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.

The Peripatetic Philosopher discusses a "secondhand" life:

 FEAR, TICKET TO A SECONDHAND LIFE

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

© November 6, 2018

When I was in industry, we had a policy of holding quarterly seminars.  It fell to a different district manager to be the host, once per year.  Each manager tried to outdo his peers.  After one such meeting, everyone was congratulating the host.  He took the praise well enough but turned on his adulators with the question: “Why do you think I worked so hard on this?  This met with dead silence matched only with puzzled expressions.  “I’ll tell you why,” he continued, “It was simply fear of failure.”  This candid admission led to frank exchanges.  They all followed the fear line summed up with the comment, “I think that shoe fits us all.  No one likes to get hammered.”  Finally, as if an afterthought, I was asked my view.  I had a great temptation to fall into line with the others, but I had thought too hard to conquer fear to con myself now.  “What drives me to do my best,” I said seriously, “is the effective utilization of my inherent ability.”  The reaction was immediate.  It echoed around the room with this needling phrase, "How did we ever get a guy like you in this outfit?"  Once the nervous laughter subsided, I smiled.  “Isn’t it just a matter of chemistry, gentlemen, opposite charges attracting?”  Even in jest there was a grain of truth as what I was expressing is the counterpart to the negative, fear.”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall Publisher, 1971. 

No country can give itself a new past.  But it can alter the future and help change its identity by quitting its self-conscious fixation on its glorious past and embrace its fear of the future.  

Dare to ask why this nation is stuck in a very different way than the rest of the world?  Could it be fear of the future?  Fear is on display in contentious and divisive polarity across the nation as if unable to rise above the immature temperament of six graders squabbling on the playground while leading essentially second hand lives.  How so?

The “spoiled brat” generation is now in charge, euphemistically referred to as “baby boomers.” 

They are reluctantly moving off stage, leaving something of a vacuum, now in their sixties and early seventies having perfected the habit of living second hand lives by aping each other in dress and manner, speech and morals, attitude and values.  Victor Hugo compared such conformity to prison.  In any case, this conformity has made these Americans indistinct from each other as they have gravitated to what is esteemed rather than preferred, leaving their children, the new millennials, confused as to what they believe and stand for.  Millennials, as a consequence, are indifferent to authority and tradition, to institutions and religion, to manners and morals for they look at all this with naked eyes.

While the “spoiled brat” generation likely had parents and grandparents who felt it their duty to serve their country in the military, few of this generation has followed that example.  Where their parents and grandparents knew scarcity and the pain of constant struggle as the nation limped through the Great Depression and then embraced the uncertainties and sacrifices of the Great War (WWII), they came into the world in the economic booming years of the postwar that followed. 

Their parents and grandparents unwisely attempted to shield their precious egos from pain and struggle, self-doubt and failure, discrimination and bias, delayed gratification and disappointment to experience the Rites of Passage with no significant obstacles in the way. 

Church was unwittingly the casualty of this obsession, which at one time elevated man beyond himself to unite with his God, while conformity and appetite has forced man down to flesh against desire crushing him deeper into himself.  Today, we are spiraling out of control as a consequence of this predilection.

When you only know plenty, and have never had to activate your reptilian brain for survival, you retreat from adulthood as you plan never to grow old or be forced to grow up. 

People seem surprised that a member of the “spoiled brat” generation would be elevated by popular vote to the President of the United States, yet that has happened with the president behaving characteristically consistent with that prototype.  In retrospect, this was as inevitable as the consistency of meteorological tides.     

*     *     *

One hundred years ago the First World War (1918) ended.  It was followed by the “Roaring Twenties” with a relaxation of traditional social barriers, including an economic run on the banks with wild speculation on Wall Street. 

Ninety years ago, the Great Depression (1929) hit throwing the United States and the world of commerce into crippling inflation and massive unemployment that found 25 percent of the American labor force unemployed. 

Life became a crushing daily struggle for most Americans while, paradoxically, most families maintained the stability of two parent homes as divorce, crime, and vagrancy were low.  Through it all, self-sustaining identification and stoic resolve prevailed against oppressive poverty.  Presidential politics (re: US President Herbert Hoover) were blamed for the Great Depression, as often happens when a national scapegoat is needed to explain a situation driven by other more complex circumstances.  

This led to the inauguration of what would become a four-term election of a president (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and to the “New Deal,” which was essentially a social-democratic agenda that changed the template of American society, and the will of the people.

President Roosevelt pieced together a welfare system taking the power and control of survival from the people (Social Security System) and corporate pursuits from industry and commerce (tax concessions) changing forever representative democracy into a shell game for lobbyist. 

To wit, this strategy and policy failed to energize banks, revitalize Wall Street, or, indeed, make a significant dent in either inflation or national unemployment.  That would be provided by Europe when Adolf Hitler came to power as Germany’s Chancellor through the democratic elective process.

Eighty years ago (1939), Adolf Hitler, now operating as Germany’s dictator, invaded Poland with Great Britain declaring war on Germany, initiating World War Two.  The United States would enter the war two years later once the Empire of Japan bombed the US Naval Base of the 7^th Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on December 7, 1941.  The war, the most devastating in history, decimated Europe and much of Asia leaving only continental United States untouched with such massive destruction. 

Seventy years ago (1945) the United States dramatically ended the war in the Pacific and the will of the Japanese people by dropping two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing more than 100,000 people, thus ending World War Two. 

Estimates of the number of deaths attributed to WWII vary between 50 and 80 million.  Meanwhile, the stigmata of that war and the devastation of that atomic bomb lurks in the memory of civilization to this day as if a bad dream.  In a curious way, it has led to essentially world peace into the 21^st century.

American industry from 1942 to the conclusion of WWII created the greatest war machine known to man.  The war effort also led to full employment although Americans had to endure rationing of household goods, along with delayed gratification for such luxuries as new automobiles, boats, household appliances, clothing fashions, construction materials and leisure ware.   

Sixty years ago (1958) the economic boom was in full swing and Americans were swimming in cash no longer experiencing restrain or delayed gratification buying houses, cars, boats, clothes, taking luxurious vacations, having children, and then giving them everything they wanted but not necessarily needed, forgetting why or how they came to be so fortunate. 

Consumption became therapy for delicate psyches not used to struggle or failure or delayed gratification as the new lexicon was, “See it, feel it, have it, do it now!” 

Communities of a thousand new homes in the suburbs seemed to spring up everywhere as if overnight.  Most Americans had jobs and good incomes with a compulsion to imitate and emulate the rich and famous with homes that mirrored theirs, but more modestly with attached garages of one, two, or three spaces for automobiles.  Paved driveways and manicured lawns were part of the imitation on postage stamp pieces of real-estate.  Hugh factories and giant interstate highways of concrete crisscrossed the country over what was once fertile farmland.   

Suddenly, with no discernible barriers, parents and their children retreated deeper into themselves to entertain the luxury of worrying about their delicate psyches.  The shrinking of America into a psychological nation was now established.  The new priests were psychologists, psychotherapists, mystics and gurus.  Paradoxically, rather than this army of palliative prescribers calming anxiety, the attention seemed only to spike anxiety creating a counter dependent industry whose greatest product was the quality of their listening and tolerance for people suspended in adolescence. 

Meanwhile, children in school or play now had to be given awards for their participation, as no one must be stained with the stigma of failure, of losing, or unable to keep up with others.  Elitism was anathema as the drive was relentlessly to mediocrity and a culture of sameness. 

Grades escalated in elementary and high school, and then even at our most prestigious universities.  For no other reason than because we could, Americans came to believe in American exceptionalism, failing to realize that Russia lost 20 million (military and civilians) and Germany and the Allies nearly as many (military and civilians), while America lost 400,000 and almost no civilians as no battle was ever fought on the continental United States.   

The 1950s marked the appearance of Hugh Hefner who exploited the mood of the times with Playboy Magazine, becoming the Marquis de Sade of his generation promulgating his narcissistic Playboy philosophy to an eager affluent audience of self-indulgent males who had too much time on their hands.  

Fifty years ago (1968) everything in the United States commenced to unravel.  It was as if a knife cut through the fabric of American history separating that year and the past from the future. 

In January, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea; the Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive in Vietnam; in April Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated; Columbia University students seized administrative buildings; 367 students were injured in student peace riots in Paris; in June Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated; the “Poor Peoples March” on Washington, DC promoted economic justice for poor people; in August Richard Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican Presidential Convention in Miami; Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia ending the “Prague Spring”; riots broke out at the Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention in Chicago led by the “Chicago Seven”; in October, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City two American African American sprinters defied tradition at the awards ceremonies with “Black Power” salutes as the US National Anthem was played; in November, Nixon was elected president; in December, the Pueblo was released by North Korea; and Apollo 8 circled the moon.

In the span of the twelve months that followed, America experienced the Woodstock Music Festival, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the occupation of Alcatraz, the collapse of moral boundaries on stage (with “Oh! Calcutta!”), on screen (“Midnight Cowboy”), and in print (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask”).  This also marked the genesis of the Gay Rights Movement; introduced the era of the “no fault” divorce; marked the rise of the Silent Majority; and solidified the Peace Movement of young people who now burned their draft cards and fled to Canada to avoid serving in the US Military and the Vietnam War.  It also marked the explosive growth of the pornography industry that successfully sought shelter under the First Amendment of the Constitution leading to a billion dollar business. 

Forty years ago (1970s), the sanctity of the home was essentially derailed as children became their own parents as parents were now too busy making double incomes to keep pace with the financial demands of their extravagant lifestyles, thus having little time for domestic responsibilities. 

Children were given “things” rather than love or time and attention from their parents.  No surprise, children came to associate love with material substitutes.  Chaos followed.  

The abrupt decline of parental authority was in turn manifested in the classroom, which more resembled a war zone than a learning laboratory.  Crime was on the rise and out of control with the president (Nixon) declaring “War on Crime” and then “War on Drugs.” Neither war proved an effective deterrent.  

The unpopular Vietnam War led to cover ups, which in turn led to corruption as politicians first deceived the electorate and then themselves which reached a crescendo with The Watergate Scandal.  Drugs at all levels of society were now in children hands as parental discipline was now a charade, as adults came to mimic their children in dress and behavior. 

New forms of bigotry and hatred were hatching as scapegoat to offset personal anxiety and unhappiness.  Meanwhile, European and Japanese automobile manufacturers were eating America’s lunch, only to have an energy crisis rock the land with OPEC’s oil embargo.  President Nixon, forever paranoid, became a law unto himself while Congress stayed the same, missed the changes, couldn’t face them, leaving the future up for grabs. 

Today, forty years later, the 1970s now a bitter memory, the United States remains a divisive and polarized nation with Democratic and Republican members of Congress stoking the fires of discontent by throwing abuse at each other rather than finding some reason for compromise leading to a nation in constant turmoil.  

Problems have become too complex to consider much less solve. 

Problems require facing our fears, our ineptitude, our incompetence and, yes, our lack of initiative and originality.  Instead, what is feared is uniqueness, of people of difference, of people who don’t see all news as “fake news,” of people who don’t have to tattoo most of their bodies to have a sense of identity, of people who don’t have to look to experts to tell them what is important or what is not, of people who don’t have to follow a diet or belief system currently a bestseller, of people who don’t worry about what other people think before they form their own opinions, of people who aren’t afraid to differ with the prevailing norm, of people not interested in getting something for nothing, of people who believe in themselves without pretending to have no faults, of people who accept themselves as they are and other people as they find them. 

The latter is an expression of “tolerance” that is seriously missing from the conversation of the day.  That is because most people are too busy living second hand lives.

   

The Peripatetic Philosopher reports some confusion with my book, Near Journey's End:

AS WITH MOST OF OUR AMERICAN HISTORY, THE PRESENT IS ALWAYS A SURPRISE 

We Americans, in my experience, react beautifully to crisis while failing miserably to anticipate trends which seemly are always beyond the pale of our optimistic mindset. We have the aplomb of always being the measure of the crisis no matter how imposing or cataclysmic. It has put our nation, and by extension, the world in some jeopardy because the world now mimics America to a greater or lesser degree, as democratic capitalistic enterprise is the principal game in town. 

Paradoxically, that applies equally to our so-called "enemies," such as Russia and China as to our so-called "allies," such as France, Germany, Japan and Great Britain.

We have arrived at this unwitting juncture and unanticipated circumstance the result of two great wars (WWI and WWII) as our capitalistic democracy is being followed liberally (France, Germany, Japan and Great Britain) or illiberally (Russia, China and Singapore) across the globe, often demonstrating our inevitable capacity for excess.

Should you simply go to Amazon.com, and type in NEAR JOURNEY'S END, then tap on the cover, it will allow you a "Look Inside" the content of this book. If you do no more than read this, you will get a sense of the book. Then if you read the book, you will see there is a segment on "The Way Out" of our dilemma.

In the "Afterword," I write:

When you write a book, you are opening yourself to reveal something inside that you might feel you have no business communicating although it burns in your heart to say. That is because you don’t know if anyone else experiences what you have experienced, or worries about the same things that cross your mind when you’re trying to fall asleep.

There is a bit of arrogance with a book such as this. First of all, I’m not a trained scholar but a peripatetic philosopher, reader and researcher, a person who has worked at all levels of society from a sacker at an A & P Supermarket as a boy, as a laborer in a chemical plant for five summers to pay my way through university, then as a chemist and chemical sales engineer, industrial psychologist and executive for two Fortune 500 corporations rising to a global executive in both, working in South America, Europe and South Africa, as well as across the United States.

JRF



NEAR JOURNEY'S END: CAN THE PLANET EARTH SURVIVE SELF-INDULGENT MAN?

Amazon.com, Kindle Library, paperback book: $29.95; e-book: $9.95

The Peripatetic Philosopher on the Power of Belief:

 What we can learn from Hinduism.

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

© October 28, 2018

The Power of Belief 

“Amish and the Jews have it right," Klaus writes, “everybody can believe what they want to believe, and they make no effort to convert.”  The Hindus have it better.

The Amish population is around a quarter million while the world Jewish population is about 15 million with 6.8 million of that total in Israel.  By contrast, Hinduism is practiced by a billion souls, most of them in India, while Confucianism which is not actually a religion, but an ethical discipline is practiced by a billion with most of them in China.  Christianity is the world’s largest population with nearly 3 billion souls with Islam the next most populous religion with more than 1.5 billion practicing the faith.  That said, Hinduism appears to be the least contentious and polarizing faith on the planet for reason. 

Hindus, like Confucians, do not believe in God.  They believe in hundreds of thousands of gods with every sect, or sub sect of Hinduism worshiping its own God, Goddess, or holy creature. 

With Hinduism, you can pay your respects to some beliefs and not to others or you can believe in none at all.  You can be vegetarian or eat meat.  You can pray or not pray.  None of these choices determines whether you are a Hindu.  There is no apostasy or heresy because there is no core set of beliefs, doctrine or commandments.  Nothing is required.  Nothing is forbidden.

Sir Monier-William (1819 – 1899) captures the essence of this in Hinduism (1877):

Hinduism is all tolerant . . . It has its spiritual and its material aspect, its esoteric and exoteric, its subjective and objective, its rational and irrational, its pure and impure.  It may be compared to a polygon  . . . It has one side for the practical, another for the severely moral, another for the devotional and imaginative, another for the sensuous and sensual, and another for the philosophical and speculative.  Those who rest in ceremonial observances find it all-sufficient; those who deny the efficacy of works, and make faith the one requisite, need not wander from its pale; those who are addicted to sensual objects may have their tastes gratified; those who delight in meditating on the nature of God and Man, the relation of matter and spirit, the mystery of separate existence, and the origin of evil, may here indulge their love of speculation.  And this capacity for almost endless expansion causes almost endless sectarian divisions even among the followers of any particular line of doctrine.     

Incidentally, the absorptive power of Hinduism is illustrated by its impact on Buddhism.  Buddha was Indian, and Buddhism was founded in India, but it has been essentially absorbed into Hinduism in India today.  That is not the case with Islam in India.  But it is a fact that no Al Qaeda terrorist so affiliated has been found in India.  On the other hand, India is a Hindu country that was ruled for 400 years by Muslin dynasties so its history of tension with Islam is real. 

While India is an emerging economic, political and technological power with more than a billion souls in the largest democracy in the world, the Hindu caste hierarchy and its cultural beliefs and practices make this something of a daunting task.  British historian, Paul Kennedy (born 1973) writes:

The sheer rigidity of Hindus religious taboos militated against modernization: rodents and insects could not be killed, so vast amounts of foodstuff were lost; social mores about handling refuse and excreta led to permanently insanitary conditions; a breeding ground for bubonic plagues; the cast system throttled initiative, instilled ritual, and the influence wielded over local rulers by the Brahman priests that this obscurantism was effective at the highest level (The Rise & Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Random House, 1987, p. 13).

Acquiring Independence from Great Britain in 1947, only 71 years ago, it is now a nuclear power, burgeoning economic market with an emerging professional class of engineers, technicians and scientists, Kenney adds:

Here were social checks of the deepest sort to any attempt at radical change.  Small wonder that many Britons, having first plundered and then tried to govern India in accordance with Utilitarian principles, finally left with the feeling that the country was still a mystery to them.

That is because Hinduism is not a religion in the conventional sense, but a loose philosophy, one that has no answers but many open questions with its only guiding principle that of ambiguity.  Still, it is a misnomer to consider India a “Third World” county as it is a do something society comfortable in contradiction and obscurantism, while not obsessing with its history or mountainous climb out of once pervasive poverty.   Then there is the United States of Anxiety.

The American sickness that won’t seem to go away.

The United States has a history of anxiety despite its legendary accomplishments worrying about losing its competitive edge and hegemony. The country retreated back into complacency after the successful conclusion of WWII in 1945, only to be stunned with the Soviet Union’s successful launching of the Sputnik satellite into space in the late 1950s.  The American Space Program followed with the push for new math and science in schools.  

The US went through a similar anxious period when OPEC in the 1970s cut off oil supply, and the economy tanked with double digit inflation and double digit unemployment.  Forty years later oil exploration in Alaska and off the coastlines of the nation has put ecological sentiments on hold.  

The economic boom of the 1960s following WWII did not prepare the nation for the emergence of Japan, Inc. as a competitive threat in the 1970s and 1980s.  Once sacrosanct American industries -- the automotive industry, and manufacturers of machine tools, electronics, glass products, and household appliances -- felt the economic presence of Japan, Inc. shaving away market share with higher quality less expensive products, panic set in.  Pandemonium followed.  While America slept, Japan, Inc. suddenly appeared to be the economic superpower of the future.  

That proved not to be the case, but as we moved into the 21^st century, commercial American airliners filled to capacity with passengers were commandeered by Al Qaeda terrorists and flown into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC on September 1, 2001.  The Twin Towers were destroyed taking the lives of 3,000 citizens and the Pentagon severely damaged. 

What now appears in hindsight a monumental miscalculation, perhaps even a watershed moment was the preemptive invasion of Iraq with the suspect intelligence from the CIA that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  American political scientist Fareed Zakaria (born 1964) puts this in some perspective by referencing Great Britain’s descent:

(In the Boer War of 1899 in South Africa) the British commanders resorted to brutal tactics – burning down villages, herding civilians into concentration camps (the world’s first), sending more and more troops.  Eventually, Britain had 450,000 troops in southern Africa fighting a (Afrikaner) militia of 45,000.  The Boers could not hold Britain back forever, and in 1902 they surrendered.  But in a larger sense, Britain lost the war . . .

Fast forward to today.  Another all-powerful superpower . . .  takes on what is sure will be another simple battle, this one against Saddam Hussein’s isolated regime in Iraq.  The result a quick initial military victory followed by a long, arduous struggle, filled with political and military blunders and met with intense international opposition.  The analogy is obvious, the United States is Britain, the Iraq War is the Boer War – and by extension, America’s future looks bleak (Post-American World, W.W. Norton & Co., 2008, pp. 172-173).   

A common sentiment to Great Britain’s decline from international dominance is “if only it had avoided the Boer War,” while others are saying “if only the United States had avoided the Iraq War.”   

In any case, five years after the start of the Iraq War, there was the economic crash of 2008 demonstrating self-indulgent America was to pay for its consumer mania along with the prohibitive costs of that war.  The Federal Government came to “bail out” General Motors and Chrysler from their bankruptcy status with the rationale “they were too big to fail.”  The era of behavioral politics without consequences continued.

*     *     *

It would be comforting if some learning took hold from these episodes, but there is little evidence that is the case.  Wall Street in 2018 is again unhinged.  People are spending like there is no tomorrow and the American political system has lost its ability to compromise; its ability to bite the bullet and endure the pain of correction, putting that off for another day. 

Meanwhile, across the length and breadth of the nation, America has become a contentious and polarized society with no one seemingly in charge or manning a highly dysfunctional political system with the nation's constituency in complete denial of its complicit role in this state of affairs. 

America’s high anxiety status is not new and has been going on at least since the “panic of 1837” which found the United States in financial crisis.  Then as now an overly rigid political system became captive to money, special interests, a sensational media, and adversarial ideological groups in Washington, DC and across the nation. 

Author Fareed Zakaria writes:

A “can do” country is now saddled with a “do nothing” political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.  By every measure -- the growth of special interests, lobbies, pork barrel spending – the political process has become far more partisan and ineffective over the last three decades (The Post-American World, 2008, p. 212).

Today there are few moderate Democrats and Republicans in Congress or in either party with the result gridlock.

If the American people could only loosen the screws a single turn, take themselves less seriously, retreat from the debilitating myth of “American exceptionalism” and embrace the world as it is, not as they would like it to be; if the American people and its political leaders could learn something from the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, such as that of Hinduism, perhaps it is not too late for America to regain its momentum, not only for the United States, but for the world at large.   

The Peripatetic Philosopher on The Problem of Talking Past Each Other:

 The Implicit Problem with Conversing 

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© October 27, 2018

Listen to politicians answering the media, professional managers and athletes responding to beat sports reporters, college presidents and department heads explaining poor student retention and academic performance, then consider ourselves in conversation with each other.  

What do we have in common?  We find ourselves talking past each other.  We answer a question without answering it going on some tangent, talking about a different subject while believing we are talking about the same thing. 

This is not new.  The idiomatic allusion to interaction was on display in a conversation between Thrasymachus and Socrates on the subject of “justice” in Plato’s Republic.  If you read the dialogue, you will see that neither man addressed any of the issues raised by the other.  Two different concepts in the exchange need not have been disputed but are confused, however, as the two participants become carried away with the idea of what is strong (and weak) in terms of justice. 

This fallacy occurred to me when comparing M's response a Klaus dictum, stating her belief in God and in the authority of the Bible, quoting it for confirmation, then leveling the charge that Klaus “must have an inferiority complex.”  This was the exchange:

Klaus writes:

Belief in a God or not makes humans feel more significant since the universe is so large and the earth is infinitely small speck in comparison.  We want to feel special which we are not and thinking that a God made humans makes many feel less insignificant.

My response:

Being neither a scholar nor a theologian, I hesitate to even offer a layman’s views of how I perceive certain issues . . . The author(s) of Ecclesiastes 1: 1-18 said it all.  In reality, what has really changed except for ourselves, who are only what we THINK we are.  Either Klaus has an inferiority complex or I am an egotist, but never felt insignificant and I like me. 

Klaus again:

I find M’s comment fascinating. The comment I made about people needing a god has nothing to do with having an inferiority complex or being an egotist. I once owned a book that listed over 2,000 gods. These gods initially served the purpose for explaining the world about which early humans had absolutely no concept. The earth has gone through five extinctions. If the last one had not occurred when a large meteor hit the earth and eliminated all the dinosaurs, we would probably not even be here.

There are still many people on this earth who believe the biblical story of how it all began as factual. They think the universe is only a little over 6,000 years old. I don’t care if they believe that, but some of these people are obsessed with making everyone on the planet believe that.

There are Christians who are that way and currently Muslims who are also determined that we all think as they do. My comment about people still determined to believe in a god has to do with the fact that they cannot accept the reality of the universe, the five extinctions that happened on this planet and the mystery about how it all came about.

So they believe that a god created them which I assume makes them feel special. We are not special any more than all the living things that existed before us. As I said before that does not bother me, but the turmoil they want to create because they can’t stand anyone not believing as they do which indicate that they are insecure.

My Response:

Yuval Noah Harari covers in nearly a thousand pages the fact that we are an animal and have been around since Pleistocene Epoch or about 2.5 million years with the last period of extinction, the fifth, occurring some 66 million years ago and called the “Cretaceous Period.”

The disappearance of the dinosaurs and the emergence of Homo Sapiens is still at the conjecture stage despite all the results, but has little to do with this exchange.

Ecclesiastes was written between 450 – 200 Before the Christian Era (BCE), which in terms of Homo erectus (man standing upright and walking) is only an instant in the history of the species, Homo Sapiens.

So, M and Klaus are talking past each other.

Now, the question of our being “significant” or “insignificant” has less to do with these data other than the fact that our Christian culture tells us we are special, and our American culture tells us we are “exceptional," which are subjective premises and have little to do with the indisputable fact that we are an animal like all other animals, and should treat other animals as we would expect our own species to be treated.

Klaus has a problem with religion and belief in God, which we know because he protests too much, while implicit in his rationale as is true in M’s is the duality of belief/disbelief in the soul.  Blame Plato.

 Plato divided the soul into three parts: “reason,” “spirit” and “appetite.” The latter he called “thymos,” or what motivates the best and worst in us. “Thymos” is a desire for a desire making it the psychological seat of the desire for recognition as well as the psychological origin of political action.  Remember, St. Paul was Greek and schooled in Plato and Socratic thought.

Our idiosyncratic nature is such that:

We all love ourselves; we are born egotists, and since our egos are fragile, we will do about anything to protect them. This makes meaningful exchange difficult.

We are all more interested in ourselves than in anyone else in the world. We attempt to turn the conversation around to what we think, feel and value. Failing that, we become bored, stop listening, or excuse ourselves from the conversation.

Every person you meet wants to feel important. Treat people with respect, whatever their station in life, and it will be returned tenfold. Be condescending and they will see you as an adversary; show them that you care, and the balance falls in your direction.

We each crave the approval of others, so that we may in turn approve of ourselves. The hardest person in the world to make friends with is ourselves. Everyone suffers this handicap, and everyone is grateful when relieved of this by complimenting them in some manner. Thus we arouse attributes of their positive side. The barriers of suspicion vanish making productive conversation possible.

Western Civilization was built on the "thymos" of this imaginative and subjective foundation, mainly by the Roman Catholic Church up through the early 16th century and then subsequently by the Protestant Reformation with the Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution and now the Technology Revolution to follow up to our day.

Klaus doesn’t say anything that cannot be verified historically, and M is right that she has been energized by her religion, which has given her a sense of self-worth and dignity, what Plato would say is her “thymos.” But, of course, this is buried in the exchange with them talking past each other.

PS Francis Fukuyama explores Plato's thymos in some detail in "The End of History and The Last Man" (1992), as does Yuval Noah Harari in "Homo Sapiens" (2015) and "Homo Deus" (2017).