Dialectics 101

[Unidian]

Dialectics 101 explains the core concepts of dialectics and dialectical monism in simple terms. This series of brief articles explores the philosophical principles and real-world implications of dialectical thought, including a defense of human progress and reasons for its resistance in modern culture.

By me.

[average]

no.

wait...


yes.

[Dan Rowden]

Well, I think it is well worth the read if only to get a clearer picture of Naturyl's general philosophical outlook. It is, of course, the only thing at GED worth reading at all, but that almost goes without saying.

[divine focus]

Breaking the sections up like that is genius. If I could have scrolled down and seen how long it was, I wouldn't have read any of it. Not right now, anyway. As it is, I read maybe half or more, and planted some mental seeds that may mix and germinate new understandings. Or maybe not, but at least now I know what you mean by "dialectic monism." Cool stuff.

[Unidian]

Yeah, people need a "bite size" presentation, so that it can be taken in manageable chunks. I'm not deriding anyone by saying that, because I'm the same way myself. If something is presented in one long, unbroken block, I'll often skip it. It's natural to be wary of investing a lot of time and effort in an unknown quantity. Brief sections give people a chance to get a "taste" and decide whether they want to continue.

[daybrown]

These days, I'm going thru Sheldrake's "The Presence of the Past", which has many of these ideas. But let me syncritize with the original Aryan cosmology....

The primordial substance is Chaos, not god. However, as any programmer can tell you, you cant run random numbers forever without a self replicating sequence showing up, with the Aryan cosmology called Gaia. And where I agree with Sheldrake, is that Gaia has been evolving. Along with everything else. The entire Universe is waking up to sentience on the way to the next singularity, when it all stops evolving the "morphic fields" as it achieves perfection, and in the Vedic sense, goes back to sleep.

Mite be a while yet, I cant tell. Now, is this combination of Gaia, Chaos, and the interaction between the two, which we call Maya, a monist view? Pre-literate iconography shows the 3, the original trinity, Gaia, Maya, and Chaos, dancing. The Platonic view looks at Maya, as if that's all there is, the Aristotelean at Gaia, as if She is all there is, but both ignore Chaos. Is Chaos really there, or is there merely some kind of suspended disbelief that things are not known, and 'progressing' to enlightenment? Where does deJevu and Murphy's law fit into this?

[Katy]

For your amusement value:
I was talking to a student at my school who had taken a philosophy course last semester. He listed the people he studied as "Hegel, Kant, Heidiegger" ...and had never heard the word dialectics.

Sometimes I wonder.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Uni: I think the mind/body dualism has been replaced in some circles by energy/matter.

[Unidian]

Has it? I'd be interested to hear your arguments to that effect. I'm not sure I'd agree offhand, given that matter has been understood as "congealed energy" since Einstein's work 100 years ago. But maybe you're referring to the New Age movement, in which "energy" is used as a rather meaningless term of opposition to various aspects of (what they see as) the materialistic metaphysical paradigm. Feel free to elaborate.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Uni: Breaking down the ontological categories that modern physicists use is beyond me. I was referring to the New Age movement, where the word "energy" has virtually no relationship to its formal use. It seems that some have decided that the word "energy" gives some sort of scientific credibility to insane claims. Life energy, life force, spirit... it's all the same, although I'm sure there are those who would argue otherwise. Energy is realistic; spirit is not.

I'm not sure if I can elaborate further. You've probably seen the word used in this way as often as I have.

[Unidian]

Yeah, you're right about that. I hear it all the time. "Energy" has become the new vague and meaningless term to replace "spirit" and other antiquated terms.

Dude, I don't like that energy of this discussion. The vibes are all wrong. I think we should Feng Shui the sentences and get them into harmony with the quantum intelligence of the manifestational morphogenetic field. It's universal law, you know!

[Philosophaster]

Yeah, the use of "Energy" in that sense has quite a long history, at least since the time of William Blake and other mystical / heterodox Christian types of his day. And of course it really picked up with Theosophy. :-P

[Unidian]

Oh yeah. Madam Blavatsky's bovine blatherings and the whole "New Thought" movement they spawned are ultimately responsible for almost every form of New Agery in circulation today, not that the typical 40-something redhead who patronizes that section of Waldenbooks is aware of it.

Hmm, was that too openly contemptuous? I can never tell. :p

[Philosophaster]

Haha.

"Energy" was likely picked up from the developing physics of the time, and physics terms like "force," "body," and "field" were taken up in the same way.

New Agers like letting the respectability of science rub off on their silly beliefs. :-)

[Unidian]

Indeed they do. Like all people who cling to various irrational beliefs, they love science when it can be used to lend them credibility, and hate it when it threatens one of their pet ideas.

But in all fairness, the impact of New Agery has not been entirely negative. It has opened the door to a more pantheistic view of reality, which is certainly preferable to Abrahamic theism. While New Agers tend to believe silly things, it is rare for them to advocate crusades, jihads, or inquisitions. In this sense, the ongoing partial transition from fundamentalist religion to "fluffy bunny" New Age ideas has been a socially progressive development overall.

[Philosophaster]

Yes.

[Unidian]

Yes.

No!

It's the dialectic in action!

Want to know how god-awfully lazy i am? I actually cut and pasted the word "yes" in order to quote it.

[Philosophaster]

Yes.

No!

It's the dialectic in action!

Want to know how god-awfully lazy i am? I actually cut and pasted the word "yes" in order to quote it.

I am lazier still. I merely clicked the "Quote" button.

[Unidian]

I yield the the crown to you!

My liege!

[daybrown]

I may have coined the term "fluff bunny" back about 96 on FIDO or WWIV nets posting to new age forums out of my exasperation with them. Its a little different in the AR Ozarks, where midwives were still in practice before it became kewl, and Cherokee women still retained some of their herbal knowledge.

From my archeological studies I found out that French expeditions to the Kara Kum and Taklamakhan deserts 100 years ago came back with *truckloads* of documents from the first millennia and even before, which has mostly sat in museum basements forgotten when the choas of WWI and then the Communist revolution cut off access to the area. But then, China opened up again, and the French went down to the cellar to see what they already had.

And published a book of "herbal recipes" and "Magic spells" translated into French that were originally written by genuine witches 1500 years ago. The silence of the customers to Barnes & Noble or Walden Books was just deafening.

Other archeological evidence revealed witch potions included Amanita Muscaria, Cannabis, Opium, & Epedra, which were either taken by mouth, or put in a special ram's head bowl and placed on the hot rocks in a suanna. Where we know people actually got naked with each other. The real witches also had hollow dildos that were either attached to funnels or douche bags like wineskins. Then more interesting and deadly compounds like Mandrake & Foxglove could be used transdermally in the vaginal cavity that would kill a man if he drank it.

The silence was even more deafening. I realized these people were all hung up on the visual image, like the "Druids" in their pointy hoods to hide their pointy heads, and that there was no real substance to what they were doing, like the dust bunnies under the bed. You could see the form, but there was nothing really there.

But then last year, I attended a gathering where the witches organized a sacred orgy. Had I not already been nearly 67, I would have felt free to join in. And just last week friends returned from another gathering where, along with the safe sex rituals, some of the potions mentioned above were used. But these people are not urbanites; they dont go to Waldon books. Many are 2nd generation rural hippies.

The media today would give the impression that most people back in the 60's were hippies. That's bullshit. I was on campus at the U of So. Fla in 1969. Out of 17,000 students at the time, all of us hippies could, and did, meet in a single bar on Nebraska Avenue. There may have been 200 of us. *ALL* the rest were rednecks, Christian fundies, Nixon supporters. So- 2nd generation hippies are a real rare breed. The rest are all fluff bunnies.

[Jason]

Hi Unidian, I haven't yet read closely through all your essay, only skimmed parts. But I just wanted to get these points off now and see what your response is. So if I've missed the parts of the essay that contain the answers to these points, and you can direct me to the relevant section of the essay that will clear things up, then perhaps do that instead of posting a reply here.

Ideas such as dialectics are concepts. In order to create concepts, the mind has to distinguish one thing from another thing. It isn't possible to have a thought without making a distinction. This is why even though the world is really a single undivided substance, it always appears to us as a collection of things interacting with each other. In order to have thoughts, the mind creates things by making distinctions within the undivided whole.

However, this doesn't mean that things aren't "real." It just means that they are segments of the whole which are defined by the human mind rather than by themselves."

The way I read it, you've contradicted yourself by first claiming that "the world is really a single undivided substance" and then saying (of the divisions that mind creates)"However, this doesn't mean that things aren't real."

I think it's problematic to try to put a limit on what is real. In fact I'd say it's one of the core problems(and passtimes) of much philosophy, putting a limit on and a border around what is real. This part is real, this part is not. It's essentially like searching for and marking out "real reality", and that's absurd.

Even though we understand that monism is true, anytime we think, we establish dualism in our own minds. So, while monism is true of the world, dualism is true of the mind.

I suppose I'm kind of repeating myself, but I think you're making an unfortunate distinction here, what is this "world" that is beyond the mind? Isn't mind part of the world too? The moment you divide mind from world there is a duality, so now automatically you can't say the world is nondual but the mind is not, see? As far as I'm concerned, if the mind contains duality, and the mind is part of the world, then the world is really not monistic, end of story.

[truth_justice]

For your amusement value:
I was talking to a student at my school who had taken a philosophy course last semester. He listed the people he studied as "Hegel, Kant, Heidiegger" ...and had never heard the word dialectics.

Sometimes I wonder.

Dialectics was a type of argumentation used by the Greeks. Plato/Socrates is famous for it. I don't know when it came to mean Monism combined with Dualism. It goes to show how the meaning of words change over time.

I too wonder... mostly all the time.

[Sapius]

And I wonder... Nat,

Monism is the idea that everything in the world is made from a single undivided "substance." It doesn't matter what the substance is, the important thing is that it is a single substance that everything comes from, rather than two or more substances.

Everything comes from and is always a part of a single undivided reality, which could be called Tao, Void, God, Nothingness, or any number of things.

Could I call that “substance” toilet brush? :)

Ideas such as dialectics are concepts. In order to create concepts, the mind has to distinguish one thing from another thing. It isn't possible to have a thought without making a distinction. This is why even though the world is really a single undivided substance, it always appears to us as a collection of things interacting with each other. In order to have thoughts, the mind creates things by making distinctions within the undivided whole.

What has the impossibility of having a thought without “making” a distinction got to do with sensing distinction as a new born for example? ? Without distinctions already being there, what would one sense? Then sensing would effectively be a senseless word!

And, is it not reasonable to question if it is the “mind” that really “creates” the distinction or is it simply a process of sensing distinction that are already there to sense?

You did mention earlier…

Consciousness is the self-aware state of the human brain. The brain is a small part of the world which has become so complex in its structure that it has achieved the ability to be aware of itself and the rest of the world. The result of this ability is the set of thinking processes known as the mind.

How come the “mind” for no apparent reason becomes a creator rather than a process of thinking?

However, this doesn't mean that things aren't "real." It just means that they are segments of the whole which are defined by the human mind rather than by themselves. In other words, they don't exist independently of other things. Things are like waves on the ocean. No waves exist apart from the ocean itself, and the ocean "is" the waves in a very real sense.

How does interdependency of things make them any different in nature than they already are? Ocean is ocean, and wave is a wave in a very real sense, just as toilet brush is a toilet brush; ocean would be ocean and waves would be waves, in any SENSE… for sensibilities sake at least.

The dualistic nature of thought can be easily demonstrated by considering how we can think about any "thing" we can think about. For example, a lamp cannot be defined as a lamp without creating a distinction between "the lamp" and "everything else that is not the lamp." Like all thoughts, this creates a dualistic distinction.

Try simple sense perception and you shall know that distinctions are already there to be distinguished sensually; one doesn’t need to define them mentally. One doesn’t need to define ones self “I” to be one.

Even though we understand that monism is true, anytime we think, we establish dualism in our own minds. So, while monism is true of the world, dualism is true of the mind.

I think dualism is true for the world too, and is the only world so to speak, since what could be a world without a distinguishing process – mind for example?

That is what is meant by "dialectical monism."

It hasn’t helped me thus far.

For now, let's go back to the unity of opposites, but instead of focusing on how the opposing things are the same at a deeper level, let's focus on how they are opposed as the human mind sees it.

Human “mind” couldn’t have the capability to “see” anything at all, for it is the “seeing” itself. Is it not?

[divine focus]

What has the impossibility of having a thought without “making” a distinction got to do with sensing distinction as a new born for example? ? Without distinctions already being there, what would one sense? Then sensing would effectively be a senseless word!

And, is it not reasonable to question if it is the “mind” that really “creates” the distinction or is it simply a process of sensing distinction that are already there to sense?

The mind that senses distinctions is the "deep mind" or "subtle mind." The mind that creates distinctions, and itself as a distinction, is the rational mind.

For now, let's go back to the unity of opposites, but instead of focusing on how the opposing things are the same at a deeper level, let's focus on how they are opposed as the human mind sees it.

Human “mind” couldn’t have the capability to “see” anything at all, for it is the “seeing” itself. Is it not?

The rational mind does see itself. It is the eye of objectivity. The subtle mind is more "subjective," meaning it is the "I."

[Sapius]

divine focus,

The mind that senses distinctions is the "deep mind" or "subtle mind." The mind that creates distinctions, and itself as a distinction, is the rational mind.

Well, a rational mind wouldn’t have anything to rationalize about if it did not have the capability to define what the “deep mind” already senses to begin with, including defining a “deep mind” itself. And what is it that senses the rational mind? Is it not the “deep mind”? May be they are one and the same thing. I don’t see that one has to necessarily define what one experiences to be what it is, in and of existence/totality that is, although it leads to better survival by applying experiences rationally. Does totality exist by the mere virtue of definition or something? I don’t think so.

The rational mind does see itself. It is the eye of objectivity. The subtle mind is more "subjective," meaning it is the "I."

It could well be, but I think the “I” isn’t that “subjective” actually. It is the rational mind that defines it so, but through the experiences of a “deep mind”, which I believe is the most objective “thing” that defines subjectivity through rationalizing, simply because it can. But the fact however remains that it experiences all that it is not from the get-go, without any “rationalizing” so to speak. So ‘subjectivity’ comes into play after we rationalize it through the eyes of objectivity, but I find that the “deep mind” is already immersed in objectivity.

I have been told that I have a weird view of objective and subjective, but somehow it makes sense to me. So I guess my rational mind tells me that my experience of I is not “I”, but - I.