creating a present creating a future). We are found within this period of temporality with the primary characteristic of having a foundational “care structure” (comparable to desire in Buddhism) which affects our entire existence. We find ourselves “thrown” into an existence which is unprecedented, and we have an anxiety towards death, a constant anticipation of future inexistence, and we embody the will to escape it (Buddhist dissatisfaction). The answer is to heed the call of conscience and to live authentically while seeking to understand our Being.

In Hegel we find that human consciousness exhibits a form of Being which is able to be in distinctive general modes, or forms of Being, which can progress itself through a dialectical method to higher states of more comprehensive knowledge and understanding of itself and reality. As contradictory truths are discovered in our experience, we seek to transcend them through forming a synthesis which contains opposing facts about our existence, allowing us to supersede our prior mode of consciousness. Subsequent philosophy is able to analyze and depict the Being which we are, Dasien, as containing infinite modes of Being which give rise to the experiences which shape these forms of Being, and which can progress.

Philosophy is able to generalize about the steps taken in the conscious development, or of a hypothetical ideal conscious development as derived from the objective nature of experience which itself is discovered through the use of reason and conceptualization within this consciousness, which is, the objective study of subjectively discovered philosophical phenomenology.

Political Theory – Hegelian Dialectic and Personal Responsibility

On By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment
Originally Written: January 25th 2020

When it comes to politics we ought not be so inclined to automatically choosing sides or adhering to dogmatic ideologies, as every issue holds contradictory yet mutually justifiable pathways to “solutions” in their intricate complexity. It is this complexity that allows complicated issues to rise to the forefront of political agendas, complexity in terms of the nature of the issues that face a country, of the different problems which arise in relation to the constituents of a nation, and the differing opinions in how to manage them. We ought to look at all political disagreements individually, and the optimal negotiation between opposing viewpoints is always to be found through using a Hegelian dialectical method. By this process we take a perspective, solution, or idea the conservative right has, with a corresponding yet contradictory view the liberal left has. Optical political solutions lie in something that transcends both of them in a new strategy, yet includes a consideration of both under its umbrella, and this is the job of our political system to actualize – as our country is almost completely divided in half. The American government relies on the temperament of the individuals that make up both parties, and forward progress relies on the preservation of values of the majority subgroups (liberal/conservative). Government is working optimally when both sides are mutually empowered to cohesively form a country that works in the best manner we can conceive of for the majority of people. We ought not cater to one side, or one aspect of the nation, but to find an optimal pathway forward that is pragmatically beneficial and “expressive” of the ideas of the majority of people. In an optimal world, everyone would be happy, and our glasses aren’t so rosy as to not see the naivety in the actuality of this idea, but nonetheless, optimal solutions are to be found in the balance and negotiation between ideological proclivities, that gets to the core of both generally dividable temperamental and belief structures in terms of people’s political inclinations.

Once we find a transcendent idea that is tempered by stability and “conservatism”, and simultaneous by change and “liberalism”, eventually you will find another corresponding yet contradictory truth that propagates the best of both worlds opposed to that idea. The forward progress of a Hegelian dialectical movement never reaches a maximum expression, but always can improve itself. We transcend both conceptions in a greater – and vaster – conception, articulation, or expression in concrete law form of something which is agreeable to the values of the people from which the law, regulation, or decision ultimately rests on for approval (at least in its democratic instantiation). This is how we advance consciously to find ever more effective and truthful resolutions to problems, and also the way consciousness can improve itself given more information without slipping into the dissonance caused by two contradicting beliefs.

There are obvious ways in which both the left and the right go to extremes, and there are good reasons why they both stretch in these ways. We need both sides, the right to maintain the state when it is in a modality that is pragmatically beneficial to the people and the country as a whole, used to maintain stability when and where the country needs to remain stable, and the left to implement change, innovation, improvement, when and where it is found to be beneficial. We need the order and the chaos, in equal balance to both temper each other, check each other, and work together for the benefit of a nation with individuals containing significant differences.

What we see recently is that both sides aren’t acknowledging the benefit of the other side, what they are doing is alienating themselves, and causing polarization not only between the two groups, but between people in their daily lives that associate with either political party. This disagreeable nature based solely on political leaning, widespread distrust, and the attribution of malice is permeating beyond the governing class into the majority of people’s daily lives. Widespread division is affecting the culture of the nation – diving us based on abstract ideals, most of which is ill informed and rooted in closed mindedness. Individuals are alienating themselves from other individuals on the microscopic level as the macroscopic political groups diverge more and more – which is being sped up and given a platform to do so by our ever increasing social media presence and technological advancement.

Due to personal conditioning to label ourselves on either side of the divide, the temperamental differences that so incline people to opposing viewpoints in the political sphere, and our biological inclination to side with those who share similar values, it is easy for us to intuit others as being the enemy given that they are “dangerous” to our way of life, or how we believe the world “should” be. Politics necessarily has the greatest impact on the most amount of people’s lives, and given these points, and the changes politics has the potential of affecting in our daily lives, these matters necessarily produce emotional and experiential division when another’s beliefs on the matter is in opposition to ours. The added complexity of a perceived moral or conscience driven proclamation of the benefit of our side, only makes the emotional tie to a group identity more powerful. The idea of a herd mentality, or of belonging to a “group” modifies the members that adhere to the identity – no matter what the identity might be. These identification categories have the tendency to divide rather than unite, towards which strong leadership can alleviate. Effective leadership can point to explaining what to one temperament may be hard to see as justifiable in the other sides perspective, and in showing people the benefit of social cohesion despite contrarian viewpoints. Strong leaders can lead people of different backgrounds and inclinations to not despise each other for their differences, but see their intentions as not based on malevolence, or on a desire to destroy another’s way as life, but as being one in the same as ours – to have a better country that is more conducive to our individual/familial/societal benefit – which everyone, despite their political leanings – shares.

As far as individual political issues, we need our greatest minds to act out of a spirit of cooperation, with an intention of goodwill for the countries people, as well as the world’s people, in reference to a time span not only in the present, but across time, not only for the individual, but his family and ever increasing group membership (to the macroscopic world). This is why Aristotle referred to politics as the height of morality and philosophy, as it is a specific domain that has the deepest and most pervasive influence into the lives of the most amount of people. This immense responsibility and complexity is why Plato advocated a philosopher king, what I think we need is a philosophical council which tempers a philosopher head of state, but we’re a far stretch from socially getting on board with such an idea.

We ought not attribute “malice” or “populace slavery” by the government or ruling groups of power, nor do I believe we ought to give headspace to any other conspiracy that paints a similar picture, whether they are true or not is out of most of our ability to concretely conclude upon. The ideas propagated by the media and the worlds governing bodies come from a much more naturally explainable place, yet are increasingly complex due to the number of individuals involved (everyone). The issues we face are much more complex than to be attributed to off the cuff conspiracy theories, regardless of the failure of the media to push unbiased accounts of the political news. It all boils down to individuals attempting to spread their individual interpretations, based on their inherent biases and perspectives. When this happens in a manner we perceive as unbeneficial to us or the country or the species in general – it often is due to a lack of expertise or articulation in politicians, or a mistake in deducing the proper manner of navigating the political landscape. That being said, we cannot escape the all too human effects of selfishness, power, and personal benefit that corrupt politicians and simultaneously corrupt the system – and this fact of human nature gives us reason to criticize seemingly irrational decisions by our countries leaders – which is the role of the people to properly discern. This doesn’t mean blanket criticism and complete distrust of anyone in power, nor does it mean that our institutions can’t or don’t self-correct for a majority of these occurrences.

The products of our political parties and media influence can be found in the trickle-down effect leading to our country’s individuals holding false beliefs, contrarian viewpoints, distrust towards one another and much of the time producing viewpoints that are misinformed. We ought to punish those systems and individuals that are exposed of perpetrating misinformation and hold accountable those that don’t give a transparent viewpoint of the workings of the government to the people – insofar as that revelation isn’t damaging to the country. This doesn’t only refer to the governmental institution, but also the educational and religious institutions. This is a matter of degrees, and difficult to discern, but a line of false representation and misinformation still exists nonetheless – and we ought to hold responsible those who don’t properly inform us in a manner that is revealed to not be “well-intentioned”, as in when the opportunity cost of doing so is greater than not.

The effect from on high is only accepted if it is given popular credence by a sufficiently large segment of the population – such effects would never be held in high esteem nor influence others if they weren’t themselves held as valuable to a substantial subset of people. Our politicians are naturally an expression of the spirit of the age, and are affected from the bottom up in their statements, laws enacted, and decisions made, just as much as those decisions made are simultaneously influential on those that they are in reference to, or towards those that pay attention to them.

What is often seen is a criticism of a president or highly stationed politician, or an institution in its totality, as being the cause of the aversive thought, value, decision, or state of society, and we tend to see the people that are in the corresponding political party as “victims” of the mind virus that comes from the top down. The perspective here that is in an opposing vein, yet holds true, is that it isn’t merely the citizen that can enact a sort of “idol” worship in their perspective of the politician, but the politician too enacts an “idol” worship in the necessity of catering to the populace or their constituents in the things they say and do – and we have ourselves to “blame” or hold accountable for that perception and influence the politicians take of/from us that gets expressed in their political activities. In order to get ahead the politician must be agreeable to a large portion of society otherwise their endeavors (albeit selfish intentioned or malevolent, or otherwise) would not be able to succeed. There is a necessary relation between the citizens and their politicians, and in this democratic age, especially in America, despite flaws in the election process, and the corruption that allows manipulative individuals to “get ahead” in their political aspirations, there remains a distinct necessity for the politician to cater to the desires and values of the people – or else their progress will be significantly hindered.

Where we find it easy to blame a politician, a political party, or their constituents for believing in that party’s values and conclusions in important issues – we find it more difficult to accept that those on high are only able to propagate such ideas in their adhering to something which resonates with a substantial portion of the population. The blame, the responsibility, the power, that influences aversive ideas, laws, or public statements of politicians that gets them elected, or decides a law, stems from the values of the people that continue to allow the politician to operate, that vote for him, that publicly and socially defend him and agree with his ideas. But it isn’t necessarily the people agreeing with the politician’s view, as the relationship has been shown to be cybernetic, it is the politicians ability to articulate ideas in a way a that is itself agreeable to these people in their own belief and value systems. There’s a necessary rhetoric to the avocation of any idea, and that rhetoric can and will be morally judged for better or worse. In the end, we’re all to blame for the production of such politicians and the manner they act. We’re all to blame for believing them, or believing in them, we’re all responsible and our own human nature is the culprit for being part of the social system which creates the individual in power. If a politician’s ideas weren’t agreeable to a threshold limit of the population they wouldn’t develop to be the person they are and would be selected against– either by their peers, their constituents, or their enemies, especially in the age of strict polarization.

Politicians must cater to their party’s beliefs or be selected against, whether that entails explicit honesty, specific ideas, a certain temperament, or rhetoric that is convincing. The responsibility still lies in our acceptance and propagation of the desirability that attracts us to one side of a political disagreement, an ideology, a politician, or a political party. This accounts for manipulation and corruption, false promises and expectation. Regardless of these phenomena the official or his party has to at least appear to be propagating what the masses believe to judge as “good”, as what they perceive as “bad” won’t be supported, and the politician or political party, or ruling legislative process wouldn’t reach actualization (and if it did, and was sufficiently disagreeable, there would be substantial kickback and even revolution).

It is only from this perspective that we are able to enact meaningful change at the root of the “problems” or “aversive” content apparent to us in politics. It isn’t merely poor leadership and selfish inclinations of politicians that constitute the root of the problems, it is the adherence to certain values in a large part of the country that grows the politicians from their bed of values – and if we want to change the upper most manifestation stemming from this belief garden, we must necessarily focus on the socially and culturally accepted values from which they stem. The problems and the solutions, the values and the judgments, all are to be attributed to ourselves, we the people, and thus it is the societal spirit of the age, the zeitgeist, where we ought to direct our praise and blame, our attempts to cause political change – not merely the superficial layer that is expressed in the party’s leadership. We must point the finger towards ourselves, the effect we have on people in our lives, and in general, our own influence upon the political and social spectrum – as the manner we individuals conduct ourselves dictates the bedrock from which the political milieu is comprised of.

Many people simply attribute to the “other side” or people that hold different beliefs, malice or ill-will in their expression of what they believe to be “good” or “right” as it threatens our system of beliefs. It is wise to apply Hanlon’s razor in these circumstances – rather than inferring harmful motives or judgment – and chalk it up to ignorance. Ignorance is something we all should seek to rid ourselves of in our comparison of our beliefs and their aligning to reality, in aligning what we think would be beneficial to what truly would be, especially on issues of such vital importance, and it often is the culprit for many decisions we infer are due to a lust for power, “evil”, or inconsiderate actions. Correcting for it within ourselves entails recognition of the unknown, such as a contrary viewpoints justification, and actively seeking more information on why it is appealing, why a large number of people believe it to be an optimal solution, and seeking to view not only the best evidence and arguments against our position, but the most supporting evidence for a contrarian position. Often times others merely don’t see our point of view, and we are just as apt to not see theirs in situations which are marked by anger or frustration by sheer natural disagreeableness. On a basic level, politics is such a huge system being affected by all the people in a nation, and simultaneously serving all the people in a nation – we therefore must take it upon ourselves to attempt to be trustworthy, respectable, and diligent in defining and actualizing values that we deem to be of crucial importance – as the bottom up factors not merely matter but are the most readily available areas we have the ability to affect meaningfully change.

One problem that exists in politics is the number of people qualified for leadership, and the societies recognition of personal responsibility of the problems we are so quick to criticize. This appears to be an issue in both the quantity of people that have the potential for competent leadership, and those that actually do take on the personal responsibility of enacting change in themselves before criticizing the system. We have systems in place that are supposed to filter out exceptional leaders across all governing fields in order to select the most competent in different areas, so those people can work together to cause a top down system that is most beneficial to the people. This bottom up advancement, top down control, should work, theoretically, yet it is not optimal in its promotion of the bottom up individuals, producing less than optimal command in the top down implementation. Frankly, this system can be improved, popularity and ego surely play a role, but nothing should overshadow competency in this filtration – something that is lacking in our search for diversity, our value of emotional rhetoric, popularity, or agreeableness to our group’s judgment.

Fortunately, regardless of the flaws, the average citizen in any developed western country lives a relatively good life, or at least its government has created a space in which the possibility to do so is open (to greater or lesser degrees of course, depending on the person’s situation and even more so on their perspective). I generally think despite the worlds political troubles, despite the average citizen’s polarization, ignorance, and aversion to contributing real beneficial change to themselves that extends to our government, that our system is doing okay. I really think things are going, that is, relatively good, compared to any point in human history, and just the fact that people are realizing the flaws of the system points to the fact that were on the right track as a group to greater improvement.

Dialectical Methodology in Conscious Advancement

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: August 3rd 2019

Conscious satisfaction with our current state of understanding, character, mode of Being, and progression towards values limits us in our ability to manifest our potentiality. Regardless, the instinctive movement towards greater perceptual intuition, and enhancement of cognitive navigation of phenomena, naturally increases as our perceptible data is accumulated throughout every moment. Whether we consciously encourage the progression towards greater heights of understanding, cognitively remain stagnant in pursuits of learning or further articulation of ideas, or hinder progress through pursuing falsehood, our natural inclination is to seek to rectify dissonance and contradiction through our rational faculty. This is necessarily done in a way that progresses the state of consciousness, or the “Spirit” as Hegel regards our “Being”, in its totality, towards higher “transcendental” states of understanding. In the realm of wisdom, morality can always be improved, in the realm of knowledge, articulations can always be refined and improved upon, transcended and surpassed. We can always make progress towards greater articulation and actualization of our value system’s priorities. This becomes greatly accentuated through conscious direction, and diligent effort.

Our ability to conceptualize appearances of truth into statements about reality is limited by time, language, and experience, but at the same time progressable through the same metrics, if utilized in accordance with consciously constructed abstractions of the underlying value system. Time goes on, and new concepts can be introduced, and experience grows. Our perceptions are altered as their datum increases through the very instantiation of our perceptible ability which courses through life. As time goes on, and our conceptual vocabulary is improved upon, as concentration upon awareness of reality develops new meanings to new concepts, consciousness itself grows in its understanding, that is, if it is concentrated on the improvement of said knowledge in a way that is fact checking itself in corresponding to reality. While requiring intellectual vigor and philosophical inclination towards progress towards higher abstractions, such processes can be implemented by anyone at any level for practical results.

The integration between the experienced and the abstract, and the constant flow of experience and abstraction, flows to deeper understanding if one never reaches a point of satisfaction or complacency. As you improve skill with experience, you also improve understanding with time, which is itself directly intuitable in our experience. Directed consciousness in an intentional direction, over time, produces experience in said direction, and leads to improvement if worked through a Hegelian process of dialectic movement. This dialectical movement towards advancement of current knowledge works through the experiencing of new knowledge contradicting old knowledge, the recognition of two contradictory truths, their transcendence into a new truth which superseded yet includes both discovered truths, and the emergence of an all-encapsulating conception. This now becomes the initial truth, change occurs and through renewed attention new knowledge develops contradicting the new founded knowledge, and their transcendence is required again to move on.

For example, this whole process is only discoverable because something is. Something is, which is Being. This Being which we recognize is a type of being which we conceptualize as human, a human being (me). We intuit that something is permanent, is lasting and unchanging, perhaps our view of our “self”, or of physical objects. The being comes to notice through phenomenological analysis that its contents are impermanent. Through science we find all conditioned things are found impermanent as well. The inner world, the outer world.  Everything must be impermanent, changing. What is unchanging always is permanent. What doesn’t change, is impermanent. Everything is impermanent. Two concepts, one consciousness. Two contradictions, one understanding, both consciously held, produces cognitive dissonance and internal confusion through their contradiction. The resolution, the permanence of impermanence, is recognized, as the type of being which reality has. The unity of the contradictory truths are found in conceptual understanding that the absolute concept (Hegelian Notion) contains the truth of a constant impermanence from the perspective of the Being which is human. From this conceptual standpoint one has traversed multiple underlying truths which are, in their divided essences, incompatible, but in their unity, a truthful depiction of reality as it currently has been found by the observer.

As long as the understanding focuses on developing the conceptualization, of not ending the conversation, experience, time, abstraction only grows from this point. One may come to see that the unity is only such due to the mind which is itself not divisible from the unity yet a part of the unity, but itself as much the unity as any other point, at the same time it is creating the unity which is appearing to itself within consciousness. One may come to conceptualize the consciousness that is abstracting as separate from the abstraction. That there is the object (the abstraction of consciousness (unity of permanence of impermanence)) as well as the subject (consciousness itself). These can become, themselves, two objects recognized within consciousness, one containing the unity of previously discovered truth, one the consciousness which recognizes, both appearing in the content of consciousness. Two conceptualizations of the state of affairs as they appear within one consciousness. Through development of understanding we see that it is consciousness itself creating both concepts within itself, which itself can be infinitely conceptualized, until the realization dawns that anything appearing in consciousness, is merely appearing in consciousness, and that experience is what is currently happening within this moment, subjectively, yet perceived as an objective fact. This itself becomes a truth of the moment, its realization quickly superseded by the next interjected moment of awareness containing fresh content (if your mindful you can notice), only possible, through the impermanent nature of all phenomena. In this way our understanding formulates a conceptualization of reality, it is contradicted by a subsequent truth, both truths must be integrated, and through their transcendence, that is, a higher resolution image which includes both, we are successfully able to integrate both ideas into a world view which houses them and is able to contain them both without contradiction. This process, albeit naturally occurring,

While this process can be understood retrospectively, after a phenomenological analysis of the transcendence of prior knowledge, it necessarily happens moment to moment despite our conscious awareness of it or not. If we are to consciously apply our intentional gaze towards progressing through contradictory knowledge, it only seeks to erode the dissonance. In this way, philosophical understanding can develop through a dialectical system of thesis antithesis synthesis. In general, the philosopher should never stop the conversation within oneself, never settle on an ideology, or think that one has the whole picture. This mode of maintaining one’s own fallibility naturally encourages the Hegelian dialectical movement, which, apart from happening subconsciously, we can utilize in our ability to formulate higher order truths towards the containment of seemingly contradictory truths, that is, as long as we abstain from certainty in regards to any one idea.