tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7621529782651296685.post8995747583456398230..comments2020-08-01T22:28:50.016-06:00Comments on Proactive Progressive Populism: An holonic tangentEdward Bergehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864657929019204993noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7621529782651296685.post-10927664649301821672011-12-28T13:59:49.210-07:002011-12-28T13:59:49.210-07:00Also see this post and the one following on Arnspe...Also see this post and the one following on Arnsperger from the progressive economics thread. He applies the principles above to economics, noting the metaphysically individual monadology inherent to the neoclassical model. He calls for a more individual/social balance and brings in Levinas to support it, one of the authors referenced in this thread. Check out his use of Levinas in his referenced article and you'll see many of the same criticisms upstream. For example:<br /><br />"Enjoyment is the sign of human nature's fundamental embodiment, its physical engagement with `exteriority' as opposed to the transcendental subject constructed by various idealistic methods.... Levinas suggests a rather different scheme, which consists in showing that individual subjectivity is in fact constituted by, rather than able to represent to itself, the exterior and hence prior otherness of world and other individuals" (143 - 45).<br /><br />However the individual is not replaced by the other. Arnsperger continues:<br /><br />"Of course, all `access' to this exteriority requires an ego, but this ego itself is unable to know itself as an ego by pure reflection, that is, outside of a relation of response to otherness....the basic explanatory entity is still the individual ego (which decides, calculates, and so on), but only to the extent that this ego is viewed as constitutively altruistic.... Viewing the ego as responsibility means....the ego and all its intentional acts can only be described as a response to otherness" (146).Edward Bergehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13864657929019204993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7621529782651296685.post-46424875174800784062011-12-28T13:59:07.927-07:002011-12-28T13:59:07.927-07:00My initial statement about Spielrein did put it in...My initial statement about Spielrein did put it in either/or terms because that was how it was presented in the movie between Jung and Freud. Spielrein was a go-between to the men personally as well as between their ideas. She seemed to side with Freud on the more social-scientific interpretation, finding Jung's mystical unions counterproductive. I used the occasion to make the point that I too find metaphysical interpretations of such union a regressive step back, as does Kennilingam when he accuses Jung of elevating prototypes to archetypes.*<br /><br />Not only that, but such mystical interpretations tend to an imbalance toward the individual pole, or rather consciousness or experience being limited to the kennilingual individual UL. Whereas the more polydox approaches, at least in this thread, tend toward more balance between the individual and the social. That's why I brought in Edwards, for his AQAL holonic expansion provides more precise tools for understanding these dynamics. He hightlights how kennilinus AQAL promotes the exact kind of metaphysical dualities that the polydox surpass by showing that any holon, individual or social, also has an UL (and all) quadrants. Just using his figure of the 1st person perspective of an individual holon more fully shows the kind of individual/social dynamic involved in individual consciousness that is inherent to the polydox approaches and lacking in the more traditional 'mystical' approaches.**<br /><br />Grated we can, as you say, interpret mystical experiences in much more postmetaphysical terms; it doesn't have to be limited to union with a super assholon like God, the universe and everything. But that is exactly what this thread starting out criticizing, this ontotheological (i.e., metaphysical) approach to religion and religious pluralism. And Jung, while having some postmeta ideas, did seem to frame them within traditional and metaphysical mystical interpretations.<br /><br />So it's not so much that individual mysticism interpreted more broadly is opposed to a social interpretation of such experience. Rather the polydox interpretation seems a much more developed interpretation that allows for broader interpretations of said mystical experience, not limiting it to an UL quadrant of an individual, to put it in kennilingus.<br /><br />* That I might agree with this in a certain way discussed elsewhere is a distinction for another time.<br /><br />** Yes, these approaches include the social, as in social service to aid others toward their own enlightenment. But that's the point; enlightenment is through an individual's consciousness and doesn't see the connections of the 'exterior' (like body and cultural body) in forming that individual consciousness.Edward Bergehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13864657929019204993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7621529782651296685.post-41479398372745971822011-12-28T13:58:06.210-07:002011-12-28T13:58:06.210-07:00More from the above thread (see it for links):
Ba...More from the above thread (see it for links):<br /><br />Balder:<br /><br />These are useful points, and I appreciate your bringing them in, but I'm not quite sure how they relate (or whether you intend them to relate) to my questioning of Spielrein's distinction. Here is what you said: "Like what you note above she talked of the dissolution of self during the sexual orgasm, and that this wish for union was indeed a wish for the death of the ego. But again, she seemed to side with Freud on this one, that this was not some sort of metaphysical or religious union with a totalizing All but rather a more concrete notion of putting aside one's individuality in service of a broader, social self. This is something we see playing out with Bendle and the religious polydox in general." This seems to put the definition of "mystical union" experience in either/or terms -- it is either a religious union with a metaphysical absolute, or it is a putting aside of individuality in service of a broader social self -- and I am merely saying this either/or choice is not good enough to cover the territory. I don't see these two interpretations as the only available or (postmetaphysically) viable ones for describing or understanding "mystical" unitive experiences. I don't have any particular issues with Spielrein's notion of putting individuality aside in service of a social identity or set of ideals; in fact, I think many religions already encourage such a thing. I'm just saying that this, in itself, isn't sufficient for "explaining" mystical experience.Edward Bergehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13864657929019204993noreply@blogger.com