The Peripatetic Philosopher asks, is it reality of the imagination, or what?

 REALITY

Is it the Reality of the Imagination, the Imagination of Reality, or What?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

©  November 30, 2018

Looking at our situation nakedly, blind evolution sanctions no particular purpose or advantage in the birth of the individual man or woman.  Equally true, there are no such things as rights in biology.  Yet, Egyptians built giant pyramids to the gods as if there were gods, while Europeans built massive cathedrals to a religion that was founded in myth.  Nor is there any certainty that those in a democracy are free and those in a dictatorship are less free.  It is a matter of perspective and cultural bias.  We do not want to hear that political ideologies are founded in the imagination or that the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are myths supported by our imagination and emotional desire to believe.  Yet, if human rights exist only in our imagination, what is the promise of a stable society?  If order is mainly imagined, is it not always in danger of collapse? (If people) imagine the order of things depends upon myths, when people no longer believe in these myths (will) that order collapse?  Look at the American and European political climate of today, is it not essentially controlled by chameleons? 

That said, Christianity would not have lasted 2,000 years if the majority of bishops and priests failed to believe in Christ as the Redeemer.  This brings us to the cage and the imprisoning walls within which we all live.  Our cage is a collection of suppositions based on an imagined order that has Americans espousing belief in Christianity, democracy and capitalism. 

Before you withdraw from this discussion, imagined order is embedded in the material world; that that imagined order shapes our desires; and that that imagined order is inter-subjective.  What then of the high priests of this imagined order who are the media using the platform of money, the law, our gods, and our sense of a protective nation? 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Near Journey’s End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-Indulgent America?(2018)

Leon Festinger (1919 – 1989) studied at the University of Iowa under the eminent German American social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947), where he developed the theory of cognitive dissonance.  Festinger found that the individual seeks consistency among his beliefs (his cognitions), and when there are inconsistencies between these attitudes and his behavior (dissonance), something must give to eliminate the conflict.  Counterintuitively, the reality he imagines and the imagined reality of his fixation find his mind playing a game on him.  A smoker may know smoking is dangerous to his health but continue to smoke in defiance of the evidence to the contrary. 

Not only individuals but groups, indeed, even societies form bridges between the reality of their imagination and the imagination of their reality.

Cognitive Dissonance & Philosophy

In these times where a drift has occurred between realism and reality while technology goes blindly forward into the future with all jets firing, analytical philosophy has entered the breach.  It attempts to explain the unexplainable and to justify that which is beyond the pale. 

My brother-in-law completed the course work at the University of California at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in this discipline, only to fail to satisfy his dissertation adviser with his proposal and therefore remains to this day an ABD (all but dissertation) without this credential, and I can see why. 

Analytical philosophy has been around for about one hundred years, or largely during the rise and cresting of the United States espousing the wisdom of the Enlightenment, and the works of Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and Voltaire, among others.  It sees itself as a conceptual investigation of language, history, religion, logical structures and forms that has guided human behavior in this and the last century.  In other words, it is a philosophy largely reliant on the wits of past thinkers.

Realism has replaced pragmatism says analytical philosopher Susan Neiman in Moral Clarity (2008) which has less to do with reflection than upping the ante on rhetoric (Subsequently, I will be reviewing this book).

Socrates claimed that philosophy begins in the marketplace and not the university.   If that is the case, then we are in a heap of trouble because cognitive dissonance dominates the market.  Read the New York Times, the Washington Post, or tune into CNN or MSNBC or Fox Cable News and what once was purported to be journalism is now entertainment with a view. 

Good and evil, rights and justice, thinking and reason are all slipping down the same slippery slope to prove indistinguishable from each other.  What we call good always has our friends in mind, never our enemies; what we call evil focuses only on our enemies, never our friends; and what we call justice is always the victors’ justice, never the collateral damage of the losers. 

Unconditional loyalty to a cause, an ideal, a theology or a friend has nothing to do with justice much less reality.  Indeed, it may clash with reality.

Experience of the things we hold most dear have been pounded into our psyches (souls) over time to influence and control our choices and actions over which we have no control as if we were only a body of shadows. 

Philosophers may make nice with words but there is no substance to the sizzle and therefore little nourishment for the soul.  A philosopher may write that George W. Bush was the worst president in American history, and believe it to be true, if American history only went back to the 20^th century.  Otherwise, this is a display of cognitive dissonance and of little value to one’s thinking.   

Morality in the Mind of the Times

Morality is concerned with goodness; politics with power.  We find with morality that we make morality fit our cognitive dissonance so that we can say, “Water boarding terrorist combatants is not only right but necessary because….” then insert our social and political justification. 

We gravitate to people who think as we do, and who hold the same beliefs and biases.  Robert Bellah (1927 – 2013) writes in Habits of the Heart (1985) that the moral assumptions of middleclass Americans indicate a discernible gap between behavior and moral principles:

The primary American language of self-understanding limits the ways in which people think.

Lacking a moral vocabulary, people act out of habit while thinking they are acting out of conviction, failing to see that they treat justice as doing good for their friends without showing equal regard for their enemies.  Complicating the matter further, they see the poor and uneducated as acting despicably but fail to see the rich and famous are equally inclined to act as shabbily and perhaps even more egregiously so. 

Think about that a moment! We are not only on automatic pilot, but existing in the reality of our imagination. To wit:

A nation is a mythical construct as is a corporation as is a government as is the New York Stock Exchange as is the family and the community, as is the state and the church. Trust and the reality of our imagination has given these entities providence over our destiny although a case could be made that they are simply the imaginings of what we deem reality.

Think about the stock market! It is a convention. We decide to let our anxieties and dreams and thoughts about the future set the price of a given commodity on the stock exchange. The price of a stock can soar or plummet on uplifting or scary news, information based largely on rumor, not on any substantive performing data.

Much of what matters in our lives, such as our cultural heritage and institutions such as the church, school, family, government, and nation are mere creations out of our human imagination.

And so, too, is money. We have faith in the system the way we once had faith in God. Modern man is suspect of God and religion. In the future, will the god of the capitalistic economy and scientific technology suffer a similar disinclination of the faithful? If so, what then?

These days our banks and savings accounts are simply numbers on a computer screen and possibly as whimsical as the tenets of many great religions. These bank accounts are constantly shifting along with frantic and often erratic movement in the marketplace. Yet, we rely on these numbers on a computer screen as being irrevocably valid and reliably true.

Imagine if we start to worry that these quotations are not accurate, and could be erased like numbers on a slate, what then? Our society would be shaken to its foundation. That is why the terrorists of today are the computer hackers of tomorrow who could erase our financial security in an instant.

Algorithms and data already control our lives. In every phase of our existence, markets are self-reflective of our interests, predicting our buy and sell orders. In political campaigns, tens of millions of dollars are spent gauging our psychological patterns and beliefs knowing we are more influenced on who will win than who is the best qualified candidate.

British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) claimed we are all perfect patsies for manipulation as our moral beliefs are like judging a beauty contest: we don’t select the most beautiful but the person we think will win.

Elaborate symbols, rites of passage, ceremonies and belief systems are all inventions in support of our sacred notions and are crucially dependent on our manifest trusts. These could disappear in a moment should convention, conformity, dependence or fear suddenly dissolve these constructions into the myths that they are.

People weave a web of belief and meaning with all their hearts. Eventually, over time, these inevitably unravel, and then, we can hardly imagine how anyone could have thought that way. Israeli scholar Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) writes in Homo Deus (2017):

A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants . . . Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination.

Reality & Corpocracy

As egregious as the reality of our imagination, and the imagination of reality is apparent in our individual and group cognitive dissonance, less apparent but more pressing are the practices of the American corporation. A German publication (Wirtschaft Woche, January 1987) called it “Amerikas Krankheit” (the American Disease of Corpocracy):

Management is insensitive to its employees while claiming sensitivity.

Management is consumed with company policy at the expense of productivity.

Secrecy is the measure of communications while feigning transparency.

Obsessive data collection is time consuming, data that is seldom reviewed much less read.

Endless meetings are the way when often the principles send substitutes and substitutes of substitutes to eventually attend these scheduled meetings.

There is an internal jockeying for clout and influence while potential markets are ignored.

Short-term planning is preferred to embracing long term challenges.

Individual initiative is advocated but never supported for you never know where it might lead.

Management confines itself to mahogany row making decisions that have little to do with the reality or status of operations.

Innovation and initiative is overtly acclaimed while covertly discouraged.

When crises develop, as they inevitably do, and the organization is spinning in place, and no one has any idea why, the ship of state enters the potential cycle of its demise.

The United States came out of World War II victorious, and management quickly came forward to take credit for its justifiably laudatory performance during the war. The peace that followed with The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, rebuilding Europe and Asia, management quietly asserted itself as being indispensable, creating a management class so top heavy in most organizations that today many are falling like a house-of-cards. 

With few if any constrains, and believing totally in their cognitive dissonance, corporate management convinced the public that it deserved huge salaries and entitlements that became multiples of workers in the trenches. 

Corporate position power was unquestioned and moved forward with reckless abandon. Now, position power is anachronistic and managers are atavistic as knowledge power of  academically trained professionals has come to the fore. 

But, alas, the expression "never the twain shall meet" is dated as work is no longer brute force but brain power and managing is no longer a position but a strategy.

The reality of the imagination and the imagination of reality have been reduced to realism.