Showing posts with label Jung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jung. Show all posts

Passed on

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Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

[Rainer Maria Rilke]
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke


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Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children ...

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents (and ancestors too, for we are dealing here with the age-old psychological phenomenon of original sin) have not lived. 

This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial if we did not add by way of qualification: that part of their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so.

To put it bluntly, it is that part of life which they have always shirked, probably by means of a pious lie. That sows the most virulent germs.

[C. G. Jung]
The Development of Personality, CW 17, pars. 84, 87


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April:  You don't want to go, do you?

Frank:  Come on, April. Of course I do.

April:  No, you don't. Because you've never tried at anything. And if you don't try at anything, you can't fail.

Frank:  What the hell do you mean I don't try? I support you, don't I? I pay for this house. I work 10 hours a day at a job I can't stand.

April:  You don't have to.

Frank:  Bullshit! Look, I'm not happy about it. But I have the backbone not to run away from my responsibilities.

April:  It takes backbone to lead the life you want, Frank.

Dialogue from Revolutionary Road (film)


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Related posts:-
Go Your Own Way
Path of Maturation

How Simple is Too Simple?



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Simple                      -                    Complex
Zoom-out                  -                    Zoom-in
Abstract                    -                    Concrete
General                      -                   Specific
Heaven                      -                    Earth


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I recently took an online personality test at 16 Personalities. The site states that there are sixteen core personality types (first identified by Myers and Briggs) and that all of us can be allocated to one of them. Using a questionnaire to gauge a respondent’s personality traits, it suggests a personality type based upon the intensity of these traits.

I found its results interesting, informative and useful. However, having spoken with others about such tests, and having perused some opinion online, I know that many people dislike them.

A common criticism, and one that I’d like to address, is that they over-simplify a complex subject.

--

A human being is certainly a complex subject, and to group all of the myriad individuals in the world into sixteen categories is certainly reductive. No two human beings are identical, and each of us, when viewed from a certain distance, is entirely unique.

As with all ‘things,’ a human being is comprised of details. Every detail is a point of distinction, thus the more details we see the more difference we see. In this sense, a detail is synonymous with a difference. Let me offer a couple of illustrations:

1. I am short sighted. If I remove my glasses I no longer see as much detail, and things - including people - become a lot more homogenous.

2. I draw two circles on a piece of paper using a compass and pencil. I try my best to draw these circles in an identical manner, locking the compass so that its legs remain at the same angle, and applying the same pressure when drawing the circle. When I look at my circles they appear identical.

However, when I examine them under a microscope my smooth pencil lines become something else altogether; they turn ragged and incoherent, as unique and unrepeatable as a Jackson Pollock painting. The microscope has allowed me to see details that I had formerly overlooked; and it is these details that form the difference between my circles. 

Things, then, can be seen as either simple or complex, depending on our viewpoint. When we zoom-in and look for details, they appear complex; when we zoom-out and look for generalities, they appear simple. Inasmuch as it is true that beneath every simple view there lies complexity, it is equally true that above every complex view there is a unifying simplicity. Neither is more truthful than the other.

The '16 Personalities' test is founded on the notion that people, in spite of their complexity, can be simplified and sorted into sixteen broad categories. Indeed, for me one of the appeals of this theory is its simplicity. When it comes to understanding ourselves, and each other, I think there is much to be gained from taking a simple view.

Simplification

In our daily lives we encounter a multitude of ‘things’ - from desks, to chairs, to cups, to roads. If we were to take every thing we encountered as an individual - in other words, as something unique in itself, rather than a single instance of a more general type - then we would barely be able to function. It would be like arriving in an alien world, in which nothing is familiar.

For instance, instead of a ‘cup’, we would encounter a hard object, with a cylindrical shape and a strange curved protrusion. Its label ‘cup’, is a shortcut; it gives the object a meaning, or direction - ‘this is for drinking from’ - but in doing so, it also distracts from all other possible directions; all of the other things that this object could be. Our shortcuts may limit possibilities, but they also allow us a crucial measure of expediency.

The process of getting to know things is, then, a process of simplification. We group similar things together and give them a label - conceptualise them - and relate our concepts to one another. Inasmuch as we are predisposed to conceptualise, we are also predisposed to simplify.

And yet the infinite complexity of reality can never truly be pinned down by concepts. It is liquid, constantly slipping out from under our definitions. We can pour it into a glass, and observe how it takes on the shape of its container. But nothing lasts forever, and eventually our glass will crack, and shatter; and its contents will spill out, go here and there, and become other things; new things.

If our intent is to accurately represent things as they are, then we must accept that all of our containers, our concepts - indeed, our whole way of looking at the world - is an over-simplification; because no matter how hard we try, we can never capture everything. There will always be something left out, or overlooked. Every picture is incomplete. This is probably what Eckhart Tolle was referring to when he said that “To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.” 1

Thus, we find ourselves caught between the chaotic infinity of creation, and the harmonious unity of the Creator. We are not omniscient: we cannot see every thing, only some things. Our experience is, then, always a concession of sorts; founded, as it is, on the acknowledgement that in order to experience things we must simplify them.

The question is: how simple do we want to make things?

Context

It seems to me that the answer to this is determined by the context in which it is asked. In other words, what are the intentions of the person doing the asking?

If you want to view yourself, or human beings in general, as complex things that cannot be simplified into types, then certainly a personality test will be an ‘over-simplification.’ If you want to view them as things that can be seen as both complex and simple, then a personality test will not be an ‘over-simplification.’ Intention is key.

If it seems like I’m pointing out the obvious, then I’m doing so in order to bring to mind something that is all too often forgotten: that what is true for you may not be true for me.

‘Simplify’ is a judgement, a statement based upon observation that ought to be true for most observers. ‘Over-simplify’ is a value-judgement, a statement based upon personal standards or priorities, that will likely not be true for most observers. Thus most will agree that to group human beings within sixteen personality types is to simplify them. However, a smaller number will agree that to do so is to over-simplify them.

I labour the point because I find that we often seem to forget this distinction. It is all too easy to get trapped into one view and to think that it is the best view, or the only view. When we do this we lose sight of the bigger picture, of the continuum of views in which our own is contained.

Whilst it is true that each of us is entirely unique, I think it is equally true that each of us can be reduced to the black and white simplicity of a binary. From one view we are analogue, from another we are digital. Which of these is the most useful is defined by those doing the looking. It may be that in situation A it is more appropriate to see complexity, whereas Situation B may demand simplicity.

Seeing human beings as unique individuals, as things that are too complex to be grouped, is one way of looking at them; and this view has much to offer us. But if we feel that we, or human beings in general, are too complex to be grouped then this suggests that we’ve fallen into the trap of believing that there is only one way to look at things - that there is only complexity. This view is unbalanced, because it chooses to see only one half of the binary whilst ignoring the other; it makes its home within complexity and forsakes simplicity.

We needn’t pick sides. Both the simple and the complex view are open to us, and both offer us something that the other cannot. To see things simply needn’t be a denial of complexity, as long as we recognise that we are choosing to use the simple-view; and thus, could also choose not to.

Telling stories

Along with the '16 Personalities' test, I also took an online version of the ‘NEO Personality Inventory test’. Much like '16 Personalities', the ‘NEO’ test is a questionnaire consisting of a series of statements (e.g. ‘Make friends easily’) which must be rated based on how close they are to describing the respondent in question. There are five categories of applicability to choose from, representing a sliding scale from ‘Very inaccurate’ to ‘Very accurate.’

Although the process of these two tests is relatively similar, they differ in the way in which they present their results. On completion '16 Personalities' labels its respondents with one of sixteen core personality types, and presents a description of the various attributes of this type. The NEO test does not go this far; rather it presents the ‘Big Five’ personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience) and shows how much of each trait the respondent possesses. This is done with a percentage value.

Whilst the '16 Personalities' test also shows how much of certain traits the respondent possesses, again, through percentage points, it goes one step further in that it attributes a particular meaning - or tells a particular story - about these values.

In telling a story we take separate things - objects, people, places - and weave them together in order to convey sense. A story synthesises, organises, and directs its contents, pointing them in the same direction in order to serve a shared meaning. It is synonymous with a constellation - an imaginary line that links a number of separate points, aligning each with a higher purpose.

For me, part of the appeal of a personality test is that it helps me to explain myself. Aspects of my personality that I may have looked upon negatively - my need to be alone at certain times, my tendency towards abstract thinking, my tendency to get lost in thought - are suddenly attributed meaning and importance; and instead of looking upon these things as deficiencies, I am given permission to see them in a more positive light. In giving such permissions - in spite of how simple they may seem - an explanatory story can have a significant impact upon the way a person views themselves.

For instance, the fact that we can now describe certain people as 'autistic' allows us to better interpret and understand behaviour that may previously have been viewed as deviant. Every label is a generalisation, and ’autistic’ is no different. However, prior to the invention of this label autistic people were more likely to be held to the general norms that are imposed on the wider mass of society, and their behaviour was interpreted accordingly. In some cases this may have led to them being seen as  ‘deficient’ or ‘strange’; because, judged against the yardstick of normality, they are. The concept of ‘autism’ gives sense and meaning to their behaviour - it explains it - and in doing so, allows us to accept it for what it is and to view it as more than an aberration. It erects a fence around these behaviours and creates a space in which they are acceptable; both to those on the outside and those on the inside.

Every collective has a strong centre of gravity, a dense core which defines and protects its norms. Thus the more rarefied members of a society, those outliers that do not conform as strictly to its norms, always need a certain amount of protection from its gravitational pull. There will always be a temptation for those in the middle to view those further out as aberrant; and in light of this to want to bring them inwards, and make them conform to more common ways of being.

If a person is not sufficiently anchored then they may fall prey to this centripetal force, casting off important elements of themselves as they are pulled inwards. A story provides this anchoring. It ring fences a way of being, making a person less vulnerable to homogenising forces.

I think the simple recognition of difference can be a profound step for many, and especially so when this difference is reinforced as something that is important and necessary. In my own experience I have come across many people who believed, albeit perhaps unconsciously, that everyone ought to be more like them, and who criticised and condemned others for being different. I am frequently guilty of it myself.

For me this is one of the invaluable uses of personality typing: its stories, those sixteen fictional types, give meaning to the many differences that we see in one another. By attributing value to behaviours that may otherwise be dismissed as deficient or aberrant in light of personal or societal norms, they foster an understanding and respect for those differences.

As with the label ‘autistic’, a personality type gives us permission to be ourselves; and, crucially, to accept ourselves. It also provides a positive spin on our behaviours, suggesting that they are not only acceptable, but vital to the wider scene; that our sharp corners and strange angles are designed to fit into something larger.

Of course, the pendulum swings both ways: and where a label can be liberating, it can also be restrictive;  condemning someone to a seemingly rigid definition. In this we see a timeless paradox at play: our structures provide us comfort and shelter, but they also confine us. The more bricks we add, the more confined we become.

Yet, if we see our structures - in this case those sixteen personality types - as stories, then we can understand that they are not definitive; that they are fiction, and thus needn’t be taken too seriously. Psychologist James Hillman described a fiction as “a formula that must necessarily posit itself as beyond criteria of true or false […] fantasies by means of which we fashion or ‘fiction’ a life or a person […]” 2

Psychologist Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig adds, “Such creative fantasies are often quite far removed from so-called reality; they are as unreal, and as true, as fairy tales and myths. They use imaginative images to grasp the nature of the other person […] Even if they are not expressed, fantasies also influence the other person, awakening new living potential in him […]

[They] are related to the nature of the other person; they represent, in symbolic-mythological form, his life potential […] Everyone needs to fantasy about himself, to circle about and awaken his own potential in mythological or fairy tale form.” 3

We can, then, see these sixteen types as fiction, or fantasy; whose proof is in whether they resonate with us - whether we find them useful, or satisfying.


Creating Types

Must we see ourselves as representative of a type? Does each of us not have our own unique case-history, our own individual story?  Is it not enough to say that everyone is different, and that individual differences ought to be respected?

Whilst every individual has their own set of whys and wherefores that make their behaviour understandable, it is, as we’ve seen, impractical (if not impossible) to apprehend every thing we encounter as something new and unique. It is impractical to learn the story of every person we meet; to spend time mapping out their terrain in order to learn their shape; and clearly, not every person would even be capable of doing this.

This is where a collection of general types comes in handy. They act as a set of common stories, as shorthands we can all use in order to further our understanding of each other. For some, even the simple knowledge that there are different types of people could be a revelation.

I think it is vital that we use whatever tools are at our disposal in order to further our understanding of each other and ourselves. Attaining this understanding is a challenge that faces any collective, and its health depends upon how successful it is in this. A society that does not understand and respect the diversity of its members may well end up promoting certain types of people at the expense of others - in thrall to red, it overlooks blue - and end up hopelessly imbalanced.

With this in mind, I think we can gain much from personality typing, in spite - or because - of its simplicity.


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1 Tolle, Eckhart, Stillness Speaks, p. 20
2 Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, p. 13
3 Guggenbühl-Craig, Adolf, Power in the Healing Professions, p. 45-7


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When the type (generic concept) reduces the individual thing to a shadow, the type has acquired the reality of a collective idea.

But when the value of the individual thing abolishes the type (generic concept) anarchic disintegration is at work.

Both positions are extreme and unfair [...]

[C. G. Jung]
Psychological Types, p. 37


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Related posts:-
The Colour Wheel
Land and Sea
Guiding Fiction
Simply Put 
Short Cuts
Deep / Shallow

Creative Conflict



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Jung’s idea is based on the premise that conflict per se between two cultures (countries, societies, or religions) is natural or normal.

The problem to be tackled is not to remove conflict, but to prevent it escalating into destructive violence, by helping the conflict become productive.  Conflict becomes destructive when it is hijacked by unconscious, emotional tendencies that are out of control and have massed together to form a cultural movement.

Conflict is productive when both sides recognise the validity of the other, and collaborate to find solutions to their differences.

[Steve Myers]
'World Peace - how to do your bit'


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Related posts:-
The Principle of Polarity
Everything is connected
Assuming a position

The Middle Path





Thesis                     Synthesis                Antithesis
Birth                           Life                       Death
Being                       Becoming                Nothing
Apollo                     Hermes                   Dionysus
Centripetal               Static                    Centrifugal
Active                     Neutral                   Passive
Positive                  Ambivalent              Negative
Left                           Centre                    Right
Upper                       Middle                   Lower
Manic                      Normal                   Depressive
Excessive                 Balanced                Deficient
Hot                          Warm                      Cold
Acid                        Neutral                    Alkali
Red                           Purple                    Blue
White                         Gray                      Black





1 + 2 = 3






[...] every tension of opposites culminates in a release, out of which comes the "third." In the third, the tension is resolved and the lost unity is restored.

It presents itself in a form that is neither a straight “yes” nor a straight “no.”

[C. G. Jung]
'A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity' (CW 11)
and, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9), par. 285







In Hegel, the term Aufhebung has the apparently contradictory implications of both preserving and changing, and eventually advancement (the German verb aufheben means "to cancel", "to keep" and "to pick up").

The tension between these senses suits what Hegel is trying to talk about. In sublation, a term or concept is both preserved and changed through its dialectical interplay with another term or concept. Sublation is the motor by which the dialectic functions.

Sublation can be seen at work at the most basic level of Hegel's system of logic. The two concepts Being and Nothing are each both preserved and changed through sublation in the concept Becoming. Similarly, determinateness, or quality, and magnitude, or quantity, are each both preserved and sublated in the concept measure.

'Aufheben'


A thought is affirmed which on reflection proves itself unsatisfactory, incomplete or contradictory, which propels the affirmation of its negation, the antithesis, which also on reflection proves inadequate, and so is again negated.

In classical logic, this double negation ("A is not non-A") would simply reinstate the original thesis. The synthesis does not do this.

It has "overcome and preserved" (or sublated) the stages of the thesis and antithesis to emerge as a higher rational unity.

[Lloyd Spencer and Andrzej Krauze]
Hegel for Beginners




Hegel's overriding impulse was to comprehend all dimensions of existence as dialectically integrated in one unitary whole. 

In Hegel's view, all human thought and all reality is pervaded by contradiction, which alone makes possible the development of higher states of consciousness and higher states of being. Each phase of being contains within itself a self-contradiction, and it is this that serves as the motor of its movement to a higher and more complete phase. 

Through a continuing dialectical process of opposition and synthesis, the world is always in the process of completing itself. Whereas for most of the history of Western philosophy from Aristotle onward, the defining essence of opposites was that they were logically contradictory and mutually exclusive, for Hegel all opposites are logically necessary and mutually implicated elements in a larger truth. 

Truth is thus radically paradoxical.

[Richard Tarnas]
The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 379




Since "one" and "two" were considered by ancient mathematical philosophers to be the parents of numbers, then their firstborn, "three," the Greek Triad, is the first and eldest number. 

The birth of the number 3 and triangle enables opposites to balance and transcend to a new wholeness they couldn't achieve by themselves.  

A third leg makes a tripod stable, and a third strand of hair allows a braid to knot as one whole, just as neutral judges balance opposing parties, neutrons balance atoms, and the Supreme Court plays the role of the balancing, transcendent third force between the Executive and Legislative branches. The triangle is the strongest and most stable of shapes and so appears in the constructions of humans and nature.  

Speak aloud the word "three" in English [...] and you'll hear its relation to words like "through" and "threshold" and the prefix trans ("across," "penetrate"). The leap to "three," as its linguistic root tells us, takes us over a threshold and through past polarized limits of the Dyad.

[Michael S. Schneider]
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, p. 39
and 'Number and Shapes: The Timeless Alphabet of Art and Life'






Homeostasis is the property of a system in which a variable (for example, the concentration of a substance in solution, or its temperature) is actively regulated to remain very nearly constant.

'Homeostasis'





Maimonides [taught] that an intelligent person should live a life based on reality, on what is true and false, while the average person who lacks the ability to do so should live according to “necessary truths,” morality.

Maimonides makes it clear in his Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot De’ot 1:4 and 5, that the moral “middle path” is the “necessary truth,” the guidance given to the general public who are not capable of evaluating every occurrence in their lives and making decisions each time how they should act based on reason, on what is true and false.

[He] introduces the concept of the “golden mean” and advises people to live a life in which they behave according to a middle path between two extremes.

For example, people should not be overly stingy nor should they be spendthrifts; they should not laugh excessively nor be sad and dispirited. He calls this derekh hachakhamim, “the path of the wise.”

[On the other hand] the ideal path, the method for the intellectual, is “the virtuous way,” the carefully considered rational behavior beyond the middle path, when reason dictates the need for such behavior.

An individual who is very careful about himself deviates somewhat from the mean to either side, and is called 'virtuous'. For example, the individual who distances himself from pride and turns to the other extreme and becomes very humble – this is the virtuous quality. If he only moves toward the middle and is humble, [whilst this is] not the best behavior, it is still considered wise behavior, [thus the individual] is called 'wise.' 

The virtuous people of old would arrange their behaviors away from the middle path toward the two extremes. There were times when the behavior would veer toward one extreme, while there were times when the behavior would veer toward the other. This is behavior that is beyond the legal requirement. We are required to take the middle paths.

Both the essential truth of morality and the real truth advocate proper conduct. However, the essential truth focuses only on what the average person is capable of doing, morality. The difference between the two can be seen in the example presented by Maimonides in his Hilkhot De’ot.

The average person following morality is advised to follow the middle path for it is easier than having to analyze every situation independently, while intellectuals, who are capable of using reason and considering the “true” results of their behavior, are told to deviate when advisable from the middle path.

[Israel Drazin]
'An Intelligent Person is not Moral' (minor adjustments have been made to the original text)




I feel I’ve been very fortunate in life and I think I have about the most even temperament of anyone I know.

I literally don’t have unhappy days. I’ve always felt pretty happy. I suspect my peak happiness is well below that of most people. When I see people very, very happy it’s quite strange to me - I feel I’ve never felt this. The same when people are depressed.

I think my range is compressed.

[Tyler Cowen]
'Tyler Cowen on Rationality, COVID-19, Talismans, and Life on the Margins | The Tim Ferriss Show'





Baker Roshi, during a little talk one day, remarked that ordinarily in our culture we have only two ideas: either we express or we repress. Either one represses anger, or one expresses it. For example, it could be said that Richard Strauss is repressing certain negative emotions, whereas punk rock is expressing them.

But expressing is not any more admirable than repressing. The Western man or woman lives in a typical pairing of opposites that destroys the soul. Either we defeat Communism or we are defeated by it. Either a man dominates women or he is dominated by them.

Joseph Campbell describes the two opposites as two horns; and if we get hooked on either, we die.

[Robert Bly]
A Little Book on the Human Shadow, p. 56




[...] living beauty spreads her golden shimmer only when soaring above a reality full of misery, pain, and squalor [...] all experience goes to show that beauty needs her opposite as a condition of her existence.

"Whenever we turn our gaze in the the ancient world, we find taste and freedom mutually avoiding each other, and Beauty establishing her sway only on the ruins of heroic virtues.

If then we keep solely to what experience has taught us hitherto about the influence of Beauty, we cannot certainly be much encouraged in the development of feelings which are so dangerous to the true culture of mankind; and we should rather dispense with the melting power of Beauty, even at the risk of coarseness and austerity, than see ourselves, for all the advantages of refinement, consigned to her enervating influence."

[...] under no circumstances can the initial value of the higher form of energy be attained by the lower forms as well or be resumed by the superior function: an equilization at some intermediate level must inevitably result. For every individual who identifies with his one differentiated function, this entails a descent to a lower value as compared with the initial value.

This conclusion is unavoidable. All education that aspires to the unity and harmony of man's nature has to reckon with this fact.

[C. G. Jung, also Friedrich Schiller (in quotations)]
Psychological Types, p. 84-6





If development proceeds well the individual becomes able to deceive, to lie, to compromise, to accept conflict as a fact and to abandon the extreme ideas of perfection and an opposite to perfection that make existence intolerable.

Capacity for compromise is not a characteristic of the insane.

The mature human being is neither so nice nor so nasty as the immature. The water in the glass is muddy, but is not mud.

[D.W. Winnicott]
Human Nature, p. 138




Iphigenia sees her role in life as that of “making men mild.” 

She is always encouraging people to calm down and be merciful. She is committed to love, but a love marked not by wild passion, but by understanding, sympathy and a desire for harmony [...]

Goethe's first audiences, brought up on Romanticism, were slow to get the message. Was Goethe turning his back on Romantic love? Where was all the passion? They described the story of Iphigenia as like “watching grey mist.”

Goethe, now in middle-age, was undaunted. He’d had enough of Werther and expressed his own view emphatically – “Romanticism is sickness, Classicism is health.” 

But he encountered an elemental cultural problem: Romanticism feels more exciting. Goethe pinpointed one of the central problems of culture: how to make things that are good for us compete successfully for attention with the thrilling passionate stuff?

 




Taoists believe that a meaningful life, the optimally meaningful life, is to be found on the border between chaos and order. 

And I would say that your nervous system tells you exactly when you are there and it’s a kind of place and you can tell when you’re there because you’re secure enough to be confident, but not so secure that you’re bored and you’re interested enough to be awake but not so interested that you’re terrified. 

And when you’re in a state like that, you find things interesting and meaningful, time slips by you and you’re no longer self-conscious.

[Jordan Peterson]
'Reality and the Sacred'





The thing is, when I'm balanced I'm not here, and I don't like not being here. I like to feel myself rubbing against things.





In the revisional concept of psychoanalysis in his first book, Perls called Friedlaender's polar philosophy "differential thinking" and considered it to be a "mental precision tool", since it can find the point of "predifference", as he also refers to creative indifference, as well as the zero-point, the center from which balancing equilibrium is possible and

"we could find a point from which the observer could gain the most comprehensive and undistorted view [...]

By remaining alert in the centre, we can acquire a creative ability of seeing both sides of an occurence and completing an incomplete half. By avoiding a one-sided outlook we gain a much deeper insight into the structure and function of the organism"

The center is a "magical" word for Friedlaender; likewise, for Perls, "to center one's existence", or centering, is the most basic goal of therapy, because we "acquire a creative ability of seeing both sides of an occurence" [...]

[Ludwig Frambach, quoting Fritz Perls]
Creative License: The Art of Gestalt Therapy, p. 121




Friedlaender's “creative indifference" [...] became for Fritz Perls the “fertile void” [...] the usual meaning-making process of polar differentiation is set aside in a state of pure being, through a deliberate act of polar indifferentiation. The closer we come to simply being, the more we open a space in which fresh possibilities can arise.

The fertile void or place of creative indifference is the ground. The goal of Gestalt process is to “lead increasingly from the one-sided fixation [on] that which is in the foreground to the ground, from the periphery to the middle and center, by way of integrating rigid dualities into flexible polarities” 

Poles such as rage and gentleness "should not be isolated from each other as mutually exclusive contradictions, but should be experienced as a unit of opposites" [...]

It is possible to achieve this perspective by being "flexibly centered in [one's own] indifferent center." In this way, one can react freely and appropriately, either angrily or with gentleness, to the demands of the situation from a totality of experience.

Friedlaender’s goal, as Perls saw it, was the achievement of this lovely neutrality in which one no longer feels pulled toward one extreme or the other and is no longer the prisoner of one way of seeing the world, which inevitably blinds one to other possibilities.

[Herb Stevenson, quoting Ludwig Frambach]
'Paradox: A Gestalt Theory of Change'





Self

As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man.

Just as conscious as well as unconscious phenomena are to be met with in practice, the self as psychic totality also has a conscious as well as an unconscious aspect.

Empirically, the self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality", such as king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc.

When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary [...]

Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united. Since such a concept is irrepresentable - tertium non datur - it is transcendental on this account also.

[C.G. Jung]
Psychological Types (CW 6, 1991), p. 460




Equilibration

This is the force which moves development along. Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.

When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e. a state of cognitive (i.e. mental) balance. 

However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).

Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation). Once the new information is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we need to make an adjustment to it.

[Saul McLeod]
'Jean Piaget'


Assimilate - will fit into existing order - no change - dominate (change other)
Accommodate - will not fit into existing order - change - capitulate (change self)



Popper envisioned science as progressing by the successive rejection of falsified theories, rather than falsified statements. Falsified theories are to be replaced by theories that can account for the phenomena that falsified the prior theory, that is, with greater explanatory power. 

For example, Aristotelian mechanics explained observations of everyday situations, but were falsified by Galileo's experiments, and were replaced by Newtonian mechanics, which accounted for the phenomena noted by Galileo (and others). Newtonian mechanics' reach included the observed motion of the planets and the mechanics of gases. The Youngian wave theory of light (i.e., waves carried by the luminiferous aether) replaced Newton's (and many of the Classical Greeks') particles of light but in turn was falsified by the Michelson-Morley experiment and was superseded by Maxwell's electrodynamics and Einstein's special relativity, which did account for the newly observed phenomena.

At each stage, experimental observation made a theory untenable (i.e., falsified it) and a new theory was found that had greater explanatory power (i.e., could account for the previously unexplained phenomena), and as a result, provided greater opportunity for its own falsification.

'Falsifiability'




Unqualified freedom, like unqualified tolerance, is not only self-destructive but bound to produce its opposite - for if all restraints were removed there would be nothing whatever to stop the strong enslaving the weak (or meek).

So complete freedom would bring about the end of freedom, and therefore proponents of complete freedom are in actuality, whatever their intentions, enemies of freedom.

[...] the maximum possible tolerance or freedom is an optimum, not an absolute, for it has to be restricted if it is to exist at all. 

The government intervention which alone can guarantee it is a dangerous weapon: without it, or with too little, freedom dies; but with too much of it freedom dies also. We are brought back to the inescapability of control [...] the maximum freedom is a qualified one [...]

[...] the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

[Brian Magee]
Popper, p. 80-2




[Derrida's] essay on Levinas [...] takes an epigraph from Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy.

'Hebraism and Hellenism - between these two points of influence moves our world. At one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them, at another time of the other; and it ought to be, although it never is, evenly and happily balanced between them' [...]

It is the desire to reconcile oppositions and differences through a movement of thought that would finally reduce them to aspects of a single, comprehensive vision.

[...] Derrida's epigraph from Arnold carries a considerable weight of implied ideology.

It stands for that power of logocentric thinking to absorb all differences into itself by viewing them as mere stages or signposts on the way to some grand conceptual synthesis.

[Christopher Norris]
Derrida, p. 230-1




There is no 2D slice of a 3D object that gives a real sense of what it is. Neither is any 2D negotiation of slices going to yield something in 3D.

[A] cylinder is not somewhere between the two reductionistic views: 50% circle, 50% rectangle… It is 100% of both descriptions…which are only mutually exclusive and paradoxical if they are trying to be reconciled in the same plane, which is the essential mistake.

In the higher dimensional reality the object actually lives in, the simultaneous full truth of both partial descriptions is obvious and non-paradoxical…as is the seamless way they fit together as parts of a congruent whole.

The key insight is recognizing these differing perspectives as orthogonal to each other rather than opposite ends of a gradient spectrum. The gradient view leads to a middle path that in this case is the rounded rectangle (or a continual maddening flip flop between circle and rectangle) … completely failing to recognize the simultaneous fullness of each truth and the irreconcilability of them within the same level of dimensionality/ complexity.

The recognition of orthogonality…gives us the cylinder, recognizes both lower dimensional perspectives as 100% true from their limited vantage point, and forces the recognition that a congruent picture is possible but requires a fundamentally more complex kind of perspective.

Looking at some of what have often been thought of as existential dualities:

- Loving what is or working to make things better…
- Accepting ourselves as we are unconditionally or aspiring to grow and express more of our full potential…
- Maximizing intentionality or following the flow of life…
- Bettering our individual ego or transcending it…
- Free will or determinism…
- Being in the now or planning for the future…
- Increasing witness consciousness or losing oneself in experience…
- Open mindedness or critical thinking…
- Persistence or surrender…
- Boundaries or allowing…
- Being or becoming…
- Freedom or structure…
- Gratitude or desire…
- Rights or responsibilities…
- Agency or communion…
- Particle or wave descriptions of the quantum…
- The fundamentality of subject or object…

All of these, commonly seen as paradoxes to be embraced or extremes to find a middle path between…are indeed orthogonal and equally fundamental partial truths…to be simultaneously optimized…fully reconciled in a congruent understanding of the higher dimensional (eg, more complex) nature of reality.

[Daniel Schmachtenberger]
'Higher Dimensional Thinking, the End of Paradox, and a More Adequate Understanding of Reality'




[…] in the total accounting the hitherto sovereign religions are among the main reasons the type 'man' has been kept on a lower level - they have preserved too much of that which ought to perish. 

And yet, when they gave comfort to the suffering, courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and stay to the irresolute, and lured those who were inwardly shattered and had become savage away from society into monasteries and houses of correction for the soul: what did they have to do in addition so as thus, with a good conscience, as a matter of principle, to work at the preservation of everything sick and suffering, which means in fact and truth at the corruption of the European race? 

Stand all evaluations on their head - that is what they had to do! And smash the strong, contaminate great hopes, cast suspicion on joy in beauty, break down everything autocratic, manly, conquering, tyrannical, all the instincts proper to the highest and most successful of the type man', into uncertainty, remorse of conscience, self-destruction, indeed reverse the whole love of the earthly and of dominion over the earth into hatred of the earth and the earthly - that is the fact the church set itself and had to set itself, until in its evaluation ‘unworldliness', 'unsensuality', and 'higher man' were finally fused together into one feeling. 

[Friedrich Nietzsche]
Beyond Good and Evil, 62




In the romantic, the "organic” conception of the state rests on [an] inability to make a normative evaluation.

This conception repudiates the “juridical” as narrow and mechanical, and it searches for the state that is above right and wrong: that is, a point of reference for feelings, which at the same time is a projection of the romantic subject into the domain of the political.

The root of romantic sublimity is the inability to decide, the "higher third” factor they are always talking about, which is not a higher factor but a different third factor: in other words, it is always a way out of the either-or.

[…] the antitheses themselves are not antitheses, but merely occasions […] The antitheses are immediately mediated and reconciled, and an agreement invariably follows.

In the absence of the occasionalistic displacement into the higher, subjective creativity that resolves all antitheses in a harmonious unity, there is no romanticism.

[Carl Schmitt]
Political Romanticism, p. 117, 140, 148




From this examination of the tradition of the West, we can formulate the pattern of outlook on which this tradition is based. It has six parts:

1. There is a truth, a reality. (Thus the West rejects skepticism, solipsism, and nihilism.)

2. No person, group, or organization has the whole picture of the truth. (Thus there is no absolute or final authority)

3. Every person of goodwill has some aspect of the truth, some vision of it from the angle of his own experience. (Thus each has something to contribute)

4. Through discussion, the aspects of the truth held by many can be pooled and arranged to form a consensus closer to the truth than any of the sources that contributed to it.

5. This consensus is a temporary approximation of the truth, which is no sooner made than new experiences and additional information make it possible for it to be reformulated in a closer approximation of the truth by continued discussion.

6. Thus Western man’s picture of the truth advances, by successive approximations, closer and closer to the whole truth without ever reaching it.

This method has basically been the method of operation in Western religious history, despite the many lapses of Western religion into authoritarian, absolute, rigid, and partial affirmations.

[…] Throughout Western religious history, in spite of the frequent outbursts by dissident groups insisting that the truth was available—total, explicit, final, and authoritative—in God’s revelation, Western religious thought has continued to believe that revelation itself is never final, total, complete, or literal, but is a continuous symbolic process that must be interpreted and reinterpreted by discussion.

The method of the West, even in religion, has been this: The truth unfolds in time by a cooperative process of discussion that creates a temporary consensus which we hope will form successive approximations growing closer and closer to the final truth, to be reached only in some final stage of eternity.

Because this is the tradition of the West, the West is liberal. Most historians see liberalism as a political outlook and practice found in the nineteenth century. But nineteenth-century liberalism was simply a temporary organizational manifestation of what has always been the underlying Western outlook.

That organizational manifestation is now largely dead, killed as much by twentieth-century liberals as by conservatives or reactionaries. It was killed because liberals took applications of that manifestation of the Western outlook and made these applications rigid, ultimate, and inflexible goals. The liberal of 1880 was anti-clerical, anti-militarist, and anti-state because these were, to his immediate experience, authoritarian forces that sought to prevent the operation of the Western way. The same liberal was for freedom of assembly, of speech, and of the press because these were necessary to form the consensus that is so much a part of the Western process of operation.

But by 1900 or so, these dislikes and likes became ends in themselves. The liberal was prepared to force people to associate with those they could not bear, in the name of freedom of assembly, or he was, in the name of freedom of speech, prepared to force people to listen. His anti-clericalism became an effort to prevent people from getting religion, and his anti-militarism took the form of opposing funds for legitimate defense. Most amazing, his earlier opposition to the use of private economic power to restrict individual freedoms took the form of an effort to increase the authority of the state against private economic power and wealth in themselves.

Thus the liberal of 1880 and the liberal of 1940 had reversed themselves on the role and power of the state, the earlier seeking to curtail it, the latter seeking to increase it. In the process, the upholder of the former liberal idea that the power of the state should be curtailed came to be called a conservative. This simply added to the intellectual confusion of the mid-twentieth century, which arose from the Irrational Activist reluctance to define any terms, a disinclination that has now penetrated deeply into all intellectual and academic life.

In this connection we might say that the whole recent controversy between conservatism and liberalism is utterly wrongheaded and ignorant. Since the true role of conservatism must be to conserve the tradition of our society, and since that tradition is a liberal tradition, the two should be closely allied in their aim at common goals. So long as liberals and conservatives have as their primary goals to defend interests and to belabor each other for partisan reasons, they cannot do this.

When they decide to look at the realities beneath the controversies, they might begin with a little book that appeared many years ago (1902) from the hand of a member of the chief family in the English Conservative Party over the past century. The book is Conservatism by Lord Hugh Cecil. This volume defines conservatism very much as I have defined liberalism and the Outlook of the West as tentative, flexible, undogmatic, communal, and moderate.

Its fundamental assumption is that men are imperfect creatures, will probably get further by working together than by blind opposition, and that, since undoubtedly each is wrong to some extent, any extreme or drastic action is inadvisable.

[Carroll Quigley]
Tragedy and Hope, ‘The Future in Perspective,’ p.779-81




[...] we must ask what does the dialectician himself want? What does this will which wills the dialectic want?

It is an exhausted force which does not have the strength to affirm its difference, a force which no longer acts but rather reacts to the forces which dominate it - only such a force brings to the foreground the negative element in its relation to the other. Such a force denies all that it is not and makes this negation its own essence and the principle of its existence.

"While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is 'outside', what is 'different' what is 'not itself and this No is its creative deed".

This is why Nietzsche presents the dialectic as the speculation of the pleb, as the way of thinking of the slave: the abstract thought of contradiction then prevails over the concrete feeling of positive difference, reaction over action, revenge and ressentiment take the place of aggression.

And, conversely, Nietzsche shows that what is negative in the master is always a secondary and derivative product of his existence. Moreover the relation of master and slave is not, in itself, dialectical. Who is the dialectician, who dialectises the relationship? It is the slave, the slave's perspective, the way of thinking belonging to the slave's perspective.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.9-10



Related posts:-
Centre / Periphery
Lines, Circles and Spirals
Land and Sea 
Balance
Shades of Gray
In-between
Open Wound
Everything and Nothing 
Searching Without/Searching Within 
Frozen in time 
Forget Your Self
Mono / Poly
Accept / Aspire

The Colour Wheel




Analogous colors are any three colors which are side by side on a 12 part color wheel, such as yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange. Usually one of the three colors predominates.

Complementary colors are pairs of colors which, when combined, cancel each other out. This means that when combined, they produce black, or if colored light (rather than pigment) is used, they produce white. When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast for those particular two colors.

Due to this striking color clash, the term opposite colors is often considered more appropriate than "complementary colors".




The colour wheel reminds us that opposing viewpoints can be held within the same structure. 

We can apply this analogy to ourselves as individuals, or to the larger collection of individuals that we call a society. Indeed, the wheel even suggests that not only can these pairs be seen as opposites but they can also be seen as complementary. Both descriptions offer us something useful.

How can two opposing views of something both be true?

Imagine you have two pairs of sunglasses, one with red lenses, the other with green lenses. You give these sunglasses to two people; one wears the red, the other wears the green. Both stand in the same room. You ask each to describe the colour of the room. One says 'red.' The other says 'green.'

If the room is red, then it cannot be green. If it is green, then it cannot be red. One truth appears to negate the other. Which colour is it then - red or green?

This is a trap we often find ourselves walking into on a daily basis. The Truth of the situation is that both views are 'correct.' But correct is a misleading word. It may be better to say that both offer us a truthful view. It is through the combination of these views that we get nearer to Truth with a capital 'T.'

The Truth of the colour spectrum is in the combination of all colours: white light. The same can be said about the spectrum of people. We each offer a view, one that is characterised by the various lenses that we wear. Our lenses arise from our individual biases; which, depending on what you believe, arise from our various experiences and/or our basic personality type. Whatever you attribute the cause of our lenses to be, it is undeniable that we all wear them: that each of us offers a unique view of things.

In the same way that the colour wheel contains an infinite variety of colours, each one merging into the next, the people-wheel comprises an infinite variety of views. Whilst one colour may be indistinguishable from its neighbour, each is also unique.

And whilst a certain situation may call for red rather than green, this does not mean that red is any more truthful than green. It simply shows us that each colour has its strengths and weaknesses, and that in one context a certain colour may be more appropriate, and in another it may not.

So whilst each colour holds an equal - and often opposing - truth, it is context that defines a colour's value in any given moment.

In referring to our opposite as complementary we acknowledge that together - as a pair of opposites - we form a balance. In a larger sense, we need them, and they need us. Remove any of the colours from the spectrum and we lose the ability to create white light - in other words, we lose our path towards Truth.

It is all too easy to fall into the trap of believing our own view - our own colour - to be 'the right one.' In times like these we would do well to remember the wheel. In remembering that all colours are needed to form the balanced spectrum, we are able to put our own little contribution into perspective.

That little feeling we often get, that we alone hold the Truth, is a trustworthy one. What we are sensing is the white light from which our individual colour was refracted. Our only mistake is to confuse our surface truth - our small piece of the spectrum - with the universal Truth of white light. It is when we are able to see beyond our individual viewpoint to the larger balance - the full spectrum - that we are able to to see things in a more balanced and Truthful light.






An Indian from Arizona states, "Among my people, gay is a special status ... The more unique someone is, the more valuable they are, the more unique their vision, the more unique their gift, their perspective, everything they can offer us something other people can't offer ...

The thing that's different about where I come from, is that all human beings are respected because all human beings have potential, all human beings have value."

[Walter L. Williams]
The Spirit and the Flesh, p. 229




At the least, our awareness of alternative attitudes and roles can allow us to appreciate the diversity of the human population, and the similarities that we share across the boundaries of culture.

[Walter L. Williams]
The Spirit and the Flesh, p. 275




Since it is the one indivisible will, which for this reason is wholly in agreement with itself, and reveals itself in the whole Idea as in an act, its phenomenon, though broken up into a variety of different parts and conditions, must yet again show that unity in a thorough harmony of these.

This takes place through a necessary relation and dependence of all the parts on one another, whereby the unity of the Idea is also re-established in the phenomenon.

Accordingly, we now recognize those different parts and functions of the organism reciprocally as means and end of one another, and the organism itself as the ultimate end of all.

[Arthur Schopenhauer]
The World as Will and Representation, p.157




The manner in which Arcesilaus taught would have had much to commend it, if the young men who learnt from him had been able to avoid being paralysed by it. He maintained no thesis, but would refute any thesis set up by a pupil.  

Sometimes he would himself advance two contradictory propositions on successive occasions, showing how to argue convincingly in favour of either. 

[Bertrand Russell]
History of Western Philosophy ('Cynics and Sceptics')




The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

[Henry David Thoreau]
Walden, p.19




You can’t collapse your political landscape into a single set of values […]

there are different values; one value might be accomplishment; another value might be achievement; another value might be hard work; another value might be equality. And fine, those are all useful values; but there has to be a continual dialogue between all of those values so that the whole value structure - which has to be diverse - doesn’t collapse into a single dimension.

Because then what you have is one tool for every problem, and that’s not good because the same tool can’t solve every problem […]

this is partly why I’m no fan of ideologues […] an ideological stance gives you a solution to every problem without ever being able to solve the problem; or maybe not even to articulate it properly.

[Jordan B. Peterson]
Where do SJWs come from?




The sensualist brags about the undeniable certainty of his reality, and the idealist insists on his.

Psychology has to resign itself to the existence of these two (or more) types, and must at all costs avoid thinking of one as a misconception of the other; and it should never seriously try to reduce one type to the other, as though everything "other" were merely a function of the one.

This does not mean that the scientific axiom known as Occam's razor - "explanatory principles should not be multiplied beyond the necessary" - should be abrogated. But the need for a plurality of psychological explanatory principles still remains.

[C. G. Jung]
Psychological Types, p. 41




Psychotherapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals. I treat every patient as individually as possible, because the solution of the problem is always an individual one. Universal rules can be postulated only with a grain of salt.

[...] Naturally, a doctor must be familiar with the so-called "methods." But he must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions. To-day they may be valid, to-morrow it may be the turn of other assumptions. In my analyses they play no part.

I am unsystematic very much by intention [...] We need a different language for every patient. In one analysis I can be heard talking the Adlerian dialect, in another the Freudian.

[C. G. Jung]
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1995), p. 153




It seems to me that the majority of people are unable or unwilling to 'think for themselves' and so need systems, or methods, in order to orient themselves to certain situations. Indeed, it seems rare to find a person who is willing or able to be as liquid; to remould themselves in light of what the situation demands. The majority of people, in most areas of their lives, need guidance.

If we define an adult as someone who is able to think for themselves; as someone who has the confidence, versatility - the maturity - to shape-shift when required (abandoning the comfort of familiar territory for the uncertainty of the unknown); and if we define a child as someone who lacks these attributes; then surely the great majority of people, in most areas of their lives, remain as children?

To respond effectively and appropriately to environmental demands.




At birth, each of us is given a particular Beginning Place within these Four Great Directions on the Medicine Wheel.  This starting Place gives us our first way of perceiving things, which will then be our easiest and most natural way throughout our lives.

But any person who perceives from only one of these Four Great Directions will remain just a partial man. 

For example, a man who possesses only the Gift of the North will be wise.  But he will be a cold man, a man without feeling.  And the man who lives only in the East will have the clear, far sighted vision of the Eagle, but he will never be close to things.  This man will feel separated, high above life, and will never understand or believe that he can be touched by anything.

A man or woman who perceives only from the West will go over the same thought again and again in their mind, and will always be undecided.  And if a person has only the Gift of the South , he will see everything with the eyes of a Mouse.  He will be too close to the ground and too near sighted to see anything except whatever is right in front of him, touching his whiskers.

Each of us has as his personal Medicine a particular animal reflection.  The characteristics of this reflection are determined by the nature of the animal itself, and also by the location of our individual Beginning Place on the Medicine Wheel.  These two things, our Medicine Animal and our Beginning Place on the Medicine Wheel, together are the Beginning Gift to each of us from Miaheyyum.

For example, there are Eagle People, elk People, Bear People, Wolf People, Pheasant People, Otter People, Buffalo People, Mice People, Rock People, Cloud People, and as many other kinds of People as there are kinds of living beings on this earth.  And within each of these different kinds of People, there are other differences of the Four Great Directions.  Thus an Elk Person might be born a White Elk of the North, a Green Elk of the South, a Black Elk of the West, or a Yellow Elk of the East, depending upon the Direction of their Beginning Gift.

After each of us has learned of our Beginning Gift, our First place on the Medicine Wheel, we then must Grow by Seeking Understanding in each of the four Great Ways.  Only in this way can we become Full, capable of Balance and decision in what we do.

A person with the Beginning Gift of the Mind must always try to include his Heart in his decisions.  When he does this, he begins to turn upon the Medicine Wheel.  A man can live out his entire life without ever finding more than what was already within him as his Beginning Gift, but if he wishes to Grow he must become a Seeker and Seek for himself the other Ways.

When you have done this yourself, and when you have reached a full Understanding of the different Medicines of men, you will never feel surprised or threatened by the actions or decisions of your Brothers and Sisters. 

[Hyemeyohsts Storm]
Seven Arrows, p. 6-8




All students of man and society who have the first thing they need for such a difficult study, namely a proper sense of its difficulties, are aware that the constant danger is not so much of accepting falsehood for truth as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole of it. 

It might be plausibly maintained that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed and wrong in what they denied; and that if either side had been made to accept the other’s views in addition to its own, little more would have been needed to make its doctrine correct.

That’s how it is with every important partial truth; there are always two conflicting modes of thought, one tending to give to that truth too large, the other to give it too small, a place: and the history of opinion is generally an oscillation between the extremes.

Because of the imperfection of the human  faculties, it seldom happens, even in the minds of eminent thinkers, that each partial view of their subject is credited with its worth and no more than its worth. But even if this just balance does exist in the mind of the wiser teacher, it will not exist in his disciples, let alone in the general mind.

Thus every excess in either direction produces a corresponding reaction; and the only improvement comes from the fact that each time the oscillation is a little less wide than before, so that there is an ever-increasing tendency to settle finally in the centre

[John Stuart Mill]
'Essays on Bentham and Coleridge'




And now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations? It is negative in one sense, but positive in another.

It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us.

Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations.

It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.

[William James]
'On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings', Pragmatism and Other Writings, p. 285




Morality aims at a code of conduct to which everyone must conform. This must therefore also be a code that everyone can follow, and morality this necessarily addresses itself to the lowest common denominator among the people whose conduct it guides. 

This is the “levelling” effect, which Nietzsche so despises. The only actions it allows aim at the interest of each group as a whole and therefore at the interest of its weakest members. 

But the rules that prescribe such actions may not at all be in the interest of the (not very helpfully described) strong members of that group. They actually prevent them from exploiting qualities that may be dangerous to the group as a whole and by means of which they can distinguish themselves from their community and accomplish the deeds Nietzsche sometimes equally unhelpfully , describes as unique, high, or great.

The deeds need not themselves be dangerous to a society as a whole, not need the qualities and abilities that bring them about when exercised by the proper individuals create such dangers. The problems, he thinks, are generated when these qualities are encouraged in general within a society. 

But morality, according to Nietzsche, recognises only two alternatives: a feature is acceptable either in every case or in none. Morality, he repeatedly insists, refuses to recognise an “order of rank” and does not want to run the risk of encouraging some qualities in some people while denying them to others.

[Alexander Nehamas]
Nietzsche: Life as Literature, p. 214-5




Prototypes act like creosote bush in the Mojave Desert - they space themselves away from each other. They not only exemplify the class, but distinguish it.

[…] the better the prototype, the less it had in common with contrasting classes.

[Daniel McNeill & Paul Freiberger]
Fuzzy Logic, p. 87




Truth has many aspects; and the limitations imposed by inheritance preclude each one of us from seeing more than a small part of it.

The most that anyone can do is to be faithful to that aspect which he himself is able to see. Each of us has his own interpretation of the truth; but our very differences may link us more closely when we recognize that the man who is capable of the deepest human relationship is the man who is most surely himself.

[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.177



Related posts:-
Everything is Connected
The Principle of Polarity 
The Colour Spiral
Project a Shadow
See No Evil
Assuming a position
Boxed Off
Life Support 
Solid Ground 
Flip Side 
Meme against Meme 
Walk a Straight Line
Pressure Valve
Full Spectrum
This, Not That 
Balance 
A Difference that makes a Difference 
The Eternal Ideas
The Sacred Circle  
You ought to be more like me 
The Right Match 
The Devil is in the Details (and God is in the Generalities) 
Get Real
Its in my DNA 
Concentrate
Playing With Your Self